By Paul McGowan From PS Audio

Our memories are kind to what actually happened in the past. For whatever reason, we tend to ignore the pain and detritus of days gone by in favor of fondness and longing to return to what feels like a better time.

But yesterday is the same as today only a little later. It’s as if time gone by mellows reality like wine aging in oak casks.

I remember when stereo retailers were kings and manufacturers and customers vyed for their favor. Tales abound of highfalutin audio shops turning away customers because their pocketbooks were too small or their knowledge of the stereo art too thin.

Yet, we often remember this time with fondness and even have a special name for it: the Golden Age of High Fi. For those who weren’t there, it can all seem like such a wonderful period when music was played with reverence on exalted equipment, the acronym MP3 had never been uttered, and there was no such thing as the Moving Picture Experts Group to violate music’s purity.

The problem with glorifying the past is glossing over the day to day realities and struggles. I can distinctly remember grumbling about the vagaries of vinyl reproduction and praying for some new technology to come along and replace the ritual of scraping dust, lathering needles with fluids, and searching out pressings that sounded good.

The flipside of remembering the good stuff is reveling in the new stuff. Today’s audio products are such a jump in quality from the Good Old Days that it’s hard to imagine ever going back.

When I remember the past it’s with fondness that I survived intact and thankful for the new and better.

For more on this story go to: https://www.psaudio.com/pauls-posts/remembering-the-good-stuff/