I suffer from chronic migraines, largely triggered by barometric pressure changes. I have in my life had the more dramatic signatures of the condition – including the dreaded “scintillating scatoma” (how is this not an album title?) – but mostly it’s just a mundane, unpleasant endurance contest. I’ll stop there and spare you the exhaustive details, which of course are interesting to but one person on the planet, and barely even to him.
During the actual headache phase, listening to music can be challenging for me. But not unendurable. I rarely have the type of migraines where I have to retreat to a dark room (though I’ve certainly been there) and overall the phenomenon is so prevalent in my life that time has taught me the lesson that is possibly the only lesson that time has ever taught me about anything – “gut it out man, make the best of it.”
Unsurprisingly, migraines make me sensitive to high frequencies. I’ll be listening to a record where I know the brass is about to jump in hot and I find myself bracing for the hit as if I’m boxing and just caught wind of a right hook a millisecond before it pulverizes my cheekbone.
To induce this effect in me, the system I’m listening to doesn’t have to be “bright” or “etched” or any of the other code words that we audiofools use as shorthand for an aggressive high end. The mere presence of “treble” is enough to make me tremble. (Treble… tremble… heh heh).
And here’s the thing: I know that this is true and yet it still provokes bouts of intense audiophilia nervosa. Recently it’s been doing so quite often, because 1. I’ve been suffering from headaches for seemingly two months straight now, and 2. During those two months I did a major gear rethink involving all of the considerable effort and attendant anxiety that I’m sure, if you’ve found your way to this site, you well understand.
At the heart of this shake-up was the decision to go from my integrated amp, a VAC Sigma 160i SE, to VAC separates, a VAC Signature mkIIa SE preamp and a VAC Phi200 amplifier. My primary source since I got this new VAC pairing has been an Aqua La Scala mk II optologic DAC, an R2R DAC with 2 12AT7’s in the output stage.
My experience of the sound of this system thus far has been… overwhelming. And I don’t mean that entirely in a positive way. Everything is so big, so vivid, so spatially delineated and inescapably there, that honestly it’s a bit much sometimes. As I wrote to a friend this morning, I was sitting in my chair listening to the Joao Donato record The New Sound of Brazil and as amazingly lifelike and present as it all sounded, I also had this sense of ambivalence, like… I’m honestly not sure I feel like having a full orchestra in my room right now ten feet from my fucking face… 45 minutes ago I was asleep goddammit. Can I go back to a regular old stereo instead of this voodoo teleportation machine?
In short, to call the move from the VAC integrated to VAC separates an “upgrade” doesn’t begin to capture my experience. Though I maybe shouldn’t use this analogy in this forum, it’s the best one I can think of so fuck it – it’s like going from sniffing drugs to shooting drugs. As experiences go, that’s not an “upgrade.” That’s a hell of a Rubicon crossed right there, a fraught journey into another country decidedly unlike any lands thus far traversed. You may eventually (and if so, woe unto you) acclimate to those environs and come to know them well, but no matter who you are or what you’ve done beforehand, the first few visits are bound to provoke an overwhelming, terrifying sense of nausea-tinged awe – “I just don’t know if I can handle all of this… FEELING.”
I quote the greatest Dylan outtake of them all: “It frightens me… the awful truth… of how sweet life can be.”
Combine the audio equivalent of this experience with a lot of nausea-tinged headaches… headaches which can make even the rustle of leaves beneath a scampering rabbit’s feet seem like TOO MUCH SENSORY INPUT SLOW DOWN ALREADY YOU STUPID FUCKING BUNNY… and the next thing you know I am drawing grand conclusions. And not the obvious conclusions either, which would run along the lines of, “Hey Dave, pal? Maybe don’t listen to loud blaring jazz when you have a migraine. Okay man?”
No way. I’m talking the full-on audiophile downward spiral, a fit of bad-acid level paranoia. “Jesus Christ this system is too bright. How could anyone listen to this. How could I have done this to myself, what was I thinking? I’ve made a terrible mistake. I’ve ruined it all. Everything was FINE and I’ll never get it back never, why do I do this, why why why…”
I only really have two goals left on this planet – get my kids off to college without any major traumas or disasters, and to somehow learn to live with myself, warts and all. Sometimes… okay most of the time… it seems like nothing but warts. We do indeed contain multitudes, each and every one of us, audiophiles, migraineurs, maniacs.