Re-Light My Fire
Hi-Fi Choice|May 2017

As David Price discovers a boxset that keeps both the vinyl and CD lover in him happy, he ponders the past, present and future of recorded music buying

Re-Light My Fire

Getting older has its advantages. One finally manages to make some sense of the chaotic, random series of events that we call life. Whereas we once had boundless energy, there is now at least a degree of wisdom. Simple pleasures like the turn of the seasons seem to matter more and things that were once so incredibly important aren’t quite the big deal I had previously thought they were.

My music buying patterns have changed over the years, but not fundamentally so. In my teens and twenties, every last penny that I didn’t pour down the petrol tank of my Honda motorbike went on vinyl. About 15 years of intense record buying, wherever I found myself in the world has left me with nearly 7,000 LPs. By the beginning of the new millennium, when CD buying was at its peak, I barely owned 50 of the things. They were purely a review tool. Back then, there were precious few CD players or DACs that I’d heard and liked – only the machines designed by John Westlake or Rob Watts, plus the occasional Marantz or dCS.

This story is from the May 2017 edition of Hi-Fi Choice.

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This story is from the May 2017 edition of Hi-Fi Choice.

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