What's That Sound?

I used to love getting new stereo equipment. I was all about upgrading: speakers, receiver, tape deck, turntable. When I had two speakers, I upgraded to four. When I had one tape deck, I upgraded to two. Keep in mind that this was a sound system that was responsible for filling my bedroom, not an entire house. Eventually I even ran speaker wire into my bathroom to make sure that I didn't miss a tweet or a woof. My favorite part about all this expansion of sound was hooking up the new components. Cables and parts spread out in front of me, I had to match inputs with outputs, test connections and make sure that my ever-expanding stereo could support the stress I was putting on it.
Later, when I moved into my dorm room, I packed and unpacked all those pieces and put them back together again in a space designed to accommodate two college freshman. When my roommate arrived, from Trumbull, Connecticut, there was simply no room for any stereo equipment he might have wished to unload into our shared lebensraum. My sound system was preeminent. There was no need to mess with perfection.
Not until I moved into my friend's house over the summer. He too had a monster set of speakers and even higher quality components. We spent the first two days mapping out where all the parts would be stacked and hung. Eventually, we assembled a six speaker wall of sound that, when the doors were left open, filled not just the house but the mountain valleys below. When we blew one of the speakers in the midst of a party, we celebrated the fact that it had stood up to most of Black Sabbath's "Iron Man" before the cone of the woofer ripped in two. It gave its life for our guests' exquisite torment.
Over the years I have slowed down the process of upgrading the way that music comes into my life. I had to buy a compact disc player, but kept my turntable for years after to allow the vinyl that I dragged around in crates to be heard. Bits and pieces have been replaced. Now I have surround sound in my living room, which comes in very handy when thrashing my medium mad Guitar Hero skills. I even have the cassette deck, the one that created so many mix tape masterpieces back in college, sitting on a shelf awaiting the next opportunity to play ninety minutes of music with auto-reverse. Every so often I see black or chrome boxes in the local electronics store that make me think that it must be time to renegotiate the aural landscape of my life. Then I remember how the sound that comes out of those little speakers attached to my computer is every bit as triumphant as the thunder I once made with big wooden boxes eight times the size. I know that this is my son's time. He's attaching ever-increasing speaker sizes to his iPod. He wants to make a bigger noise. And I know now that it has become my job to yell, "Turn it down!"