2018 exactly what is ‘High End’ audio?

At the end of the day, how do you decide who is or who is not, in the club?

Whomever wants to be in the club, is in the club.

"High End" is simply a state of mind, just like "Happy", and there is no scientific correlation as to what physical properties constitute a state of mind.

High End - You know if when you hear it.......

This is not a club. It's a forum on a commercial website. Anyone can participate, like it or not......

High end has gone from searching for low distortion and high quality (longevity, low failure rate, equipment lifespan, etc)..and necessarily into the lext level of concern when those criteria have been conquered.

This means moving into the psychoacoustics of how we hear. How exactly that relates to the now ’more or less’ perfected aspects of ’engineering level measurements’ that was the prior emphasis.

Eg, a big debate gong on right now, outside of most people’s notice, that can make a mess of high end audio, and that is Bob Stuart’s MQA digital recording and playback software/mathematical manipulations.

We’re having a large amount of unsuccessful, on non-concluding debate as many people did not get the mental memo about ’what comes after electrical parameters have been stabilized across the board?’

It’s the connection between vanishingly small electrically weighted parameters and how this relates to the way that humans hear.

And how we don’t fully understand how humans hear in the specifics of the minutia of perfection in hearing..and how that VARIES between people, as people are all wired differently..and that this variance is as common and REAL as differences in athletics and intelligence, in individuals.

The debate has moved to being outside the electrical obvious to the esoteric and fleeting. As in science itself, the Newtonian debate ends....and moves to being quantum in debate and understanding of reality.

Which is where the debate and the reality of high end always was..but was covered by by the motion into low electrical distortions. And how those electrical distortions relate to how we hear. How in science the quantum includes Newtonian in it’s envelope ...but is actually, at a very different level, and requires a very different mind and mindset -to deal with it.

And just how alarmingly FEW people who debate audio understand that...if they solely pursue what they know and project that onto what they don’t know.

It’s like the multi-level jokes in what are obstinately a child’s cartoon animated film. Where the jokes can be understood by the one set but mean entirely different things -on a different level... to the other set in the audience.

The data is there in high end audio to ’get’ the esoteric but if one is looking at it strictly in electrical terms, that would be only the ’completed and obvious common-junior level aspects’ of the scenario.

So the debates center around the lack of understanding of the complexity and a stubborn inability to consider what they don’t know -but still calls to them if they look with different eyes/ears/mind..one one hand..and... those who note that difference.

Since it is all in mind and can’t be easily labeled but is ~very very real~, the debate rages due to one part of the group not even realizing they are not getting the multilayered complexities that are within (but poorly explored/expressed) the electrical end of things.

The vanishingly low levels of distortion in differential is the entire package of the intelligence of what high end audio seeks. It’s important to the envelope of the music signal’s expression as this is related to how we hear in the specifics of attempts at perfection in this ’expression’ we call ’high end’.

The non athletic, in their ignorance, rage against the athletic, essentially. Then there are other aspects of how the ’audio athletic hopeful’ are testing their own limits, exploring in the ways they may..how they may fall prey to a false presentation within those attempts of expressions. We hear that in those badly realized audio systems that are constructed of what are obstinately low distortion products but don’t have any real musical ’synergy’.

We’ve developed an entire language to try and express to one another....these (electrically) vanishingly low data sets and their overall contexts.

Like the edge of any complex science that is still being hashed out and is not wholly defined, we run into serious levels of contention and hard expressed opinion which happens in a multitude of directions.

To top it off, it is commercial, competitive and not in a professional arena.

It is figuring itself out but it will likely always be a bit of a mess and a area of contention, as it is about individual skills at the edge of human capacities, and not everyone is equal.

There’s no winning or losing as everyone can get to where they want to to be, if they try hard enough and well enough. But it can be vary argumentative as individual human realization, which runs rampant and throughout the envelope of the scenario..this realization in each individual is not equal or in possession of a common norm -outside of the basics.

It’s a mess and will be for a long time yet. Until the debate settles this out and moves on to the next level that will be under a cloud of confusion. Same as it is for all areas of complex endeavor.

Not exactly what you wanted as a contribution, but hopefully.... helpful.

Until you have even a little bit of experience with PWB stuff you really shouldn’t comment on what high end sound is. After all, high end sound is all about sound, not anything else. Not “solid emgineering.” Not blind tests. Not “scientifically valid arguments.” Not cost. It’s about sound. It’s like the old dude says to Geddes the detective in Chinatown, “You may think you know what you’re dealing with but, believe me, you don’t.” This is not to say sound is not (rpt not) also about the room, directionality, fuses and being able to put it all together too.

@blindjim - you pose an interesting question.

Is it based on Price?, Performance? Component Matching? etc...

I’ve heard stories from people in the business about customers who had them install $200k+ system in a 12 x 12 room with no acoustic treatment - is that a high end system in a low end room?

And then there are other who’s system cost a fraction of that, but their systems melt the walls of their listening room for a truly concert-like image/sound quality. Is that a high end system

I have recently experienced a friends system that provided amazing sound from a 40 year old tube amp, a pair of bookshelf speakers and lamp wire for speaker cables with a DVD player as the source.

High End? - not by conventional "evaluation" methods.

Then you have to factor in an individuals hearing ability.

Do they have High-End hearing?

As for...

At the end of the day, how do you decide who is or who is not, in the club?

Why bother?

From my own experience on this forum I find people are generous with sharing what they have learned, regardless of whether their systems might be categorized as "High-End"

I really appreciate my modestly priced system.
I really appreciate the systems of others - regardless of price or performance.

I recently had my system described to me as "mid-fi" - I was actually quite amused (not offended) because that person made that assessment based on my components - he’d never heard it.

His system did sound more "refined" than my own, but even he conceded that there was more he could do to make it sound better. And I thought there would be a few things I’d change with it also :-)

We all have our own level of audio insanity - we should simply appreciate the "sanity" of others

It’s a fun hobby though :-)

Regards - Steve