Audio: Listen to this article.
It invariably starts with, “What do you do for a living?” It invariably ends with, “Wow, that was amazing!” I’m talking about my experiences sharing my love of music and good sound with several people who’ve come to my house to repair, install, or sell something. I never push my passion on anyone. I wait for them to ask what I do or I wait until they need to walk through my listening room and I see their eyes enlarge to dinner plate size. Young, old, men, or women, matters not. Everyone likes music and everyone is interested in taking little break in the work day to experience something they didn’t know existed.
One young kid’s first question was, “Do you have YouTube?” He had no clue that lossless, high resolution, or high quality audio was a thing. I responded by saying of course I have YouTube and will be happy to stream it through this system. Meeting people where they are, then showing them something even better is always beneficial. After playing some YouTube streams, I remember switching to Tidal to play every song he could think of, because he didn’t want to stop listening. What about this one? What about that one? Do you have XYZ? As if I needed to “have” an album, in order to play it. Needless to say, I can guarantee he talked about the experience for a long time.
Perhaps my favorite experience of late involved my plumber Jerry. Notice I call him “my” plumber. After our shared music / audio experience, he probably calls me “his” customer as well, even though he works for a company that has been around for 101 years. Jerry is old school and wanted to do whatever it took to keep the original fixtures in our main bathroom, rather than replace them with something new and often of lesser quality. His recognition of quality is right up my alley.
After repairing the main bathroom, I invited him upstairs to see the high quality fixtures I put into the bathroom attached to my listening room. I knew he would appreciate them and I had a feeling he would appreciate my audio system. We’d already discussed my career and his first few audio systems as a kid, so it was far from proselytizing good sounding music under the guise of a bathroom fixture review.
Jerry asked to hear something on the system. I said of course, have a seat in the listening chair. The next 45 minutes was spent listening to Rush, Deep Purple, Van Halen, and every band he could think of or that I could recommend. Jerry looked like the Maxell guy, sitting in my chair very relaxed with his hand on the volume control. I told him to let it rip, he couldn’t hurt anything, other than our ears.
When it was time to wrap up the listening session, our conversation about music and good sound didn’t stop until Jerry shut the door to his work truck parked on the street. That walk downstairs, through the living room, and down the front sidewalk only takes a minute for most people. I bet Jerry and I spent 20 minutes walking, stopping to talk, walking, stopping to talk again, etc…
I have no doubt that Jerry remembers the experience and shares it with friends and co-workers from time to time. I know this because Jerry gave me his direct mobile phone number in case of an emergency, and that emergency happened the night before I had some very special guests visiting for a listening session.
I sent Jerry a text asking if it was too late in the evening to talk, and if not, seeking advice on what to do. Jerry immediately called me from two different phones and followed up with a text because neither call went through for some reason. He remembered me as if our initial meeting happened yesterday, and he remembered the music we listened to. Taking it a step further, he said he “had” to hear the Black Crowes on my system if he ever makes it over again.
Jerry walked me through fixing my emergency plumbing issue, even though I told him I was happy to call his office to schedule someone to come out in the morning. Jerry is a mensch who connected with me because of our shared passion for music, and a new interest in high quality sound.
Last but not least, I received a voicemail yesterday from my new small business banker. A young sounding kid who is new to my account, and likely going through a long list of businesses to call. In his message he said he loved the name Audiophile Style (take that all you haters / lovers of the old CA name), was a “low end” audiophile himself (whatever he means by that), and he was very interested in talking about audio with me.
I know what I need to do to share the audiophile love. What are you gong to do?
P.S. Sharing my love of music and good sound goes to another level when my 12 year old daughter and her friends come up to my listening room. It's Atmos music all day long, by request. That's a story for another time.
About the author - https://audiophile.style/about
Author's Complete Audio System Details with Measurements - https://audiophile.style/system
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