Opinion

The audiophile collector’s core conundrum is an eternal one – how to house all that physical media in our domiciles without breaking the bank? Mike Mettler has a few ideas

I love hearing the bing from the SimpliSafe app on my smartphone that lets me know when the UPS/ FedEx/DHL courier of the day shows up on my doorstep in full view of my front-door camera. I have a big outdoor storage bin waiting there to greet them, where everything they have for me can be placed inside to ensure nothing gets exposed to the elements.

This is precious cargo, after all. As an inveterate and unapologetic audiophile accumulator of physical media, I believe actively monitoring receivership is nine-tenths of the collector’s law – or something like that. But what’s a poor boy to do with it all, after it arrives?

To have and to hold

Sure, the streaming era has made it much easier for us to access the broadest spectrum of music we can listen to with almost no restrictions. And, thanks to most digital providers offering a myriad of hi-res playback options, we can usually do so at a sound quality level that our golden ears demand. That said, as much as I like the convenience of streaming platforms like Apple Music and Qobuz, I’m still one of those pernickety types who prefer to have tangible, physical copies of my favourite music in hand. Whether it be 180g vinyl, multidisc CD box sets, and/or Blu-ray collections with bountiful bonus tracks and Atmos mixes galore, I want to own them.

I’m also of the mind that keeping things tactile – by perusing the gatefolds, photos, liner notes, and other related ephemera while the music plays – is part-and-parcel of the full-on audiophile experience. It’s a case of all senses activated. Unless I’m in ‘reviewing mode’, of course, when the focus is on the music, and the in-real-time analysis of what I’m hearing.

The more corporeal options available to me, the merrier – but the problem is, where does it all go? This is the eternal dilemma of the insatiable collector with space issues. Although I’ve semi-reluctantly invested in off-site storage for the short term, I’m constantly calculating what can go where in my L3 – that’s shorthand for my ‘Listening Lab Library’ – before I dive full-bore into more custom-storage construction.

After all, as much as I love furniture, my main investment is in the media itself. Yes, I’m putting aside a nest egg to let me explore custom options in the future, but for now I have to jerry-rig what I can.

Luckily, most LPs are relatively uniform in size, so they get shelved together either in a side-view formation, or visibly front to back. Some of my LPs (I have around 10,000) reside on vinyl-specific custom storage racks with the spines showing—all of them in 3mm poly-sleeves, sans flap, for further protection. Ones from Vinyl Styl (www.vinylstyl.com) are my current go-to.

However, I also deploy BCW stackable record storage boxes (www.bcwsupplies.com) that hold 65 LPs on average. I stack ’em three boxes high – low enough so they’re not in danger of tipping over or sagging, and high enough for me to lift and move them around without experiencing back spasms and/or knee strain. I tend to max out at 60 LPs per box so I have enough room to flip through them without breaking fingernails or bending covers.

To do list

I recently collected over 60 BCW boxes from storage. I’m still in the midst of cataloguing everything into an online library (for this, I use www.discogs.com), but I feel much more zen by having all my LPs at arm’s length whenever I need to cue up first pressings, or even third pressings, for whatever I’m evaluating.

Box sets, either vinyl or CD/Blu-ray, are another matter entirely – often oversized or unusually shaped, and worthy of pride-of-place display. Working out how and where to store these is another conundrum. It’s also one that will have to wait, because a UPS driver has just popped into view on the front door camera – and I want to see what’s arrived, right now.