Sitting on Top of the World

What you see here is a real picture of a real situation in my real house.

I'm not sure where to begin with my droll comments about the circumstances that led to this being the latest necessity in our decor, but I will, of course, give it a try.

One day I turned to The Audiophile and said, "Honey, I wouldn't mind having a me-sized chair in The Listening Room."

Understand, in our new down-sized life, The Listening Room is actually called The Living Room by normal people even though it causes The Audiophile to wince a little and gnash his teeth. This room had sufficient papa-bear furniture, and I was simply asking for one quiet mama-bear chair.

Now, as you all know, if you give a mama bear a chair she's going to want a new coffee table, and if you give her a new coffee table she is going to want a new rug to go under it. This domino effect will continue until something positively MUST be done about the horsed-up acoustics in The Listening Room.

I don't know what the problem was with the acoustics or their horse, but this is The Audiophile's happily-ever-after solution, and I'm pleased to report it has restored harmony to his Goldilocks zone.

TAW

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

Bugler's Dream

As I was considering which Olympic sport I might start training for, it occurred to me that there's really no reason Big Air Listening shouldn't be added to the roster. It would be something akin to the Maxell poster guy getting blown away except for the part where the more senior competitors are wearing ear protection to save what little is left of their high-frequency hearing.

The Audiophile has been training for this event since he bought his first system in 1975 at the tender age of don't-make-me-do-the-math. He can still rattle off the exact makes and models of the components in that system with a level of affection generally reserved for... for...

Anyway, Big Air Listening should totally be a thing, and according to some science guy on the www, it will need to be a summer sport because sound travels better through warm air than cold.

And now I would like to issue an apology to all the audio wives for enlightening their husbands to yet another variable to fiddle with that will affect the entire household. Hot flashing? No, the thermostat is just set at 95 because the acoustics are SO much better when the air molecules are warm enough to optimally transmit sound vibrations.

TAW

Dylan and Dylan

Remember Barney and Fred, the subjects of the last post?

Well, two guys named Bob, drove here from hundreds of miles away to listen to them. First, I don’t think Bob was really their names. I think when they were walking up to our house one of them whispered, “Let’s use code names,” but they only had time to think up one name before The Audiophile ushered them in.

Anyway, the “Bobs” listened to Barney and Fred, loaded them up, and took them far away where someone named Bobbette undoubtedly had the pleasure of listening to a lengthy discussion about the “acoustically superior proprietary polygon-oriented, triple-ring radiator high frequency array.”

Perhaps she too found it fascinating that while she knew what each word in the aforementioned sentence meant when used alone, if she’s like me, she had absolutely no idea what the words meant when they were put side-by-side in a magnificently ridiculous overly-descriptive, verbose-laden string of utter nonsense.

TAW

Have a Yabba Dabba Doo Time

What you see here is The Audiophile. Look closely. I know I did.

To the untrained eye, it would appear Barney and Fred slipped out of the house one night for some alone time with their womenfolk, and the next thing you know, Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm were born. Alas, that is not what happened.

Barney and Fred lived with us for several months. They were so named because they were as unattractive to me as their animated body doubles. For the record, I am not physically attracted to cartoon characters, but if I were I’d like to think I could do better.

Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm came to us from another audiophile who didn’t want to risk his eyebrows tearing them apart, rifling around with their intestines, and putting them back together again. Fortunately, nothing makes The Audiophile happier than risking every last hair on his head in the pursuit of Grand Poobah fidelity.

To his credit, all the characters shown in the photo sounded beautifully three dimensional when he was finished playing OPERATION with them, and that meant they were listed for sale faster than you could say WILMAAAA.

TAW

Back in the Saddle

Father, forgive me, it has been four and a half years since my last confession, I mean blog post.

You know how you sometimes see elderly people working the cash register at the market, and you ask yourself, “Do they need the money? Was retirement boring? Where did they get those sensible shoes and matching support stockings?”

While I don’t have the answer to any of those questions, I can tell you this: I have come out of retirement because The Audiophile cannot, for the eternal well-being of his soul (and mine), stop being unnaturally obsessed with this hobby. I thought about giving him a gift certificate for psychological therapy to celebrate the birth of Jesus, but he probably would have pawned it for a pair of boutique film caps manufactured across the pond.

Seriously, I’ve come out of retirement because The Audiophile has given me permission to use him as my muse once again until I can find a lucrative hobby of my own.

TAW