I too often wonder why people feel challenged on the internet. I see Romys site as primarily his diary on events around building his system. His very lucid descriptions show a deep level of thought about things before getting the soldering iron, saw or checkbook out. His constitutional right to look at the rest of the world obviously holds a mirror up that many are uncomfortable with. I notice that social media has turned the latent asshole into a priest of indignance. They obviously feel "protected" by the anonymity of the web - in fact they are broadcasting their intimate sphere. This site gives them plenty of things to be indignant about - in Germany we call this "Zwergsyndrom". I really have no good translation for it but it sort of means that their own smallness makes them aggressive.
I certainly agree that high end audio is not about advancing the human state. I would not credit most of the practitioners with enough intelligence to deliberately fool the masses. I think that like many gurus, they get a following because they feel good about decisions that involve no perceived compromise. They really want to hear what the cable elevator does as a proxy for what they cannot hear.
One thing I would disagree on is about the 78 outperforming todays offerings. Yes, every generation has had their brilliant performances and it is surely pure luck that definitive renditions even get recorded. I can think of many personal references in every era of recorded music. Being in Germany, I think that I could find definitive live music that tickled my fancy every day as we really do not need more than 6 hours to get anywhere else.
Pavlov was right. We are what we repeatedly do...
 Romy the Cat wrote: | I was reading
a few days back Altec audio forum that had a thread “GoodSoundClub owned by an
idiot”. In the thread a bunch of “confident about themselves” audio folks discussed
what kind crazy idiot I am and what might be underlying reasons for my insanity.
There was a long list of justifications and testimonies provided by the posters
who with the same conviction as they feel that Altec is the “greatest company
in the world” instead that the reasons for my idiocy is progressing Asperger
syndrome, alcoholism, feeling misery about myself, being pissed by my incapability
to get good sound, a marketing attempt to game system and using the gained publicity
to produce my own products, low IQ and many other “lucid” explanations. I need
to admit that I LOVE to read those commentaries but not only because wicked entertainment
I get from it. Those people do not understand that fantasizing about an abstract
subject that they are not familiar with they are quite publicly exposing their
own subconsciousness motivations. I very much assure you that the fool who diagnosed
me with Asperger one way or another touched the Asperger spectra, the fool who
feel that I am an alcoholic dealt with alcoholism of his own, the fool who fell
that I am stupid has IQ no higher then size of own shoe and the fool who feel
that I run “smart marketing campaign” is dreaming to sell his stupid audio cable
elevators. I hate to sound like cliché but over the years I more or less socialized
with audio mob I have seen them all.
There is in
all of it one subject that I find interesting. Unquestionably my condescending and
neglecting attitude toward high-end audio industry and most of high-end audio
people very much and very publicly expose my own subconsciousness. So, lately I
was thinking about it, trying to debug my own Pavlovian reflexes.
Activating
the whole 10 points of my residuals IQ and looking at the darkest corners of my
soul I do think that at the very bottoms of me (as far as audio concern) there
is a sentiment that the entire High-End Audio concept and the industry that
derives from it are based upon a very erroneous ground. It is not that I deny
that belter quality sound might serve human benefits, I am fine with it.
However, the High-End Audio concept as we have it since the second part of 20 century
very much failed on human level. We produce “better” sound by our playbacks utilizing
belter audio machines by our manufactures but in most of the cases the human benefits
from consuming audio are absolutely disassociated from our audio reproduction techniques.
The
classical “successful” high-end audio person, and in my estimation, it would be
good 80% of audiophiles out there, is a man with extensive ability to of high-end
fermiology, a set of current industry-popular expensive sound solutions and a collection
of “high-quality” recordings of 23 concertos for kazoo and hot jazz. Do not get me wrong, there are many musically-sane
high-end audio people but their sanity and their musical interests has absolutely
nothing to do with their high-end audio involvement, would be a hobby or occupation.
So, this dissociation
between audio benefits and the benefits to the thin levels of human awareness (aka
musicality) is the main reason why I feel that high-end audio is a huge fake and
nothing but a stupid deception. This is also (in partial) a reason why 100-year-old
78 disks substantially overperform the best today audio methods in terms of musical
impact. You can put a pretty mask over a corps in morgue and make the mask to have
a sensational smile. It would not make the dead person to be alive. Following
this metaphor, to me the whole high-end audio industry, with all its greedy manufacturers,
with all its pompous reviewers, with all its “professional” editors, with all its
“experienced” participants is nothing more than a herd of morgue’s mask painters. |
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Whenever I feel blue, I start breathing again.
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