Vinyl and vintage audio equipment find their groove at new store

In a society enamored by the next newest thing, there are still people who like their books on paper, prefer their thank-you notes handwritten, would rather talk to people than interact with bots, and like their music on vinyl records, played on a turntable through a pre-amp and amp with real visible tubes, housed in furniture specifically made to hold audio equipment and heard through speakers the size of an apartment refrigerator.

The folks in that later group are fueling a re-discovery of vintage equipment and vinyl records and raising the hopes of Aural HiFi, a new store on South Broadway’s Antique Row that rehabilitates old stereo equipment for a legion of ardent audiophiles.

Aural is owned by self-described “stereo archaeologist” Jeremy Irwin.

Irwin’s entry into the world of HiFi was unintentional. The Michigan native was living in Genesee in 2016 when he discovered that the former owners had left a pair of speakers in a storage space. After some research, he discovered that the abandoned Infinity RSii speakers were special.

So, he decided to strip and refinish the cabinetry and hunted for missing internal parts, which led him to audio specialists in an online forum called Audio Karma, where likeminded enthusiasts mentored him. Those enthusiasts included a Boston audio equipment dealer, Brian Salazar, whom Irwin says was instrumental (no pun intended) in his appreciation of HiFi equipment.

Irwin – whose primary vocation is advertising — then began accumulating audio equipment, traveling around the country, doing his own version of “American Pickers.” That led to him opening an “audio boutique” in Globeville two years ago, selling mostly online. Last November, he moved into his storefront on South Broadway in a cavernous space formerly occupied by an antiques dealer. It features several stereo set-ups and shelves of audio components and vinyl records. If they aren’t enough to take you back to an earlier time, the orange shag rugs will.

The store features a workspace for a staff of seven, who restore and repair electronics and cabinetry and photograph and ship equipment advertised on the store’s website, auralfetish.com.

The interest in stereo equipment coincides with a rebirth of the vinyl record and an aesthetic – largely driven by Millennials, Irwin said — that values the look and sound of a HiFi setup. “People seem to like the idea of equipment that adds to the aesthetic of their space, that has permanence, and is built to last a lifetime or two,” Irwin said. “It’s becoming more mainstream and is growing in awareness, and therefore popularity. Most people just have never seen – and definitely haven’t heard – anything like this before, and when they do, it’s hard not to fall in love.”

Vinyl itself has been around for more than 100 years and has been used to make records since the 1940s. By the ‘70s, vinyl was the standard format for music recordings. But it started to decline in the ‘80s as digital formats took over, and seemed doomed for obsolescence by 2006, when Tower Records went out of business.

Skip to a couple of decades later. Vinyl sales in the U.S. increased from 21.5 million units in 2020 to 41.7 million units in 2021, according to MRD Data. The Neilsen company says sales of vinyl records have grown by 260% since 2009. By 2020, sales of vinyl records exceeded sales of CDs, according to Ciao Amore, an online arts magazine.

“Vinyl is a ritual, an experience,” Irwin said. “People like the act of taking a record from its sleeve, putting it on a turntable, hearing the needle drop and simply immersing themselves in listening to music. They savor the music, just as a wine-lover savors wine or a bibliophile savors a book.” And just as a book lover would hardly invite dinner guests to enjoy an after-dinner snifter of brandy in the library to see what books she had recently downloaded, so, too, do audiophiles enjoy having sight, feel and hearing stimulated by something other than their iPhone.