We are animals and I am not an exception to the rule. It was Aristotle who first started studying the class of mammals and the class of birds and fish etc. I (we) belong to the class of mammals and from that class is derrived the class of homosapiens. We each belong to different races. Thus we are descended from more general classes to ever more specific ones. Of course this begs the question, what are we going to evolve into and what derivations and subclasses will the future present. What will humans evolve into?
Now, that was not an entirely random thought but an introduction to the concept of class (and type which can be considered synonomous ie class and type can be used interchangeably). Back to the point of behaviour (and more relevant to the title of this page). I’ve noticed that I spend an inordinant amount of time listening to music and also at the same time (As I am quite effective at multitasking) mugging up on devices designed to extract, amplify and produce audio ie. extraction devices such as turntables, CD players, streaming devices etc. I’ve been doing it for quite some time and I’ve decided to put (virtual) pen to paper and list the components of my audio tower of Babel.
My present tower of Babel consists of:
A Rega Planar 25 Anniversary Edition turntable with a Denon DL103 moving coil cartridge.
A Bang and Olufsen Beogram 5500 turntable with a MC4 moving iron cartridge purchased at Bang and Olufsen of Ealing (Stuart and Helen) whom I can’t recommend highly enough. (Nuff said)
A Rega Planet CD player (the original version I think)
A Rotel RCD-06SE CD Player
An Audiolab 8000A integrated amp
And the amp is connected to a pair of Neat Mystique 2 speakers with QED Genesis (3?) cables.
To my (cloth) ears at least, my personal Tower of Babel sounds Ab Fab.
The internet is all about discovery and if you’ve come across my page by accident then may I kindly point you to VintageSonics.
For my personal (and yours if you are interested) reference:
Sony WM-D6C Walkman Professional Review
As far as streaming is concerned I stream from Spotify and YouTube Music. I’ve built a Sandy Bridge (circa 2010) mini (I think) ATX motherboard PC with a RME 96/8 PAD PCI sound card. It’s a 10 year old ish (as I write) motherboard. I chose it as the RME card was of the older PCI (and not newer PCI-E) type. The RME-PC as it shall now be referred to is running XP (sadly now disowned by the guys at Redmond, who are unwilling to support it - RIP XP). The audio is actually piped to the RME-PC via optical SPDIF (I’m awaiting a Coaxial SPDIF bracket ordered from AliExpress). In short, even Spotify Free at the bog standard (why are standards referred to as bog?) bitrate sounds sublime. I must disclose dear reader that I suffer from high frequency hearing loss so if there is any high frequency information being disseminated in my system, I’ll be unable to hear it.
Future projects perhaps: