Rocky Top

A couple of years ago The Audiophile decided it would be in his best interest to take an early retirement so he could devote sufficient time to the micromanagement of his sound triangle.

The exciting part of this life change for me was our decision to leave the Land of 10,000 Perpetually Frozen Lakes to relocate to, and I'm not kidding here...

Music City.

Luckily for me there isn't a Perfect Sound Triangle City, or I'd be living there instead, and it would probably be in an underwater cave or on a planet with acoustically superior oxygen molecules.

To say we are happy here is as much of an understatement as saying Dali Epicons are aesthetically adequate. Not that I have personal experience with the Epicons, but I may occasionally entertain a little fantasy about a pair of boxes arriving from Denmark with my name on them. Dali, if you're reading this, PM me for the coordinates of my sound triangle.

TAW

Rock a Bye Baby

Recently I overheard a fragment of a conversation The Audiophile was having with his stepson. His stepson, for those of you working through this biological conundrum, is also the only human being I've personally baked from the size of a bean to the size of an 8-pound bean.

As always, I wasn't paying a lot of attention until I heard The Audiophile say, "A tube amp is a great first project, but you've got to be careful because you're dealing with anywhere from 350 to 525 volts under the hood, and that will kill you dead very quickly."

Soooo, if I understand this correctly, what we have here is a situation where The Audiophile has somehow enticed my 180-pound bean to engage in a hobby that, on a really bad day, may very quickly turn one of them into a big pot of soup.

TAW

Cappety Cap, Don’t Talk Back

More often than you might image, another audiophile will get in his car, I mean SUV, and drive for an unreasonable number of hours to spend some quality time with The Audiophile.

Why? I don’t rightly know. I can’t say I’ve ever met another bibliophile online and typed out, “Hey, Persona Loca, what say you drive over this weekend with your favorite book, so I can tear off the cover and glue on a different one that I'll probably import from Canada.”

I usually hide under the bed when The Audiophile is having a play date, but that doesn’t mean I’m not overhearing some of the scintillating conversation. From what I can tell, everything is up for comparison: woofers, wire, cable, caps, the watts of the caps, the manufacturer of the caps, and the caps the caps would wear if caps wore caps.

If I were inclined to play a drinking game based on the frequency of the word CAP, I would be capitally incapacitated. And... now I have a plan for the next audiophile play date.

TAW

Here Comes Peter Cottontail

Check this out. It's an A/B test I ran in the privacy of my gray matter a few weeks ago when The Audiophile was doing a mod for a guy.

 

First of all, I would like to salute The Audiophile for making the speakers sound great, but let's face it, our living room looked a little like Easter Island while he was testing his handiwork.

Secondly, did I really use the term "doing a mod" in the opening paragraph? When did that replace the term "modification" in my tumbleweed lexicon?

Lastly, full disclosure: I stole the phrase "tumbleweed lexicon" from Aimee Mann because it is brilliant and just plain fun to weave into everyday conversations about abandonment and despair.

TAW

I've Got a Girl Crush

Once upon a time in January The Audiophile took me on a date to celebrate the fact that we are still married even though one of us is an audiophile. The date included food, wine, dessert, and most importantly live music, which is better than dead music, but not always better than what The Audiophile can produce in the comfort of our home.

The artist of the evening has been a favorite of mine since she was featured on the soundtrack for a disturbing movie that came out right before the turn of the century. To make this easy on you, I’ll also say her first name is Aimee, and her last name is Mann.

Has The Audiophile been queueing up her Mental Illness album on Tidal like a gerbil on a wheel? Perhaps. Do I mind? No, I do not. 

The way I see it, if Ms. Mann gets paid $0.007 per stream, we've simultaneously boosted her into a higher tax bracket and sufficiently burned in the Jupiter copper-foil upgrade du jour.

TAW