9/5/2023 0 Comments Kanso audio furnitureWith the inexorable march of progress in digital, I have accumulated a variety of digital sources over the past decade: an MHDT Havana DAC, a Sony PlayStation 3 gaming console, an Oppo Digital BDP-105 universal Blu-ray player, an NAD M5 SACD/CD player, that Line Magnetic LM-515 CD player - and, most recently, with the advent of DSD, a Luxman DA-06 DAC and Aurender X100L music server. Hoffman, a Virginia-based furniture maker, is as besotted with Japanese style as I am, but also has backgrounds in engineering, physics, and the building of high-end homes - which, in my mind, makes him uniquely qualified to build perfect habitats for high-end stereo equipment. ![]() All rest on a component rack of Indian rosewood, superbly designed and gorgeously finished by Aaron Hoffman, of Kanso Audio. ![]() Digital is handled by a Line Magnetic LM-515 CD transport-DAC and Auditorium 23 interconnects. My analog source comprises a Garrard 401 turntable in a flamewood plinth crafted by Woodsong Audio’s übertalented Chris Harban, an Ortofon TA-210 tonearm, a Miyajima Shilabe cartridge, and a Bob’s Devices Sky 30 step-up transformer. My office stereo consists of a Shindo Laboratory Cortese single-ended-triode tubed power amplifier, a Shindo Masseto tubed preamplifier, Horning Eufrodite Ellipse speakers in Indian applewood, and High Fidelity CT-1 Enhanced speaker cables. My reference system reflects my fondness for an enduring design aesthetic in which extraordinary electronics are encased in beautifully crafted cases of metal and wood. What Kondo proposes requires that you ask yourself a different question: Will the next upgrade be that destination piece, that holy grail - a purchase that will bring me lasting joy? To me, such an audio component must be utterly transparent and relentlessly musical in sound, timelessly drop-dead gorgeous in appearance, easy to use, absolutely reliable, and provide state-of-the-art sound quality that won’t be significantly bettered for years. At some point you might ask yourself, “When does this quest end? When can I start to focus again on the message - the music - and stop obsessing about the medium?” What does this have to do with stereo gear? Stimulating the brain’s reward center with music can unfortunately lead to an addictive, obsessive-compulsive search for an elusive holy grail of auditory nirvana, and along the way we can accumulate too much stuff. Clutter could be a roadblock in the neural highway to the brain’s reward center: the nucleus accumbens, a small, almond-shaped structure deep in the midbrain that has been shown to be an important part of the positive emotion our brain senses when we hear music we like. In this age of distraction and materialism, too much information and too much stuff could be obscuring or interfering with our brains’ pathway to joy. Kondo encourages us to keep only what brings us joy, and to get rid of everything that doesn’t.Īs a psychiatrist entrusted with the responsibility of helping people take care of their inner worlds, I can see the interesting neuroscientific premise behind this. The path to reorganization, however, involves a ruthlessly deliberate shedding of some of our things. Declutter your life and you’ll feel better, she promises. Kondo makes a simple but powerful claim: a dramatic reorganization of your outer world can result in correspondingly profound changes in your inner world. I’ve been reading a compelling self-improvement bestseller by Japanese cleaning consultant Marie Kondo: The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |