• Back in 1998 I bought a paid of Monitor Audio speakers, yesterday was the first time in perhaps a decade when I really opened them up and let them sing.

    There was a street party on my road, kids playing outside, no cars and no background noise, and all the windows open. The Monitor Audio are not the loudest speakers out there, I barely recorded 90db on my sound meter... but wow, were they alive.

    Even in songs I know really well, the feel of the kick drum was palpable. The tone of the bass. The clarity of the high hat. Damn... these things sing.

    So all I have in the way of audio equipment left over from years of having acquired and sold little bits, is this beloved pair of speakers - the model on the back shows that they are the Monitor Audio Silver S8, they were bought as reference speakers for a couple of grand back in the late 1990s when I had sold a record (a flawed master acetate of a band, which contained an alternative version of an album, and a fan paid enough to cover most of the cost of these speakers). And these speakers are hooked up to an Arcam amp, an amp old enough to not have a screen on it, with it's model designation no longer visible on the front (it's been cleaned enough times or chipped off?), but it looks a bit like Arcam A38 except without the screen and with fewer inputs - it's from around the same time as the speakers... the late 1990s. And the input for all of these is a studio DAC from RME Digi known as a DIGI96/8 with some FLACs (mostly 24bit) inputting to that.

    Anyhoo... yesterday with people drinking outside, all windows open, and a party atmosphere pervading I figured that so long as I put on party-esque music I could have these loud.

    I'm soooo glad I did. I've kept these things out of emotional attachment, at having purchased them at a time when I was broke and forlorn, a bit despondent. The music they played at the time kept me alive, and now in a different place (emotionally, financially, work-wise, etc) they remain an unbelievable gift that keeps on giving.

    Hard to put words to how good they sounded and what they did to the songs. But I haven't heard them that alive in as long as I can remember (probably aided by a wood panelled room rather than a concrete box).

    Good equipment, even old, is a glorious thing.

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