My journey to hi-fi

MY BACKPAGES

- ROGIER VAN BAKEL

STEP 1. When I was in my mid-20s, an older editor at the Dutch current-affairs magazine I worked for told me he wanted to write a piece about audiophiles: He had been bitten by the audio bug himself. Because I often wrote about rock and pop music, he asked if I had a quality hi-fi system, and if so, would I be willing to be interviewed for his article.

I should have demurred. I owned a modest system: a Nakamichi cassette deck, a Technics turntable, a Mission Cyrus One amplifier, and Dutch-made BNS 482 speakers. But I thought it sounded fantastic together. In a fit of misplaced pride, I agreed to be quizzed for publication.

Thus, one evening, my colleague ascended three narrow flights to my Amsterdam apartment. Still puffing, he entered the living room. I watched him draw a sharp breath.

To his credit, he was too polite to point and laugh, but years later I understood what had flustered him. I’d placed the 482s where I had space, with zero thought to soundstage or imaging. One tower stood just right of the television 12' in front of me. Its twin was nestled in the cranny between my Lundia LP rack and the kitchen door—some 4' behind my prime spot on the sofa. I could maintain that this was an early experiment in surround sound, but the fact is that I had no clue what I was doing. Whether I and my pitiable rig made it into the article, I don’t remember.

STEP 2. About a dozen years later, after I’d moved to the US and begun writing for Wired, the editors at