Currently I’m working on some new content with more guidance on how to make REAL PROGRESS in the analog audiophile hobby. To be honest, I’m not really sure this is the content that YOU, my readers, really want. To this day the most read post I’ve ever written is one from the early days of this site in which I compare several pressings of Ziggy Stardust. It would seem then that most people coming to this site are looking for insights into to which pressings of their favorite records to buy, Ziggy in particular.

The Broken Record has always been a labor of love, and I LOVE the way a great record can bring a performance to life. It’s fun to track down a great pressing of a great album, but unless we do the work we need to do on our systems we will NEVER fully appreciate that record for all the joy it can bring. Meanwhile it’s hard to get sound guidance on improving our systems so as to actually be able to PLAY the great sounding records we’ve found.

Given my LOVE for analog, I find I’m compelled to talk about things that you may not have come here for and perhaps things that many audiophiles won’t agree with and may even dismiss as the rantings of a lunatic. “Cheap speaker wire sounds better than the expensive stuff? What’re you NUTS!”

A few years ago I realized that I could let the sound of the records themselves guide me forward. When I wrote that Ziggy article, I had a system that liked the sound of the 2016 Parlaphone reissue. Now I can’t stand listening to it! Is this just a change in my preferences? ABSOLUTELY NOT! Yes I was enjoying that ’16 reissue back then. It sounded good to me and it was fun to listen to at the time. But with the copy I have to play now, I’m literally STUNNED by it!

A few weeks ago I had a friend over who I’d say is not quite as far along with his analog system as I am. He’s aware of the changes I’ve made and I’ve encouraged him to try some of them out himself, but he said to me that he was concerned that if he changed his system in the ways I suggested, many of the records he enjoys listening to now, particularly the newer releases, wouldn’t sound good to him anymore.

Does this really make ANY sense? SO WHAT if a few modern records sound not so great. They ALREADY sound not so great (to put it mildly)! Meanwhile his vintage records, at least the good sounding ones, would sound WAY, WAY better. Now that sounds like a pretty good trade off to me.

I reassured him that the records he likes now would not sound bad if he changed his system, and that some of his records would sound much better, but I’m not sure I convinced him. Time will tell. The question is, have I convinced YOU? Because that’s the very thing I’d like to try to do. That’s the sort of content I have coming down the pike for you and so I’d suggests you get ready for it and get ready to get your system to a place where your records don’t just sound, well, pretty good, but FRIGGIN’ KILLER!!!

Take a look at Tom Port’s recent post at ontherecord.co and see what he has to say about what it takes to make REAL PROGRESS in this hobby. I think you’ll find it enlightening. He also weighs in here about using great pressings of recordings to drive improvements in our systems.

And stay tuned for more from me…

Thanks for reading!