It is interesting to recall how audio started in my life. Somebody asked and I was puling out from my memories some unconnected fragments was really enjoying to recall those times…

I do not relay remember how old I was. I was then probably 10, as all those events were developing before Moscow Olympic games so it were probably the second part of 70s…

My father gave me old reel-to-reel machine  - the Russian made “Dnepr-11”. I was recorded some music and played it – I do not even remember what music it was, certainly it was some kind of Russky teenager crap. I remember that over the course of the next couple years I was doing something very wild to this reel-to-reel. I was constricted some kind of absurd mechanisms for semi-automated tension control, designed some kind of barbarian things to push more firmly the tape to the head, tradeing at the Odessa move studio a premium quality magnetic tape (putting it from the 5km pro-reel to the standard .5km reel… manually!!!). Later on I was changing the correction chains in that “magnetophone”, updating the output tubes to the better (it has a little push-pull around EL84). Shortly I was changing the heads in there, made custom outputs and was building a pair of external speakers using drivers that was collecting form any imaginable TV and radios (do not ask me why I bult a pair for this mono reel-to-reel machine). When I was 14-15 I had a quite large collection of tapes using this old “Dnepr-11” with many completely idiotic modifications (actually at that time I own an army of different old reel-to-reel machines). Furthermore I had a pair of completely stupid loudspeakers with many-many-many drivers inside that I constantly “worked on”. (Do not ask me what I did I was completely clueless - first off all because I was clueless and second I was 14 years old). At that time I used tree separate older radios (“Baltica”) as the external amplifiers to drive my speakers, one “Baltica” was used to drive the “LF section” – means the biggest drivers I was able to find ….. :-)

I had no idea what I was doing back there but probably I was getting as the result of those affords better sound or whatever it was. I had some kind of turntable but I do not remember the name. I never collected any LPs and whatever I borrowed from my friends we taped.

Interesting that the most vivid and colorful memories about audio form my childhood did not come form my system but form the radio of my grandmother. When I was visiting her (she lived in another part of city but we visited here once a week) she allowed me to play with my grandfather’s radio (grandfather died form cancer when I was 2 years old). It was something very old, has AM consol and a turntable with exchangeable metal needles. It was not a gramophone as it has amplifier and speakers. My grandmother had little but “interesting” collection of very old records (there were 78s). The most exciting in there were the records of “EvroMol Teatr”. (Might be translated from a Russian abbreviation as “Theater of Jewish Youth”. They where recordings of operettas in Yiddish played with a full-scale orchestra somewhere probably in 20-30s.  (Jews were majorettes in Odessa at that times)  It was absolutely fantastic musk and an enormously spending experience to listen it. I was stated to listen those records when I was 6 or 7 and was listening them unit I was probably 12-13…. I still very vividly remember many verbal and musical phrases form those operettas…

Later on this old grandma’s radios and the records were wasted. The grandma now in Philadelphia… she is 95. She strongly believes that America is a big “shtetl” where no one knows Yiddish…

Rgs,
The Cat

Actually I think I was clueless until a second part of 90s, perhaps the late 90s. You know it is kind of strange: I did audio kind of all my life but I never knew, cared and was a part of the high-end hobby. All those valleys and summits of audiophilism never were a part of my awareness. Sometimes on mid 90s when some friends of mine pulled me into the hi-fi world I was kind of surprised: it was entertaining but at the same times it was completely irrelevant and completely not beneficial for who I was.. Interestingly that I (as I see it now) had no serious intentions or objectives at that time: I was listening different systems and components, acknowledge the differents but it all was not connected and did not serve any serious depth.

Somewhere in the second part of 90s I approached Lamm electronics, bought a few components and detected that I begin to develop a new and totally different visions about audio. I do not know if it was due to the Lamm electronics (if so, then it was because the L1 preamp – the most “politically” and “tactically” remarkable component Lamm even did – read my article about the X-factor) or it was just a time-consequence with some other processes that took place in me but I quite rapidly become to develop a very personal “every-connected” visions about audio. At that time I was engaged in quite heavily interactions with Lamm himself and many subjects that we were unavailable for each other very stimulating for me. (Vladimir might be, or at least was, quite interesting person and particularly if the subjects were not audio-related – in many subject of audio he acts more like a paranoiac psycho than as a rational thinker). There were some other people and events that took place at that time or that are taking place now. All of them bult up a new for me, and helped and me understand for a different perspective, many aspects or relationship between a person audio and music. Somewhere in the very end of 90s I come across to an article by A. Likhnitsky. The article was about some kind of semi-typical for him foolishness but the author’s specific view on the specific minor subject was a great trigger to me. Many things that were in me and that defined who I was were after then connected with many things that I knew about audio, life and world and I ended up with a very flexible and very complete view.  It was quite interesting feeling that let me to view audio not as a self-contained parts of my time spending but more like am organic fabric that I can touch and use in any way I wish.

I think that from that moment I became “not clueless” and my actions and my thinking about audio began to have some sense. Somewhere in beginning 2001-02 I started to feel that my relationship with Lamm begun to be too annoying for me and that I was beginning to develop a strong rejections to the many manifestations of Lamm’s idiosyncrasies. I withdrew myself from the relationship with him (too much unnecessary lie was already intolerable) and it was a very nice stimulation of my visions, my mental projections of audio and it was a very beneficial for me experience.

My views and my clamed understanding of audio are in a way a collective composite awareness presented via a prism of a steaming pile of me myself. I think all those guys that I dealt within the last 10 years and all those events that I was involved into helped me to develop something the I find is very essential for audio understanding: a sensitivity to the mechanism according to which musicality can be connected with the rest of own experiences via the audio methods.

So, will I consider in 10 years that I was clawless in 2005? Probably. I think that our ability of “learning to live” make it as a part of the game…

Rgs,
The Cat

*** I've received and read most of February issue of Stereophile. They review the last M1.2 Reference amplifier and the comments from the reviewer are more about how the music can flow and show as a unique event, with the kind of interaction with the listener that we've talked about in another thread, than about all the audiophile-sound jargon they usually employ.

Note rely. I know those guys and they are clueless in what they hear, how it sounds and what it all about. The only thing that changes in their jargon is the fact that they realized the level of revolt in this typical audiophile lingo (actually it is not what they realized but it is what thier readers can not stomach anymore). Now they stuff thier casual reviewing idiocy with a new reviewing mannerism: spreading an empty BS about “flow of musicality” and the similar subjects. This is just a change of marketing tactics but their “evaluations” still has nothing behind it.

*** I wonder if this is a property of Vladimir's designs, or if it has more to do with any personal sensivity of yours.

I do not think that anyone would be able to answers defiantly. Was it the result of the amps’ influence of it was just my normal development? Would the result be different if I used instead of Lamms some Krells or Spectrals? I personally do not think that Lamms were reasons in those events. I would attribute as a major reason to my personal growth that would take place without Lamms or without audio at all. However, Lamms I think were a stimulating or at least not preventing factor. It is like a development of an ability to recognize a smell of a fine wine… Would that ability develop more likely if a person spend time at a flowery garden vs. the person spend time at a smelly pubic restroom? Also, do not take out of consideration that anyone with whom I dealt in audio was able to knowledgably discuss the long-term consequences of audio experiences. Vladimir, actually was able to support conversation about it and perfectly understood my queasily. I think some aspects of L1/L2’ ability to intentionally interfere with phases processing has a lot of to do with his thinning on the subjects….

*** Do you really know how to get your system where you want it to be? Are you really that experienced?

Not really. My more typical situation is a state when I know exactly what is wrong; I know how it should be; I perfectly correct can identify the delta between “how it” is and “how it should be” but I do not necessary know “how to get there”. Thos problems is more or less resolvable at Acoustic System level, the field where I have all necessary tolls, silks and knowledge to navigate myself and my system to the direction that I need. However, many things in audio are done via electronics where I have very-very superficial expertise, if any at all. I use some friends of mine to consult me for some needs-to-accomplish basses but my results I get there more or less accidental and unpredictable. Thankfully the ML2 are a fantastic playground that has unbelievable audio-integrity and a stunning audio resilients (very-very few people actual know about it). So, do not paint a picture that I am a complete Master of the house… It is unfortunately very far form truth. However, practically all things that I am trying to accomplish with my playback do have underlying reasons and objectives.

Rgs,
The Cat

"*** Do you really know how to get your system where you want it to be? Are you really that experienced?

Not really. My more typical situation is a state when I know exactly what is wrong; I know how it should be; I perfectly correct can identify the delta between “how it” is and “how it should be”..."

Well, to me that's a lot of knowledge and I wish I had that ability. Could you develope that affirmation further? To me it's very interesting knowing how do you evaluate and how are you able to perceive what's wrong and why. I know my system is doing things wrongly simply because certain recordings don't sound as meaningful and "moving" as I've listened to them in simpler systems, but I cannot assess what things, and much less why are they wrong. I may have some ideas, but don't know for sure.

By the way, could you post in your site or direct us to those articles you mentioned on your first post? They might help me to learn interesting things.

Rgrds,

Antonio

Antonio, you abridged my quote at a very inappropriate place, there was something else in there that you apparently did not fiend important.

You see and to understand the goals and the strategic direction is unquestionably important but to find the actual creative intrusive solution of the problem, by actively interfering with the process of recreation of Sound is way more complicate and way more noble task. As far as I see it - the only actual results validate all verbiage that we can visualize and express and therefore the actual solutions ns accomplishments are the only important things.

 It is know that Audio filled with self-important idiots, sort of the ultimate wannabes that love to bravado about their ability to eloquently express a meaningless BS and who love patronize whoever who do not take thier “intelligence” seriously. When I see/heard them I always ask about exposing the actual results. When I mean the results I am not necessary demand a well-performing playback system as evidence. To me more important what person was trying to (a person who understand the “real audio language” can easily read the signs of somebody’s attempts and objectives). The actual accomplishments or the pursuits of accomplishment are what matters and to make those “tactical steps” are way more complicated then just “identifying the goals”. To run mouth is ease and many Morons on the Internet are blessed with this ability. To make the actions and to receive a desirable result that matches the demanded reference points is WAY more difficult. I have to admit that although my own percentage of my audio-steps in the wrong direction is substantially lower then it was 5-7 years ago but I still unfortunately have unforgivably high rate of wrong audio actions and blind audio movements. So I would not suggest that really always know HOW to get my system where I want it to be.

Reading your reply further: I generally agree that a lack of any objective evaluation methods in audio is a major reason of the audio Moronity blossoming. Few people including myself pitch this idea for years but all that I see as a result is that audio propaganda slowly embraces the becoming-fashionable talks about the objective evaluation methods, However due to multiple reasons they do nothing more then to substitute their typical audio-primitivism with a surrogate of the very same emptiness only now the emptiness presented with the zippy meaningless words of subjective pretendnivness.

Answering your request: I do not remember which exactly article attracted me. Besides I personally reevaluated the “load” of Likhnitsky’s thinking and his fight with his own demons is not something that I would recommend to anyone.

The Cat

Antonio J. wrote:

How could I learn to identify how, why and where those "audio performance characteristics" affect my appreciation of music?

Actually the approach “this is working fine because SET amp has a correct harmonic reconstruction" I find is very wrong in audio. It is similar to what Thorsten written in his compilation about the loudspeakers problems: “I'm an Engineer in the end, all I want are parameters to which I can design equipment so it makes a better job out of reproducing music” (I do not know in the T’s door I juts use his semantic as an illustration). He in his objectives does not target the interests of a listener but wiling to construct an artificial algorithm and deal with it. It is a noble task of engineering self-amusement and ego-boosting but it is a strategic dead-end of humane-beneficial creatively and a brave claming to hell of real-engendering impotency. For instance the abovementioned Lamm is one of those guys who convinced himself that a arithmetical approximation of Reality (multiplied to his own ego) is all that people need. I can see Kurt Gödel is laughing his ass off… So do I. However, Lamm still has something to back up his visions, would they be correct or not, but there is an army out there of complete idiots who have no ability even remotely understand anything else because the totally artificial and mostly mistaken theories of circuitries and signals: I mean all those John Curls, and the similar to him audiophile electricians…

You see, I am not against parameters or any artifacts representation of realism but they all should be considered and interpreted in context something else that has no relation to engineering. Without a proper perspective all engineering data is just a pile of unrelated gibberish that serve nothing else but the satisfaction of the scopes, voltmeters and dead theories.

Any step and any decisions in audio should be projected to the amplitude of listening benefits and to connect the mechanism of the transformation of those benefits into the language mathematical approximations (what Thorsten calls “parameters”) is the most important thing. However, it should not locked feeling but it should be alive, ever-vivid ceremony… I do not know any other successful ways and I haughtily reject any other ways.

Let me give you an illustration how it works for me. I have local guy, a former clarinet player in some kind of French orchestra… He kind of “doing” audio or at least he is familiar with all those things that exist in audio. A few months ago we went to grab a dinner and begun to dispute about a specific performance of a specific peace by a specific pianist. I suggested that this contained a very specific “load” and has a very specific values but he did not consider that it was a case. Actually he did not consider that this performance were worth any attention at all. I pulled him in my home and played the mentioned piece on my playback (actually it was juts one channel of my playback) The guy realized that by listening this musical piece numerous times within the other playbacks he was not able to grasp “it” because to the different playbacks filtered out the some qualities that existed within given peace of music. Be advised that neither the French guy nor me were taking about any subjectivism or tastes but about the extremely objective characteristics.

The reasons why I brought this example is to illustrate that my playback do not do better or worth any of Engineering parameters. Well, it dose but those parameters can’t not be observed or understood from a position of bare Engineering and I did not discover them because my “engineering capacity”.  An objective-musical evaluation of the engineering parameters and decisions within an environment of a complete absent of any conceptualism, agenda or self–falsification is the only know to me way to improve a playback.

Rgsm
Romy The Cat

Richard, here are a few comments of disagreement that might sound absurdish but I find them very.... indispensable.

The rules are always there and consequentially the data of the rules is always there. We might not have awareness - which particle of data is important in one or another situation, but the interesting part is that we don’t relay need this awareness. What is important - is to have a mechanism according to which this awareness could be easily obtained anytime and under any condition. What I mean that the entire framework of engineering knowledge should be plugged into a feedback of very tangible and very material personal sensations and experiences. It is like a flying a lightweight airplane when each single vibration of the plane get propagated to your hands via the control mechanisms and eventually the mechanics of the plane become the indispensable feeling of your body. Furthermore, the “further progress” in my world has a slightly different definition then you mentioned. You feel that a further progress is an expansion of understanding the rules of the game, however I believe that a further progress is a deepening and increasing of our sensitivity to sense the sensible. With a high level of objective sensible sensitively we reach a state when we do not need to have knowledge in order to know.

Rgs,
Romy

Antonio J. wrote:

The "problem" is that if you haven't ever listened to a system revealing them into a certain recording, you cannot know they're there.

I have been pitching for the years a concept that the answers in audio are NOT located in audio and that the entire audio actually starts form a library (it it’s metaphorical definition). I had been implying about the “librarian” derivation of audio for years at AA and at few other pleaces but those hoodlums vigorously deleted each post that suggested this "superb audiophilic hereticy": to use different out-of-audio intellectual and spiritual sources in order to conduct audio analyses.  This vision is presumably contradict with thier definition of audio… I do not wont to go further explaining their motivation because it will be too brutal.

I kind of keep mentioning that all this information have already was presented and then vandalized by the AA’s dirt because it was a lot of efforts and a lot of time spent in past to share those concepts with others. However, I think the fact that a domination majority audio Idiots (so colorfully presented within most of the internet forums) considers what the above-mentioned issues are a hereticy and foolishness is a wonderful illustration what kind people presented in audio  and what objectives they have.

The Cat

Romy the Cat wrote:

Anthony, not really. I have been pitching for the years a concept that the answers in audio are NOT located in audio and that the entire audio actually starts form a library (it it’s metaphorical definition). I had been implying about the “librarian” derivation of audio for years at AA and at few other pleaces but those hoodlums vigorously deleted each post that suggested this "superb audiophilic hereticy": to use different out-of-audio intellectual and spiritual sources in order to conduct audio analyses.  This vision is presumably contradict with thier definition of audio… I do not wont to go further explaining their motivation because it will be too brutal. I kind of keep mentioning that all this information have already was presented and then vandalized by the AA’s dirt because it was a lot of efforts and a lot of time spent in past to share those concepts with others. However, I think the fact that a domination majority audio Idiots (so colorfully presented within most of the internet forums) considers what the above-mentioned issues are a hereticy and foolishness is a wonderful illustration what kind people presented in audio  and what objectives they have. The Cat

Romy the Cat wrote:

Furthermore, the “further progress” in my world has a slightly different definition then you mentioned. You feel that a further progress is an expansion of understanding the rules of the game, however I believe that a further progress is a deepening and increasing of our sensitivity to sense the sensible. With a high level of objective sensible sensitively we reach a state when we do not need to have knowledge in order to know.