Paul McGowan:
I was on the phone with our marketing company Creativello in Seattle and trying to explain what it’s like to be an Audiophile: what moves us, what motivates us, what really floats our boats. When I got to the part of turning the lights off and imagining you are in the room with the musicians, I struck a chord.
Lori, our account rep, said “That brings back an old memory I haven’t thought of since childhood. I think perhaps my father might have been an Audiophile, but I don’t know. I remember he had a lot of speakers built in a special area of the house and connected to it was a reel-to-reel tape recorder. His favorite was to bring the family into the room, turn off the lights, and play a special recording he had of an old steam locomotive approaching far off in the distance.
The train was on the other side of house, or so it seemed, and the recording was made right at the start of a thunderstorm blowing in. It was amazing because as the train came closer the thunderstorm intensified until the entire room shook with the sound of the train and the thunder and lightning, and finally it all went back to quiet as the rain left as did the train. It was as if the whole event happened right in the room with us. I will never forget that experience as long as I live. When we turned the lights back on we all had tears in our eyes, so real and visceral the experience.
Do you think my father was an Audiophile?”
I can remember hearing that recording at various hi-fi shows in the 70s. On a big system it was indeed impressive! As was the infamous Telarc 1812 on vinyl. Ah……such memories.