If I don’t blog for a few days, it’s because I am cozied up to my speakers, gently stroking their veneer and whispering “prreeecioussssssss, my prrrrreeeciousssssss”.

I decided to go into a state of denial about living in an apartment, and after hooking and fiddling with metres of speaker wire (oh. my. god. they make that stuff THICK these days - i just about needed an oxy-acetylene torch to cut it), I gave my new system a work out.

The first thing I stuck on was the “Hell Freezes Over”, Eagles DVD and I swear, the intro to Hotel California brought tears to my eyes. The sound was clean and crisp, and when the sub-woofer kicked in, I swear my ears orgasmed! Now the Hotel California from the DVD is like no other version I’ve heard and is almost solely responsible for the Eagles being 2nd on my “most listened to” list over on the right. You can clickety on the little music player thingo down the end of the post for sample of what made me swoon. Seriously, if you’re a home theatre salesperson, and you don’t have this DVD on #1 demo rotation, you ought to be fired!

<--- Hotel California sample from DVD

I played a CD next, and probably my favourite, and that's Measure for Measure, by Icehouse. My beautiful Iva Davies did not disappoint as usual, and “Baby You’re So Strange” rocked my socks! In fact, that whole CD rocked my socks. The speakers sounded good without the sub, but with, whoa baby! (and sorry neighbours!)

<--- Icehouse sample

And because too much acoustic guitar is never enough, I chilled out on Dire Straits’ Love Over Gold (probably my second favourite CD) and the very first song I ever heard in CD format on my very first CD player, Private Investigations. Well today, that song gave me my second religious experience, 20 years later.

<--- Private Investigations, Dire Straits sample

So, the verdict? I'm in love. I tell you the honest truth that tears came to my eyes hearing some of this stuff played that way it should. I realised more than ever just how sucky the sound was that I had been putting up with for years and am finally, truly in audio nirvana! :wub_tb:

Now for the P.S.-es

I’m fiddling with the new mp3 player plugin for Wordpress by Martin from 1 Pixel Out. The plugin works in Firefox, and should in IE, though you probably need to update your Flash version if it doesn’t. Oh, and IE users, make an “L” out of your thumb and fore-finger and rest it against your forehead. There’s a good poppet. :wink_wp:

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