Seth's Blog : The pursuit of wonder

The pursuit of wonder

This is a bonus post about a couple of my hobbies. We will return to our regular scheduled post tomorrow.

Wonder is the feeling we have when our experience extends beyond our expectations.

It’s uniquely human, and available whenever we can create the conditions for it to occur.

Wonder is a fine place to do your work, but it’s also a reliable way to find joy in your hobbies. If most jobs are about meeting spec and following the manual, our hobbies can be about creating the conditions for wonder to arrive.

Recorded music is a miracle. Not sort of like a miracle, but an actual miracle. Transporting human voices across time and space. Bringing people long gone back into the room. Giving us a chance to hear music that we’d never experience otherwise.

And then, when we added stereo, a second bit of wonder. Because a well-designed stereo brings music into the space between the speakers–and sometimes, the soundstage extends beyond the speakers. How can this be? Voices coming from another place, and then landing far from the device itself.

I became an audiophile when my friend Steve introduced me to the original Stereophile magazine in 1990. Since then, I’ve traded my way through hundreds of speakers and amps, usually breaking even as a I bought and sold used equipment designed with great care and at great expense (lots of people only buy new stuff, making the purchase and resale of used equipment a resilient proposition). Along the way, I discovered the magic of ancient tube amp technology.

The late Art Dudley wrote many reviews that inspired his friends and readers to give it a try.

The short version: transistors are cheap and plentiful. Transistors give your car stereo 40 or 100 watts per channel of power. Lots of power makes it easier for speaker manufacturers to create modern speakers, because the power available means they don’t have to be as efficient (sort of like race cars not needing to worry about gas mileage).

But the old tube amps bring wonder. The old tube amps might not be powerful, but they’re magical.

I was a columnist for Copper Audio Magazine when I discovered the Glow in the Dark blog. That led me to the work of Don Sachs and Oliver Sayres. I wasn’t going to give up my extraordinary PSAudio DSD and Lens, but these amps rekindled my love of the hobby.

The problem is that a 2A3 amp only generates 2 or 3 watts per channel of power. That’s 1/30th of your car stereo. Hook them up to a modern speaker and nothing worthwhile will happen.

I needed new speakers. And so I went down the high-efficiency rabbit hole. Horns and other more obscure devices. Fussy, oversized and not always a home run.

About this time, I discovered a few companies that were making drivers (those round things you see in every speaker) that were extremely efficient.

I bought a pair and built my own baffleless speakers:

This speaker is painted Yves Klein Blue, a paint made by my friend Stuart at Culture Hustle. A story for another post. And yes, that’s a subwoofer, but my office has just the speakers, no sub…

These speakers are baffleless. There’s no box. That’s simply a piece of plywood suspending the driver rigidly in space. It’s impossible. And again, the wonder. The sound so exceeds expectations that wonder arises.

A few months ago, I found some lumberyards that were selling live-edge slabs of wood. Hardwood is a wild animal, not farm-raised. Each pull on the spokeshave reveals something surprising, and when you finally apply the finish, chatoyancy may arise. How?

Do they sound better because I made them and like the way they look? Of course. Placebos are real, especially in the arts.

Do they sound better because of all the steps in the journey to get here, the people I’ve met and the tech I’ve encountered? Perhaps. It’s also possible that being a snob makes them sound worse.

I’m going to post some pictures of the latest speakers on this page.

Wonder can lurk in places we don’t expect, and it’s worth seeking it out.