Hi-Fi for sale

Through a desert on a horse with no Naim

By John Groom

June 2003

Psychobabble is a column to explore the twilight zone of hi-fi. That strange place where the improbable meets the impossible, the fussy meets the obsessional, and the physical meets the psychological.

It has been a sad weekend. A friend came around to collect the Naim Fraim along with the Naim 82 and 250. Yes I am selling off my hi-fi gear. There, confession is good for the soul. No, I don’t desperately need the dollars, though it will help my son find a deposit for his first home. No, I haven’t gone off Naim gear, it is wonderful at what it does. It's just that my hi-fi tastes are changing.

I have spent a disproportionate amount of time (thousands of hours), money and immeasurable energy, creativity and focus over the last few years building up a system that achieved moments of startling realism. The boys at the store want me to just leave it alone for a few months and not listen to the system. Perhaps the logic is that I would fall in love again. Absence makes the heart, etc.

The problem however is deeper than that: I am no longer in search of the Holy Grail. The issue is about a change in my own hearing and in my own priorities. It is about being less obsessional and more accepting. It is about a more balanced life that is simpler and probably cheaper.

Yes, the future will involve a stereo but it will be chosen because it has only a couple of components plus speakers. It will have a warm enveloping sound, it will look nice and finally it will cost significantly less than a house deposit and no more than a used Japanese import.

The sound when I find it will be perfect for where I am then, in the same way that Naim has been perfect for where I have been.

There is an old Zen story about a nervous housewife who wants to impress her dinner guests. She goes to the butcher and asks him for his best cut of meat. He replies “they are all my best cuts of meat”. I think it is the same with hi-fi. It is all a matter of what we want the system for.

I have had a romance with Naim as I have appreciated it’s pace, rhythm and timing. At other times I have enjoyed Marantz for its fullness, Rotel for its life, Arcam for its integration or Musical Fidelity for it’s tonal subtlety.

Along with the ‘house sound’ that all manufacturers develop there is always a compromise. Some of the cleanest systems I have heard for example have also lacked life. Some of the liveliest have also been the most fatiguing. As the Americans put it so sensitively, there is no such thing as a free lunch. I am also persuaded that throwing more dollars at the ‘problem’ won’t solve it.

When my friend came to pick up the gear he wanted to know how I could let go of such great sounding equipment. I told him the story about when my ex-wife remarried. I like her new husband and we grew close one evening over a bottle of whisky and some interesting herbal cigarettes. At one point he threw an arm across my shoulder and told me what a wonderful woman she was. It is one of the few times in my life when I have been stuck for what to say. I think I mumbled some thing about I am glad you are happy together.

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John Groom is a psychologist working in private practice on Auckland's North Shore. John has over three decades experience in both hi-fi and psychology.

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