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In the Forum: Audio News
In the Thread: Michael Fremer Continuums…
Post Subject: Why so personal?Posted by markus46 on: 7/30/2008

It's hard to know where to start...

I'd read a fascinating (and widely recommended) article about the importance of absolute speed stability in turntables. http://www.iar-80.com/page12.html

I'd also read Grand Prix Audio's white paper on their turntable where they also state their belief that absolute speed stability is the most important criteria in a turntable design.

Having previously read Mr. Fremer's review of the Continuum turntable, I thought I'd see what Continuum had to say on the subject.  If they felt they'd nailed the speed stability issue, then perhaps that would go some way to explaining the large jump in performance over previous designs that Mr. Fremer was hearing.

Some further googling turned up your post.  These are my thoughts...

This is in no way a criticism, but English is obviously not your first language.  Your posts are littered with spelling, punctuation and grammatical errors which make it difficult (for me at least) to understand what you are trying to say.  Perhaps this explains why Mr. Fremer thought you were mocking Continuum and himself rather than just himself?

If you feel that some (all?) of the hi-fi press is guilty of a litany of sins, then why not just calmly state you case, provide evidence and foster intelligent discussion on the topic?  Your post was not funny.  Your post was a personal attack that had an undercurrent of viciousness that I found despicable.

Despite claiming that you are not criticising the Continuum turntable, you go on to do just that in your subsequent posts!  For example “I have my doubts that Continuum team is able to manufacture Sound instead of rendering thier abstract mostly irrelevant design principles.”  Sounds like criticism to me!

I hope you don’t mind if I explore your comment further.  Let’s take one design principal mentioned by Continuum in their literature.  Speed stability.  Irrelevant?  You may not consider it to be the single most important function of a turntable, but surely you can’t say it’s irrelevant!  Another design principal – Isolation from external vibrations.  Seems a decent enough principal to me.  Can you please list for me those design principals that Continuum document that you feel are irrelevant?  As important is WHY you think they are irrelevant. Your credibility is at stake here.

At least they don’t claim that their platter can be manufactured with different materials to tune the sound for different amplifiers!  Or (get this) that the art of turntable design was the art of recognizing and managing emotions in materials.  What sort of dim wit would fall for that?  Oops!

In another Fremer & Co. bashing, you claim Fremer and his ilk “… are completely ignorant in more or less civilized assessment procedures. The only real motivation for TT upgrade (or change of any audio component) should be a person clearly defines for himself what specific sonic shortcomings his current TT has. Then, ONLY AFTER THEN, a new TT should do nothing else but addressing those specific shortcomings.”

Now this comment is just plain silly.  Firstly, the job of a reviewer is to write reviews.  Are you seriously suggesting that because a reviewer is perfectly happy with their turntable at home and can find no specific sonic shortcomings, that they should be disqualified from writing reviews of turntables!!!

Secondly, surely it is possible that listening to a new product may highlight shortcomings in existing gear - shortcomings that you never new you had.  It would be a very closed minded individual who (once happy with the performance of their music reproduction system) would shut out the possibility that improvement might just be possible.

Peace!

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