Nashville HiFi
Sweet sound to be found at 6600 Highway 100.
I thought Nashville’s only quality home audio dealer was Hifi Buys on Nolensville Road, but a simple, curiosity-driven internet search for “Nashville HiFi” produced, to my great surprise, a business called, get this, Nashville HiFi. Score one for search engine optimization.
Nashville HiFi is a boutique in that curious old-school business strip on the right side of Highway 100 just after you’ve left Belle Meade on your way to Percy Warner Park. It’s a by-appointment place, so I called ahead and found sole proprietor Brad Bossman presiding over several well-appointed showrooms set up with some of the finest audio gear in the world, from the damn reasonable to the downright hilarious on the affordability continuum.
Though I was not actively shopping for any new components, Brad took time with me, gave me a tour, and let me listen to some stand-mount speakers that melted my face and made me cry a little. That included my introduction to the Danish speaker company Dynaudio, and I’ve been having covetous dreams ever since.
And that’s how it’s supposed to work. In a hypermodern world where shopping is online and audio gets a hundredth the attention of video, the musical citizen needs and deserves opportunities to hear hi-fi audio in relaxing environments. But these are vanishingly scarce. Getting in front of real hi-fi systems is the key to understanding what’s possible, what price points are out there and what it feels like to hear music you love with detail, power and spatial resolution. It’s like knowing or not knowing what quality cooking tastes like. You can’t set internal benchmarks if you can’t experience the real thing. So if you love music, I’d urge you to drop Brad a note, set a time, make a short list of favorite tracks in advance or bring records, and pay the place a visit.
Bossman the boss man is a sole proprietor with an entrepreneur’s story. He started working for a stereo chain in Florida at 18 years old, and between that and his father’s hi-fi hobby, he got a fever for the field. His employer got purchased by a corporation who “ruined it.” So in 2003, he opened his own place selling audio and video. It grew and he learned a lot until the great recession struck in 2008. As he looked for a new frontier he got a tip that in Nashville, the iconic Nicholson’s Hi-Fi in midtown was closing and there would be a void in the Music City market.
“I didn’t have a dime to my name but I had a truckload of equipment,” he says. To keep costs low, he rented a shop front in Fairview, TN and did a lot of traveling to install audio and home theater in the region. Brad got a boost when the TV show Nashville hired him on contract to provide their prop audio gear. Believe it or not, this alone can set off a cycle of curiosity. (I remember when some exotic audio gear appeared in the Oscar-winning film Parasite, it led to chatter on consumer boards. What are those speakers?) Anyway, that helped Bossman get further established in Music City. He’s now in his second address in Nashville.
I went back for a second visit to take some photos and ask Brad a few questions.
Do you have a philosophy that guides this store?
I tell people two things. Do it once and do it right. And I tell people yes, this is a big investment, whether you’re buying a $500 pair of speakers or a $500,000 theater system. You want to feel like you got your money’s worth. My biggest thing is if you spent $1,000, I want you to get home and feel like you spent $2,000. I need it to sound such that you say ‘I really got what I was trying to get. I got more than I was expecting.’
You’re a one-man show, so what do you do?
Well the easy answer is everything. I do payroll, inventory, ordering, the market research, web design. I do research into what’s new and how things are advancing. Sales. Maintenance and repair. And installation. In fact today we just started quoting for a house that’s going to be built. The gentleman knows what he wants. And we’re going to be with him from the first day all the way to the designing and building of the room.
So that’s one extreme. What do you say to people who are excited about music but who are intimidated by cost?
I had a family come in with their daughter. They said we just came from Best Buy but we want something better. We have a $2000 all-in budget. So we did an integrated amplifier. They were into records, so we got them a Rega turntable and a pair of these entry level Dynaudio speakers. So they have now a fully functional system that’s going to beat anything they’d find at a big box store and the ability to expand it later on.
Or swap up components, because it’s all modular.
Yes.
What have you noticed about the market in Nashville? Is it extra hungry for high-end music?
It’s actually the opposite. I came up thinking there are so many musicians and music lovers. I thought it would be a shoe-in. And I found out two things about middle Tennesseans, which I appreciate. It’s just different than in Florida. First off, you’ve gotta build up trust. You’re the new guy. What’s your story? The next thing is a lot of the musicians I talked to were of the philosophy that I deal with this day in and day out. When I go home I don’t want to see this any more. And there’s never been many hi-fi shops around and not much choice. So it’s kind of building people up. We’ve done some work with some people at BMI to where they realize hey I can have a nice little system at home and enjoy it and not feel like I’m still at work.
So what’s the best approach to being an evangelist for high fidelity audio for regular folks who don’t get it yet?
Well “audiophile” really quickly adds a connotation of being expensive. I call them music snobs. As hi-fi evangelists, we are all out there preaching that you can have something that’s better than what you listen to on Spotify or on your phone. And you can do that by setting up the proper equipment. And you can get people that normally would not be involved with it when they re-hear albums that they know and love - and they finally hear it in the way that it was supposed to. And it’s an ‘Oh my goodness’ point. You remember hearing it on the radio or you have the CD. But it’s the difference between saying that’s a really good song and hearing instruments you never heard before. To get somebody to appreciate and enjoy that is half the fun of it.
Audio is supposed to be fun. It’s also emotional, spiritual and intellectual. But we need to dissolve the “music snob” problem and build bridges between active hi-fi listeners and everybody who’s got Apple Music and a sound bar. Nashville HiFi should be regarded in a similar way as Nashville’s numerous guitar stores. Nobody’s surprised when instrument dealers display guitars and mandolins that cost from $1,000 to $50,000. It seems natural. Audio systems - musical instruments for the non-playing population - are no different. This stuff is extremely well designed and well made, and it’s got heirloom potential.
If I have one concern, it’s the website. The home page presents us with a white middle aged man sipping white wine in what’s obviously an expensive home with an expensive system. To me, this projects if not music snobbery then certainly a needless aura of privilege, playing to stereotype, if you’ll forgive me. I’d market hi-fi gear with imagery of musicians from all genres and periods, and music fans from all walks of life. I’d write narratives of customers whose experiences could be inspiring to others. I absolutely understand that for a lone owner-manager, a web site is hard to get to and mostly a necessary pain in the butt. I’m just saying that the site’s imagery was my first impression of Nashville HiFi, but as soon as I spoke to Brad it was clear that he wants to be there for the many and not the exclusive few.
