October 2026

An Audiophile's Journey: How Hi-Fi Shaped A Lifetime Of Music Discovery
From olden times monophonic sound systems to modern immersive high-end audio, one listener's path through classical, folk, world music, and today's Hi-Res Music lossless streaming hi-fi culture.
Editorial By Roger Skoff

  When I was a kid, I was different from most other kids. For one thing, I was a kid audiophile. Having been exposed to hi-fi when I was just twelve and immediately falling in love with it, I had my own (mono, at first, because that's all there was until I was a wizened old man of fifteen) System, which I listened to in my bedroom while the rest of the family was in the living room watching TV.

Even for monophonic (mono), what I had wasn't much: Starting with a cast-off Silvertone radio / phonograph player, I had—as I could afford (used, mostly), find, or scrounge them—added more, better, or just different parts (first a speaker, then a Heathkit FM tuner, then an Eico tube amplifier, and then... well, you know how it goes) until I had something as good as I could get with the resources available to me. (First, just my allowance and the occasional present, later, an after-school job.)

When I turned sixteen, learned to drive, and got my first car (a blue 1952 Plymouth four-door), the Beatnik era was in full swing, and I became R. Skoff, boy audiophile / beatnik, and—hanging out at places like the Unicorn Coffee House—added folk music to my list of musical loves.

Before that, it had been mostly classical music—Baroque and earlier—and Doo-Wop (looove me them Coasters, Platters, Drifters, Flamingos, Del Vikings, Five Satins, Dion & the Belmonts, Cadillacs, Moonglows, Clovers, Penguins, and all the rest, Yeah!), eschewing other musical forms and styles as plebeian (and using, in my snobbery, words like "eschewing" and "plebeian" to say so).

That fit in nicely with my new Beatnik status, and at the Unicorn, The Renaissance, The Fifth Estate, Positano's and other coffee houses of the time, we would sit around, listen to folk music, wisely discuss all of the books we claimed to have read (Sartre, Camus, Kierkegaard) and the poems we claimed to enjoy (Kerouac, Ferlinghetti, Ginsberg, Corso, and so on) and, all in all, have a great time.

It was also then that I learned one of the great lessons of my life: It's not where you are that matters, it's where you're at. Think of all the people you know or have heard of who are dissatisfied with (pick a thing—life, Society, politics, or whatever else) and want to change it or tear it down and start all over.

What I learned as a kid Beatnik—presumably one of a group of rugged individualists who, with all the guys in their beards and sandals and all the girls in granny dresses, with no makeup and long straight hair, were peacefully rebelling against The Establishment—was that there's more than one option for everything, and if you don't like where you are or what you've got, you don't have to overthrow it; you can just go on to something else you like better. There's no one Society, for example; there are many local, cultural, intellectual, or other, small "s" societies, and you can pick whichever of those you want to accept or be a part of.

The same thing applies to music, too. I've heard more than a few people complaining that the music we have today isn't up to par with whatever kind there was in the past—the romantic ballads, for example, or the music of the Swing or Big Band eras, or the Sixties and Seventies, with the Beatles, Pink Floyd, Dire Straits, The Jefferson Airplane, and all the rest.

But here's the thing: every musical style is its own little society. Its own place to "be at." And if you don't like one, you don't have to burn it down. You can just walk over to another.

Take Russian music, for example. Nobody does misery like the Russians. They celebrate it. They wrap it in velvet and parade it down the street. Whether it's the sweeping heartbreak of Rachmaninoff, the brooding thunder of Mussorgsky, or the stark beauty of a simple folk lament, Russian music makes sorrow feel like a cathedral. It's pain as grandeur; melancholy as national identity; sadness as a kind of spiritual athleticism. And it's magnificent.

Or Mexican music, which also loves misery—but treats it differently. Mexican musical angst doesn't brood; it bleeds. It's heroic fatalism set to melody. The ranchera, the bolero, the canción—they take heartbreak, pour tequila on it, and sing it out with a kind of proud resignation. Listen to José Alfredo Jiménez or Javier Solís and you'll hear it: tragedy as entertainment; misery as a party; sorrow as something you can dance to.

Then there's Gamelan, the shimmering, interlocking percussion of Indonesia. It's not sad; it's not happy; it's not anything you can pin down. It's a world of bells, bronze, and breath—music that seems to float above emotion entirely. It's hypnotic, mathematical, ceremonial, and somehow more "otherworldly" than anything Western ears grow up with. Gamelan doesn't tell you how to feel; it tells you how to be.

Or choral music, which might be the purest expression of human sound we have. Gregorian chant, Russian Orthodox choirs, Renaissance polyphony, gospel—each different, each built on the same miracle: people using nothing but breath and intention to build architecture in the air. Choral music can lift you, calm you, shake you, or make you feel like you're standing in the doorway of something sacred. It's humanity singing to itself.

And that's just scratching the surface. There's Flamenco, where the guitar cries and the dancer stamps out defiance. There's Bluegrass, where virtuosity meets front-porch storytelling. There's Indian classical music, where a single note can bloom for minutes. There's West African drumming, where rhythm becomes community. There's Klezmer, laughing through tears. And Tango, the sound of longing wearing a tuxedo.

Every one of them is a place—a society—you can step into whenever you want. No overthrow required. No revolution necessary. Just the willingness to go where the music takes you. A lifetime of musical art.

And that's the real lesson: If you don't like where you are, change where you're at. There's always another musical world waiting.

Open your hearts  and your ears. Find it. Then turn on your magnificent immersive hi-fi system, put on some tunes, close your eyes, feel the beat, and...

Enjoy the music!

 

Roger Skoff