Even further adventures in hi-fi (Or ‘You zombie be born again, my friend’)

It starts with a pair of Bowers & Wilkins floorstanding speakers — heavy, black and monolithic like, well, the Monolith in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, only not as portentous.

My girlfriend Avee and I carried one after the other up a flight of stairs into the music room. Like penance. The weight of the world. Like Mr. and Mrs. Sisyphus. All for the love of stereo. We had just picked them up from the store’s warehouse in Q.C., after subsisting on Spam and noodles for months. At first I thought an army straight out of Sparta would help us load those bad boys into the car. Only one guy came out with muscles a-glistening. He looked just the old man in the bar in Adam Sandler’s The Wedding Singer (who’s listed on IMDB as, uhm, “Old Man In The Bar”). And clearly just as “strong.” But the old man’s eyes were “the same color as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated.” It was an epic adventure from the warehouse to the waiting car, worthy of a Hemingway sentence or two.

I am just messing with you, dear readers. The only thing that’s really, really heavy about a pair of B&W 683 Series 2 floorstanders is the bass. That beloved low-end that bookshelf speakers (at least the ones I owned) could only communicate in whispers. When the 683s were set up, we put on some Marvin (Gaye, that is), sat back, listened to the Fender basses of James Jamerson/Bob Babbitt and the sound of ambient Saturday rain.

Mother, mother, indeed.

I’ve had so many adventures hunting for the elusive piece of stereo equipment that would make my sweet spot even sweeter. And my search for good records has led me to strange places. (Example: the shop of a buff guy in Kamuning who seemed to talk only in capital letters, looked like Beaker from The Muppets, loved Olivia Newton-John LPs…) If you want an audiophile’s views on gear and grooves, go read Val Villanueva’s column which comes out in this section on Saturdays. But if you want this music junkie’s jitter-filled, clip-ridden, compressed take on things, read on, and let the warm tubes of aural epiphanies glow some more.

Come sign in, stranger.

No static at all

It’s not a lonely journey, I tell you. Fellow addicts are legion.

There is a group on Facebook called Audio Pilipinas from which I learned a lot. Its members post ideas and talk shop — while I lurk. Record producer Romeo Babao and his eye-popping stories about meeting Neil Peart of Rush and Björk in New York; Roberto Coloma and his hi-fi discoveries in Singapore (from him I got the idea of using an Ikea Aptitlig chopping board as a turntable isolation platform); Leonard Co and his contagious love for digital audio (his music room with acoustic treatment he installed himself looks awesome); as well as insights from Manny Vivas, Reggie Halili, Yossie Ferrer, Doc Cesar Martinez, and the Yoda of Audio, Rene Rivo of MusicHaven. The group admins keep things interesting, maintain positivity. Even artists Elmer Borlongan and Ross Capili are part of the group. Yes, attraction to audio need not be the curse of loners.

By the way, we eventually got to meet Romeo Babao — the brother of another great guy, Julius — who shared interesting bits of audio lore: the story behind the “Led Zeppelin II” Robert Ludwig pressing, Bernard Purdie and Jay Graydon as Steely Dan session players, and why the underrated “Tormato” is Romeo’s favorite Yes album, etc. He generously gave me and my bandmates in the Vomits pieces of advice on how to proceed with our own vinyl release. Time flies when you’re with this audio guru.

If you love audio, you’ll want to have cold San Mig Light and sisig with all those guys while an old Garrard spins madly on.

I was able to buy a DAC (digital to analog converter) via Audio Pilipinas’ AP Store. It’s an amazing piece of Schiit, I tell you. Turned my old, discarded Mac desktop into a digital jukebox complete with a classic Vox app and a David Bowie screensaver that I put together myself. (“Kinareer,” said my longsuffering girlfriend, shaking her head.) Avee and I also met Che Cruz of Stereofiles Audio on Sgt. Esguerra in Q.C. through Audio Pilipinas, and got ourselves a warm-sounding Rega Elex-R solid-state amplifier to match our badass bass-enveloping B&W 683s (not to mention coffee, Beatles posters, as well as stories about Rega founder Roy Gandy from Che).

We also made friends with Rey Dumo the vinyl seller. Dumo has a Facebook page where he posts a new stash of pre-owned albums every Saturday at 6 a.m. — everything from Van Morrison to the Mahavishnu Orchestra to pristine Deutsche Grammophon and ECM records at pocket-friendly prices. Rey’s LPs get reserved really quickly. Wake up late and all the goodies are gone — shades of the Tsukiji Fish Market auction. Drat! I shouldn’t have told you about Rey Dumo. I think I’ve now spawned more competitors to those holy-grail vinyls.

On Saturdays, Avee sends me a text message around 5:59 in the morning with one word (“Dumo…”) and I get up right away, ready to outdraw other early-rising audio gunslingers named Doc Roy and Mulcetur. Let me see… Neil Young’s “Tonight’s the Night,” Frank Zappa’s “Hot Rats”… Dibs!

Some babies grow in a peculiar way

I also follow Daddy J’s Audio Boutique on FB. The man sells brand new as well as deftly restored pre-loved stereo equipment (Musical Fidelity, Spendor, Audiolab and — salivate, salivate — McIntosh, Conrad Johnson, etc.) in his shop in Las Piñas, and priced fairly at that. All great finds. But the comments sections for the posted pictures can sometimes get comical. The prices as well as the shop address are conspicuously posted and often reposted, the specs of the items are meticulously detailed, but people still ask, “H.M.?” (How much?), “Saan yung shop mo?”, “Meron ba sa Raon n’yan?”… Ugh!

But Daddy J answers them patiently. Even if the question about an H.H. Scott LK-72 tube integrated amplifier is, “Magkano po ‘yan, pede po ba sa traysikel ‘yan?” My favorite is the post about the Tandberg 3012 solid-state amp. A guy asked, “San ‘yan? Gusto ko bumili pag-uwi ko. Magkano ba ‘yan?” When Daddy J told him the price, the guy retorted, “Ampli lang bibilhin ko, hindi ‘vedioke.’” Nyak!

Things can also get pretty surreal.

A woman was looking for a portable amplifier for the microphone she uses when she talks about Jesus. Another guy asked, “San shop mo?” Daddy J told him it’s in Las Piñas. The guy pressed on, “Sa Pilipinas ba ‘yan.” Yes, of course, answered Daddy J. A map was duly posted. The guy either was literally lost or just waxing philosophical: “Paano ko matatagpuan?”

The man might still be on expedition to this very day.

Angular banjos sound good to me

At this year’s Hong Kong High-End Audio-Visual Show, my trusted companion and I saw stereo equipment and accessories that only hardcore audiophiles, tycoons, as well as concert kings at the New Bilibid Prison and their bagmen (or bag ladies) can really afford. Names to aim for: Dan D’Agostino, Sonus Faber, TechDAS, Aurender, VPI, Kharma, T+A, Accuphase and other brands that purvey everything from audio equipment to musical software to machines that will provide users with clean electricity (I kid you not!) and cables for equally clean signal transfer (I kid you not… part two).

Our favorite among the products was the Walker Proscenium Black Diamond V turntable, hailed as the “most accurate, realistic-sounding turntable ever made.” And it’s quite the looker: shaped almost like the helicopter in Airwolf. The motor runs separately from the table itself. At the Walker Audio room, a classical LP by a German composer was playing and you’d swear there was an oboist there somewhere. Ensconced at the registration table, sheet music in front of him. As the flutist and bassoon player were taking a ciggy break. We were also impressed by the Cambridge Audio space (with its phalanx of amps, speakers, free bottled water, friendly staff and music streamers — Dear Santa, please give me a CXN network player for Christmas and one terabyte of Wagner). The Tannoy Westminsters are also breathtakingly beautiful. Imagine them in your house, like gates to Albion and beyond. 

Some of the rooms and booths we did not find as compelling: sometimes too clinical and clean-sounding (I like grit and a bit of snarl to my system), sometimes because what was spinning or being streamed were tracks by Eva Cassidy, Julia Fordham, and the girl who covered Desperado whose name I don’t recall (not Linda Ronstadt, though… Ronstadt is queen). Those “audiophile female voices” that I don’t particularly like. But to each his own, right? Give me Joni Mitchell, Patti Smith, Chrissie Hynde, Beth Orton and their galaxies of emptiness, anytime. You can have your omnipresent Diana Krall — and I will raise you whoever fronts the Sergio Mendes troop. (Even if Kramer in Seinfeld says, that in South America, “Sergio Mendes has a cult following.” And Newman promptly adds, “They follow him like a cult.”)

In one room, we requested some prog rock (imagine Supper’s Ready by Genesis or Ritual [Nous Sommes du Soleil] by Yes or La Villa Strangiato by Rush wafting from state-of-the-art, proudly British-made speakers, about to blow minds). But the guy didn’t have any of those tunes in his arsenal, so we settled for Jeff Buckley’s Lover, You Should’ve Come Over. A song that was written for feeling, bleeding human beings. Not for someone who only obsesses over SQs, measures bitrates, and quantifies stuff only dogs could hear. Music should be made flesh. That’s what great stereo equipment does. And that’s what audio peeps spinning the magical black wax, lighting silver discs, or shuffling hi-res music files will tell you.

We listened on. Intently, un-talking. My kingdom for a kiss upon her shoulder. The words turned and yearned. The song, the singer and the damage done were all there. The room hummed. It’s never over and Jeff never really died.