We're Going To Have a Revolution

At lunch last week, our sales manager Mike Clarke and I were debating the future of high fidelity music.  Thanks to the new digital media of satellite radio and the ipod, more people than ever are listening to music. But the scourge of this digital media is compression, which can dramatically degrade the quality and detail of the music. Listening through headphones and cheap sound systems, there’s a whole generation who has never experienced the full fidelity that music can deliver. 

 

Get back to where you once belonged  

My true passion for music started in 1976, when we built the store we are currently in. Back then, there was no home theatre, no VCR and the Walkman had yet to be developed. What we did have was some of the finest audio components made, and we set them up in showrooms for dynamic music demonstrations. We taught the listener what to listen for, like the slight hum of Stevie Ray Vaughn's Fender Twin Amp in the intro of his version of the Hendrix classic "Little Wing."  It was a fun time, turning on some of the most powerful and interesting people to great systems and great sound.

 

Fast forward to today.  Visit the local Best Buy or warehouse store and ask for an education or demonstration on the latest speakers or home theatre system and their clerk or checkout girl will look at you like you’re nuts. But 30 years later, we at The Audiohouse are still passionate about music and home entertainment.  We offer better audio and video systems in a comfortable environment for learning and listening. 

 

Got to get this into your life 

On 09-09-09 the remastered The Beatles catalog hit the stores.  I feel it is an historic event. As a fan throughout my life, it is a thrill to be able to rediscover these treasured recordings.  It is just as thrilling to me to see that successive generations have discovered The Beatles music, including my high school aged children and their peers. We are, after all, talking about a band whose last recording was made very close to 40 years ago.

Paul McCartney himself praises the sound quality of these new remasters. Quoted in Rolling Stone, September 3, 2009, he says, “It sounds like I’m back in the session. I hear John and think, ‘There he is.’ You can close your eyes and see him, because the quality is so real.”

 

The remasters took place at London ’s Abbey Road Studios, where The Beatles recorded throughout their career. Although Abbey Road Studios pre-existed The Beatles by decades, it is safe to say that the Beatles made the studios immortal.  Abbey Road, also the site of hundreds of more recent, highly acclaimed classical, pop and film-score sessions recently chose to upgrade their facilities with twenty five pairs of B&W speakers and fifty Classe amplifiers.  They wanted the best equipment available to ensure absolute perfection in recording.

 

I invite you to our showroom and experience a few of these remastered Beatles songs through a great system consisting of a Classe CAP-2100 amplifier and (2) B&W 804 tower speakers. Come listen to a quality uncompressed system again, or maybe even for the first time.  I think you’ll enjoy experiencing the 3-dimensional, living, breathing emotional connection to the music as well as I do.   

 

All the best,

Brett Ringeisen

Owner / Director