Way back in the mid-90’s I did some contract work for Microsoft. I was the Systems Engineer of The Microsoft Home, responsible for the maintenance and upgrades for a prototype test environment of the Advanced Prototyping Team. This 2500 square foot area was situated on the Microsoft campus in a nondescript building and had no signage or advertising.
It was designed to emulate a “typical” upper scale family home, except that it had about three million dollars of computers and electronics that hosted scenarios for future technologies.
It also had one of the most impressive sound systems I’ve ever had the pleasure to sample. 3600 watts that could be shuttled anywhere throughout the home using a remote control. And a home-built jukebox that provided a Pandora-like experience - years before that service existed.
Among my duties was a morning ritual where I restarted all of the gear and brought it online, in anticipation of the various executive level tours that took place there.
One of my favorite tunes to check out the audio system was Collin’s “In The Air Tonight”. Everybody has heard the song a thousand times over the years, but you can’t really appreciate the nuances of the audio until you’ve heard it on a really good system.
What a great way to start the morning!
My husband has a degree in industrial engineering, but his first love is sound system technology. I don’t understand how he has everything wired (or not wired) but we have a turntable for vinyl records and we have 8 speakers throughout our home. Besides the vinyl (analog) capability through the speakers, he also has them configured so that, he can play albums or song lists through his Samsung app on his iPhone. For a home system, it’s pretty impressive, at least to everyone who ever visits here. It’s not anything like what you’ve described, but it is pretty cool to have this much already. I have the feeling that if we could afford a recording studio in our home, that would be his next wish.