Wired for Sound Part 1: Playback

You don’t need a fancy Hi-Fi system to have fun ear training, but good sound reproduction can inspire your creativity, reveal unheard detail in a familiar recording and is less tiring for extended listening sessions. In this series of articles I will be providing some hints and tips on how to get the best listening experience at home and on the move.

You may wonder why I need to write this article; after all there’s a huge amount of information available on the web. Unfortunately few subjects provoke as much ill-informed, unscientific nonsense as home audio. Audiophile magazines are full of reviews claiming a £1000 speaker cable makes music more “emotional” or advising you to spend £500 on a mains lead for your amplifier. I hope to share with you lessons I’ve learned with my own ears in my years as a broadcast engineer and musician to get maximum enjoyment out of your music – without breaking the bank, or blinding you with science.

In the first article of this series I’m going to talk about playback sources. Playback sources come in a variety of shapes and sizes from CD players, to iPods, to laptops and they are key to getting great sound. Click to read the rest…