The Online World

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March 2021

We have now been closed for almost 3 months and I'm becoming institutionalised into online business and working!

While I know that this Blog is online I view it as talking to customers who mostly know me so it's also personal. I was shocked to find how I've been ignoring Blogs the past few months while busy on Youtube and eBay and spending hours ever y day at a keyboard answering emails!

YouTube videos are fun to do. I don't use a script and you can tell, for better or worse. I have a product, topic or person and off I go. If you haven't seen any do have a look and also subscribe, I hope to showcase all new products there as well as here in blogs. The advantage is that by subscribing you get an email every time I go off on another interview/rant about once every 2/3 weeks, and it's free.

The music ones are hugely rewarding. So far I have talked to Ronnie Greer and Ken Haddock and the craic has been great. Couple of great songs from Jimmy Neeson there too and reviews of Kef LS50, Linn Majik DSM4 and Rega Kyte speakers. Also a geeky one about equipment racks! Check these out and please subscribe, it costs nothing, 

Lyric Video Channel

We've also been doing eBay for a few years now and it keeps growing. We don't sell much new gear there, it is mostly trade-ins for which we have the original packing. We have never tried to be a second hand hifi store buying and selling used gear. We use trade-ins to make your new purchase easier and so if at a particular time we don't have a lot of used gear I'm happy. It's the profit on our last sales!

Check out our eBay store:

Lyric Hifi eBay store

Now we are all more than ready to return to talking to people face to face. Phone calls and emails just aren't the same. This time has been interesting though in clarifying what Lyric Hifi is here for. We are specialists. That means that we select and demonstrate the best gear we can find. The hifi shortages have meant waiting lists on Rega, Linn, Naim and Kef products. Sorry, if you have to wait for the best then wait. If you want second best then go elsewhere. And that's the difference, shops where you can buy any old hifi rubbish (some of it expensive!) are not specialists just because they sell hifi. They are just supermarkets driven by half truths and the biggest commissions. We apply the highest standards to selecting the best gear and limiting ourselves to that premise. Many stores sell, or at least list, lots of really expensive gear that they have never even seen or heard, that's not being specialist, that's being order takers and online sales lend themselves to that lack of knowledge, experience and even morals.

Anyway, rant over, I really hope that we will be back open in April to let you hear the finest recent new products, LS50 Metas are fantastic, the new Rega Kytes are also great and there is a very big announcement to come from Linn next week.

Keep safe, see you soon, Michael

Kef LS50 Meta

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Read more: Kef LS50 Meta

Lockdown Blues

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So it's 3rd January, Christmas and New Year have come and gone, lovely time thanks for asking, and now we get stuck in, ready to go back to work, let's go for it

But it's not quite the same this year.

The sales and installs we've planned are all on hold pending our folks on the hill deciding how long this lockdown goes on.

Karen starts tomorrow with a Vat return while I have orders to ship out, a proposal to finish and then chase up progress on ongoing projects.

During November and December business has been good to us, thank you again, and we have been too busy to sell on trade-ins.

So when Ross and Sam return even more refreshed on the 11th they have trade-ins a plenty to check out, listen to, clean and value.

That's many hours work when you have various Rega turntables, 2 Linn Sondeks, a VPI, a Luxman and a couple of Pink Triangles to work through! And that's only the turntables, there are also amplifiers, speakers and even tuners!

If you want to treat yourself to a bargain upgrade check out the Catalogue tab above followed by Used, Pre loved, Preowned, but wait until later in January, from about 15th on.

After that the guys have more to do in the shop before we re-open. I have purchased a very special music collection running to thousands of cds and vinyl records. These have been collated over many years and are mostly classical with some jazz and blues. While used Classical music usually doesn't sell, this collection has all been chosen as the best performances and recordings from Gramophone magazine over the past 30+ years and is in pristine condition. It is full of gems that can be treasured additions to any collection. We not only have to sort them we also need to work out some shelving/display for them

Someday when we are back open call in for a browse and pick up a bargain be it music or gear.

Happy New Year everyone, here 's hoping for great things in 2021

The long game

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I have just had this missive sent to me by a long ter m customer who asked if there was space for it on this website. Now it paints Lyric and me in a very good light so of course there is space for it! It sums up beautifully how and why we work like this.

Thanks Alastair, owe you a coffee!

Ever had an experience where all the stars seem to align? I had one recently, courtesy of a trip to Lyric Hifi, an online vinyl purchase and a wet Saturday afternoon with just me and the dog at home.

My relationship with Lyric Hifi goes back to my student-teacher days in the early eighties when I arrived into Michael McClean’s shop (then on the Stranmillis Road in Belfast), with most of my first term’s grant cashed-in and stuffed in the pocket of my recently acquired Navy-surplus trench coat. Rather than investing in coursework books, a teaching-practice suit or other such nonsense, Michael ended up with most of my grant in his till, in exchange for a pair of nearly-new Mission speakers and a well-broken-in Marantz amplifier. These I hooked up to my dodgy Sony cassette player and a slightly ropy Technics turntable, all of which entertained me extremely well throughout my college days and well into my early teaching years. For me this was the era of Tubular Bells (Mike Oldfield), Discovery (ELO) and Horslips - The Belfast Gigs (live at the Whitla Hall). Back then Michael was not a high-pressure salesman, and he remains the same today - he sets up some gear in the listening room at a price-point to suit your pocket and lets the equipment speak for itself. If you want the technical info, he has it. If you just want to listen, he’ll let you do that too, and he’ll even provide you with a decent coffee.

So after 35 years of audio adventures - never sailing into super-expensive waters, but often making modest upgrades, I arrived back with Michael, (now set up in a gloriously and very expensively cluttered loft on the Lisburn Road) looking to reboot my relationship with vinyl. Over the years I had given away most of my records and my turntable got assigned to the attic when CDs became a thing. I brought with me my trusty Meridian F80 all-in-one system which for the past decade I had mostly been using to play my, by now very large, iTunes library through the Meridian’s iPhone dock. I was hoping to trade it for an amp, speakers and a decent turntable, and also had a notion that it might be time to consider a streaming service. So after a parallel experience to the one I’d had in the 80’s: a half-hour chill-out in the listening room, a few amp, speaker and turntable auditions, a decent coffee and an enjoyable haggle over the trade-in value of the Meridian, my pocket was once again emptied.

But I’m a very happy man: now on the sofa with a sleeping dog, listening to The Secret of Climbing (Stephen Fearing) (Rega Records) on a Rega Planar 3 turntable with an Elys 2 cartridge, through a Cyrus One amplifier to a pair of KEF Q350 speakers mounted on Linn stands. I’m also able to switch remotely between the warmth of analogue and the precision of digital, as the Cyrus amp came with a Google Chromecast WiFi streamer and a 6 month subscription to Tidal, through which I can stream recordings in master-quality, controlled by my phone.

Was the turntable a worthwhile purchase or just a nostalgic indulgence? Well it speaks for itself, especially when playing that Stephen Fearing record, which was engineered by Roy Gandy himself (owner of Rega Research) in his own home studio onto analogue tape, with the one aim being to capture the intimacy of the original live performance. Close your eyes, and Mr Fearing is pretty much in the room with you. And when I put on Mike Oldfield and Horslips (repurchased and remastered), well I’m back in my student digs, but I’m also hearing detail that my ancient Technics turntable could never have picked out (especially as the stylus would have been battling it’s way through fag ash and home-brew spillages to plough it’s way down to the music.) And the WiFi streaming experience? I’m quite blown away by the quality, depth and detail of some of Tidal’s ‘master-quality’ offerings - a significant step up from iTunes via Bluetooth - and when I move those solidly built KEF Q350 speakers away from the walls and crank up the volume - well the dog has to be banished to the garden so she doesn’t see me playing my air guitar.

I can still enjoy my iTunes collection too, albeit that some tracks sound thin at high volume compared to the Tidal masters, or to a well-engineered piece of vinyl. I was a reluctant subscriber to streaming - I still prefer ‘owning’ my music, but I have taken the plunge and through my £20 per month subscription I am constantly discovering new music, plus rediscovering old, re-mastered gems.

I would say I’m content, but of course young Ross, the audio engineer who Michael keeps mostly hidden in the attic has promised to keep his eyes peeled for a traded-in Cyrus or Rega CD player to compliment my system. And would those KEF floorstanders he showed me pick out more bass?

Dammit Michael, you’re just too good at the long game!

Great sound quality, great music and great musical experiences are separate things, yet intertwined, and subjective and elusive. But when the stars align - that’s what makes it a life-long hobby.

Alastair Mackay

Amateur audiophile

Belfast

10.10.2020