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In the Forum: Audio For Dummies ™
In the Thread: Josh: My visit to Romy the Cat's Macondo
Post Subject: Here is what I feel....Posted by Romy the Cat on: 2/2/2019
 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.

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