Leo Tolstoy use to say that all happy couples resemble one another but each unhappy couple is unhappy in its own way. I think in audio this witty Tolstoy’s idea could be very much applicable …reversed.

All playbacks are the same and only good playbacks demonstrate own uniqueness that I call “sensible attitude”. This “attitude” is not how the playback sounds but the way WHY it would in the way it sounds. The dominating majority of audio people who read this article would be under impression that this “uniqueness” would derive from some better components or from some secret knowledge of the system’s organizer. Here is way I sometime discard that “dominating majority” of audio people, labeling them the Morons™. The reality of the thing is very much different and the “attitude” has absolutely nothing to do with better components, nothing to do with the sets of precompiled “secret know-how” and has absolutely nothing to do with anything else that the Morons™ have in thier inflated and “artfully inspired” imagination. The only thing that counts in playback organization is the level of intentions of an individual who bult his/her playback and, looking at the level of those intentions, it is obviously why the 99.9% of all playback out there are juts an stimulated waste of time, space, money.

Approach those 99.9% of audiophiles who juts paid a large chunk of money for thier new amplifier or loudspeaker and ask them why they did it. If you do research what drove and what motivated those 99.9% then you discover that those people had no sensible objectives and no realistic rational for their actions. They did it because they in one or other way were told to it. They are not the masters who shape this own Sound. They drift among the audio sewers with no sentiments regarding of what they do in audio. They have some kind sound in thier listening rooms, the sound that was accidentally fashioned for them by the nature of elements that they blindly used. Those 99.9% take this sound as granted reference. Most of them do not family with inflictions that “life sound” might have on a listener and even the few of them who do familiar with it do correlate thier listening experiences from “live” music with the experiences they get form audio.

So, what we have? We have 99.9% of audio people assemble thier playback without any references to “live” experiences, without applying own cultural levels (there is a lot of more to it) and without expressing any demands of own constrictive creatively. What in fact they do is juts brainlessly pileing up the bundles of audio ingredients, composing the typical audio idiocies about “synergy” and “differentiation of sounds”. This is very similar to a person who stranded at inhibited island, found an animal-made cave and pronounce the cave as a magnificent accomplishment in architect art.

I love to listen other people playbacks. I like when they large, extended and I demand that they should be expansive. The expansiveness of playback does not relate to the monitory equivalent of the audio components but to the amount of the reasoning and thinking that the system’s owner invested into the organization of his/her playback. A system should portray nothing else but the owner intentions and listening that playback is like reading somebody’s book. Unfortunately the 99.9% of playbacks out there are very-very cheap. Many of those 99.9% playbacks, although they cost $300K, but in realty, analyzing the amount of invested thinking, reasoning and consequential performance, those systems have no worth

As the result audio is filed with Morons who run from manufacturer to manufacturer, from dealer to dealer, form a review to review, buying in own next expectations without realizing they in fact do not search for anything. Ironically the most of the manufacturers, dealers and reviewers are contaminated with the very same disease of the INTERNAL AUDIO EMPTINESS. The only difference between the dead audio-consumers and the dead audio manufacturers-dealers-reviewers that the later deploy, exercise and exploit consumer’s fears….

This all leads to the fact that that 99.9% of playbacks out there are annoyingly boring, boring if they even manage to sound more of less survivable audio-wise. “No objectives” leads to no accomplishment and no identification of targets leas to a shooting in all directions. Of course here and there you always would see some kind of cretins who would pontificate about the “unique ballistic trajectory” of those wonderfully aimed shots flying in all directions, the shots aimed to nowhere…

Antonio J. wrote:

Not everyone has the time and resources to be really serious and convert his wishes and attitude in a musical fact.

Rgs,
Romy the caT

Sure, I am too radical for an average audio Moronism. There is nothing wrong in radicalism, as radicalism is an advocating of edgy view within currently dominating practices. Therefore the values of radicalism could be measured only in regard of the value of the dominating practices. If one express some radical views somewhere among the Adolph Hitler’s, Joseph Stalin’s, Saddam Hussein’s, Augusto Pinochet’s or Gorge Bush’s administration then this person would be unquestionably considered too radical, so what? If my views are too radical for audio as it understood by the today’s audio-hoodlums then there is a possibility that the views of those hoodlums are too dead, isn’t it?

Anyhow, answering your question. I do not know anything about your stratification of the audio frustrations but there is something where you from my perspective are mistaken. Real knowledge does not transmitted from person to person but grow within a person himself, it should breed within a person and just to be discovered but this person as a pre-existing force. We pretty much have all answers and all knowledge have bult within us and all that we have to learn is to teach ourselves to communicate with ourselfs, to ask ourselfs the correct question and to recognize the answers when our inner-we provide them for us.

Rgs,
Romy the Cat

I suppose I'm more tolerant, even to myself than you. I don't think that most people are morons, some just try to be helpful acknowledging their own limitations.

I agree that real knowledge about things that matter and are serious comes from inside. But that knowledge can only grow from a substrate of experience. In audio getting the valuable experience to develope some real knowledge is not easy. You may have the right questions, you may have subjective answers about how it should be, but if you don't have the exposure nor the advice about what might produce what you think are your answers, then you cannot have the knowledge.

I believe that you think of most audio people that are morons because they don't have questions, and probably many of them not even are ready to accept that they're into this just for the pieces of kit, and don't give a damn for the music. Don't you?

Regards,

Antonio