We’ve spent a frustrating week, ludicrous as it sounds, trying to spend some money. It’s not really a great amount of money but it represents all the fat in a month’s pay, so it’s a lot to us. The problem we’ve been trying to solve, for once by chucking money at it, is the storage and enjoyment of all the music we’ve bought over the years and into the future. Jane wants the CD’s and the vinyl packed away, the wires hidden, or removed, and the general amount of equipment minimised.
Fair enough, I thought, and set about researching some of the streaming set-ups, which became strangely irritating remarkably quickly. Call me old fashioned but I like a bit of foreplay when I go shopping, a bit of effort on the part of the seller goes a long way to lubricating that sale. Instead I was confronted by overpriced, poorly thought out, less than credible technoporn which left me feeling a bit dirty, and not in a nice way.
One manufacturer refused to state system output saying that watts can be a misleading measure, volume depending on design. I really don’t care, if the system has an amp in it, the power output should be noted, so that one was duly crossed off the list. Another system required a remote (if you don’t own an iPhone) which was £280 extra! Others required network adaptors, also sold as extras. This narks me because if they are required, they aren’t technically extras.
Confused and a bit annoyed I consulted Hi Fi John who took the conversation in another direction, telling me about a so-called industry leading product, with a picture of a fruit on it, which kept dropping his wireless connection - something to do with the network next door. So, even if you put your hand deep into your pocket there are no guarantees of a reliable and robust wireless streaming solution, yet.
“Best thing is to stick with cables,” said John.
“That’s what we’re trying to get away from,” I replied, wearily.
And what ever happened to having a blast? I mean, what can the standard 30-odd watts really do for you? Will it shake the windows? Anything more than a room-fill seems to move you into serious money, like it’s become the last bastion of the true music devotee. Come on guys, isn’t this traditionally the first question? Like, ‘how fast does it go, dude?’
As ever, there are always options and Jane's most excellent friends put us onto a hard drive with USB, a CD slot and an integral amp. You can even plug a tape, or record deck into it to transfer legacy media. It won't stream music from our PC but I’m happy enough with this, after what John said, and we have laptops for that anyway. The really interesting thing was the difference in the experience of buying a sound product versus the flaky, plastic 'beta' boxes I’d come across.
The preferred solution was developed by a small company in Cambridge which has sold so many of these boxes that at one time it purchased the entire global supply of a particular component. At one point it also had to cease advertising to damp down demand. Payment is not deducted from your card until shipping can be confirmed - actually thinking about their customers there - and second hand examples (there are none currently on eBay) reputedly sell at 90 percent of the new price. There are no technology lock-ins, as far as I'm aware, and all you need is to do is plug it in, load your music and connect up a pair of speakers.
This is another thing that irks me with developing technologies, feeling I'm being hustled down some kind of technology alleyway. Extra brand compatability doesn’t come high on the list of large developers’ priorities, they'd rather play the tune and have everyone else dance along. It's a dirty business, and they have the nerve to talk about customers like they really have our best interests at heart. I haven't bought a Sony product since they produced a Minidisc player called the Net MD, which I bought thinking I could transfer my MP3s onto it. Silly me, as an internet friendly device it was a pile of mouldy old bollocks.
Mike the product designer tells me he bought a dock for his iPhone and changed the handset for a newer iteration which turned out to be incompatible with the dock. This is some shady bullshit and Mike was righteously unimpressed.
You guys have got to stop this selfish bullshit, you’ve got to get together and share, you really have, or we ain’t gonna buy your shit. That’s it, that's really it.
