...And I should talk a little about surround sound before I consider myself introduced.
I've been into music since third grade, when our Music teacher brought in "Yellow Submarine" for us to sing in class. I remembered that my parents had the red and blue sets, so I began my record collection with those albums. This was in late 1983, and a few months later the Beatles were in the news due to the 20th anniversary of their first appearance on the Ed Sullivan show, so that was exciting to read about as a new fan.
I was a stereo purist until maybe 15 years ago when I found a Denon 7.1 channel AVR at a thrift store while on vacation in Sheboygan WI for $20 - one of my best thrift shop finds ever! This was shortly after the first three CD/DVD sets in the King Crimson 40th anniversary series were released, and those discs were among the first that began my multichannel audio collection.
Since then, I have had a surround sound system set up in the living room (and I must thank my wife for allowing me to have 10 speakers of various sizes in there!), and for about ten years enjoyed listening sessions there whenever I found myself alone in the house for an adequate amount of time.
During the pandemic, I gained some additional equipment in trade and decided to set up a dedicated listening room in my basement, in a small room that I had originally built to use as a recording studio for playing with my musical partner. It isn't completely soundproofed, but it's built with double-wall construction and is a very quiet room and I can now have listening sessions any time of day or night without disturbing the household. I use a relatively new front end that plays all formats of digital discs, through a relatively new Denon AVR. My front speakers are 1968-vintage AR2ax, rears are circa early '60s Bozaks with crossovers that I scratch-built to Tobin specifications. My center channel and ceiling speakers are KLH model 21. My Frankenstein setup is a strange mixture of new and vintage, but I just love everything and think it looks so cool.
For me, the primary driver of my purchases has been how ridiculously inexpensive these physical releases are in a historical sense, especially with everything that we're getting on some of these discs. I'm talking two, four, or more mixes of an album, each presented in two, four, six or more channels of high-definition digital audio. And other than those discs locked in expensive boxed sets, the most I'm regularly paying for a particular title is about $40 or $45, which is typical for a SDE Surround Series Blu-ray including shipping to the USA. I feel like the most common retail price right now for an album with 5.1 or Atmos is in the $25-$35 range. Then there are the Quadios, which can be picked up for $20 each in bundles. Have any of you bought a new vinyl record lately? That's for two channels of crackly playback that degrades with every play. Did any of you buy DCC gold CDs in 1999, like I did? Their regular retail price at that time was $25. That's almost $48 in today's dollars! For just two channels of music, with a single mix of the album. I remember I bought the initial four Doors discs when they ran a special for 5 discs for $100. That's $38 each in today's dollars! I'm in for every new Quadio bundle, and every new SDE release, because those series have exposed me to so much wonderful music that I would not have heard otherwise. I aspire to giving an attentive listening to each disc at least once. There are some that I am certain I will never play again, but I've had so many more pleasant surprises than disappointments.
My favorite listen at the moment would have to be "Sylva" by Snarky Puppy. I can't believe this awesome music has been with us so long and I'm just now discovering it! I was excited to see "Spectrum" in the latest Quadio batch. And waiting for "Who's Next" from SDE was patience that paid off.
I hope to begin joining into discussions and share my enjoyment of this hobby with you.
I'm a german guy and live in Heilbronn, near Stuttgart.
