Welcome to hifideli.com! I will come back with (much) more in a matter of…(insert ticking clock)

What is this website? It’s about my research and quest for (definitive) answers. 

Answers to what? That’s a good question. Maybe it’s about asking the right questions…

To be brief, it’s about how I got my turntable to sound worse today than yesterday—and understanding how to reverse it tomorrow. 

It’s about helping other analogue obsessives navigate the vast and mysterious labyrinth of pseudo-science and anecdotal evidence. It’s about listening to the gods with a respectfully deaf ear. It’s about drawing your own conclusions. 

Confirmation bias is a good thing as long as you are aware of what’s going on inside your onion (the human brain). Your onion is very lazy. To preserve energy (and survive the incoming saber-tooth tiger attack), conclusions tend to take the shortest neural path of least resistance from A to B. It’s obviously the only option to leave these electromechanics on full auto instead of doing double-blind analysis and writing a 999-page peer-reviewed report on every decision you make. This concept of backing your own theories and being judgmental makes life livable. You would, vice versa, definitely go bat-shit crazy. 

Hifideli is about my experimental turntable setup, consisting of 2 x EMT 930st—this (can be) one of the world’s best-sounding turntables. It is a marvel of German engineering and industrial design. It is not for the faint of heart and should certainly not be your first turntable. It was not primarily designed to sound good—but to just work 24/7 in a national broadcasting studio. It was built to track grooves even at 30 degrees off-level (can I use it on a sailboat?). It has a service schedule like a vintage car, requiring an oil change every year and a tire (idler wheel) replacement every 3–4 years. It can rumble like a steam train, and it’s pretty far from the black background of direct drives and high-end belt drives. But—the music coming out of these machines has an authority and emotional impact that is very, very hard not to get addicted to. 

My thinking (maybe in the grim light of post-rationalization) is: If I can tame this monster, I will understand what’s going on in a turntable-based playback system. The EMT highlights all the weaknesses hidden in plain sight in (most) other turntables. See no evil, hear no evil. Get it? I’m looking for solutions to problems that other turntables also have—but with the EMT, I draw them out into the light and address them. This knowledge can then be translated and used to optimize other systems. 

The turntable, aka A Solution Looking for a Problem, is like making a Dry Martini. You often hear that digital sounds better than vinyl. And that can be true when you listen to Tidal/Qobuz through whatever DAC vs. a mid-end Technics or Rega. It’s very easy to mix gin with vermouth and call it a Dry Martini, but serving up the experience of a Dry Martini at Duke’s Hotel bar in London? That’s another story. 

Getting a turntable system to sound great requires informed decisions (what is important and what is not) and a great deal of investment in knowledge (mostly time). It can be (somewhat) expensive if you have to start experimenting from scratch and make all the mistakes yourself. The challenge is making the right decisions and understanding their place in the hierarchy. This can be overwhelming for the onion. The onion can give up, go digital or find another hobby. 

Hifideli will try to, highly subjectively, guide you from the tip of the industrial diamond (A) through the • cantilever • coils • magnets • conductors • materials • mounting • rigid/decoupled/isolated structures • impedances • compliances • tracking angles • stylus rake angles • azimuth • anti-skating • zenith • inductances • electromechanics • parasitic electromotive/magnetic fields • resonant/vector forces • space & time • gravitational forces • bla bla bla… etc. etc. …to the phono stage output (B).

It’s about the turntable and associated gear. 

Hifideli will also offer a selection of very high-quality designs for the Norwegian market. We represent Consolidated Audio Berlin, the home of the very excellent Step-Up Transformer from mastermind Michael Ulbrich—custom-made to the exact specifications of your delicate moving coil cartridge. 

Contact me at lasse@hifideli.com if you are based in Norway and are wondering if the «Monster Can» will elevate your high-end turntable system to the next level. 

It’s obsessive work to get a turntable system to sound optimal (and, not least, to match your personal taste)—but if you fall into this rabbit hole and experience fleeting moments of sonic bliss somewhere along the way… There’s only one way to go. And that is not up. You’ve been warned. 

To be Cont’d.
Lasse