I constantly receive emails from people asking me my opinions about audio equipment. I was trying to address it in here:

http://www.goodsoundclub.com/TreeItem.aspx?PostID=681

…but still. Those people do not really understand hot tedious to think about their made-up and fully self-fabricated problems. It would be OK if people have real problem or real interests, or at least were able to shape the purposeful audio questions but it practically never happens: an average audio person has only audio-cartoons in his/her head and consulting them on the subjects of audio is only about listening their atrificial sentences and asking them their own sentences as questions. Deal with them and thier issues is boring, not stimulating, and horribly mind-numbing. No wonder that the folks who work in high-end audio retail, all of them with no exception, are get converted into retarded zombies, even if they come to their jobs with their best intentions and some baged intellectual possession (which is awfully uncommon but still happenes).

However, running this site and putting my views on public domain I do “review” in a way the audio equipment, audio ideas, audio people, audio practices, audio topologies and so on… I hardly see my views as "reviews" but rather juts as the notes in my pubic dairies. Still, I would like anyone who does read this site understand the fundamental deferens between a typical audio reviews and a reviews the comes from my mouth.

cv wrote:

…also admire your restraint in not immediately proclaiming this the best thing ever

Chris, I appreciate you "admiration" but I feel it is very important to understand that my desire do not proclaim or do not quantify any results does not base on my presumed "objectivity" of "honesty". The problem I see in here is that our audio-people have a bogus perception of audio-reviewing as an estimative concept. Audio-reviewing, as a process, is deeply imbedded into the ceremony of audio distribution. I do not mean that they get paid. I mean that in the absent of a necessity to sell a product the Audio-reviewing would not take place as a concept. Furthermore 80% of audio gear manufactured out there is NOTc built to perform in a certain way but made0-up explicitly and intentionally to conceive the specific marketing campaign, means to generate revenue, nothing else. Therefore, those reviews, even if the authors have this best and noble intonations (which is awfully uncommon but happened), are written for the consumers, to convey one or other messages to the perspective readers. In conrerary,  my “reviews”, if one perceives my articles on this site as "reviews", have very different underlying stricture. I do not write for the readers but for myself. I’m not planning to convince readers in anything but rather to figure out myself the nature of a subject. The only thing that I try to satisfy is myself and my own interest to the subject; the only thing I would like to accomplish is to advance the result I'm getting in my personal listening room. I have no needs to “proclaim this the best thing ever” since the only thing I compete is my own results and my own interest. I find that my own sound reproducing objectives and my own critical listening demands are much more difficult to satisfy then the demands of anyone else and therefore I have no interest nether to present any comparative results. I do not mean tot be rejective to somebody else' experience or results but it is not what I care when express my “reviews”. I find that to satisfy myself with the result is the noblest task I can peruse in my listening room and it is the only thing that I care.

I am not Vladimir Horowitz. Horowitz use to say that he feels each person among his audience and that he would like “to fuck each of them”. If to continue this parallel then I feel more in line with my beloved Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli.

Michelangeli wrote:

I do not play for others-only for myself and in the service of the composer. It makes no difference to me whether there's an audience or not. When I sit at the keyboard, I am lost. And I think of what I play, and the sound comes forth, which is a product of the mind. Today's young musicians are afraid to think. They do everything in order NOT to think. Animals are better off. At last they possess instinct. Man has lost his instincts-he has lost contact with himself. Before an artist can communicate anything, he must first face himself. He must know who he is. Only then can he dare to make music!

Our playbacks are in a way a set of machines, similar to the musical instruments that we employ in agreement with the motivations of our objectives. My audio objectives are not convincing anyone in anything, are not making friends in audio world, are not exercising my behavioral esthetics, and are not making up rules, guidance or manuals, are not pushing anyone’s interests. In audio, I do not write, think, listen or feel for YOU but only for the benefits of my own realization. So, next time when you feel that I pass my observation about anything in audio be conscious that it serves only my own listening practice and my own listening objectives. That, and only that,  is my reviewing agenda.

Hm, the example with Wilson is much more complicated then you think. Wilson are very much misunderstood and mis-presented products. From certain prospective they well worth their money. Still, in context of this thread: problem with Wilson is not Wilson do but with the fact that each single reviewer who wrote about them and was trying to assess the Wilson’s ability was unspeakable idiot who was not qualified to use or understand them.

Anyhow, you ask a question “why audio”? Good question. I do not know an answer and this subject is something that I never cared. Some people like it and they probobly would like to get pay for what they like. I would love to have somebody to pay me $30K for me experimenting with my S2 driver for instance of for making a TT to sound properly. It never happens. From another side, many people who are business mature and savvy about money-making stay away from audio. I perfectly understand them.

Rgs,
Romy the Cat