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In the Forum: Playback Listening
In the Thread: Audio critique – open your mind!
Post Subject: Show me the Sound!Posted by Romy the Cat on: 6/28/2006

 yoshi wrote:
This is how I took Jonathan's post.  He (Janathan) is mocking you (Romy) by presenting a hypothetical situation assuming your ego would be hurt in that situation and get pissed the same way some audio people react hysterically to your criticism of their system.

Why show I get pissed in that hypothetical situation? Quite opposite: I would feel very much gratified. It would be completely up to me if I accept a criticism worth attention but would I discard the opportunity to explore the subject deeper. It is very similar with Melquiades. It would be essay to make a pair of them for myself to listen it and to show to the people out there a big middle fingers proposing that that their SETs are most likely are crap. The fan part is not juts make the Melq but to make the Melq’s performance level available publicly and make it available for a prospective collaboration and prospective future improvement. I do monitor what is going on with Melq around the world and do examine the criticism that it get. But here is where the Melquiades critics are falling short (very much similar to the Jonathan’s hypothetical situation). Whatever I have seen people try to criticize the Melq was always groundless and based upon some prejudices that people managed to build upon their former failed projects. I mean the criticism was always based upon the subject of own ego but not the subject of the Melquiades design (I do not mention that Melquiades performance because none of the critics heard it). Now, what it has to do with the Jonathan’s hypothetical situation? Well, I feel that the Jonathan’s hypothetical situation is Jonathan’s hypothetically faulty as he more mock his relation to the subject then recognizes an importance of the subject.
  jweiss wrote:
If someone sent you an email telling you, in quite a clear way, how you had made an enormous mistake in one of your audio projects, for example an exercise in modifying a speaker, detailing all the mistakes you had made in not correctly understanding the design of such a type of driver, how your misunderstanding led to wrong paths in modification, and so forth…

Yoshi, pay attention that in proposing this hypothetical situation Jonathan makes assumption that exist any abstract ultimate implementation upon which the “enormous mistake” might be evaluated. However, in this hypothetical situation Jonathan associate the “ultimate implementation” with some sort of “unrelated awareness” that has no connectivity to the actual evaluateable results. I would accept the Jonathan example much more seriously if Jonathan said: “If someone sent you an email telling you, in quite a clear way describing the sonic imperfections I have in my room based upon the proposed enormous mistake I made with not correctly understanding the design of a type of driver, how your misunderstanding led to wrong paths in modification, and so forth…” Without taking under consideration sonic results there is not needs to talk about anything in audio at all. But would the sonic considerations be my primary motivation for doing those “misunderstandings that let me to wrong paths in modification”, would they be?
The point is that the very much as audio people are Moronic in accepting criticism of own playbacks they also foolish to expressing criticism. What Jonathan is proposing is unfortunately is very common. If you go to any product centric Internet community you will see an army of what I call “droolers’. Thos people bind themselves with a church or Altec, RCA, WE, Pre-war Telefunken, Vitavox, Klipsh, JBL, balanced circuits, MOSFET amplifiers, silver cable and so forth… and they alleviant to the actual sonic results as long their conceptual playbacks complies with their vision of not making “the enormous mistakes”. The bad part that the criterion of mistakes for those people is not Sound but the irrelevant “concept”, the concept that subordinated brain’s logic but not ears… Those people are boring like hell in audio and they are so far off that they mostly do not get when they are being mocked.
 yoshi wrote:
It seems to happen so easilly that the recorded music and its presentation becomes just a tool to evaluate a system.  Audio critics talk about particular recordings to show case the pros and cons of a system (a component) in review, audiophiles put on a disc only to evaluate or admire what his system can or cannot do.  When someone's in this mode, the system itself becomes the purpose.  It is like the church itself becomes the purpose instead of it being a tool to serve your faith.  So when the church is criticized, they take it as if their faith is critisized.

Yes, I like you association between audio and church, I use it myself quite frequently. But in the end here is a hint for you: unquestionably music is a tool to evaluate a system but from a certain perspective (or at certain level) music and audio are absolutely not related entities and audio is a purely self-contained and encapsulated field.

 yoshi wrote:
I wonder if what we (I) need is a different perspective and wordings to talk about audio, instead of the typical separate sonic parameters like high/mid/low, soundstage, imaging, etc., etc.  Something in higher order that can put those separate parameters in perspective (can be multiple perspectives) and that can penetrate and disarm the church, but that'll be a separate topic.

Well, I do not have a universal recipe. I personally use associations with people who could understand them. Unfortunately it is difficult with audio people. I mean how many bible-thumping freaks could understand hyperbolas, allegories, parables or metaphors. They take everything direct and primitive like a manual for VCR. I ma not even mention that most of the audio installations out there are not at the level where “interesting” associations might be applied and they are juts in domain of badly implemented high/mid/low, soundstage, imaging, etc., etc….

Rgs,
Romy the Cat

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