I love to write, but I suck at typing. One day I will have my thoughts more planned out, then I can use text to speech. Look out Decware forum and world, when that happens...  

I use the forum space here to help me process and log my hifi journey at this point. I have never needed to do this before. It has always been such a slow journey, and not really a main emphasis in my life. After reading some articles I thought I might see what improving interconnects and cabling would do for my modest systems that sounded good enough to jam some rock and roll fairly impressively. So many things always HAD to come first, though... so many times. I would be able to try this or that... someday. I guess I was never really chasing hi-fi. I was chasing mid-fi. And that is SO fine, if that is all you need in your world... The highest fidelity really isn't for everyone('s wallets). It always lived in a dream world for me, the hi-fi. Mostly because of price and availability, but also because of the transient-esque lifestyle I have as a non home owner. Quality weighs, and I have been lugging so many pounds of gear around already... what would I do with MORE, EVEN HEAVIER stuff!?!

As I was slogging through that preverbal forest one day, I stepped on a a branch to avoid a large puddle, and the branch broke! I lost my balance and fell off my path and tumbled deep into a long dark hole. Before I could open my eyes after waking up I saw a vison of a white diamond with a slash towards the bottom, then it vanished... I could hear the voice of an angel...

...actually it was Elvis (and later Jimi Hendricks, but that's another story altogether).

That was the moment my hifi fate changed.

Tonight, Terrific Tuesday Turntable Club was light on attendees and those who had shown up needed to leave a bit earlier than usual. We have been auditioning a new arm/cart setup for a few weeks, and it is going swimmingly. We had a really informative chat on phono stages, tape stages, and analog media, as we do from time to time, but this one really opened some doors of understanding for us. Some technical ones for me, but alot of of well stated user end for the other guys as well. It was a nice time.

The predicted storm was rolling through pretty good at this point. Thunder rolled, lightning crashed, sheets of rain broke across the roof.

Serious night. Serious weather. We figured better to hide from it this evening as we were a bit worn out and we decided to let it roll through, but to ignore it we would need to go all the way.

I think the Terrific Tuesday Turntable club afterparty should be called the AfterTape Society (unless I come up with something better). We already would have a bit of ritual built in, with the loading and cueing of tapes, I think all we would need is a secret handshake to make it official. Its a society, not a club... sounds more serious that way. The rubber meets the road here folks...

If fidelity is what you are looking for... these recordings, the good ones anyway, are the epitome of it. Why stop at the mechanical media? Skipping an entire non-magnetic step in the process can bring you to the edge of nirvana.

To chronicle the details of how tape presents itself would take a special session/s, which I plan on. As it is I just wanted to whet your pallet. Poke the bear so to speak.

I am quite tired... I think this is post 99 for me... gonna have to wait till later as I have amps to build for a bunch of lovely folks tomorrow.

chow

Keep on listening! I know I will

I had to take a little time this morning to slow down and stretch my back out. I will be heading back into the shop soon, but had a brief thought to add to my previous sticky note.

A few months ago I became acquainted with the terminology of 'being the mic'. It is an eloquent way to refer to the phenomena of a time/space travel feeling of being a fly on the wall for a an event through its audio playback... Is there a terminology for something beyond that? I guess it would just be 'like being there' as if they are in the room with you'... but that is  weak sauce. The phrases have been used so often to describe sub par experiences that are just better than the usual and no longer descriptive of the absolute grandeur of the true high fidelity experience... sales pitches for brochures and flyers that merely allude to such things so that everyday mid-fi audio purchasers can validate enormous price tags... rambling more, sorry...

Do we need our own language? I think we need our own language.