Chasing Sound

It was 1971.  I was in front of my parent's only FM radio.  It was not state of the art, even back then.  It worked on vacuum tubes.  In the evening, I could turn the lights out and the room would still be illuminated by the orange glow coming from the back of this aged FM radio.  You could have roasted marshmallows from the heat coming off the radio.  I never tried, but I'm sure it would have worked.

The knob was tuned to 98.1 MHz, KUDL, Kansas City.  KUDL-FM dubbed itself as a progressive/underground rock station, the only one in Kansas City at the time.  I tuned in, and turned up the current song.  It was "Walk Away" by the James Gang.  The bass was deep, the guitar riffs crisp and clean.   Or at least as deep and crisp as possible on a less than state of the art FM tube radio in 1971.  It really wasn't that deep or crisp, but it began my quest for quality sound.

At 15, I could not afford quality sound.  So I experimented.  I replace the then blown speaker in the old FM radio.  Improved, but still not very good.  I cut the speaker wires so that I could extend them to an external speaker.  That was better, but still not very good.  I learned the lesson that if your audio source was of poor quality, better speakers only let you know just how bad the audio source was.

I bought my first stereo.  It was a cheap second hand turntable, and amplifier/tuner with a pair of speakers.  Sound quality was much better than the FM radio.  The problem now was that couldn't record my favorite songs for playback when I wanted to hear them.  Reel-to-Reel tape decks were the quality standard of the time.  They were thousands of dollars - too pricey for a boy of my means.  So I bought a portable cassette recorder - one with a built in microphone.  I would hold up the recorder to a speaker as the song I wanted to record played.  While it worked fine, the sound quality could not be well controlled, and was completely worthless if a younger brother or a parent made noise during the recording.  And they always did.

So my attempt at creating a high quality recording solution died.  I instead turned to improving the core system.  My first upgrade was the purchase of a Pioneer receiver/amplifier.  It had a low noise 100 watts per channel output and could switch between multiple audio sources.  It was sweet.  And all for the low low price of $600 from Kennedy and Cohen.  I even sprung for the extended warranty.  Another lesson learned.  Kennedy and Cohen didn't last as long as my payment for the receiver and extended warranty.

With a higher quality amplifier, I now looked to upgrade the turntable.  By now it is probably the mid-1970's.  Turntables were the core of quality sound and one could be purchased for as little as $100, or as much as several thousand dollars.  The difference between cheap and expensive was the phono cartridge (the needle and signal conversion from mechanical to electrical).  "Wow and flutter" was another key specification.  I believe wow and flutter was a measure that indicated just how constant the turntable turned at the intended 33 1/3 RPM.  I spent another $200 for a direct drive turntable with a decent cartridge and a relatively low wow and flutter.

Between the new turntable and receiver, I had the beginning of a decent system for 1975.  Speakers were the last piece of the puzzle.  Good quality speakers in the 1970's had two major faults.  They were expensive and they were big.  I have a buddy who bought JBL Studiomasters.  The speaker pair consumed all bedroom floorspace that his bed and dresser did not.  But they sounded awesome, especially when his parents were away and we could turn them up to their maximum potential.  He spent a couple thousand dollars on them.  That was about $1,900 more than I had, so I bought an alternative.  I bought a pair of studio quality Koss headphones for around $100.  The headphones allowed me alone to hear the potential of my turntable and receiver.

I then began to build my own speakers.  I bought woofers, mid-ranges and tweeters.  I added cross over network components.  I built the cabinets roughly based on the bass reflex design I had seen in commercial speakers.  I mounted and wired the components and finished the outside of the speaker cabinets in tuck and rolled black vinyl.  I stretch black cloth over a frame and covered the fronts.  They looked pretty good.  They looked very 1970's.  They sounded great.  This combination of speakers, turntable and receiver served me well for many years. 

They were used many times at weekend parties where the music was turned up loud.  My buddies and I would occasionally rent a clubhouse and invite as many stereo owners as we knew to bring their equipment to the party.  We would wire one turntable to drive multiple amplifiers, each with their own speakers.  The result was a high decibel party that would usually generate one or two calls to the police.

As decent as my audio system was, I knew there was more.  I was occasionally invited to the home of a well paid sound engineer for a local TV station.  This engineer poured his discretionary income into buying the very best sound equipment possible.  He had Bang & Olfsen turntables, electronic crossovers, Crown pre-amplifiers and post amplifiers, and the JBL Wall of Sound.  The Wall of Sound had an intended market of concert musicians.  They were sold as components of a commercial concert sound system.  This particular Wall of Sound was located in a 2 bedroom ranch home in Mission Kansas.  The left Wall of Sound speaker was located in the living room, the right in the dining room.  When turned up to near maximum volume, it could be heard for blocks. 

But the amazing thing was listening to the system when turned to a comfortable volume.  It was like being there.  It was today's digital audio quality on yesterday's analog technology.  Every small nuance in the music would be heard distinctly and separately.  In 1975 you could buy this sound quality for around $15,000 - $20,000.  I could not afford to spend nearly that much on a sound system, but I wanted it.

In the 1980's affordable quality audio was introduced with the audio CD-ROM.  Vinyl albums began a rather rapid death.  Not only did audio CDs provide clean digital audio, there was no hiss, clicks or scratches that vinyl albums would introduce.  Connecting a Audio CD player to a standard sound system would immediately produce a higher quality sound than previous components.  I purchased a player and soon began to collect audio CDs.  My vinyl was boxed and stored, for what purpose I don't know, but I still own them.

Today I buy music from Apple, and listen to music via iPod, iPad or Apple TV, sometimes over headphones, other times over the entertainment system connected to my TV.  I don't even download the music anymore.  The music I own now plays through the internet via Wifi to my device.  It has taken nearly 40 years, but I now have affordable quality audio.  I recently purchased "Walk Away" from iTunes for 99 cents.