I love music. Who doesn’t? I guess there must be some people. I was one of them.

I stopped loving music when I was too busy feeling miserable to love music or anything else. I stopped loving music when I converted from the warmth and intimacy of vinyl and mix-tapes to the colder and harder to get close to CDs, and later mp3s. The difference between analogue and digital. I do miss my old records.

I started loving music again when I started feeling better. I started loving music again when I started investing in better listening gear and lossless digital recordings. I’m no audiophile, but it makes a big difference, even (or perhaps especially) to my untrained and unbalanced partially deaf ears. And I honestly don’t miss my old CDs.

How do I listen to music now?

I’ve got a massive pair of old Jamo Gale Force 25 (or 35?) speakers, which I must have bought nearly thirty years ago. Back then they were used as mini-PA speakers in my old band’s rehearsal room.

Since then they’ve provided a heavy bass and mid-range sound for music and TV connected through my Sony amplifier (much, much better sound than my previous Marantz and Cambridge Audio amps). I added a pair of smaller QAcoustics top speakers to these a few years ago, which noticeably (and unsurprisingly) improved the top end and overall sound.

Although I could stream from my phone via the Bluetooth link on the amp, this year I acquired a Tempotec Serenade X music streaming device, which does the same, but with a built-in DAC (digital to analogue converter). It makes a massive sound difference, even at a relatively low cost (these things can cost hundreds if not thousands).

Plus it can connect via ethernet cable to hi-res streaming services Tidal or Qobuz, and play my entire lossless digital music collection via a connected micro-SD card.

All of that said, it’s not often I get to listen to my music without using headphones. My little kid used to love watching the psychedelic videos of The Beatles and The Stones on YouTube, as well as some Tiny Desk concerts, but that all stopped when he quit daytime naps when he turned four and discovered YouTube Kids and how to operate the TV remote control.

For years I had a pair of cheap Sennheiser headphones, which were decent enough for listening to mp3s via my laptop. In 2018 I got a Dragonfly Black DAC that plugs into my laptop via USB. The difference in sound quality was astonishing.

Later that year I bought a Fiio M7 DAC music player, and again the transformation of sound was literally music to my ears.

This year I got a Tempotec V3 (cheapish, but still an upgrade), and been through wireless Iris Flow ListenWell and wired Bayerdynamic DT 770 Pro Studio headphones, before this year treating myself to a pair of massively discounted wired Focal Elegia ‘phones. Each one offers a different sound. The key being that they make listening to music an aural pleasure again.

I’ve also got some cheapish EarFun in-ear buds (a big upgrade on Pixel buds) for a quick wireless listen and an EarFun dongle DAC to plugin to my headphones and phone or laptop as an upgrade on my Dragonfly.

Big kid now has my Fiio M7 and Iris Flow headphones and loves listening to The Beatles, as well as my old band Hovercraft.