Confessions of a Pseudo Audiophile

Health warning - the following is a really long ramble!!

Let me start off with a disclaimer, I am no audiophile. Yes I enjoy a good refined sound and lust after expensive hi-fi components but ask me to describe the sound in terms of resolution, dimensions, placements, timbre or space and I am completely lost. For me what works best is the 'goosebump' test - if i get them while listening to familiar material then for me the setup is damn good. In this respect I am a huge fan of Magnepans (but clearly my wife isnt - well she loves the way they sound but cannot stand the sight of them, and i see her point!!).

With that out of the way, my tryst with vinyls began about a decade back when I inherited an old Cosmic Cogram 2000 from my uncle along with a bunch of old records. I was amazed at how records, that were older than me and were lying unused for about 2 decades, started singing when the needle dropped on them. I loved the fact that each record was dated with many having personal messages, and I was smitten by the mechanical simplicity of it all. Back to the first principles, I told myself. But was I impressed with the sound..nah!! yes it was not bad but could'nt hold a candle to the CD or the novelty back then, the high res digital music.

Still I loved owning it and I even started buying new vinyls. However I used it more as a nostalgia trip and a party piece. Then after the Cosmic broke down, I got myself a Pro-Ject genie 1, which I adored aesthetically. But very soon I realized that a dust cover was absolutely essential in India. Sound wise I thought that the Pro-Ject sounded a bit 'hard' and lacked smoothness and there was more noise and pops than I would have liked. Upgrading to a Shure M97 XE sure did help but but did not completely solve the issues. Analog firmly remained in the realm of nostalgia with digital being the mainstay. Plus the lure of having terra bytes of music at your fingertips was simply impossible to ignore.

However I continued to buy vinyls occasionally and listen to them. I was heartbroken when I accidentally dropped the Pro-Ject and ended up bending its tonearm and breaking the cart. After this I bought a Denon DP 300 F along with another Shure M97 XE. The key considerations then were the dust cover and the mechanical auto start and return functions!! There was a marked improvement in the sound quality and for the first time ever I started listening to Vinyls to enjoy the music as well. By this time however my focus on digital convenience was at its peak with a dedicated music server, DACs, high end USB cables and Jitter filters along with enough digital content to keep my next few generations busy. My time was spent testing various filters, equilizations, formats, protocols etc!!

Fast forward 5 years back, one day I realized that I was falling into the typical audiophile trappings, listen to the same half a track and keep tweaking the system parameters till you get that 'perfect' sound.. and then test that setting on a 'well recorded high res audiophile' track that I did not like!! Essentially I had build up a hifi system to enjoy music but in doing so I had simply stopped listening to music.

I decided to simplify. Digital was still the way for me but I decided to cut the clutter. I replaced all the different components with just two, The Peachtree 220 SE, a stunning minimalist amp and an Oppo 103 which took care of all my digital playback needs. I plugged in my hard disk to the Oppo and controlled it an App. Life was perfect. I realized that if you have a decent system and avoided A-B testing you could be perfectly happy with it for long. I was certainly enjoying music a lot more than I did before. I was also listening more to Vinyls but the convenience of digital was hard to beat. In terms of sound I was actually neutral between the two. It was just a different flavor of the same thing and I thought it was perfectly ok to like both.

Another fast forward to a year back, I began realizing that digital convenience had its own flaws. Now I was spending more time worrying about what to play next than listening to what was playing. Scrolling through thousands of albums was so easy that it seemed like an opportunity loss if I did not do it while hearing music. Suddenly listening to vinyls seemed to be a purer endeavor and with middle age catching up thick and fast I found myself enjoying the ritual of playing vinyls. Flip through the vinyls, admire their artwork, remove the record carefully with a samurai like precision, place them on the spindle, start the spindle spinning, dust off the record, drop the needle and then sit back and finally listen. heck I was even enjoying the initial crackle as the needle hit the spinning record. Analog was simply not only about the music but was a full experience. It actually slowed me down and robbed me of any conveniences or choice.. and I loved it. Also because I could not even forward the tracks without physically displacing myself, more thought went into choosing what I wanted to hear at the first place. And with my daughter stepping out of her toddler years, the evenings spent cleaning records was a real fun activity.

However sound wise, Analog and Digital were comparable, only different flavours. While I had an analog bias, I was also listening to my CDs (rather than the files on my hard disk). There were certain recording like those of Radiohead and U2 that I preferred over CDs while others like old bollywood songs, gazals, dire straits, led zeppelin etc that I preferred over vinyl.

I had not made any major changes to my HiFi set up and was very happy with it. I was also perfectly happy with my turntable and the Shure cartridge. However last year I began toying with the idea of upgrading the cartridge. Of all the carts I read up about (I had not heard even one of them), I finally settled on a Denon DL 301 MK2, mainly because a great deal presented itself online. But this was a MC cart and I from what I had read it seemed that they can be notoriously difficult to match with the right equipment. to start with I had a 10 year old Project phono box whose MC button had never even been depressed. But since the deal was good I decided to go blind on it. The cart arrived from Japan in a couple of weeks and based on online tutorials I set it up on my TT.

My first impressions were that the Denon sounded different. It was certainly more detailed than the Shure, the base was tighter but I thought I missed the warmth of the Shure in some records. However as the weeks have passed the sound.... well either the sound has got smoother and more refined or I have simple got used to it. But now I just love the sound of the Denon. Owning the Denon cart has been another watershed moment in my hifi life. My sound preference has now shifted firmly in favour of Analog. The highs are smooth, mid really engaging and the bass is fantastic. I am revisiting my entire collection one by one and enjoy that goosebump much more often than anytime in the past (except whenever I heard the full range Maggies at a friend's place).

But I do have to admit that I am again foraying down the rabbit hole of upgrades. After the cartridge I have upgraded my phono stage with the Schiit Mani, a well reviewed budget equipment. To this I have also added the Schiit Loki which is a fantastic equalizer that enables very fine adjustments to the tone. But I must say I am in a happy space with my new love for vinyls and am now focusing on growing my vinyl collection. I see this now only as my music collection, but also as an heirloom that would be passed down to my daughter. Well the way I am going this may well be the only inheritance my daughter might end up with!!

PS - Apologies again for the endless rant, I started off with the intention of writing about how the Denon cart has changed my perceptions but ended up writing it as a footnote to the whole backstory.