A wonderful trip down memory lane

Hello guys,

A few weeks ago when I was visiting jack-fi for an audition, we ended discussing about vinyls and old times. The guys from jack said that it was a time when they had a turntable in every audition room and that maybe they will bring them back, as they begun to miss them.

Two weeks ago I was pleasantly surprised to see a functional one in their second audition room, a Kuzma Stabi SD:

A pair of Focal Electra 1008 BE and a Jadis Orchestra amplifier stood proudly near the turntable. It was a time for a listen. My ears started itching.

The music started flowing and with it so did memories from my childhood. The sound had that magic analog/turntable touch that I missed throughout the years. We started with some old vinyls and we got that static that used to bug me while listening when I was a child. Now it surprised me to see the situation has changed in such manner that I actually loved that static for the particularity and emotion it brought to the music.

The Focal Electra and the Jadis amplifier did their job wonderfully and they impressed me very much. Those little 2 speakers did a very good job on the whole audio spectrum.

The sound overall flowed nicely and musically. The voices were very present and had a very nice texture. I started thinking how the hell did they manage to include all those details into that small thin groove. How could it make so many sounds in the same time. So, as you may have guessed the sound was very detailed and the separation of instruments quite good.

After listening to the old vinyls the guys put a brand new one with the soundtracks from Tron: Legacy. That is where the true WOW appeared. The bass was amazing. It was so deep and impactful it truly amazed me. The openness of the sound was again very impressive. While listening to the soundtracks I got a thrill on my spine and throughout my body at every 10 seconds or so.

That is my awesomeness meter and it was derailed that day. We then put the same song from a CD and I felt the song was less alive than on the vinyl. Did not make an extensive comparison between the two but another thing I observer was that the bass was not as present and did not go so low as with the turntable.

I tried to listen at home to the same Tron soundtracks with LCD2 & HD800 & Burson Conductor. It was very good but not the same…

I remembered my father has over 100 vinyls at home.

Many friends of my father have sold/given all their vinyls and their turntables away when they got a cd player.

Those vinyls have been in our family for more that 28 years and I am happy they have made it through the CD era without being given away.

Jack-fi opened a nice trip down memory lane and made me refocus my attention on the turntables once again.

Ok, so let’s get to the other part of the story.

This weekend I have been at my wifes’ grandparents at the country side. They have a modest house in a village near Tulcea. They are over 80 years old. While they were all talking in the garden I entered the house and started exploring. I found two rooms that were not lived in any longer. One room contained a old russian turntable and 4 stashes of vinyls.

Ok…so practically that was an audition room? 😀 I looked at the turntable.

It was full of dust. I cleaned it a little and checked for the power cable. I found one… My heart was pounding… Found a socket and plugged it in. Looked over the curtain and saw one old speaker. Followed the cables and found another one across the room. Pressed the power button and it started spinning…

I started looking through the vinyls and found some very interesting albums there.

That is when memories really started flooding in. My father had a russian turntable too with similar speakers. From 5 till 10 years old I used to go to sleep while listening to the turntable. I used to listen to recorded stories or music before sleeping. So…you may say I have audiophile roots since I was a little boy 😛

I also found a story disk I used to listen to:

Ah…sweet childhood. I am planning of getting this turntable and use these stories when I will have kids of my own 😀

I also remembered how I used to look at the disk spinning and get real close to the turntables’ needle and started hearing the music at a very very low volume.

The sound quality was kind of poor but now it was all about the music, and the magic the moment had. I just stood back and enjoyed the music.

I found a wonderful vinyl with Mozart Concert Nr. 24 for Piano and Orchestra:

After this I called my wife and we both listened to some Queen:

Then some Lionel Richie:

We also found a Beatles Vinyl :

That trip was a real surprise and I felt like a kid that found a little treasure. It was like opening a chest full of memories and the soundtracks on which they would play.

The turntables will always have the magic of the past and of true analog sound.

+music.+

It made me think of my childhood and how the society changed throughout the years. In those times we did not have so much media and television, so we had more time to just sit and listen to music, to read a good book or just get out and play, things we could still do today but we get polluted by all the media and new life style.

So don’t forget what these turntable mean, just sit and enjoy the music.