Aside from great actresses, overwhelming humidity, and pervasive dread, one of the most noteworthy aspects of Sharp Objects is its music. The show’s needle drops tend to come from diegetic sources, often an iPhone, or, as in the many creepy scenes in the Crellin family’s Victorian house, a sound system. When Alan Crellin (Henry Czerny) wants to retreat from the outside world, and ignore all the deep psychological drama playing out between his wife Adora (Patricia Clarkson) and stepdaughter Camille Preaker (Amy Adams), he puts on a sweater, drops some vinyl, and blasts whichever piano-heavy compositions he’s interested in at the moment.
For anyone who would like to re-create this experience, minus the murders, we reached out to HBO to figure out the specs of Alan’s setup. According to director Jean-Marc Vallée, Alan is using “the ultimate audiophile system on the market,†with a series of amplifiers and preamps from Simaudio, a French-Canadian company (the director himself is from Montreal).
According to Simaudio, the “MOON†setup that appears on Sharp Objects includes: a 430HAD, headphone amp (estimated price $4,300), a 740P stereo preamp ($9,000), a 810LP phono preamp ($13,000), a 650D CD player ($9,000), and two 880M monobloc power amps ($22,500 each). Alan also has a VPI turntable ($4,000) with an Ortofon cartridge ($1,000) for his vinyl collection. All in all, that adds up to over $80,000 worth of equipment, plus however much Alan has sunk into his vinyl collection. At least Adora’s hog-farming money is going to good use?
Update: Alan’s speaker system is even more tricked out than we thought! A Simaudio employee told Vulture that, in addition to everything else, Alan uses a Ultrasone — Tribute 7 headset ($3,000) and two Dynaudio C4 platinum speakers ($12,000 each), which means the total comes to more than $112,000, plus all the money he had to spend on cables. The next question: How much went into that creepy dollhouse?