Music, Home Audio
I sometimes question how I ever learned to love music when all I had was a transistor radio that just worked with batteries, and a record player, where I could only play a single record at a time. The important thing for our family was buying our first stereo system. You had a big chest where you opened up the top and inside it has a turn table and next to it . The turn table had a device so you might play several records at one time, one would drop down on top of the other. For sure, it was big time novelty back then! There were two speakers, built into the chest., one for treble, one for bass pretty much like there continues to be these days.
Needless to say, setting up this fantastic home stereo system was as easy as putting the plug in the outlet. With that you got AM and FM stations, you get two speakers, you get to play several records at the same time, and just go over to turn the record over every so often. My mom and dad could sit in our living room and totally get pleasure from their music enjoying moment, while I could go to my room and turn on my transistor radio, or my record player. One of the ways I learned to enjoy all kinds of music, and not only the early rock sounds of my time, was also listening to my parent’s music while sitting in the living room!
About the just thing that is the same nowadays about my home audio system is that I plug it into the outlet. I now own a receiver/amplifier, that has a tuner, we used to call a radio, a tape player, which is basically outdated, and a CD player that plays 5 CDs at the same time. I also have a turn table, formerly referred to as a record player, that is also hooked to the receiver so I can still enjoy my records.
From the front, it all looks straightforward, you turn it on, hit what you like and it plays. From the back, you will see places for the speaker wires to connect into the receiver. Then you need to connect other wires from the turn table to the receiver. You have to figure out the difference between input and output to get the wires in the right places. There might alos be an irritating antenna wire that you just put somewhere near by. This is not like a computer where they design each connection a different size so you can’t connect it wrong if you tried. So you have to learn to read the labels on each connection.
In order to take advantage of your sound system’s speakers on your TV set, you need to make use of what are referred to as the auxiliary connections and connect wires from the receiver to the back of the television, which has a totally different arrangement with red, white and yellow connectors and cross your fingers that you plugged them into the right red, yellow or white connection. You better not even look around or think about how the TV is attached to the DVD, the cable box, any game consoles, TiVo, or your wireless router.
When all is said and done, there I am at home in my living room, listening to the same music I listened to on my mom and dad’s old stereo and my transistor radio that is designed to be this wonderful high definition sound. And my children are in their rooms listening to their own music– on a few more electronic devices than a old time record player or transistor radio!
