Discovering music a second time — Part 1

Lately, I have been noticing more and more often that I suddenly rediscover songs I have known for 30 or 40 years. Not because the songs have changed, but because I have — and, above all, because of the way I listen to music today.

How it all began

When I think about it, it is actually quite a long story. Even as a child, I could sit in my room listening to music for hours. The Alan Parsons Project, Jean-Michel Jarre and much more. It began with fairly ordinary HiFi equipment. At some point, a friend of my mother’s became a major influence on me.

He was a concert manager, listened to an incredible amount of music himself and, over the years, became much more than a family friend. I was a little like his unofficial adopted son. Through him, I attended many concerts he organised, was allowed backstage and, at quite a young age, gained glimpses into a world I found tremendously exciting. I owe him a great deal — but that is a story of its own.

For this story, something else matters: he was also the person with whom I built my first three-way speakers. There was a wonderful amplifier, and later a tape deck. And that awakened something: a fascination with how the same music can suddenly sound completely different on different systems.

Music to take with you

Then came something whose importance to my generation is probably hard to overstate: the Walkman.

Today, it almost sounds ordinary. But suddenly, you could take your own music with you. Put in a cassette, put on headphones — and music that had previously been tied to your room and stereo system could go everywhere. I thought it was sensational.

For my birthday, I was given a Sony DD Walkman. And back then, that was not just any Walkman. Sony’s DD range was among its high-quality, correspondingly expensive players. In Germany in the early 1980s, the original WM-DD cost around 300 to 350 Deutsche Mark — a small fortune then, and not only for a teenager.

I still remember how incredibly proud I was of it. It was probably the loveliest birthday present I ever received. I did not only love what it could do. I thought it was beautiful: the mechanism, the buttons, the materials, that compact design.

Apparently, some of that has stayed with me. Today, I own a Sony DD again — or two. Of course, I do not need one at all. But when I hold it now, I still admire its design just as much as I did then. Somehow, it reminds me how exciting it once was simply to be able to take your own music anywhere.

Later, I saved up for a long time because I desperately wanted a Revox CD player. That was a really big thing for me too. The CD was new, modern and promised perfect sound. Looking back, HiFi was already what it has become for me again today: curiosity about just how good music can sound.

Eventually, that enthusiasm went a little dormant. My love of music did not, and my later systems were not bad either. But in retrospect, my listening became flatter somehow, more functional. Switch on the system, put on music, listen. Done. I listened to music without thinking deeply about how I was listening to it.

Curiosity about sound returns

That changed quite abruptly around ten years ago. I bought a McIntosh C40 preamplifier with an MC7150 power amplifier. Klipsch Heresy came first, followed by Klipsch Cornwall.

The Cornwall were an experience even as they arrived. Of course, I knew they were big. In theory, at least. But when two speakers like that actually stand in front of you, it is something else again. Honestly, I felt a little overwhelmed at first. They really are big.

Then I connected them.

And suddenly, music stood in the room.

For me, it really was a revelation. Music no longer simply came from the left and right. A voice could suddenly stand in front of me, an instrument behind it, another to one side and some things behind me — with two speakers in front! There were distances, depth and spaces. Suddenly, music could genuinely sound three-dimensional.

The Klipsch Heresy and Cornwall have another characteristic, though. They are horn speakers, and in my experience they react extremely strongly to placement. Slightly different toe-in, a centimetre forward or back — and the spatial image can change completely. I experimented for ages before finding the position where they sounded right to me.

A few centimetres and a small catastrophe

Which brings me to a little story I can laugh about nowadays.

A friend of my partner’s stayed with us one night. Apparently, those two rather conspicuous Cornwall were a little in her way. So she simply moved them a bit. 😉

I came into the room later and thought: what has happened here? I could have cried.

Of course, she had no idea what she had done. How could she? To her, they were simply two rather large speakers in the way. To me, a few centimetres were a small catastrophe.

Afterwards, it actually took me months to find the position again so that everything sounded right to me.

In any case, McIntosh and Klipsch brought back something I had lost for a long time: that incredible curiosity about sound. An Innuos streamer followed, a separate DAC, other power supplies, special sockets, and on and on. I began looking into cables and eventually making them myself. Always experimenting, listening, reversing changes and asking myself: what can I really hear? What actually changes something?

A HiFi system is probably never finished

And of course, the most dangerous HiFi question of all:

What else could be improved?

Unfortunately, the answer is rather simple: you can always find something. A HiFi system is probably never finished.

Back to building speakers

Eventually, something else returned that I had last done as a teenager: building speakers myself. Through the YouTube channel I Am Mad, I discovered Le Petit, a full-range speaker, and built it. Somehow, that brought me full circle to those first homemade three-way speakers of my youth.

Today, I have both the Klipsch Heresy and the large Cornwall. A McIntosh MA252 has joined them too, along with quite a few other things. 🤔

And my next speaker project is already taking shape. It began with a DeVore Orangutan. By now, though, I have changed and adapted so much to suit my own ideas that it has really become a speaker of my own.

What remains with me

A hobby that keeps going

And of course, I am already curious about what this one will do differently again.

I tell the next part of this story in Discovering music a second time — Part 2. You will find my speaker project in Le Petit after Jean Hiraga — building my speakers.