What is my New Year's resolution? Not to focus so much on "resolution," at least that is, in my audio system. After thirty-plus years in this hobby, I believe I have assembled a musical and engaging audio system, but I still find myself hunting for that additional bit of detail, focus, and… resolution! Sometimes to the detriment of my musical enjoyment. My wife has commented that on occasion (maybe too often), I will play the same track over and over whilst making small changes to my system. Tweaking the VTA here, trying different record clamps, whether speaker cable power packs are connected or not (Audioquest), and making small changes to my speaker crossovers (adjustable on the fly), etc., etc., etc.
While this kind of experimentation is useful for the evolution of one's audio system, one can almost always find a tweak that may accentuate the playback of a particular recording. And those possibilities are kind of endless… and maddening. Not letting Audio-nervosa take over is my main point here. I have always tried to focus as much on the music, and in my case, record collecting, as with the equipment, but sometimes that itch to get more out of my system takes over.
The other day, I visited a member of our audio family who has a tape-centric system with reference reel-to-reel playback. Unlike vinyl and digital, switching different tape reels is more labor intensive and tends to encourage the listening of an entire album or performance at a time. I found myself relaxing more into the performance and not so much listening to how it was reproduced. I do play entire recordings at home, but not enough, and after hearing my friend's system, I think I will endeavor to do more of that in the new year and lean into the performance of the musicians and less the performance of my system. So my New Year's Resolution… Don't worry about the resolution!
That said, on side two, track 4, if I increase the VTF by 0.02 grams, I think I can hear more of the... Oh, never mind.
Happy New Year!!!