Rack Your World

IF YOU’RE A boomer who grew up in the 1960s and 1970s like I did, you’ll remember that no home was complete unless it had a stereo system in the living room.

- Michael Trei

After you moved into a new place, the number one priority would be to get your tunes up and running, even before arranging furniture. I guess it was around fifteen or twenty years ago that I suddenly realized this reality had changed. Watching my sister listening to music coming from her iPhone’s tiny speaker while working in the kitchen, I couldn’t help but feel that we’d somehow ended up going backwards. Music is a form of spiritual and emotional nourishment, and if we don’t have access to a good-sounding audio system for music-listening, we will be malnourished.

Andover Audio is a company that aims to bring the nourishing living room hi-fi experience back into people’s lives. A couple of years ago it introduced the SpinBase powered turntable speaker ($299). In my review of the SpinBase (September 2020, and online at soundandvision.com), I raved about how unexpectedly excellent it was and how it comprised a great basic music playback solution for an office or bedroom. Now, Andover is kicking the SpinBase concept up a few notches with the Spin System, a complete matched component system.

A complete Spin System features a SpinBase at its heart and adds: a turntable for your records called the SpinDeck; a subwoofer to pump up the bass called the SpinSub; and a rack to hold everything, including a bunch of records, called, you guessed it, the SpinStand.