When Less is More (More or
Less)
 I should have known the day
was coming, but for some reason, whether it was willful ignorance or intellectual
laziness, it hadn’t occurred to me that it would ever happen. It was only late last
month, when my 11-month-old daughter took her first steps in the living room, that it
dawned on me: the stereo would have to go.
Luckily, the stereo had a place to go. Over the past
several months I’ve been putting together a basement home theater. (SoundStage!
Network junkies may have already seen me write about this in my "DIY
Home Theater" column on Home Theater & Sound.) It had always been
my intention to keep the theater system separate from the stereo, but as I saw my daughter
stepping and crawling toward my speakers, my priorities changed. I spent the better part
of a day getting the system down into the basement. It took me days to get everything set
up, and the whole time, I kept thinking that I would miss having the stereo in the living
room. I feared the new location would cut back on how often I listened to music.
Weeks have passed now, and I’m happier with how things
have worked out than I ever would have guessed. I don’t miss having the stereo in the
living room, but the empty space where the stereo was has my wife looking through Stickley
furniture catalogs (their prices can make audiophile catalogs look economical). In
fact, I’ve decided that the stereo system I had in the room was a bit overpowering
for it. It sounded great, but it wasn’t conducive to casual listening; it, not family
interactions, had become the room’s focal point.
But I couldn’t stand to be totally without music --
especially from my satellite radio -- in the living room, so I picked up an inexpensive
TEAC mini-system at Costco. My criteria were minimal: It had to be small and have an
auxiliary jack for the satellite radio receiver. I didn’t expect great sound for what
I spent (just over $100 USD); this was all about convenience. The whole system, except for
the small subwoofer, could have been hung on the wall, but I put it on the corner of the
fireplace mantel.
Only after having this little system in the living room for
a few days did I realize that I was actually enjoying listening to the radio more than I
had with my big system. Listening to the radio for hours at a time (I usually have it on
as I write) wasn’t as fatiguing, and I was much less grumpy when someone wanted my
attention. When I listened to my big system, I always engaged first with the music;
I’d forgotten how to listen casually. With the TEAC system in place, my son can throw
his nightly dance party before bedtime without me having to continuously push him away
from the speakers.
I’ve found that, in some ways, less of a stereo system
can be more useful. My big system gives me more of everything I want from a music system,
but the mini-system allows me to enjoy music in many ways I hadn’t. It isn’t as
satisfying sonically, and many of the things I value in my stereo are completely missing
-- don’t even think about any sort of meaningful imaging or soundstaging. Still, the
TEAC is better for family life and for listening to the radio.
While I listen to my big system less now than I did in the
past, I think I’m using it more efficiently: when I want to listen seriously to
music, I descend to the basement theater room -- where, I was pleasantly surprised to
discover, the system sounds better anyway. A good deal of this is because of the
basement’s isolation from the rest of the house, but it also confirms the idea that
room acoustics matter -- a lot. I already want to investigate the acoustic properties of
the theater room more, which will likely require professional help. (I mean an acoustical
consultant to help with the room, not a shrink to help rid me of such desires.)
My enjoyment of the little TEAC system has me fondly
remembering when my entire hi-fi system consisted of a CD player, a HeadRoom headphone
amplifier, and AKG 501 headphones. There’s a special intimacy in listening on
headphones; I used to love staying up late listening to my favorite albums in my own
little world. No matter what the perceived shortcomings of headphone listening are,
it’s an experience very different from speaker listening, and one that I found
equally enjoyable.
What I think I’ve learned is that there are many ways
to listen to music, and that your stereo system needs to fulfill your needs.
If you mismatch your system with how you want to use it, you’ll likely end up less
happy, even if the system is great for its intended purpose. As you read equipment
reviews, keep in mind that your goal may not be a megabuck system that takes two men and a
horse three days to set up. Such a system may be phenomenal in many ways, but if you have
a small house and young kids, you might better invest your money and time in a headphone
system, which will take up less room and won’t wake sleeping tykes. It’s easy to
get sucked into spending more money on audio equipment or thinking that bigger is
automatically better, but that’s not what will bring you audio nirvana. You’ll
achieve that only when you’ve discovered your goals for good sound, and those
decisions will always be individual ones.
If you’re like me, once you’ve taken the time to
really think about what you want in a music system, you’ll want it to include vacuum
tubes. Our review this month is of the Sound Quest SQ-88 integrated amplifier, which just
might fulfill that need.
…Eric D. Hetherington
|
