Every cloud has a silver lining eh? Well, sometimes. This one did. But when part of your Hi Fi breaks down, it’s always the case.

I’d had the Marantz amplifier for a good three years or more, and not really thrashed it at all, music quality is more important than volume, though with pieces of kit like this, there’s a happy medium around 12 o’ clock on the volume dial itself.

Unfortunately around twelve months ago it started playing up, intermittently deciding it wasn’t going to power up, I’m sure it must have overheated in the summer of ’06 back at my parents but that’s by the by. It finally gave up the ghost last week and is now relegated to the pile of broken amplifiers that lie under my bed. I mean hey, I might meet someone who can repair these things on the cheap. Or at least for a fair price, something I won’t get at the local electrical repair shop staffed by young fellows who say innit a lot.

So after scouring the net for an amplifier that would take the 1v+ signal from my mixer, I came across the NAD C315BEE. Perfect.

Richer Sounds do a pretty cool price match scheme, so off I went to Stockport with a printout of the amp at another online retailer for £30 less. The manager did not want to match it, whether out of a dislike for the company selling it cheaper or maybe I didn’t look the stereotypical sort of clean cut respectable customer who would be spending such a large around of money on Hi Fi equipment, but he did, begrudgingly.

Amp sorted it was time to look around for some speaker stands, as everyone knows bookshelf speakers don’t sound right until they’re off the shelf and on some stands. I picked up some 9-cm high Gale ones for £50. I know they’re not exactly high end but once they’re filled with gravel or lead shot for weight, they’ll sing, or more accurately they’ll be pretty much inert, and help the Hi Fi system to sing.

And after a while cleaning contacts, fitting dum-dums, mounting and toe-ing, it really does. All my old CD’s sound like brand new albums, I can hear bits that id never heard before, notice little things like the sharp intake of breath before each line when Ben Gibbard sings, it brings more depth to the way Francis Mark and Ben Perri’s vocals intertwine.

Yes, today I am going to be listening to a lot of music, and it’s going to sound a whole lot better.