The Rain is a Vibe
Seattle is a strangely in tune with Hifi sort of town actually. It’s not immediatly obvious but once you start looking around with a bit more specificity than “speakers” or “stereo” you slowly find more and more people interested in bispoke and niche Hifi gear. I don’t think there are many other places in the US with such a high density of places where you can go listen to one off speakers/amps and the like!
Exploration
If you’re at all interested in Hifi going to listen to other people’s gear is definitely the way to go about learning the sounds and stuff which are important. I think it’s hard to read about Hifi gear without having some sort of your own personal preference as well as some reference for what others are talking about online. What does “more bass” actually mean in practice? It’s hard to know if you haven’t heard some standard setup that everyone references and builds from there in their descriptions and whatnot.
Hi-Fi Shops
There are really two I’d say types of shops out there with gear. A more mainstream I’d say are the ones that carry what would be like the Ferrari style things. Fancy name brands that cost like hundreds of thousands of dollars but also the stuff that comes up when someone first tries to expand their search beyond that of the BestBuy type offerings. Then there are the more strange, niche ones. A lot of the times these are smaller and also have used gear. These are often times sort of gate kept but have a more wide range of things and often brands you’ll find deep in the forums.
The Showroom
Think of the Wilson speakers, Mackintosh Amps, maybe some Hegel stuff, $2,000 dollar amp racks and turntables made of marble so no vibrations get into your sound. Here is also where you’ll find the maximum snake oil offerings like $500 speaker cable holders to keep your $3000 set of speaker cables off the ground because it reduces noise. lol
Silly silly yes but these are the first sorts of things people come across when getting into the hobby! So it’s important to have actual real life experience with them, even if it’s seeing them so you can laugh at it later. The other thing is because these sorts of speakers are somewhat widely available and have lots of specifications about them, you can at least hear some super high end stuff and start to hone in on what sounds and general Hifi experiences you’re hoping to recreate with your own gear.
Niche/Used Shops
I think this is where they get more interesting after you’ve made the initial foray into listening to some generic high end stuff at whatever the most expensive shops are around. Here is where Seattle really shines. There are actually a strangely high number of these. Also, because it seems that rainy winters means people get stoned and listen to jazz on funky SET amps they build, there is a lot of interesting used gear floating around.
Check this out! At Hawthorn Stereo I got to listen to the exact amp from Glow In The Dark Audio which somehow had made it’s way from DC to Seattle. This amp sounded great, definitely a bit more delicate than mine at home. Makes sense as it has a lot more refined components in there. Felt a little bit less hammer like, if you could describe my probably 12 watter back home as one lol.
Being that its a similar design to my own modded Magnavox 6L6 Push Pull design, the fact they had SeLh Audio 3 way speakers there was an amazing combo. This design always intrieged me and is a big reason as to why I made my HiVi 3.1 kit which I still think are the best speakers I’ve ever owned personally. These are made with ScanSpeak drivers which are definitely of a higher quality, but interestingly the box isn’t ported. Therefore they’re quieter than mine are even when being driven as hard and the bass doesn’t smack you in the same way or hum through the room like mine do. If they made these with a ported box holy dooley.
Almost DIY Manufactures
Another thing in Seattle is there are actually manufacturers, if you can call them that, making artisans stuff around. Here is a photo I of when I went to a “factory” which is really just a husband and wife combo in a house in Ballard, making front loaded horn, single driver full range speakers of all sizes.
I found this place by randomly coming across a phone number I decided to call, probably when having too many beers in the middle of the day listening to my own equipment, and on the first ring someone answered and said to come on over! How cool is that.
I was there for a few hours and we listened to a range of sizes and designs. All are built with what I think are Fostex drivers? Maybe Mark Audio drivers, but then the boxes are really where the differences lay in this design of speaker.
Full range single driver speakers are a really cool Hifi phenomena because they’re the perfect example of just liking something over what spec sheets say. This sort of thing would never end up in the first type of store for example.
These speakers are the opposite of fancy speakers which try and pack big bass and sound into a small box. That works, but as a trade off its less efficient, more watts to make the same dB output. Also there are soundwaves coming from different places, crossed over electronically and then physically in the space between the speaker and you.
Single drivers say “ya no bass really and we are gonna be quiet” but in that simplicity there is an oh so special midrange that you cannot get with multi driver speakers. The midrange is where your brain and ears are designed to listen so having there be no artificial crossing of waves in this range make them eerily realistic for simpler jazz and singer/songwriter type music where all the sound is in that wave length anyway.
Just get out there
Listening in person is the best thing to do to as many things as possible. Whenever I’m in a new city I always make a point to go to any speaker shop and listen to at least something. I usually listen to the same sort of songs too so I can go compare later. Really it’s not scientific but hey, usually you walk away with a “woa okay that was cool” or “meh I’ve read a lot about those and they’re sorta eh” which is all great to have locked away so when you’re reading about things later you have the context to understand how that translates into what you’re looking for.
