While old and new may blend wonderfully when it comes to renovated barn conversions and Lucy Dracus covering Carole King, it doesn’t always in the case of hi-fi system aesthetics. This writer should know – on their rack is an old-school, dial-heavy Marantz integrated sitting below a sleek, minimalist Cambridge Audio streamer – and, to make it worse, one’s silver and one’s black. The company badges don’t remotely line up. Visually, they are as compatible as wedding invitations and the Goosebumps font.
On the flip side, there are likely very few things more beautiful to the eye of a hi-fi enthusiast than a handsome rack of matching separates. Naim’s streamlined black-punched-with-illuminated-green, Salisbury heavy metal components spring to mind, as do the attractive tiers of blue glow that come from the marriage of multiple McIntosh electronics. You can probably picture those, but if the image of a Chord Electronics source stack is beyond your mental conjuring, just take a look at that beauty below and try not to drool. The uniformity an army lieutenant would be proud of.
