Your audiophile embarassment

Dang MONO BUTTONS!!!

 

My preamp displays "MONO" in bright green letters when the switch is engaged.

 

This was already funny up until the "lifeless machine" part, and that put it into legendary status, in my book!

 

janszen electrostatic speakers.........just terrible.

 

When moving I took my tonearm off of the turntable and carefully moved it separately. These components were moved in a car and not boxed. I even had a friend hold the arm to make sure nothing would happen to the cart. Then I went to put it all back together with all the bits on the floor of my new listening area. All that care and I ended up snagging the needle of a Denon DL-103R with my sock, tearing it free of the cartridge body.

 

Bummer! That's funny, like you when I move, my stuff allways goes with me in the car nice and comfy..and safe.

 

I was laughing out loud at this before I was even half way through, knowing what was coming. The guy in the cubicle next to mine has to wonder what I'm reading over here. You should have asked her if she had any dented tweeters.

 

My custom slo-mo version of Rio. It's bad ass.

 

My first speakers, the Polk SDS. Tweeters blew out every week due to a design flaw. I have never forgiven Polk. They are dead to me.

 

I do my homework. I research thoroughly. I talk the talk. I audition to exhaustion.

All of that should preclude embarrassment.

And yet it happens. Thusly:

"I'm sorry sir, but I'm afraid your card has been declined."

 

I admire all your candours

 

I bought a Radiohead 2lp set. I didn't realize that I was playing it at the wrong speed until side 3!!!!!

 

I was visiting friends at NYU one summer week, crashing on their futon. I had the days to myself and decided to visit one of the audio salons that advertised in Stereophile, Sound By Singer. It's several blocks away so I decide to make a day of it. But it's hot even by Eastern seaboard summer standards, so I'm soaked before I've traveled three or four blocks. I'm also incredibly grimy, because as a child of the suburbs I lack basic city knowledge such as how to use the subway; not to touch or lean on filthy posts and even filthier walls; and that New York City blocks are long.

Needing sustenance to continue what I imagined would be a pleasant noon stroll, I purchase lunch from a street vendor and promptly empty the contents of a gyro down my front, the greasy meat leaving a trail of shredded lettuce and yogurt sauce. As if things couldn't get worse, a summer squall erupts and soaks me before I can find shelter inside a public building, where I efficiently remove the sole of one of my shoes in the revolving door.

I reach Sound By Singer and it's a veritable Temple of High End. Inside I can see a tube amp far larger than I imagined from its magazine photos, a turntable for which an engineering degree would seem necessary to operate and speakers the size of coffins, everything hooked up with what appeared to be garden hoses. I also espy in the store window my own reflection: hair matted flat, my five o'clock shadow grown ruin over the lazy week, my doltish tee-and-cargo-shorts tourist uniform soaked with rain, perspiration and what passers-by could only hope was food pre-ingestion. My shoe sole hung by three or four threads, stubbornly sticking to the sidewalk and emitting a squishy blurt with every step to call maximum attention to my sad spectacle. All I needed was a sandwich board imploring the sinful to repent before the End of Days and my Crazy Homeless Guy costume would have been complete.

A trio of well-groomed and well-tailored salesmen looked at me blankly and non-judgmentally through the shop glass but I filled in their mental Mad-Libs myself: I could not sully their immaculate store with my presence. I slunk back into the lunch throngs now returning to their Manhattan offices -- how did they stay so dry and composed and non-food-bespattered? -- without having played with the audio toys or even breathed their sweetly ionized air. No, I retreated south to Washington Square, exposed and defeated, squish-blurt, squish-blurt. I wasn't Midtown; I was mid-fi.

 

If this post doesn't get a lot of likes, I'll spill a gyro sandwich down my shirt.

 

That writer was probably saying to his coworker, "hey, watch this..." as he typed away, giggling...

A sheet of paper.... into a book....

 

It was not all of us.....

 

That seems familiar. Sounds like it could be an Enid Lumley (The Absolute Sound) thing.

I enjoyed reading her stuff. She was way out there. Often it seemed that her imagination would run away with itself. I can't remember particulars but some of her discoveries eventually became accepted as facts.

So I thought of her writings as a mixed bag, but she was always an entertaining read.

 

Yeah, but com' on... Put a sheet of paper??? Into a book!?!?! That just slays me...

 

All the books.

I'm not sure if that was Enid Lumley, but it seems likely. One of her "discoveries" that sticks in my head is:

Put a board over the kitchen sink. Also, she described the differences in sound when the faucet is turned to the left and when it is turned to the right.

Give that a try. It won't take as long as putting a sheet of paper in each book.

 

Well-groomed and well-tailored? That's not the Sound by Singer I remember working a summer at in the 90s.

 

Yeah, I know. There was another "tweak" involving replacing quality speaker cables with cheap doorbell wire.............

 

Setting-up my tone-arm at least 1 centimeter (probably more) away from the null points and only discovering this weeks after satisfied listening . I still have a picture...it's so far off that it almost missed the side of the runoff groove at the end of side

 

Getting rid of some lp's because they skipped or got stuck while playing them on my old sony PS-LX250H record player. Fortunately I kept some others, which had the same problems previously, and these are now playing fine on my new turntable. So I can only imagine that the Pink Floyd "Wish You Were Here" lp I had at one point would have also played fine on my current turntable. On to buy the upcoming re-release I guess.

 

At the insistence of a salesman at Crazy Eddie's, I purchased a pair of Acousti-Phase speakers thinking they were a real brand when they were really a house brand probably on par with white van speakers.

Not only were they house brand but Acousti-Phase was owned (as a separate company) by none other than Eddie Antar.

 

This is the most entertaining thread I've seen in a long time. Keep 'em coming!