Home Audio - Music
I at times marvel how I came to truly love music when the simply thing I had was an AM transistor radio that only worked with batteries, and a record player, where I could just play one record at a time. The main thing for our family was when we bought our first stereo system. You had a big chest where you lifted up the top and there was a turn table and beside it you will see knobs and tuner for an am/fm radio. The turn table had a device so you might play a couple records at one time, one would drop down on top of the other. Remember, it was major new gadget back then! There were two speakers, built into the chest., one for treble, one for bass pretty much like there continues to be today.
It goes without saying, setting up this wonderful home stereo system was as simple as plugging it into the wall. With that you had AM and FM stations, you got two speakers, you get to play a few records at the same time, and only have to get up to turn the record over every hour. My parents could sit in our living room and thoroughly enjoy their music listening event, while I could run to my room and enjoy the music on my transistor radio, or my record player. One of the ways I came to love all kinds of music, and not just the rock and roll of my youth, was also listening to my parent’s music while we were in the living room!
When you look at it, the only similar thing these days about my home sound system is that I plug it into the wall outlet. I own a receiver/amplifier, that has a tuner, formerly called a radio, a tape player, which is basically out-of-date, and a CD player that will hold 5 CDs at the same time. I also have a turn table, previously referred to as a record player, that is also hooked to the receiver so I can still play my records.
From the front, it all looks simple, you turn it on, press what you need and it plays. From the back, you will see places for the speaker wires to connect into the receiver. Then you have to connect other wires from the turn table to the receiver. You have to learn the difference between input and output to get these wires in the accurate places. You also find an bothersome antenna wire that no one really knows what to do with. It is not like a computer where they make each connection a different size so you can’t hook it the wrong way if you tried. So you have to learn to read the labels on each connection.
If you want your television to use you home sound system’s speakers, you have to find what are referred to as the auxiliary connections and connect wires from the receiver to the rear of your TV, which has a totally different system with red, white and yellow connectors and hope that you connected them to the correct red, yellow or white connection. You do not even want to think at this point about how the television is hooked to the DVD, the cable box, any game consoles, TiVo, along with your wireless router.
When all is said and done, I am enjoying to the very same songs while sitting in my living room that I listened to on my mom and dad’s old stereo and my transistor radio that is meant to be this wonderful HD sound. And my kids are in their rooms listening to their own music– on a few more contraptions than a little radio and simple box record player!