Aurender N50

I was born and raised in Argentina. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been fascinated by machines. My mother used to call me “Botones” (Spanish for “Buttons”) because I pressed every button and turned every knob I encountered.

- MIGUEL BARRIO

I was particularly interested in machines that played music, especially my dad’s Grundig console, which sounded like a warm breeze in a beautiful sunset. It’s hardly surprising that I pursued an education in the sciences. I was a graduate student in physics at the University of Chicago in the late 1990s and a poor, inquisitive audiophile. I tried to improve my mid-fi audio equipment in whatever ways I could, which mostly meant opening things up and tinkering. Every day on my way to the physics research building, I walked by the research lab’s dumpster. It was a magical place, where I often found interesting discarded equipment. I once found a 500W Variac—very heavy. I put it in a cardboard box and carried it to my apartment, a 20-minute walk. I still have that Variac. It has proved useful over the years.

Another time I found a low-noise, dual-rail power supply in the dumpster. I had the perfect use for it: cleaner power to feed my Sony ES CD player’s analog output stage. The modification involved cutting the power traces to the analog output section and connecting the components to the new supply. I was even able to mount the new power supply inside the CD player’s chassis.

The result was transformative, much more dramatic than previous upgrades I’d tried, like replacing the output op-amps with better parts and the electrolytic coupling capacitors with film capacitors. With the new power supply, the sound became more relaxed, spacious, and tonally richer.