Chelsea opened in 1976 as a stereo store, and it’s still our first love. The challenge of
selecting stereo components, no matter the budget, that are able to accurately reproduce
a recording is thrilling to us (I know… we’re geeks). When you can close your eyes and
imagine Diana Krall singing and playing piano in the room with you, it’s fun!
You just can’t do that with MP3’s thru computer speakers…sorry. You can surely listen
to your music through such a system, sort of like listening to a radio or boogie box.
Nobody was ever fooled into thinking that was a live performance. When you want to
hear music like it was a live performance, you have to do a few things better.
The good news is that computers are capable of being the best source for music ever!
When your CD’s are recorded in one of the lossless formats and played back thru a
decent digital to analog converter, amplifier and speakers, it is likely the best you’ve ever
heard recorded music.
The reason MP3 recordings aren’t best for sound is they only record 10% of the original
music from a CD. No computer can reconstruct 90% of a song. So, you hear all the major
stuff, but none of the subtlety of a recording. A lossless format, like Apple lossless or
FLAC, records 66% of the original recording and the playback equipment can reconstruct
every bit of the original CD recording.
Around Chelsea, we record all our music in lossless format so we have our music on
portable devices like I-pods and I-phones for convenience. And when we want to listen
to music as good as it can be, we dock the device in a dock with a high quality digital to
analog converter (they use pretty cheap ones in the portables) feeding a good amplifier
and speakers and voila, the best sound there is.
By the way, great music can be heard on well selected, modestly priced equipment. We
have some of the best stereo gear on the planet, but most of the systems we sell are well
selected, affordable ones. Please come in for a listen…we love showing them off.