Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Settled in and Wired for Sound

     Things are looking good in our new home. All of the walls and ceilings are painted, the new kitchen is complete, the art work is up, the furniture is in place, and the majority of stuff is put away. I even took my old stereo out of storage and hooked it up.
     Let me tell you about my stereo. In addition to the newer components (CD player, DVD player, etc) I have a Dynaco PAT-4 preamplifier, and a Dynaco Stereo120 power amplifier. I left my Empire 398 turntable and my open reel tape deck in storage. The speakers I bought from my brother back around 1987. I don’t know much about speakers except how they work and what they sound like. These speakers were apparently priced originally somewhere around $600 and their sound is awesome. He only parted with them because he found better ones at a price he couldn’t pass up. In any case when hooked up to my system the combined performance is better than anything I have heard in over forty years. Yes, the system is that old.
     I purchased the Dynaco components back in 1968 as kits. This was back in the days when electronics were still made of discreet components. Integrated circuits might have been just making their appearance then. What is amazing is that the preamplifier has such a selection of inputs that one of them has an impedance matched to a CD deck that wasn’t even dreamed of back then. Is that luck or what? It also works for the DVD player. The result is a stereo that far exceeds anything I have heard in my travels. A McIntosh system would probably outperform it to be sure but that kind of equipment is so far out of my price range that I don’t even think about it. Besides my hearing is not improving and I have to wonder if I would even be able to appreciate the difference at this point.
     I hooked the DVD deck to the system and those 12 inch woofers give that wonderful big sound you usually only hear in movie theaters. Some movies like Hunt for Red October need that kind of sound. The only thing missing is a larger screen television and that will probably happen once my cash flow goes back to normal. Movies are important to me since I do not have the television hooked up for programming and in fact I have not watched television since the 1970s unless I was at someone elses house. From what I see I don’t think I am missing much. Maybe my relationship with TV can be a future topic.
     By now you have figured out that sound is important to me. I mourned the loss of my stereo while we were in the apartment and so it is very exciting for me to have it back again. My wife and I have a very extensive collection of compact disks. Between the two of us we must have over 2000 CDs. I love CDs. Anyone who tells you that vinyl sounds better than a compact disc either has a hearing problem or else listens to music where the advantages of CDs don’t matter. A lot of people will disagree with me on this but if they do they are wrong. This is a topic I won’t compromise on and so plan on a major discussion of it in the very near future.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Awesome post, Bob! Great to see you blogging again!

Unknown said...

W00t!! :) Glad to hear your house is becoming a home. Love the stereo system.
BTW> Glad to have you back missed hearing from
ya.

Robert~

Physicalchemist said...

It's always good to hear from my regulars, all two of you.