Breaking the circle

A while ago I blogged about my plans to upgrade my television, stereos etc. It ended with frustration, since even simplest upgrade required upgrades somewhere else, end-result being thousands of euros being "invested" in technology that will lose value very fast.

Obviously, my original plan was flawed, since it required such a large investment. So I took a fresh look at how to proceed. And I realized that I can reach my goal with a lot less complication and expense.

Yesterday, I took the first step. I bought a pair of Genelec 6020's. Those speakers are absolutely superb. Only thing better would be another Genelecs. Those speakers are on the "low-end" of Genelec-range and they are pretty darn small. But size does not matter. The sound-quality is impeccable. It's quite probable that similar Genelecs (only bigger) were used in the studio that recorded the music you are listening to. They are that good.

Yes, it could be said that spending 700e on a pair of small speakers is a lot of money (the list-price is 800e, so I got a nice discount), but there are speakers that cost ten times that much. And the price/quality-ratio of these speakers is probably the best in the market. 800e for these speakers is a bargain! Besides, my plan is that I will be using these speakers for at least 15 years, if not more. And in any audio-setup, the speakers are by far the most important component.

And good thing about those speakers is that they hold their value. At least when compared to stuff like televisions, computers and the like.

I will receive the speakers at the end of the week, since they are shipping straight from the factory in Iisalmi. Yes, I value the fact that these speakers are made in Finland.

So I now (well, soon) have the speakers. What next? Well, next step is to invest about 90e on an Airport Express, and hook it to the speakers. Then I can simply select the music I want through iTunes, and tell it to play the music back through the speakers. Problem solved. As an added bonus, I can use my iPod touch to control the setup.

I guess there is a third step still. And that's re-encoding my music in a lossless format. But we shall see. That would take quite a bit of hard-drive space, not to mention time.