Tis the Season

Seeing as how this is the time of the year where we celebrate the birth of our Savior by stimulating the economy, I thought I would give The Audiophile something related to his hobby. I mean, not his hobby, because I've been told it is not a hobby, but rather his... his... I don't know. If it is not his career, and it is not his hobby, I guess that makes it his passion, which sounds somewhat better than calling it the "love of his life."

The mailbox cooperated with my plan by offering six catalogs peddling everything from tiny underpants to chocolate-covered prunes, which should probably not be partaken of simultaneously. My attention, however, was on the audio catalog whom I selected as my traveling companion for the business at hand.

It took about six seconds with my nose in the glossy pages for me to realize this was not going to be easy or comfortable. I had no idea a power amp needed mega isolation nor did I realize metal connectors were susceptible to oxidation and corrosion. If this wasn't horrifying enough there was a photograph of a $13,000 subwoofer (reduced to $7,999) with a mature gentleman crouched next to it TOUCHING THE DRIVER.

For the record, I would like to say my intentions were good, but the non-audiophile has no business saddling up the hi-fi pony on the Christmas catalog merry-go-round. Fortunately, The Audiophile also likes wool socks and chocolate-covered fruit so I've got that going for me.

And that, my friends, is audio winning.

Gender Confusion

It seems there are a couple of readers out there who believe I am a man. Perhaps this is because I have not devoted sufficient airtime to the discussion of birthing children or divulged a weakness for designer shoes. To authenticate my gender, I conducted an unscientific survey in which two out of two people unanimously agreed I have the necessary anatomical coordinates to be classified as a woman.

That being settled, there needs to be some consensus on whether stereo components are male or female. In my opinion, the following are all male: subwoofers, components housed in austere rectangular cases, and speakers that flirt unabashedly with the ceiling. That leaves speakers that do not flirt with the ceiling for closer examination.

The smaller more demure speakers, which do not rupture one's spleen when moving them from Point A to Point B to Point A, could be mistaken as female, but I propose most are actually male. The defining characteristic that separates the he's from the she's, if I'm not mistaken, is the slight taper in the midsection, which creates the womanly silhouette. These rare and exotic creatures, as mentioned previously, can be found in the workshop of the Denmarkian elves who handcraft these lovely ladies while maintaining a high degree of sensitivity to their cyclical highs and lows.

As for the gender of the elves, my feminine intuition tells me they are probably men because women would question the necessity of green tights and pointy wooden shoes to obtain an accurate frequency response.

And that, my friends, is audio winning.

Tinker Toys

There are many things I do not understand about audiophilia nervosa. One is the idea of taking something apart, applying fire, and expecting it to be better than it was before. I suppose you could make a case for this theory if the subject were a chicken or a goat, but it seems a little shaky when it comes to stereo equipment.

Nevertheless, The Audiophile likes to take his rectangular toys apart, remove their innards, shake them, smell them, and then put them back with the aid of a soldering iron aka fire. He says he has changed out the parts for better parts, but I've looked into the open chest cavity of the rectangles, and the "before" looks exactly the same as the "after" as far as I can tell.

Sometimes, when he is desperate, he solicits my assistance with these projects. I am generally tasked with holding something PERFECTLY STILL while he wields the soldering iron like a drunken samurai warrior. Once, my hand was accidentally nipped by the iron during one of these adventures which provided me with an opportunity to howl like Janet Leigh and then lord the incident over him for a yet-to-be-determined period of time.

Still, it is enjoyable to have him set up shop in the kitchen on a Saturday afternoon. He can spread the entrails of some mysterious item across the island while I putter with a culinary masterpiece. The only challenge in sharing kitchen space is my overwhelming desire to hide one of his parts for my personal amusement. It would, of course, be returned with a smile when I handed him fresh-baked cookies and milk, but my rational brain tells me only one of us would be amused with these high jinks.

And that, my friends, is audio winning.

Conspiracy Theories

My distrust of subwoofers has been well documented in previous posts, but I may have to add "enormous speaker crates" to the list of the maligned.

Currently The Audiophile has two sets of speakers doing the Cotton-Eyed Joe in The Listening Room. So far; so good. However, the set that is generally referred to as the "body scanners" arrived in crates that could easily hold a dead body or I suppose a live body, but I prefer not to think on that so, redact.

The crates had been living peaceably in our garage, minding their own business, or so I thought, until the day The Audiophile determined they should be moved inside to the storage room. This seemed like a fine idea to me since one of our able-bodied sons had been recruited to assist with the transportation detail.

The problem arose when the lid, JUST the lid, from one of the crates launched itself at The Audiophile's biggest of toes. I don't know if the lid was in telepathic cahoots with the subwoofer or if this was the work of a lone gunman, but the near-death experience certainly gives one pause. The good news is, The Audiophile did not need surgery, stitches, or an amputation. And thank goodness for that because a prosthetic toe would have totally horsed up the acoustics in The Listening Room.

And that, my friends, is audio winning.

His and His

A couple of weeks ago I had the audacity to gloat about MY new speakers that were being set up in MY living space to provide ME with my own source of auditory pleasure. Yes, well, as with all of my gloating, the time has come to acknowledge I was misguided.

The new system, briefly known as "mine," has become very attractive to The Audiophile because it is hooked up to a thing that siphons music from heaven or wherever it is music lives when it is not vacationing on a compact disc. Consequently, the Audiophile has quickly become addicted to the manna and has been inhaling deeply from the personalized stations he has created to play his favorite music both past and present. Mostly past. Mostly by artists with whom I have been happily unfamiliar.

I concede I have horrible taste in music, which I blame on Nancy Sinatra and a pair of fabulous white fashion boots that I was given shortly after birth. Still, it is probably damaging my fragile self-esteem to allow someone else to select all of the music all of the time on a system that I now suspect was never going to be mine from the onset.

To remedy this situation, I took the liberty of creating my own personalized station this week. The thing is, the station was so bad no amount of clicking "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" could make it palatable--even for me. So, although I may not enjoy all of the music selected by The Audiophile, at least he can boast that no genomes were harmed in the making of his stations.

And that, my friends, is audio winning.

The Windy City

Periodically The Audiophile and I take a trip to Chicago, which really needs to consider adopting a tag line that doesn't blatantly announce my every waking moment will be spent dragging my hair from my mouth.

On a recent trip, The Audiophile called ahead to area stereo shops to see if there was any gear he needed to visit at a remote location that likely doubled as a cover for other questionable activities. Sure enough, there was just such an item in just such a location for our homicidal pleasure, so we hailed a taxi and took off in a northerly direction from the heart of the city. We departed the taxi in an area of town that easily-frightened tourists commonly describe as "why didn't we tell the cabbie to wait" ville.

The owner of the establishment eagerly invited The Audiophile inside while I stood in the entry and ran the calculations on whether three people could simultaneously fit inside the store without personal violation. Ultimately the visit only lasted a couple of minutes because the proprietor had, it seems, exaggerated the quality, condition, and sheer existence of his inventory.

Fortunately it was a beautiful day for a purposeful walk with The Audiophile. I complimented him on his prophetic suggestion to start the day with sensible footwear as we quietly discussed whether we were still capable of sprinting should the need the arise. Thankfully, the need did not arise, and we eventually found the Brown Line and returned to familiar territory just in time for an architectural boat tour narrated over a pair of all-weather speakers, which, if I'm not mistaken, could have benefited from better cables and a tweak to the mid-range.

And that, my friends, is audio winning.

Reading Pleasure

The Audiophile subscribes to several magazines devoted to the obvious. I had never paid much attention to these periodicals because I assumed from looking at the covers that they were not written in my native tongue.

This all changed recently when I decided to thumb through an issue of what I will call "The Sound Pile." I didn't read any of the articles because that could have compromised my ignorance on this subject, but I did notice an advertisement featuring a physically enchanted woman posing with a pair of speakers.

The shocking part was she appeared to have been granted permission to actually touch the audio equipment. I looked carefully in the background of the image to see if I could make out an audiophile in the periphery shouting at her to NOT touch the drivers, whatever those are, but she seemed to have carte blanche over the photo shoot.

All in all, these magazines seem harmless enough as long as you wear a head-mounted magnifier to read the minuscule font used in the layout. Not that I'm complaining about the minuscule font because from a cost-benefit perspective we are definitely getting our money's worth out of these subscriptions with or without the speaker candy.

And that, my friends, is audio winning.

His and Hers

The Audiophile doesn't always do so right away, but eventually he reads my weekly post. He astutely likes to point out where I've stated something incorrectly, which is pretty much all of the time given my proclivity for ignorance and hyperbole.

Recently he read the Hello Dolly entry in which I bemoaned the loss of my favorite speakers that departed our mud hut several years ago. THEN he used the departed as a swinging pocket watch to convince me we needed a Second System for MY living space.

As soon as I gave him my hypnotized go-ahead, he dashed to the www and began to quiz me on which speakers I wanted. I responded that I wanted them in rosewood. He peppered me with many other irrelevant questions all to which I replied, "I want them in rosewood."

A few days later some guy in Texas was packing up my rosewood furniture while his inconsolable wife was probably choking out a eulogy. I imagine her clinging to the ankles of the apologetic FedEx guy as he dragged both her and the crates down the driveway.

This post is dedicated to that wife. Dear wife, thank you for relinquishing parental rights to the twins. Rest assured they will be regularly polished with a free-range diaper, and, if necessary, I will puff myself up like a cat to protect them from the delinquent subwoofers that swagger through on occasion.

And that, my friends, is audio winning.

Mile High

According to my source, this is the weekend of one of the most highly anticipated audio festivals of the year. I've never been to this festival, and I truthfully don't know whether it is highly anticipated or just moderately contemplated. Either way, I suspect love is in the air for those who are making the pilgrimage.

It is a shame I will not be at this festival because I see they have generously devoted an entire page of their website to "spouse outings." Browsing the outing options allowed me to vicariously savor the thoughtful balance of activities that appeal to temporarily abandoned people of all walks.

If I were more entrepreneurial, I could have reserved an exhibitor room at the festival itself to peddle my wares. That I have no wares to peddle may have been problematic and somewhat confusing for the selection committee.

Instead, I have put "attend an audio festival" on my bucket list because it seems as if I should witness a gaggle of audiophiles in their natural habitat. Sure, I have preconceived ideas about what they look like when two or more are gathered together, but actually seeing them with the naked eye would not only be an educational opportunity for me, it would also make The Audiophile as giddy as a girl on a spouse outing.

And that, my friends, is audio winning.

That One Bad Day

A few years ago, The Audiophile and I were entertaining a convivial couple with our witty banter and good looks. When that had run its course, The Audiophile segued to Plan B and ushered us to The Listening Room with a moderate amount of fanfare about our senses being on the verge of pleasures unknown.

He played a couple of songs at normal listening levels to assess whether we could handle the pent-up testosterone of the subwoofer, and then he slowly began to up the volume until he had perfectly synchronized our bobbing heads. Shortly after this, things went awry. It was the aroma that first got our attention. Something was burning, like hair or poultry feathers or forty-five dead cows.

The Audiophile threw himself at the subwoofer to presumably reestablish his position of dominance and then quickly turned his attention to one of the other rectangular things on the forbidden side of the room. After fussing with a couple of screws, he lifted the case on the innocent bystander and unleashed a belch of putrid white smoke that gave three of the four of us permission to run for our lives.

The Audiophile courageously stayed behind to assess the damage and whimper a little, but eventually he joined us outside where God was faithfully making new air. He solemnly reported that the sub had bucked loose from one of its connectors causing a short that had fried the more emotionally vulnerable component.

In the end, the victim of the audio fisticuff was repaired for less than the cost of an alpaca. But more importantly, we all learned a valuable lesson: subwoofers are bullies.

And that, my friends, is audio winning.