Plucking an old jazz album from his imposing wall of wax, Mike Grellman points to a smoke-stained edge on the front cover. The day he bought the record, Grellman asked the store’s owner about the stains on it and a few other rare albums in the bin.

“The guy’s wife found a receipt for one of his LPs, and tried to set fire to his collection,” he says.

The world’s most dangerous hobbies: Skydiving. Mountain climbing. Audiophilia.

A Sonic Bunker

Walking through his ranch-style suburban home, Grellman starts counting off the number of doors between the master bedroom and his listening room, our destination. “One, two, three, four.” Evidently, this amount of insulation is required to keep his marriage intact. When we reach his hi-fi lair, a renovated double garage, Grellman goes into detail about how he tore apart and rebuilt the walls to create a suitable listening environment. It was unclear if he tackled this project before or after the moving boxes were unpacked.

Two speakers are centered in the room, each weighing 500 pounds and standing about five feet high. Tethered to each speaker is a thick black cable leading to twin monoblock amplifiers on the floor, each with an array of dimly glowing vacuum tubes poking out the top. These dedicated speaker amps are connected to another half dozen or so amps and preamps on shelves along the side wall, which power the turntable and other front-end components. Along the back wall are the records — several thousand of them, some rare and valuable, but many others from the dollar bins.

“Sit on the crack,” Grellman instructs me, pointing to a small couch with two cushions centered about 10 feet in front of the speakers.

Grellman is a Rolling Stones fanatic, and he leads off with a live-in-the-studio version of Robert Johnson’s “Love in Vain.” Every fluctuation in Jagger’s voice and each pluck of Richards’ guitar strings sounds amazingly alive and detailed, with a deep, airy soundstage that only grows bigger as more instruments enter the mix. The system quickly sucks you in and demands your attention. It’s a far more vivid musical experience than anything I’ve encountered outside of a nightclub.

“On a late night after a bad day, with a glass of wine and good power, this reminds me of seeing the Stones in a smaller venue in 1981,” Grellman says. “You get that feeling you got, and it’s closer to that event to anything I’ve ever had. This system puts me there.”