I set up my childhood HiFi system yesterday to listen to the excellent Memories of Infocom music. I was reminded that there was a cassette included in the package and not only a CD. The tape deck in this system is much better than the deck in my cheap portable cassette player and in my childhood “boombox” that preceded this HiFi system. At the time I got the Memories of Infocom I hadn’t yet re-acquired my childhood HiFi system and that’s probably why I forgot about the cassette tape being in the box.

Anyway, I didn’t notice any differences in sound quality between the CD and the cassette. Both sounded quite good on this system. When I put the system away again, I noticed just how light weight the speakers are. Quite a difference with the book shelf speakers I have in the living room. That’s when I was curious how the system would sound with those speakers. So today I took the system downstairs surprising my teenage daughter with it. ‘What is that… “box”?`, she asked. And I started to explain to her how ancient forms of media worked. She laughed out loud when I lifted the hood and showed her the record player.

She asked why there were two cassette decks and before I knew it, I was talking about waiting the whole week for the top-40 to be aired and recording from the radio and then cutting out the announcements from the dj on another tape. About ferro and chrome and the use of the little counter to keep track of different songs. About high-speed dubbing and about choosing whitch tape to sacrifice for new songs because you didn’t have the money to buy new tapes. About the convenience of auto reverse, and so on and so on. To her credit, she was actually paying attention, and not only to humor me. That’s not generally a thing young children and teenagers do anyway.

So, I hooked up the KEFs and while they look good next to almost anything, they certainly didn’t look out of place beside the Philips system. Not very surprising that the step up in sound quality was very noticeable. And now you could also hear the difference between the CD and the cassette. There was a slight hissing noise coming from the cassette and the CD sounded a little bit more clear, but otherwise there wasn’t much difference. It probably helps that the tape hasn’t been played much yet.

When I paired the KEFs up with the Naim amplifier again that sounded even better. That was a relieve. Having spend my adult money and adult equipment wasn’t all for nothing.