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01-30-2019

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Romy the Cat

Boston, MA
Posts 10,166
Joined on 05-28-2004

Post #:	1
Post ID:	25249
Reply to:	25249

Josh: My visit to Romy the Cat's Macondo

In reference to :  https://www.diyaudio.com/forums/multi-way/333079-visit-romy-cats-macondo.html

I was pointed out to me that Josh posted his commentary about me at diyaudio.com site. Since he was actively posted at this forum I was presuming that if he want to write anything about Macondo then it would be at my forum. To post the writing at the forum that I do not read regularly and from which I was banned due to my contempt of the forums community is kind of strange thing to do. Still, Josh is a free man and he does whatever complies with his definition of ethics…

Generally, the Josh writing very accurately describe the sound he experienced. A very minor nuance: I did not invited Josh, he as I understood visited in Boston, asked to be inverted, which is I did. I have no problem with it and I do not think I never turned down any visitors, particularly a horn enthusiast. I was also interested in another subject. From Josh posting at my site he extensively traveled and listened many tailored playbacks out there and I was curios to learn how my playback would be comparing to other playbacks Josh heard. It is not that I have a competitive spirit in playback building, the people who actually know me know how I am far from that feeling. I have my own interests: interviewing people, getting from them some information that I understand about topological decision and listening consequences   even though in most of the cases the people do not understand what they were asked and what they replied.

Generally meeting Josh was a positive experience. I with 99% accuracy predicted to my wife a day before the visit what the visit will be about and what music Josh most likely will bring. Amy asked me why do I need to do it. I replied that it is what is out there. She wished me to have good time…

Generally Josh is what I feel is wrong with audio people and why I very much abhor the audio crowd. This is not a negative commentary about Josh personally. Josh is very nice gentle man and it is not a fault of his character that he has no realization regarding what audio is all about. Many people do not. Josh is informed, knows a lot of audio buzzwords, can fluently talk about audio technologies and he perceive audio with slight obsession. So, what wrong with that? The wrong part is that the hobbits like Josh as people with whom is great to drink bear with or to discuss the latest clips at CES but they are horrible to be with them in the same room when they listen anything. The reason for it that they have extremely low expectation to themselves, to own listening culture and to own sense of relationship with musically. As the result they cruse around audio hobby in a search of some kind of mystery “playback” that would reveal to them some kind Messiah, the Messiah that they are not able to recognize. They absolutely do not understand that the Messiah they are searching in in them, the Messiah is a result of self- evolvement, sort of Gurdjieff’s Fourth Way, and a playback can only reflect it if music has it and if you are ready. Somebody told that it is hard to find a black cat in a dark room, particularly if the cat isn't there. THAT was the perfect description what Josh should be feeling about my installation. It is also a perfect my assessment of Josh listening experience at my home and anywhere else.

Usually the material I play to visitors very much reflects the visitors. I always start from one of my favorite Bach pieces and then I observe visitor reaction and go from there. With Josh it went south with speed of avalanche. He was looking at for some kind of frequencies, told me that he has not enough of chest pressure at bass notes and the rest of kindergarten crap. I told him that I can very easily to shape to him the sound that he likes but it might be also might be an opportunity for him to learn how sound might be from playbacks and to ask himself why I decided to it in this way if I can do it in any way. He agreed to tolerate sound as is. I played to him relatively simple things, and I played to him even some jazz! It was very clearly that he was absolutely bored with classical music. There is minor inaccurate thing in his writing where Josh stated that he “enjoy more simple romantic modern classical music such as Satie, or Chopin / Liszt, up to Italian opera”. Sorry, I do not buy it. I do not feel that he even remotely familiar with anything. He IS familiar with names but he is not able or have no habit to decimate performing interpretations. He apparently did not even understood the concept of interpretations!

The complete wreck of the day was then I stopped to play to him my music and he told that that to “truly evaluate my playback he need to hear his own music” and he played a dozen or so his own files. I cannot describe the horror. First of all it was objectively severally compromised audio. Second, it was beyond terrible music, if fact most of it was just a combination of some barbaric sounds. Third, there was one track is Beethoven prelude and it was such a evil play that I juts was not able to tolerate that crap and asks him to turn it off. After this I played to Josh the very same peace with more of less lucid interpretation and Josh was surprised that this music might be performed differently!!! After this I left him and he spent one or two hours to listen recording of some kind of hammers hitting marble statures. Honestly I do not know what it it as I was trying to stay as far from my listening room as possible.

In the end a few words. I do tend to listen music significantly loader then he does. It has to do with perhaps personal preferences, habits, type of the music we listen, personal sensitivity. I have no problem with that and this is why I give to visitors a remote control. Set whatever volume you want. The harshness Josh reported is very much there and very much deliberate. In my view it is not a harshness, Josh just did not understand it, but it is +1.5dB forwardness of S2 driver. It gives some edge to Bruckner recordings and to some other music. I did demonstrated it to Josh on Bruckner and he I think got the lesson. I also, proposed him to get rid of it, it would take 10 seconds to do but he refused.

I personally would recommend Josh temporarily stop perusing high-end audio. I am sorry, Josh, with your level of interest in music and with your understand of your own sonic benefits you will not be able to find a satisfaction or fulfillment in high-end audio. You will be traveling from company to company, from topology to topology, from idea to idea, from guru to guru, keep discovering hew “opportunity” to explore but the “cat isn't there”. I very much was in your shoes and very much know how you feel, you are not alone, you have 99% of audio people with you the most diyaudio.com website. I might be wrong but in sometimes in a future when you discover how the “back cat” might look like you might find that you wasted a tremendous amount of energy to the unfortunately empty chaise. If you get there then feel free to visit me again.

"I wish I could score everything for horns." - Richard Wagner. "Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts." - Friedrich Nietzsche

01-30-2019

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Amir
Iran Tehran
Posts 355
Joined on 02-11-2009

Post #:	2
Post ID:	25250
Reply to:	25249

Josh Review

Josh wrote :
"it sounds like a normal speaker. ""This was too soft, and this way not really desired. Maybe the tubes soft clipping caused some compression? I actually prefer SSD amps for their extra slam. "

this type of review is very similar to other reviews in internet.I am not romy follower and I am not fan of Romy and I am not here to say josh is wrong , I just say there are many audiophiles (90%) there that they do not like right sound. they just react positive to impressive sounds.
I do not care about Josh review.

one of my friends told me he hates my speakers (i have living voice obx-r) and i told him most of other audiophiles in iran hate my speakers too but i do not care what you and others think about my sound.

www.amiraudio.com, www.hifi.ir

01-30-2019

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N-set
Gdansk, Poland
Posts 617
Joined on 01-07-2006

Post #:	3
Post ID:	25252
Reply to:	25249

Deep thought

Possibly the deepest thought I've come across as to why pursue audio (or actually any other activity). All that we need is in us, we just need to discover it. Fantastic, thank you very much Romy for sharing it.

Cheers, Jarek

Cheers,
Jarek
STACORE

01-31-2019

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martinshorn
Germany
Posts 114
Joined on 04-14-2017

Post #:	4
Post ID:	25253
Reply to:	25249

Bitching about the Macondo in the enemy forum

Hello Sir

I expected your disappointed resonance already. What you write completes the impression of the evening. I didn't go that far not to blow up the mini article unnecessarily. But be honest, you knew it all before. And so it happened... And I believe deep inside you remembered yourself back in the days when you were searching, the moment you responded to my "self-invitation".
Just a few things i want to comment :

1. The 90% of wrong audio people
I feel you mean 90% of people have different objective than you. Which makes them wrong. Its not particularly modest buddhistic approach of thinking. Lets say two are talking how nice it is to drive out on the weekend for a road trip. Both agree but mean totally different things. Person A loves to drive technically coz his car is tuned to perfection. Second person meant he reaches destination to enjoy food and meet new people. I feel the same in the audio scene. You can either enjoy the music itself or enjoy the sound-bathing. Sound-bathing is by far more common between audiophiles, and listening to well recorded but meaningless music. Both is OK. If I enjoy to jiggle my senses with sound effects, no one gets hurt. Sound-bathing is totally fine. Only the abuse to justify consumptionism is bad about it. This is what many are guilty of.
As for the actual music, honestly i came along the conclusion years ago that even the radio in my car is good enough to stop there. Thats because it transmits the emotion of music to the max extend I expect. Which leads to the next point

2. Only classical music is actually music
I am familiar with this thinking since childhood. My grandpa is a classic snob too. He is hobby pianist and Chopin obsessed since his teenage. He would always argue that what i listen to is more similar to African bush rituals than music. I mean we are both familiar in Germany and America with people of younger past calling jazz music barbarian....... The truth is, while my grandpa may felt superior about enjoying his complexity, he never had a chance to enjoy singing out loud with Howlin Wolf under the shower. Or with Jimi Hendrix in the car with open window. Neither he was dancing to techno with his friends in a secret industrial nightclub till 8 o'clock in the morning. Nor did he date many girls on the salsa dancing courses in that cuban bar downtown. I don't know which of us both had more life-fulfilment, but I sure do have assumptions.......

3. Learn to truly listen
That his handing over to the point when I say that any level of quality above shitty car radio does actually already not matter to me. When I sing horribly bad to Curtis Mayfield or Charles Bradley in the car (and my Lady notices she doesn't have enough hands to cover her face and ears at the same time) the sound quality doesn't matter at all. This is when I truly listen. And I feel fulfilment of music. And I know that for long. It has little to do with audio sound bathing. Maybe you find this your way with understanding the real power of classical music and the individual personality and art of each interpretation. And it may be what you try to articulate. My way may lack complexity. But I feel i don't need to proof to anyone my grandeur. Instead i feel this genre has a lot of its own bohemian charm, which is composed after 5 beer and heartache, instead of 2 dices thrown on a matrix.

4. Bitching about the Macondo in the enemy forum
I had little notice of you being banned nor does it have any relevance. It is simply the biggest platform reaching out to people. And that was the idea, it actually was a pure socialistic idea. I do not feel this forum here would be a platform to communicate this. As you pointed: most people are the same. I find this shockingly often to be true in life. This is where I agree with 90% Smile

A lot of people want to hear your system. People were asking how does it sound, was anyone ever there? I was googling it, no results. Many sure did. I wanted to let them know. And its better to share experience rather than keeping it secretly within a small snobby highend society. I was lucky to be nearby and you making time. Thanks!
If you create something, and say someone else's creation is shit, you actually also say yours is better. If you say everyone is shit, you imply the statement of your own superiority. You do say a lot how shitty others are. That certainly triggers huge curiosity around the globe. Look how the S2 prices exploded to unreasonable height. You and Kevin made a lot of fuss about it.
So I wanted to speak to people and address that. I really think it is a great thing to do. Though it may hurt your feelings. Sorry for that. See it as contribution to something bigger. It hopefully releases some tension of curious audio people how the mystical Macondo may sing. Like when you welcomed me. That relief was great gift! Happy to share it.

with all positive intentions.. Josh

01-31-2019

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Romy the Cat

Boston, MA
Posts 10,166
Joined on 05-28-2004

Post #:	5
Post ID:	25255
Reply to:	25253

If the Back Cat is not there....

martinshorn wrote:
I expected your disappointed resonance already. What you write completes the impression of the evening. I didn't go that far not to blow up the mini article unnecessarily. But be honest, you knew it all before. And so it happened... And I believe deep inside you remembered yourself back in the days when you were searching, the moment you responded to my "self-invitation".

Josh, I have no disappointing in here of any kind with exception that I wish you do not post at the forums where the typical idiots dump dirt on me and I have no means to response. In fact I am very pleased with your visit as in my view Macondo demonstrate a very high performing integrity. You mentioned that you were surprised that Macondo sounded like a regular speaker, you were not moves, astonished, surprised, flabbergasted or experienced any other emotional shock that you typically expect to get from a playback. This is the highest compliment I even got for Macondo. This is the ultimate expressive transparency of playback, the transparency that you unfortunately do not understand yet. Macodno did present you with auditable surrogate that in your mind you recognize as a definition of “quality”. You did not understand the music was played and you experienced no invents for your soul. When you played your surrogate Macondo did not ornament it with your expected sonic goodness, so you pass through the Macondo presentation like a hot knife there the butter and hear only a boring regular speaker. There are very few speakers out there that can do it for you and Macondo is one of them.
Also, I think Macondo did spectacular job to suggest you do not look for “progressed” solution and to settle down for something more modest. I think it was a good education at good time for you and I do glad that you come to this realization.

martinshorn wrote:
The 90% of wrong audio people I feel you mean 90% of people have different objective than you. Which makes them wrong. Its not particularly modest buddhistic approach of thinking. Lets say two are talking how nice it is to drive out on the weekend for a road trip. Both agree but mean totally different things. Person A loves to drive technically coz his car is tuned to perfection. Second person meant he reaches destination to enjoy food and meet new people. I feel the same in the audio scene. You can either enjoy the music itself or enjoy the sound-bathing. Sound-bathing is by far more common between audiophiles, and listening to well recorded but meaningless music. Both is OK. If I enjoy to jiggle my senses with sound effects, no one gets hurt. Sound-bathing is totally fine. Only the abuse to justify consumptionism is bad about it. This is what many are guilty of. As for the actual music, honestly i came along the conclusion years ago that even the radio in my car is good enough to stop there. Thats because it transmits the emotion of music to the max extend I expect. Which leads to the next point

I do not understand why you audio people are so constantly and so deep in PMS state of mind and why you perceive any statement of any person different to yours with you as some kind of need to self-validate yourself. It is not about right of wrong. What is the stupid concept it is! It is about matching of very specific audio endeavors to very specific musical objectives. Do you want to collaborate musical objectives? Fine. Do you want to collaborate what audio methodology you use to accomplish those objectives? Fine. That are all protocols where communication might takes place. If you want somebody to care that you have no understanding of own objectives and no understanding how your lost might be rendered by audio then it is fine as well, BUT you need to educate yourself at least to be able to ask yourself proper questions.

martinshorn wrote:
Only classical music is actually music. I am familiar with this thinking since childhood. My grandpa is a classic snob too. He is hobby pianist and Chopin obsessed since his teenage. He would always argue that what i listen to is more similar to African bush rituals than music. I mean we are both familiar in Germany and America with people of younger past calling jazz music barbarian....... The truth is, while my grandpa may felt superior about enjoying his complexity, he never had a chance to enjoy singing out loud with Howlin Wolf under the shower. Or with Jimi Hendrix in the car with open window. Neither he was dancing to techno with his friends in a secret industrial nightclub till 8 o'clock in the morning. Nor did he date many girls on the salsa dancing courses in that cuban bar downtown. I don't know which of us both had more life-fulfilment, but I sure do have assumptions.

It is perfectly fine, I have no need to convince you in anything. All that I am saying that I refuse to acknowledge existence of high-end audio in context of restaurant music. I think it is my constructional right, right?

martinshorn wrote:
That his handing over to the point when I say that any level of quality above shitty car radio does actually already not matter to me. When I sing horribly bad to Curtis Mayfield or Charles Bradley in the car (and my Lady notices she doesn't have enough hands to cover her face and ears at the same time) the sound quality doesn't matter at all. This is when I truly listen. And I feel fulfilment of music. And I know that for long. It has little to do with audio sound bathing. Maybe you find this your way with understanding the real power of classical music and the individual personality and art of each interpretation. And it may be what you try to articulate. My way may lack complexity. But I feel i don't need to proof to anyone my grandeur. Instead i feel this genre has a lot of its own bohemian charm, which is composed after 5 beer and heartache, instead of 2 dices thrown on a matrix.

The “bohemian charm”, is it a copyright name? Sound like a good name for iPhone App…

martinshorn wrote:
Bitching about the Macondo in the enemy forum. I had little notice of you being banned nor does it have any relevance. It is simply the biggest platform reaching out to people. And that was the idea, it actually was a pure socialistic idea. I do not feel this forum here would be a platform to communicate this. As you pointed: most people are the same. I find this shockingly often to be true in life. This is where I agree with 90% A lot of people want to hear your system. People were asking how does it sound, was anyone ever there? I was googling it, no results. Many sure did. I wanted to let them know. And its better to share experience rather than keeping it secretly within a small snobby highend society. I was lucky to be nearby and you making time. Thanks!

I do not feel that diyaudio.com is enemy forum. I consider that the forums is saturated with many boring people who do anything to accomplish anything and run by highly unsecure people but they are under no circumstances are enemy of mine. Anyhow, if you are looking a pure socialistic idea and education of public is your objective then feel free to post at your diyaudio.com thread the link to my reply.

martinshorn wrote:
If you create something, and say someone else's creation is shit, you actually also say yours is better. If you say everyone is shit, you imply the statement of your own superiority. You do say a lot how shitty others are. That certainly triggers huge curiosity around the globe. Look how the S2 prices exploded to unreasonable height. You and Kevin made a lot of fuss about it.

Again: shit, superiority, better… Man, are you catapulted from another planet? Ah, I see from the diyaudio.com. Josh, you have very little understanding of what is going on around you, at least in audio. You cannot even repeat after others the things. I do not think that anybody many any fuss about anything, this is all your reception, quite inflated reception I need to say. I very openly made many a made many comments that S2 is not an perfect driver but something that I happens to settled because I made it to sound in the way how I needed. Kevin also did not make any fuss from S2 and he perfectly feel that if it was any other driver then he would make it to work too. For you audio is about things, the stupid dead things and you are looking for that the dead things will make you to feel moved. Well, it is what it is but you and I are in a different hobby.

martinshorn wrote:
So I wanted to speak to people and address that. I really think it is a great thing to do. Though it may hurt your feelings. Sorry for that. See it as contribution to something bigger. It hopefully releases some tension of curious audio people how the mystical Macondo may sing. Like when you welcomed me. That relief was great gift! Happy to share it.

Well, what hurt your feelings is that you do not use this opportunely for asking yourself if there is anything else in this hobby then just your itch to sit next to audio equipment. Over the hours we spent together you did not ask any questions that I found “enlightening”. Trust me, I have a lot of very interesting music, a lot of ways to demonstrate some very useful audio techniques and a very good capacity to teach audio language. You just have no interest and was numb and non-receptive, looking for a very different things. I think you missed a good opportunity for yourself.

"I wish I could score everything for horns." - Richard Wagner. "Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts." - Friedrich Nietzsche

01-31-2019

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anthony
Posts 338
Joined on 08-18-2014

Post #:	6
Post ID:	25257
Reply to:	25255

Siblings

Romy the Cat wrote:
martinshorn wrote:
I expected your disappointed resonance already. What you write completes the impression of the evening. I didn't go that far not to blow up the mini article unnecessarily. But be honest, you knew it all before. And so it happened... And I believe deep inside you remembered yourself back in the days when you were searching, the moment you responded to my "self-invitation".

Josh, I have no disappointing in here of any kind with exception that I wish you do not post at the forums where the typical idiots dump dirt on me and I have no means to response. In fact I am very pleased with your visit as in my view Macondo demonstrate a very high performing integrity. You mentioned that you were surprised that Macondo sounded like a regular speaker, you were not moves, astonished, surprised, flabbergasted or experienced any other emotional shock that you typically expect to get from a playback. This is the highest compliment I even got for Macondo. This is the ultimate expressive transparency of playback, the transparency that you unfortunately do not understand yet. Macodno did present you with auditable surrogate that in your mind you recognize as a definition of “quality”. You did not understand the music was played and you experienced no invents for your soul. When you played your surrogate Macondo did not ornament it with your expected sonic goodness, so you pass through the Macondo presentation like a hot knife there the butter and hear only a boring regular speaker. There are very few speakers out there that can do it for you and Macondo is one of them.
Also, I think Macondo did spectacular job to suggest you do not look for “progressed” solution and to settle down for something more modest. I think it was a good education at good time for you and I do glad that you come to this realization.

Josh, like many people I have a brother. We are born of the same parents, raised in the same home, had the same friends because we grew up in an isolated rural community, and are only 18 months apart in age. We even look like each other, some people have to look twice to see which brother they are talking to. So what does this have to do with anything?

Well, given our identical upbringing, my brother is always looking over the fence for the next 'thing' to make him happy whilst I play in my own sandpit content and happy. Searching for things, like audio nirvana, happiness, love, is more often found with introspection than with outward searching. At some stage a man must grow up so that lust and hunger can settle to love and devotion. Likewise, to get to an audio nirvana one must be capable of understanding exactly what they want, how to evaluate what you have, and try to reason how to set a path to make necessary changes.

Wandering the globe and listening to various high end acoustic systems and judging them by how the builders intent matches with your expectations is folly. Wandering the globe and listening to various builders of acoustic systems about the decisions they have made to mold their playback to their expectations is certainly not folly, listening to the builder is far more enlightening that listening to their system alone. Afterall, the 'why' and 'how' is far more important than the 'what' when you are on a path to do something personal to a particularly high standard, and audio, like love and happiness, is very personal.

The whole "I built it and it sounds great" argument is not very convincing. The "I heard this awesome system and I am going to copy it" is a sure path to failure unless you are able to evaluate not only what you want, what you get, and are prepared to put in some real effort to get there. Is my Macondo/Melquiades going to rock my socks when it eventually is finished? I don't expect so and it will likely evolve to meet my personal requirements for my acoustic playback. It would be nice if it did rock my socks off straight away, but things don't work like that.

02-01-2019

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martinshorn
Germany
Posts 114
Joined on 04-14-2017

Post #:	7
Post ID:	25258
Reply to:	25255

Throwing the dirt

Dear Romy,

I feel you perceive yourself very much as enlightened and 90% of other people as low beings.You describe yourself as offering a generous helping hand from the top which is not understood due to ignorance.

A true enlightenment does not judge when feeling compassion - it offers the hand like to a child who cannot ride the bicycle yet.

It is very much different from feeling pity for others. Pity is a form of disgust.Why are you disgusted by all people around you?How we perceive the world, is a reflection of ourselves.

Remember, there is no reality but your perception of it? You even said it yourself.

I recommend trying to understand other people and see the positive things around you.It requires a lot of empathy. But it may reward with a lot of love. Even with more love to yourself.

best regards
Josh

PS: as for the rest of audience in this forum, i recommend emancipating yourself an own opinion.

02-01-2019

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Romy the Cat

Boston, MA
Posts 10,166
Joined on 05-28-2004

Post #:	8
Post ID:	25259
Reply to:	25258

Emancipating yourself...

Josh, are you upset and are you yawning for a public sympathy because I did not find you worthy “education”? I think it is my prerogative to decide and at this point you most likely will not understand my motives. To understand my motives you will need to remove your attention from players and preconceptions you have and begin to appreciate the outcome of game itself. It would be great if you learn what the game is all about. If you do then you might stop to sound like a provincial psychologist.

Generally, to hear those thoughts about enlightenment from an individuals who dedicate themselves full time to celebrate the infamous “cargo cult” is not what I am willing to waste my energy upon. Get yourself where you need to be, do your homework, “clean your own room” as Jordan Peterson would say and then express your complains about problems of Socrates educational system.

One of the French dukes told that it is easier to judge man’s mind by the man’s questions rather than answers, think what questions you are asking. Here is a question from me. You, after experience Macondo was bored and distracted. In two weeks after you left I had a visitor who experienced the very same Macondo and who was very much not bored and with whom we had very MUTUALLY STIMULATING listening session. Here is the question: if Macondo was the same then what was reasonable for sensual differences between you and my next visitor? I do not need you to answer it here, or there or at any other your typical “public burning”. Take your own house in order and answer it to yourself. Then you will not be upset that somebody did not demonstrate enough empathy to subscribe your unsolicited love. This pretty much exhausts at this point the time I am willing to spend with you.

Romy The Cat

"I wish I could score everything for horns." - Richard Wagner. "Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts." - Friedrich Nietzsche

02-01-2019

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Amir
Iran Tehran
Posts 355
Joined on 02-11-2009

Post #:	9
Post ID:	25260
Reply to:	25259

Very interesting topic

I think this topic is very very interesting to me and it is a opportunity those 90% audiophiles (like josh) think more about their objectives .I have pointed it many times in my weblog that romy recommendations (both methods and components) can not help those 90% because they will not impress with those objectives and for start they needs to change their objectives.If you love high feedback high power ss amplifiers then you will not be impressed by right sound.
What is the problem? The problem is that those 90% are not smart enough to educate themselve and they think audio is a tool for hyper impression like cocaine. Audio is not cocaine and at first you should learn how to react to audio.
When josh wrote it sounds like a normal speaker i will tell you josh needs to hear speakers with impressive sound.
In tehran iran i have listened to CEC TL0 , Purepower pp3000 , Purist cables and checked some Romy methods in audio . We know Romy Use CEC , Purepower 3000 and Purist cables. We have tested many times between these components and other components.For example we had A/B test between Purist cable and Acoustic Revive cable or we had A/B test between Purepower and Wall AC .i prefered Purist and Purepower with large margin but some other audiophiles prefered acoustic revive and wall AC.
I have listened to 24k$ purist anniversary speaker cable (single core silver cable) but i prefered Purist neptune 2k$ (copper) cable but many audiophiles prefer silver cables.
I have tested CEC TL0 and it was far better than other expensive transports but many audiophiles out there may prefer dcs transport.I have spend over 20k$ For PC audio to beat CEC but i just wasted my money and the story is i will credit romy seriously because his methods is very very effective to me.I am not fan of romy (i do not like him) and i am not here to defense him but i think if any body would like to review macondo he should be educated.
I never heard Macondo but i guess the digital chain (bidat lavry cec pre power speaker) is very very dynamic and i guess it may needs fuller harmonics.I think DAC and Pre i this system may have less than perfect tone. I may prefer more immediate more rich sound .These are my guests about romy digital chain.

www.amiraudio.com, www.hifi.ir

02-01-2019

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rickmcinnis
Posts 60
Joined on 10-18-2010

Post #:	10
Post ID:	25261
Reply to:	25249

Very disappointing but NOT surprising

All of us know that we do not share the same perceptions as others. Some of us would readily agree we are on the road to perfecting our ability to perceive and there are others who have convinced themselves they have reached their destination. They very well may have. But I have noticed those folks ended up in Brooklyn and not Boston Symphony Hall.

When I first read this I was happy for the fellow - I knew he had been treated well and had the opportunity to hear something well out of the ordinary. I did not think he said as much about Romy as he did about himself. The folks at the increasingly dumber DIYAudio predictably see it the other way 'round. One of the folks who has posted here thought it was unfair that Romy not be able to respond since they had kicked him out years ago. (and we know Romy has been crying in his beer ever since) My first thought, even though I knew the poster meant well was YOU HAVE TO BE KIDDING. I cannot imagine Romy "defending" his honor as if his honor could be harmed by a post in an audio forum.

Nonetheless, I think what Romy has said is just what I would thought he would. He filled in many of the blanks and gave us his opinion of how the day went. I am surprised that someone would go to Romy's and want to listen to anything other than orchestral music. That is so obvious as to be painful. But he had, i assume, come a long way and I can see Romy being more amenable to requests for that reason.

I guess the fellow was expecting something impossible? We are still dealing with speakers. Disappointment happens every day and if you are lucky less than once an hour. I mean the ideal is the suspension of disbelief not complete recreation of another reality. Christ! And then to hear he was expecting pressure on his chest? What can you say? The less the better?

It is not as if Romy has said he has found THE way. He has said he has found a way that works for him. He has given us plenty to think about and whether these thoughts mesh with how we hear is for us to discover for ourselves. He has done lots of research but quickly admits there is much left to know. I like the fact that he never gives an opinion on something he knows nothing about. If only one-tenth of the folks at DIYAudio had the same ability to edit themselves.

Oh, well, I am one who knows he has learned much from Romy. Nothing in my system is Romy approved. Just because you respect someone doesn't mean you follow them to the end of the earth and one's bank account. I cannot afford a system like Romy's! At DIYAudio they effortlessly (everything there is best when effortless that is how motivated most of them are) assume that those who admire Romy's work think he is the ultimate MAN. I admire Romy's determination. He is willing to work to get what he wants and never sat back and waited for something to be handed to him. Yes, I make no bones about being a fan.

I did not realize Romy had even acknowledged this nonsense but when I saw that he had I could not help myself and had to write something.

Sometimes this hobby can be too strange. The irony is the audio forums are even dumber now than they were when they kicked him out. If they were in this state back then I doubt he would have ever made the first post.

02-01-2019

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mats
Chicago
Posts 85
Joined on 09-18-2005

Post #:	11
Post ID:	25262
Reply to:	25261

No small achievement

I’d like to pick up on one thing the visitor noted.
He said Macondo was able to “dissect” the most “complex and dramatic” Bruckner.
To me, this is a stunning achievement. In my humble attempts at resolving the most
complex passages, all successs has translated into improved sound in less demanding music.
As well as exposing the emptiness of many recordings.
However, I still struggle to differentiate between my systems failures, and those
inherent in the recordings. I would love to get a few recommendations of Bruckner
Mahler recordings that play resolved and uncongested on a properly set up system.

Mats

02-01-2019

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Romy the Cat

Boston, MA
Posts 10,166
Joined on 05-28-2004

Post #:	12
Post ID:	25263
Reply to:	25262

I kept my smile to myself..

mats wrote:
I’d like to pick up on one thing the visitor noted.
He said Macondo was able to “dissect” the most “complex and dramatic” Bruckner.
To me, this is a stunning achievement. In my humble attempts at resolving the most
complex passages, all successs has translated into improved sound in less demanding music.

Hmmmm, I do not know how about that. I am comfortable with the way how Macondo get stressed into large drama but I would not take the comments of my visitor with any seriousness. For him, at least form what I was able to ascertain, there is no “complexity or drama”. You know like in a Symphony Hall the Morons go over super enthusiastic applauds after any loud and bombastic passage? Josh did the same and the parent when he expressed “pleasure” was not where I wanted it to be. I uselessly very carefully monitored reaction of my visitors and I stopped to do it with Josh after 3-4 recordings, it was juts all in wrong moments. He reacted to sonic sensations but those sonic sensations had no aesthetics and ethics values for him. I felt that he in his mind was “dissecting” the sound to some very known to me reference points about which he learned in audio publications and read in audio forums. I did not detected that he even interpreted those reference points in any more or less personal way.

I even played some games with him. I use very aggressively ask my visitors to criticize what they heard from Macondo. What I listen in responses is not the specific criticism of sound (even though it might be interesting as well) but rather the level of criticism that allows very accurately to stratify a person in a hierarchy of my expectations. The very first thing Josh told me that he had not enough chest pressure from bass and event begun to tell me what frequencies Macondo was locking. I did not explain him that to understand my bass requires a lot of decupling from what audio Morons consider bass is. I have good additional 16dB that I can add at 20Hz with 1dB increment and I did proposed him. I also recommend to give you himself more time and to listing, trying to answer to himself why I do not inject more bass in the room. Then I decided to have fun and played to him one old POD recording with some “amazing bass” It is some kind of systemized crap that sound like a Godzilla is walking over a rubber boardwalk. As soon Josh heard it he said that he liked it better. I kept my smile to myself..

"I wish I could score everything for horns." - Richard Wagner. "Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts." - Friedrich Nietzsche

02-02-2019

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rowuk

Germany
Posts 454
Joined on 07-05-2012

Post #:	13
Post ID:	25264
Reply to:	25263

A very interesting exercize in futility

There are so many things that pop into mind when reading this thread - the "expectations" of a visitor, Roman knowing before the guest is even there what the outcome will be and then for both sides "proof".
Yes, anyone who even has heard of Macondo and Mequiades certainly have more than enough documentation about what can be expected. Romy's law of relativity: bad music/recordings sound proportionally worse depending on playback quality.
On the other hand, even Romys wife Amy knew what the outcome was going to be. I can imagine the pleasure of keeping smiles and comments to yourself.

Whenever I feel blue, I start breathing again.

02-02-2019

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martinshorn
Germany
Posts 114
Joined on 04-14-2017

Post #:	14
Post ID:	25265
Reply to:	25263

Cant keep the smile now

Hi Romy

I cant help but not keeping back the smile Big Smile

Come on Romy, we are grown ups, you can not be so angry only because you I don't like your speaker.

It is important to stay open towards the outside world and get inspired by new input.

Stay hungry.

Like JMMLC said, you need to re-evalute what you, go out and compare.

Otherwise you tweak forever only at home on your own system.

By that you loose the relation, your ear gets used to your coloration.

And you end up compensating within your chain each others components.

Like the Tubes softness try to compensate the S2 harshness.

Or the Tannoy and Ribbon try to compensate your odd dispersion.

At the end when you stay forever home and tweak for 20 years, there's only Frankenstein coming out of it.

I had that once and i listened so much to colored horns that all others sounded colored to me.

You cure that by listening to more natural performance and compare with other speakers.

And its not enough having it done 30 years ago. It keeps coming back. So you need to keep moving.

That was one of the reasons for me (also being a copy cat) being interested in a visit.

I highly recommend! It opens you more to the reality instead of encapsulating yourself far off the grid in the countryhouse deeper into own reality neglecting. Because I feel this is what is happening whenever someone sais everyone else is different.

You tend to turn things upside-down to your liking but must gain back the birds-eye view on where you stand.

Otherwise you twist yourself into contradictions. There are many examples:

You ask me if I am upset, but you say it is unethical to post elsewhere about Macondo.

You insist in the accuracy of you not inviting me but I invited myself - when elsewhere my comment to you "Macondo lacks lows, its way too lean" gets reworded by you into "he said there was no chest pressure".

When I visited, you say i would be an exception coz you normally do not allow audio people anymore. But now as I didn't like it, just the other day someone was there who liked it very much...

Back 10 years ago when you heard about Kevin using S2, your first reaction was he is probably trying to copy Romy. Which is funny because he has been using it for 30 years.

Back when ESD horn showed up, you say that ESD lacks good taste to make horns red. They are not modest. And that modest people would color horns black. Which is funny looking at your horns and the contradictory explanation of modesty Big Smile

When I say I dont like Macondo sound, you say I have inability for evaluation.

When I say Macondo lacks correct tonality, you offer me to press the loudness and bass boost button.

When I refuse to spontaneously detune your setup on potentiometer to my liking within the little time i have to listen at all, you say I am missing my opportunities to discover.

When I mention the unpleasant harshness, you say this was also intentional forwardness by you making the response uneven.

When I say I was not impressed by the sound, you say this is the biggest compliment because that was actually the plan. Which I dont buy sorry, why would you burn 6 figure money for 10 years voicing to be ordinary.

Or when you say you exhausted the energy youre willing to waste on me, but you keep coming back. Like when that "someone pointed to you" the diyaudio threat Smile

And after you realise I do not give you the validation for your playback, you claim that you were actually just playing games with me to giggle, snigger and titter behind my back. That is actually the not funny but rather sad statement already.

cheers

Josh

02-02-2019

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Romy the Cat

Boston, MA
Posts 10,166
Joined on 05-28-2004

Post #:	15
Post ID:	25266
Reply to:	25264

Here is what I feel....

rowuk wrote:
There are so many things that pop into mind when reading this thread - the "expectations" of a visitor, Roman knowing before the guest is even there what the outcome will be and then for both sides "proof".
Yes, anyone who even has heard of Macondo and Mequiades certainly have more than enough documentation about what can be expected. Romy's law of relativity: bad music/recordings sound proportionally worse depending on playback quality.
On the other hand, even Romys wife Amy knew what the outcome was going to be. I can imagine the pleasure of keeping smiles and comments to yourself.

Rowuk, last nigh Amy and I had this discussion. She was asking me why I agreed Josh to come if I was confident that he will not “get” it. This is an interesting subject and I would like to talk about it a little.
First of all, my confidence about Josh’s simplicity is not an absolute thing and I do allow myself to be wrong. I made my predictions talking under consideration some comments Josh did at this site about other playbacks. In any of my “predictions” there is always a room to be mistaken. So, why not let the chips to fall wherever they do…

Second was the fact that he is German. Over the years and having many vistos in my listening rooms from all over the world had only one German man. I have a very warm spot in my heart for German music and how the entire musical culture is distributed among German population. Many musical things that we experience all around the world and we feel represent evolved level of accomplishment in reality juts a very average unremarkable level in Germany. It is not about quality of playing music but rather that very deeply seated, solidified cultural musical experience by generations of Germans, the experience that none of other nations have in my view. I witnessed it many times in Germany and I hugely admire that aspect of German culture. I have some my audio friend (and my wife) with whom we love sometimes to listen some new music and dissect it by individual phases, attributing each phrase to a different nationality. The Germanic musical expressionism has a very special feeling for me. I was trying to demonstrate it to Josh, igniting in him some healthy musical German awareness but his sensitivity was unfortunately absolutely immune to any culture above cable elevators.

Third, Josh had interest in horns and extending the invitation to him I felt that I am preserving my responsibility to keep the torch lit. This is how the things work. We do the things, we embrace or reject each other moves, we collaborate the things, we love or we hate what other people do, but altogether we are pushing the envelope of our awareness how we build our playbacks and how we use playback in our life. This is all apart of much bigger picture and it is not up to me to change it. I have higher respect to the game then to maintaining a mental comfort preserve egos for random and irrelevant players.

Forth, I do not feel that the event with Josh is a problem. Josh in a way of a victim of very understood by me prosses, the prosses that unfortunately consume, as I like to say, 90% of audiophile out there. If to remove from Josh that acquired audio stupidity and senseless audio itch then whatever is left will be a very fine young man. I welcomed him and proposed him and his reported “lady” do not book a hotel and to stay at my house. I took a day off to be available for him. I instructed my nanny to keep kids in our basement playroom. During his planning of the visit, he was in Boston for 3 days, I told him that if he so much like then he can stay at my place overnight or even the whole time while he is in Boston. I have in past some visitors from other country who stopped by at my listening room for a short couple house listening and ended up spending with Macondo couple days, I was gone for work but they were left alone in my listening room spinning records. Anyhow, without Audio aspect Josh is pleasant, he is interesting as we all are. I have no problems to welcome him and I am not sorry that I did it, I would do it again if he demonstrates that he “gets” eventually anything more in audio. I very much assure you that in 10-20 years when (if) he discovers that in audio there is something else then the “attacking Marla Glens’ scream” he will be wondering what he missed during that Romy’s visit in 2018. Years back I was the Josh and I very much remember myself listening many playbacks and having no idea what I was doing during the listening, some of the past playbacks I would love to listen again but …you can not step in the same river twice…

In the end it is what it is. I did not extend any preconditions to Josh visit, he could do it as public or as discreet as he wanted it to be. I always very much willing to talk about Macondo, about my installation, I would like to listen and discuss the Macondo problems, to hear other people reasons, objectives and means to deal with objectives. I feel that I am very attentive to criticism if the criticism come from respect of results. The people who know me know that I very aggressively solicit criticism about my playback from my visitors. A few years ego a person visited me and I insisted to name for me 10 adjectives about Macondo sound. Then I asked him to position those adjectives in priority. We then spent great few house drinking, smoking and arguing what the priority for those adjectives might be and importance of those priorities in our life. What can I say? I love audio, I love it all my life, what can I do? It is what it is. Unfortunately, I do not see any playback criticism from Josh in his writing. He mentioned a few things that made him uncomfortable but he has no listening intelligence to interpret his sensations. When I pointed it to him and asked him if he wants to learn about it and if he wants me to show him how to understand and to remediate his sensations he refused. The only subsect that he was truly interested was how to behave in order be invited in the listening rooms of some other audio folks I know. It was kind of sad and pathetic…

Josh can go with price, he is not first and not last, it is 90% of them out there. :-) The only minor sour taste I have from the whole event is that he went to diyaudio.com site with his “report”. I do not like it. It is like taking a back man to KKK meeting and not allow him to defend himself. It is not about Josh audio stupidity but it is impression of his ethics. I have very hard position on the subject of ethics violation.

"I wish I could score everything for horns." - Richard Wagner. "Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts." - Friedrich Nietzsche

02-02-2019

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Romy the Cat

Boston, MA
Posts 10,166
Joined on 05-28-2004

Post #:	16
Post ID:	25267
Reply to:	25265

As my favorite character in “The Ritz” said: Die with you little secret

martinshorn wrote:
I cant help but not keeping back the smile

Josh, I said above that you exhaust the time I am willing to spend to feed your itch. I am not responding to your posts, very much how I do not respond to the posts of other people at my site I do not care. I have no problem with your audio immaturity but I feel that at ethical level you are an asshole which sets all bets off. I would like you do not post at my site anymore as you have no audio value in my view. The only thing you do is using social media to reassure yourself of own existence and to therapy own sense of audio insecurities. I do not ban you or restrict you access to my site, you need to learn from somewhere in the end. Please do not abuse my hospitality as I might very easy to get converted from a peaceful pussy to a very mean tiger. Sometime in future is you feel that you were an idiot in 2018 then you might contact me. It was the last time you heard from me for now.

"I wish I could score everything for horns." - Richard Wagner. "Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts." - Friedrich Nietzsche

02-02-2019

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martinshorn
Germany
Posts 114
Joined on 04-14-2017

Post #:	17
Post ID:	25268
Reply to:	25267

Ok goodbye

Footnote for the record: evaluation music of the guest was the famous Manger Test CD

http://tempuri.org/tempuri.html

02-02-2019

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Wojtek
Pinckney (MI), United States
Posts 178
Joined on 09-01-2005

Post #:	18
Post ID:	25269
Reply to:	25268

Good God, you took a "cookie cutter" test CD to a private, intimate system evaluation?

Those things are made to impress enough to buy whatever the maker of CD is selling. I'm glad you posted that review on DIY-audio although out of respect for the host it would be nice if you had posted it here first and out of politeness asked if you can re-post it on DIY in order to massage ego's of site's gurus or for publicity purpose .Roman does not make living in Audio , selling his expertise the way Kevin Scott of Living Voice is, so your less than ecstatic opinion wouldn't have any materially negative impact. I do think it's the only honest review (from the bystander point of view) of Roman's system out there and while it's not positive it's also not derogatory. It's just exact justification for the sound of high end systems out there-nothing more , nothing less. I'm happy you confirmed Macondo actually sounds like a normal speaker. I remember Roman saying that may times over the years and sort of making fun of people who did not experience "The sound" but I had my doubts. It is confirmed now at last . It's a speaker.
PS.
Pity is , I was visiting Boston with my GF and there was a thought of soliciting an invitation but I said to myself"nah. I can barely articulate 2 sentences on the forum , can't ever remember who was playing what and I'm not able to tell viola sound from violin,and suffer some hearing loss from construction work abuse. However , reading Josh impressions of the system my first thought was " Asshole!you should have worm your way into Roman's house , told him you will entertain his unruly brats for 2 hours or expedite your GF to do that and have the system in disposal for a day , not to mention fine free cigars (you usually can't afford to buy )or even a glass of fine old Burb" Smile

If really the general sonic description of the system are accurate ( and Roman says they sort of are ) I would probably really enjoy the sound even if "not getting it' Now, don't get me wrong. Myself,I told Roman to go "sxjkkdf" or at least to a Salsa club where girls would rob his naked sweaty back with their aroused tits while dancing but I doubt he listened and now is too late. He will die his "prickly" way without that liberating experience , surrounded only by loving family and faithful friends and Macondo wold be either buried with him or burned...Josh , while I don't think you're an asshole and the honesty is always good you did cross some unspoken boundaries. Also I'm pretty sure Roman would not request a return of that fine cigar if you'd post here that the system is not to your liking and why. You would hear in return you're not ready and you're probably not . Is any of us ever ready?

02-02-2019

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Paul S
San Diego, California, USA
Posts 2,664
Joined on 10-12-2006

Post #:	19
Post ID:	25270
Reply to:	25269

Imagination

Josh, although I think you should have posted your “report” here, yet I wish you well, and I hope you find what you are looking/listening for so fervently. I always feel sympathy for young people who have so much energy and the material resources to put together a nice system for themselves but, while they earnestly believe they are “right there”, so close to success (at any given time), it is obvious they are either years away or they will, after all the searching, settle for something mostly because they ran out of patience, drive, resources, or imagination, or they simply “cashed in their chips” for a system someone else agreed was “the best” in a last ditch attempt to “return to normal”. I do not need to hear Romy’s system in person to know that he has created a portal to what he hears and can actually describe in the great Music he listens to. When you get this far along, if you are still interested in talking about it, I hope you will check back and share your experience.>>

Best regards,

Paul S

02-02-2019

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ArmAlex
Iran
Posts 106
Joined on 02-15-2009

Post #:	20
Post ID:	25271
Reply to:	25268

Manger test CD!!!

Josch actually I red your previous posts a couple of times to find out your point about the sound you heard, as haven't had the chance to experience Romy's system. Of course I couldn't understand you completely. Anyhow after seeing what CD you brought to test I realize the time I spent reading your posts was complete waste of time.

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