What should we make of the Democratic vice presidential candidate’s now-controversial stereo setup?
Credit: lev radin via Shutterstock
In his short story, “The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone,” Arthur Conan Doyle has Sherlock Holmes trick two criminals into believing that he is playing the Barcarolle from Offenbach’s opera fantastique, The Tales of Hoffmann, on his violin in his chambers at 221B Baker Street. “Pray make yourself quite at home in my absence,” he instructs them. “Holmes,” we are told, “withdrew, picking up his violin from the corner as he passed. A few moments later the long-drawn, wailing notes of that most haunting of tunes came faintly through the closed door of the bedroom.” As they listen to the haunting strains of the solo, the thieves discuss their plans for a stolen gem, only to be astounded as the great detective himself rushes into the room and divulges that he was actually listening to their scheming. “These modern gramophones,” Holmes notes, “are a remarkable invention.”
Indeed they are. It seems unlikely that Tim Walz was trying to ferret out reprobates when he set up a stereo, complete with an Audio-Technica LP60X-GM turntable and Denon receiver, for his daughter Hope, but his old tweet about it from December 6, 2020 is suddenly garnering a good deal of controversy. “Teaching Hope about old school stereo set ups,” Walz wrote. “We’re sharing the joy of classic vinyl and Bob Seger.” An accompanying photo shows him trimming the end of speaker wire so that he can attach it to the binding posts of a loudspeaker. He concluded his tweet by admonishing, “Quality speaker wire matters people!!!”
A harmless tweet from a proud Papa introducing his daughter to the pleasures of analog sound? Not a bit of it. Now that Walz has been tapped by vice president Kamala Harris to become her running mate, his avidity for vinyl, not to mention his favorite stars (he signed a “Taylor Swift bill” earlier this year), is coming under forensic scrutiny. Is he a true exponent of timeless truths exemplified in his old school love for LPs? Or is he a feckless liberal do-gooder who should mind his own damn business?
To try and address the furor surrounding this question, it may be helpful to assess the nature of the criticisms being directed at Walz. One prominent source of concern has been the fact that Walz made bold to situate the audio gear on top of a radiator, which could lead to the warping of the precious vinyl. Another centers on his endorsement of Bob Seger. But the greatest ruckus appears to hover over Walz’s animadversions about loudspeaker cable.
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Two schools of thought quickly emerged. The first was discountenanced by what it saw as the prohibitive cost of the wire. “Let me guess,” wrote one respondent, “you’re one of those people that buys $300 speaker wire from Best Buy? Figures you would lie to us about wires like you lie to us about everything else, you tool.”
The very opposite concern, however, was sounded, as it were, by The American Conservative contributing editor Matthew Walther. Walther alleged that Walz was something of an audio imposter: “He’s using a piece of crap Denon receiver from Best Buy (he has it set to the DVD channel) and a $150 turntable with a built-in phono preamp arranged on top of a radiator. This is like Kamala talking about listening to Snoop Dogg in ‘college’ or Kerry wearing hunter orange.” The problem with Walz, then, isn’t that he’s a big-spending liberal. It’s that he’s a tightwad. Instead of buying the best, he went to Best Buy.
Who has it right? Certainly Walz is to be commended for introducing his daughter to what amounts to a provisional step into the high-end stereo waters. The fact is that LPs are now outselling CDs, which are headed for the dust-bin of history, especially as digital streaming comes on strong. Written off when digital was first introduced in the late 1980s, vinyl is the comeback kid of the audio industry—some 43 million LPs were sold last year. The result has been to kick-start the turntable industry as well. You can buy a turntable for anywhere from under $149 to around $600,000. Some of the top high-end ‘tables include the Air Force Zero from Japan, the Oswald Mills K3 from Pennsylvania, and a new GMT One from Wilson-Benesch, which is located in Great Britain. This is why Walther has it right when he observes that Walz is a mere piker when it comes to the high-end. But it doesn’t exempt Walther from the charge of snobbery about lower-priced equipment—high fidelity, after all, is in the ear of the auditor.
Maybe the most compelling argument on behalf of Walz, though, is one that should appeal to the former president Donald J. Trump. When I asked Michael Fremer, a turntable expert and a writer for the Absolute Sound, about the Walz audio brouhaha, he observed, “American-made hi-fi positively impacts our trade balance. Kudos to the Governor for encouraging domestic consumption of what the rest of the world recognizes among our most important cultural exports.” Indeed, two leading audio companies hail from Minnesota—the Magnepan corporation, which manufactures planar loudspeakers, and Audio Research Corporation, which builds tubed equipment. If he and Harris waltz to victory in November, then they might ponder initiating a new Buy American campaign with gear from the Twin Cities for the White House sound system.
Sourse: theamericanconservative.com
