Maru Hi-Fi, Newcastle — The Quiet Door on Union Street
In Newcastle West, two engineers built a jazz kissa from ten thousand records, a shipping container and a pair of Tannoy Westminsters.
By Rafi Mercer
New Listing
Venue Name: Maru Hi-Fi
Address: 10 Union Street, Midtown Precinct, Newcastle West NSW 2302, Australia
Website: https://www.maruhifi.com
Instagram: @maruhifi
Union Street doesn't announce much. This is the west end of Newcastle, the stretch the city has spent the last few years filling in, one late room at a time, until the signage started calling it Midtown. Number 10 used to be a gallery. The building next door holds a karaoke bar. From the pavement you would not guess that the quieter of the two doors is the one that took years to build.
The owners of the karaoke bar also own the listening room. Andrew Coughlan and Joel Hillier opened Jam's Karaoke on Union Street in January 2020. They then watched the strip around them become a nightlife district and went next door to build the opposite: a room where nobody holds the microphone and the record carries the evening.
Both men are electrical engineers, and that explains a great deal. They engineered the room's acoustics themselves, working with Spectrum Acoustics, Sound NSW and Renzo Tonin. The system is published on their website like a spec sheet, with no adjectives. It lists modified Pioneer PL1400 turntables, a Condesa Carmen V rotary mixer built to their specification, a McIntosh C40 preamplifier into a McIntosh MC7300, and a pair of Tannoy Westminster Royals. The Westminsters are the big wooden horn cabinets that look like furniture until they start moving air.
The collection came the long way. Over two years of trips to Japan, the pair brought back records by the suitcase, until they had around ten thousand. They also brought equipment from a recording studio in Saitama, outside Tokyo, and needed Japanese government sign-off to ship speakers home in a container. It was a lot of effort for a room that seats a few dozen people. That is roughly the point.
The lineage is Japanese. The jazz kissa was the small café where people went to hear records they couldn't afford on systems they could never own, and the one house rule was attention. Maru adapts the model for a different city. The food is Japanese-leaning share plates. The signature cocktails are Dominic Vun's. The murals on the walls are by Brontë Naylor. It is a restaurant and a bar, and it doesn't pretend otherwise.
The week has a shape. Wednesday is live jazz and soul with dinner. Thursday is BYO Records: you bring something from your own shelf and hear it through the Westminsters, which is the single best idea on the calendar. Friday is all vinyl, and Saturday belongs to a guest selector. A recent Saturday was Brad Smith, a Melbourne digger who plays vinyl-only sets built for attentive listening. Sunday goes looser, with pub-style live music. Sets are recorded and streamed, so the room reaches further than its postcode.
Coughlan has said plainly that listening bars are spreading everywhere and that what they tried to do was build one properly. The spec sheet backs him up. What stays with me more is the arrangement on Union Street itself: two rooms side by side, one built for everyone to sing and one built for everyone to listen, run by the same two people. Coughlan also said the city is trying to find its new heart. On a Thursday night, somebody's own record is playing through a pair of speakers that crossed an ocean to get there. That seems a fair place to look.
I write about rooms like this most days in the Tracks & Tales Daily. If you'd like them to arrive with you, subscribe here. And there are more spaces built for listening in the venue guide. — Rafi Mercer
