Japanese Listening Bars: Golden Age HiFi

 

My first interest in electronics way back when was HiFi and audio to play music. When I started, you could actually learn something from Audio Magazines, with technical analysis of amplifier topologies and loudspeaker designs. The wonder of the CURRENT DUMPING QUAD405. The glory of the Great America Sound's AMPZILLA.  I had a '70s British HiFi Magazine with an article I stared at for years on the first PHASE LINEAR 700B into the country: 

Then HiFi morphed into the grifting "golden ears" and "magic thinking" of oxygen free power cables and such rubbish with sky high prices, that never entered into the world of Studio Sound I had move into. 

I still occasionally look at the world of HiFi, and the latest stereo magazine in Japan here has an article on the Listening Bar JAZZ HOUSE ON LAVA in Yamanashi Prefecture at the foot of Mt. Fuji.

There are quite a few of these Bars/Cafes in Japan. Never heard of something similar in different countries. They are owned and run by avid 12" vinyl album collectors with Golden Age HiFi gear and, generally, top of the range old studio monitors. The owner selects and plays the music at live band levels. You sit and listen.  They all started as record collectors and HiFi fans, and took the step to turn that into a paying job as a café.

Speakers like the JBL4350 were built into the walls of top end studios and used as the far field monitors back in the day. Not what you find in a studio these days, which is more likely to be high end GENELEC powered DSP corrected monitors. It seems most of these old monitors ended up in Japan, where they were renovated and became prized possessions of many a  HiFi fan, along with similar huge monitors from the likes of ALTEC and TANNOY.

Live sound levels are not a problem with these kinds of speakers, with the huge power amplifiers they get teamed with. It is what they were designed for.

These bars mostly use 12" vinyl and top end turntables, related to their owners peak collecting years, before the CD.  Expect more than a few 78rpm Jazz Classics as well in their collections.  

I had some 120 12" vinyl albums at the time I sold them all, and my turntables around 2018. I never replaced all of them with CDs. There were many albums I had that had a good song, than the rest was filler.  That is the way the record business was. 

The only 2 12" Albums I still kept:

Kept for the album sleeves, not the records inside. These both meant a lot to me. Never a fan of "the sound of vinyl". It was only great until the CD was invented.

I extended the LOVE OF VINYL? after making the above MUSIC+COMIC. Features vinyl record noise from the few albums I recorded into Reaper (the needle drop and sound before a song starts and at the end where the arm automatically lifted and returned to the rest position. ) before selling them. Strategically arranged noises from Synthesizer and Guitar are featured too.😀 

The Reaper Project:

Now on Bandcamp, embedded here

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology