At this point I’ve crossed the Rubicon that separates the hi-fi enthusiast from the audiophile, having added a pair of B&W 803D speakers to my living room. There they stand, Fasolt and Fafner, four feet each of cherrywood majesty, capped by that signature jet-engine top-mounted tweeter (in these models, employing a specially-grown diamond core.) I don’t mind a bit that they utterly dominate the room. My primary use of the living room is for listening and watching movies on the flat-panel TV. I’ll probably re-orient it in the fairly near future in order to make even better use of the space for listening purposes. No "wife factor"—that bane of the serious audiophile—to contend with.
The combination of the B&Ws, driven by a dual-mono NAD amp, fed signals from a Benchmark DAC1 digital-to-analog converter, produces sound that isn’t just good; it’s utterly transporting. Last night I put on the Vienna Phil playing Brahms 4 with Levine conducting—recorded live and capturing the Great Hall of the Musikverein with uncanny accuracy. The pristine clarity of the recording, combined with the depth and power of the sound system, swept me thousands of miles away right into the hall and its great orchestra. Because my living room is long and narrow, and the speakers are by necessity at the far corners on the long side, I sit a bit closer than is optimal and require a fairly sharp toe-in on the speakers for proper imaging. The net result is the impression that one is standing right on the lip of the stage rather than out in the audience. It’s pretty exhilarating.
Fine audio has a rap for being surrealistically expensive. It can be—you can drop over $100,000 at the drop of a hat, in fact.
But in truth a superb sound system needn’t be like that; in fact, you can grace your life with absolutely jaw-dropping audio for the price of an economy-level new car. Consider that a base-model 2010 Honda Civic can be had for $15,655, or the equivalent Toyota Corolla for $15,246. Splitting the difference, that means about $15,500. Here’s one possible hi-fi system for that price:
Bryston B100 SST Integrated Amplifier: $4500
B&W 803D Speakers $9000 pair
Denon DCD-CX3 CD Player $1200
Quality speaker cables and interconnects: $500 (I recognize that the value of these remains a matter of controversy)
Total: $15,200
Keep in mind that the audio system does not require gas, oil, or scheduled maintenance, nor are you obliged to provide expensive liability insurance (although some homeowner’s or renter’s might be a good idea). You needn’t worry about speeding tickets, parking tickets, parking meters, garage space, or vandalism. Furthermore, in ten years’ time the car is going to be reaching the end of its lifespan and may become more trouble than it’s worth, but your audio system will be performing just like new. The car won’t be worth a fraction of its original sale price, but those stereo components—particularly the speakers—will have held their value pretty well.
And it’s quite possible that you’ll get a lot more pleasure out of the stereo system than the car, and you have the further added inducement that the stereo is unlikely to kill either you or someone else.
Now it’s perfectly true that you can pick up a tinny little stereo from BestBuy for $250; a tinny little car is going to cost a lot more than that. And you can get really fine sound for the $2000 range—still far below the price of a new car. So my car-versus-audio analogy can be taken only so far.
Nonetheless, sometimes it helps to broaden one’s perspective a bit, considering that buying a high-end audio system is much more in the neighborhood of buying a musical instrument than buying a piece of electronics gear.