Transforming the music

One of my favorite things about this pastime is the modesty of its aims.

- ALEX HALBERSTADT

Despite the sometimes-astronomical sums spent on gear, and the small handful of drama queens who populate various corners of this hobby, all we're doing is trying to enjoy recorded music at home. No one here is reversing planetary warming or solving the Riemann hypothesis. The sole purpose of the pursuit we write about in these pages is to please, enlighten, and entertain. I like that about it.

This means that aesthetics matter. During a recent trip to Japan, I found myself marveling at the many vintage audio components used in both public listening spaces and people's homes, and the high prices these meticulously restored devices command. I found many of them lovely, the patina of age only adding to their allure. In the West, where we believe in eternal progress, it's common to ask whether these components' performance is up to contemporary standards. "Sure, it looks cool, but how does it sound?" we might ask, as though the physical beauty of the gear is a distraction or, worse, a ploy. Recall the old audiophile joke about the initials of the design-forward Danish manufacturer Bang & Olufsen standing for "beauty only."

In Tokyo, fellow listeners explained to me that the history, appearance, and even provenance of a component are inseparable from its sound. How can one fully appreciate hearing a vintage Marantz 8B amplifier without deriving pleasure and meaning from its industrial peanut-butter-brown casework and round bias meter-reminiscent of a prop from James Whale's Frankenstein-not to mention what the amp's burnished sound represents in audio history? Like a participant in the tea ceremony-where the myriad details of the surroundings matter as much as the tea in your bowl-an appreciative listener responds to everything.