Stereo

I bought a new stereo setup today - the first new one in, oh, 35 years. My ex still has my old one, in fact.

This is a more modest setup than the one I got back in the seventies. It's just a receiver and a pair of speakers. I put all my music on iTunes, so I don't need a CD player.

The receiver is a Yamaha home theater thing with about two hundred features I'll never use. All I really needed was a power amp or maybe an integrated amp; most of the digital signal processing stuff doesn't interest me. But the plain old amps are hard to find (and I didn't limit my search to big box retailers), and tend to cost as much or more.

I had been listening to music on high-end self-powered computer speakers, and the chamber music and Asian flute music were tolerable. But symphonies and other big-orchestra pieces sounded choked. Everything sounds much better now.

When I retired, I set some budget goals for myself. I haven't come close to meeting them, and my cash reserves have shrunk faster than I planned. Austerity will have to be the watchword from here on out. I already own more crap than I can fit in my house - cutting back shouldn't be a problem.