Realising Hi-Fi obsolescence – very sad
Discussion
My wife finally sold my old Hi-Fi system at a cash-converter type place, and now that it’s gone, I feel genuinely gutted!
It was a Kenwood separates system, which needed six plug sockets. I bought it back in the mid 90’s and cost about £1200 – I guess it was nothing special, just a more upmarket typical bog standard system of the time, with a 6 CD changer, amp, tape deck, receiver and graphic equaliser – along with beefy 5.1 speakers. It even had voice activation (which was a bit of a pain, TBH, as you only had to speak and it switched itself on!)
It came with us to Italy for three years, and was never used, and it came back to the UK last year, and has been in the attic ever since. However, after having new insulation, I realised just how much space it was taking up, so I decided to sell it or just ‘dump it in the skip’
However, when we changed the plugs and connected it all up, to make sure it all worked – and I see all the lights and graphics spring to life, pressed all the buttons and the various trays still have their smooth action, I felt a huge pang of guilt. Suddenly, I didn’t want to part with it – this was THE thing to have way back, and it is hard to shake that feeling for some of use of a certain age, I guess.
I tried desperately to convince myself that we still had a use for it – somewhere – even the wife was impressed with it and said we’d put it somewhere if I wanted to. I tried to convince myself it still had a purpose, but try as I might, I couldn’t get past the fact that it needed a lot of lounge ‘real-estate’ just to play CD’s and cassette tapes (the former are all boxed up in attic and we have no cassette tapes ant all). I have a new amp under the TV with HDMI connection for the SKY HD, PS3 and PC, the latter has a £160 dedicated Asus soundcard and now stores all film and music collections, and sound as good as the raw CD’s.
With a heavy heart, I consented to get rid of it – my ‘pride and joy’, realising it was simply obsolete, a relic of the pre digital age – but the feeling I got when we switched it on after all this time took me right back – it never let me down. Now that it’s gone, and despite not using it at all for the past 5 years, I regret selling it.
Is this normal!
It was a Kenwood separates system, which needed six plug sockets. I bought it back in the mid 90’s and cost about £1200 – I guess it was nothing special, just a more upmarket typical bog standard system of the time, with a 6 CD changer, amp, tape deck, receiver and graphic equaliser – along with beefy 5.1 speakers. It even had voice activation (which was a bit of a pain, TBH, as you only had to speak and it switched itself on!)
It came with us to Italy for three years, and was never used, and it came back to the UK last year, and has been in the attic ever since. However, after having new insulation, I realised just how much space it was taking up, so I decided to sell it or just ‘dump it in the skip’
However, when we changed the plugs and connected it all up, to make sure it all worked – and I see all the lights and graphics spring to life, pressed all the buttons and the various trays still have their smooth action, I felt a huge pang of guilt. Suddenly, I didn’t want to part with it – this was THE thing to have way back, and it is hard to shake that feeling for some of use of a certain age, I guess.
I tried desperately to convince myself that we still had a use for it – somewhere – even the wife was impressed with it and said we’d put it somewhere if I wanted to. I tried to convince myself it still had a purpose, but try as I might, I couldn’t get past the fact that it needed a lot of lounge ‘real-estate’ just to play CD’s and cassette tapes (the former are all boxed up in attic and we have no cassette tapes ant all). I have a new amp under the TV with HDMI connection for the SKY HD, PS3 and PC, the latter has a £160 dedicated Asus soundcard and now stores all film and music collections, and sound as good as the raw CD’s.
With a heavy heart, I consented to get rid of it – my ‘pride and joy’, realising it was simply obsolete, a relic of the pre digital age – but the feeling I got when we switched it on after all this time took me right back – it never let me down. Now that it’s gone, and despite not using it at all for the past 5 years, I regret selling it.
Is this normal!
If you’re still using it, that’s great. However, we haven’t used mine for over half a decade – the convenience of new technology usurped it for me – but I still feel regret in selling it – more so when we switched all the components on and everything worked perfectly – but again, in the tug of war with my senses, I realised that my/our entire CD collection is now stored (in lossless format) on a 3.5” hard drive, safe in the knowledge that the originals are safe in the attic.
Strange, you don’t miss it if it spends years in the attic, half forgotten – but when it comes to deciding to sell it, it wasn’t an easy decision!
Strange, you don’t miss it if it spends years in the attic, half forgotten – but when it comes to deciding to sell it, it wasn’t an easy decision!
rsv gone! said:
Funny thing is, there has been a swing from quality to quantity of music.
Ipods etc can store thousands of tracks but the total harmonic distortion of the output will be a figure which would make a mid-seventies audiophile cringe.
I know - the kid's have thousands of songs (read-crap) on their ipods, and they only like but a few. Years ago I remember hearing something on the John Peel show, writing it down and catching the bus to Birmingham the following Saturday to buy it - and then listening to it over and over again. (I still do this now, ut with CD's instead of vinyl)Ipods etc can store thousands of tracks but the total harmonic distortion of the output will be a figure which would make a mid-seventies audiophile cringe.
I would not compromise the quality of the music I like to listen to – but the younger generation don’t appreciate it as much, I think.
I do find it funny though, that sometimes, I’ll put on a track, something like Wish you were Here, and they do listen to it intently – but after, when I asked if they liked it, they’ll say something along the lines of ‘it was Ok for olden day music I s’posse…” lol
Silent1 said:
The suggestions that CDs are the pinnacle of music quality is hilarious, not only do they record a narrower range of sounds than most other media they're also susceptible to the money spent on producing them, take a Michael Jackson album or James blunt and compare it to almost any other cd and you will hear the difference there.
I always felt that vinyl produced a 'punchier' sound - especially noticable with reggae tracks - or was it just my imagination? I am thinking of getting a turntable and hooking it up to my amp, and buying a couple of LP's, to see if that's the case.....Gassing Station | Home Cinema & Hi-Fi | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff