earlofsodbury
Wastrel.
I wasn't able to afford a remotely decent hifi throughout my youth, so didn't get my first "hifi" until I was in my 30s: off the top-shelf at Tesco, branded "Dual" - pure Chinese garbage, and deeply unsatisfying, "but you get what you pay for" said the moneyless-fool... When my dad died suddenly, my brother who lived nearby simply threw everything the old bugger possessed into a skip - and it was from there I obtained my first upgrade: a Denon UDM-30 - which actually sounded amazing hot-on-the heels of Tesco's finest. I should have stopped there.
Sadly, with that the audiophool bug bit me hard on the backside, and I was all-too-soon chafing for an upgrade, to-wit a Cambridge Audio 640A - newly-out, and much-lauded by the pundits. To be fair to it, it was a little better than the Denon, and devoid of any actively nasty traits, merely underwhelming.
However the bug kept biting, and all too soon I was staring down both barrels of Musical Fidelity's lovechild of a safe and shoebox - the X-150. Now that was a stinker... Shrill upper frequencies, with random, lightweight, disconnected bass, and depressingly-little in-between: rather reminiscent of large Tannoy coaxial-driver speakers there was a hole in the midrange that depressingly-large numbers of people seem unaware is absent. Sadly I was infatuated with the cute little box and began feeding it different speakers - including Richmonds, PMCs, Neats, Pro-Acs, etc. It remained horrid, so I started throwing MF's assorted little strap-on boxes into the fray - a valve impedance-matching thingy which did precisely nothing at-all, then biamping with the matching power amp - which also did precisely nothing at-all... But even that was by no means the limit of my stupidity - and so after picking the brains of a couple of people who really should have known better, I gutted the wretched thing out, pulled most of the caps and resistors, re-routed some wiring and replaced it with solid silver in Teflon, new socketry was installed, and back together it went. By some miracle it didn't blow-up, but everything that was bad about the infernal contraption was now much, much worse. I flailed away at this madness for a couple of years, and inevitably killed it stone dead. I still have it, dead in the box: my own personal albatross - always there to remind me of my unlimited folly...
Sadly, with that the audiophool bug bit me hard on the backside, and I was all-too-soon chafing for an upgrade, to-wit a Cambridge Audio 640A - newly-out, and much-lauded by the pundits. To be fair to it, it was a little better than the Denon, and devoid of any actively nasty traits, merely underwhelming.
However the bug kept biting, and all too soon I was staring down both barrels of Musical Fidelity's lovechild of a safe and shoebox - the X-150. Now that was a stinker... Shrill upper frequencies, with random, lightweight, disconnected bass, and depressingly-little in-between: rather reminiscent of large Tannoy coaxial-driver speakers there was a hole in the midrange that depressingly-large numbers of people seem unaware is absent. Sadly I was infatuated with the cute little box and began feeding it different speakers - including Richmonds, PMCs, Neats, Pro-Acs, etc. It remained horrid, so I started throwing MF's assorted little strap-on boxes into the fray - a valve impedance-matching thingy which did precisely nothing at-all, then biamping with the matching power amp - which also did precisely nothing at-all... But even that was by no means the limit of my stupidity - and so after picking the brains of a couple of people who really should have known better, I gutted the wretched thing out, pulled most of the caps and resistors, re-routed some wiring and replaced it with solid silver in Teflon, new socketry was installed, and back together it went. By some miracle it didn't blow-up, but everything that was bad about the infernal contraption was now much, much worse. I flailed away at this madness for a couple of years, and inevitably killed it stone dead. I still have it, dead in the box: my own personal albatross - always there to remind me of my unlimited folly...
