Vinyl & Hi-Fi
9 stories
Moving in Stereo: Why do audio fools fall in love?
Soundproofing is not acoustic treatment, the way Ryan Adams is not Bryan Adams. The never-ending build of a listening room, failing better.
Audio Inferno: Or how I learned to stop worrying and love ‘Best Audiophile Voices Vol. 4’
Bass traps, butcher blocks and a Doberman named Lucca: how to make a small room sing without selling a kidney for the privilege.
Art, The Day After
Written from inside the 2020 lockdown: what a random Tuesday will taste like again, and why art does not thrive in the bleakest of moments.
Houses of Wax and Other Hits
Vinyl resurgence, my ass. Digging through Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam and Budapest for the record you did not know you were looking for.
Even further adventures in hi-fi: Or ‘You zombie be born again, my friend’
Speakers heavy as a monolith, vinyl drops at six in the morning, and a Hong Kong audio show where Jeff Buckley never really died
Get Your Kicks On Route 666
Noel Gallagher on his first guitar, the Cure’s longest set, a reporter who mistook Fergie for Apl.de.ap: an album of crazy diamonds met along the way.
‘Rivo-lution’ no. 9
Rene Rivo is the Yoda of audio. The man behind Hyperaudio on hotrodding tube amps, tweaking Thorens turntables, and why vinyl never quite died.
Further adventures in hi-fi: Or ‘And he’s buying a stereo to heaven’
Feel the derision of audiophiles once they find out you owned a piece of Bose equipment at any point in your life. It’s like the Mark of Cain.
The wild sleep chase
Three in the morning, wide awake, counting sheep into the thousands. A record, a book, and the bakers’ radios arriving at last like a lullaby.