Audio

I enjoy collecting and listening to recorded music, a hobby I began in high school when my family acquired a Columbia record player early in the stereo era. Sophmore year of college, I built a Dynaco PS-3 and Stereo 70 from kits and began to collect music on my own. In the mid’70’s I graduated to a Gas Ampzilla, Conrad Johnson preamp, and Dhalquist DQ-10 speakers as the record collection continued to grow. Over the years the input sources have changed from LP to CD to digital. Today’s system includes an Apple TV, Cambridge Audio FM tuner, and Cambridge Audio DacMagic digital to analog converter. Some of this column will be about equipment but most posts will be about the music.

Future posts describe my continuing odyssey through the world of recorded music. The RIAA continues its war on big records’ customers (us) while neglecting artist and repertory development, screwing its artists of royalties, and expressing shock that we are not buying increasingly banal and boring product that hurts my ears. There are alternatives out there.  One of them is CDBaby which continues to publish music recorded by independent artists. A second is our independent labels, many of which are found at Linn Records in the UK. Linn Records does high quality original recordings of european artists and distributes the works of like minded labels in both digital download format and as physical disks in several high definition formats.