Hi-Fi Speakers Are Like Wine

Drinking cheap wine wasn’t an issue until I tried the good stuff. When your understanding of what’s possible is limited to what’s affordable, there’s no conflict between your taste and your wallet. Luckily for my wallet, I noticed that drinking any wine was slowly becoming an issue so I quit drinking altogether. But that doesn’t mean that other tastes don’t pull me towards that special place where cork sniffers go to distract themselves from actually doing something worthwhile. Besides, it’s more fun to pretend you’re a knowledgeable cultured person than admit that it all tastes like grape juice spiked with vodka.

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To be honest, recognizing and rebelling against the cork sniffing culture that exists around virtually all drinking helped me to quit. Of course I liked quality booze over the bottom shelf stuff. I had preferences surrounding hops in beer and fruit-forwardness in wine. But god, I hated having to listen to the people I was drinking with (or worse, myself if we’re being honest) explain that the difference between some regional wine and the rest comes from the ammonia content in the soil, pH plasma delta, volcanic rock, mineral deposits, in oak barrels that were actually used for bourbon first which imparts a light smoke to complement the overtones of… Just writing this makes me want to have a drink so I can quit again.

If you drink, I support you. If you have a favorite brew, I support you. If you’d rather talk about the current state of nuclear fusion research, in particular your thoughts on creating stable plasma with powerful magnets, instead of why the Pliny the Younger you’re drinking is so special, I really support you.

But you had to test a bunch of beers before you found that Pliny the Younger and that means you had to engage in some light cork sniffing, at least temporarily, until you honed in on your taste. To my great dismay, this is the situation I find myself in with stereo speakers.

We’ve been listening to music through the same small Yamaha speakers for over 20 years. Now that we finally have our own house, we’ve decided it’s time to upgrade our home stereo speakers. I’m sure you’ve had that thought about your own home stereo system, right? Your home stereo system that plays music because you don’t rely solely on your earbuds and stock car stereo to check out new bands? Of course not, right? RIGHT???

So we ordered a couple of pairs of bookshelf speakers to see what flavor we like.

Dude, trying out speakers is a painful process. There’s just something messed up about listening to speakers instead of music. How are the highs on this pair compared to the other pair? Speaker Pair A brings out the drum cymbals and background vocals, which is fun, but do I like hearing things that were mixed in the back brought up to my face? Pair B is more relaxed sounding and less fatiguing on the ears but the keyboard solos keep sounding lost in the mix.

But the real cork sniffing begins when you try to talk about how the speakers handle things like sound stage, imaging, instrument separation, and detail. All these terms sound totally pretentious yet once you start listening to different hi-fi speakers, totally real. Some speakers make the band pop out in front while others make you have to listen-in to the speaker. Some make it sound like all the instruments are clearly defined while others make the entire mix sound more glued together. The question is, what flavor do you like? You have to endure the pain of the cork sniffing phase before you can sit back, relax, and drink it in knowing that these are the speakers you like because the hops are citrusy without the body being too fruit forward. It’s at this point that you can stop listening to the speakers and start listening to the music.

So far, I’m not sure I like either of the speaker pairs we got. They’ll probably both go back. Besides, I mostly listen to music with earbuds or in the car anyway.

(I know I mixed beer into a wine metaphor. Sometimes these things come out a little sideways and we just roll with it.)

Tracks used for testing speakers:

Aerial Root is an open and airy mix with a lot of clarity between instruments and air in the cymbals, particularly in Chad Wackerman’s recorded drum sound. One of the speaker pairs made all of the cymbals sound like china crashes. I don’t think aluminum dome tweeters are my thing.

This is a dense mix with a powerful female vocal, lots of electric guitar, and plenty of double kick bass drum. I liked listening for how clear Christine Rhoades’ smooth vocal harmonies sat above all the mayhem.

This was my wife’s go-to test track. With the right speaker, turning this one up makes it feel like DiFranco’s band is playing live and coming out of the PA speakers of a local venue.

Speaker Pair C arrived yesterday. The jury is still out but so far they piss me off the least!