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When is the golden age of high-end audio?

When is the golden age of high-end audio? When and where is the exaltation of music by the component and the component by the sound, the exaltation of buying and consumption through the sumptuary spending of high-end production? Whatever the subjugation of high-end audio to the management of capital (but this aspect of the question--that of the social and economic impact of high-end audio--always remains unresolved and fundamentally insoluble), high-end audio always had a more than subjugated function, it was a microphone held out to the universe of great music, great orchestras, great conductors, it was for a moment their glorious imaginary, that of a technical one, but an expanding one. But the universe of high-end audio is no longer this one: now it is a world that is both saturated and involuted. At some point, high-end audio lost both its triumphal imaginary and, from being in some sense a glorious microphone and playback device, it passed in some sense to the stage of mourning.
There is no longer a golden age of high-end audio: there is only its obscene and empty form. And high-end audio advertising and marketing is the illustration of this saturated and empty form.
Gone is the happy and displayed high-end component, now that it is suddenly like a man who has lost its shadow. Thus the high-end store these days closely resembles a funeral home--with the funereal luxury of the component buried, transparent in a black light, like a sarcophagus. Everything is sepulchral--white, bnlack, salmon, marble. Built like a tank--in deep, snobbish, dull black. Total absence of colors.
So, I ask you, when and where was the golden age of high-end audio. What individual component, in your opinion, is the testimony of a triumphant artistic-technical industry that was at its apogee? Why not save this golden age from decomposition? Later the historians and maybe our grandchildren will rediscover it, at the same time that they discover a culture that chose to bury it in order to definitively sell its soul to the devil, to bury its seduction and its artifices as if it were already consecrating them to another world.
slawney
celtic66
1,674 posts
 
The 'component' you seek is the late 70s Luxman integrated you talked your friend into buying which was the perfect upgrade to his Pioneer receiver. You then sat around and rediscovered some of his CDs and vinyl together.

The Spica 50s you modified to replace a pair of Bose 301s for a sister and watched her excitement as the magic of everything better is experienced.

The time you set someone down to experience for their first time the fullness of tube gear with just the right vocalist and all the dicussion of 'old technology' disappears.

The difference made with lead shot and sand in a friend's Target stands without changing anything else.

Hearing a pair of 25 year old Rogers LS3/5As embarrass a new pair of $2000 speakers.

Experiencing digital more open and analog than it's ever been before and praying it will continue in that direction.

The Golden Age of audio is each time something of quality and not found at mass marketers is placed into a system which surprises and delights the owners. I find excitement in assembling a garage sale system equal to that of my forays into the esoteric and sometimes ridiculous world of audio.
twl
3,251 posts
 
Slawney, I have found that the "golden age" can be continually transmuted to the present, by seeking further knowledge and truth, and implementing those into your audio philosophy. While I once would have chosen some past era as the golden age, I now seek new vistas of dedicated DC battery bank power supplies, designing and building my own speaker systems, collaborating with other DIY innovators and small manufacturers, experimenting with new untried theories and lesser known products. In this way, I am not subjected to the sepulchre-like high-end emporiums that have succumbed to the rigor-mortis of modern commercial audio. I can soar like a bird to heights that are limited only by my own imagination and creativity. I subscribe to the notion that if you are not happy with what is out there, then make it yourself. Make it better and, sometimes, cheaper. You will broaden your horizons, expand your scope, deepen your insight and knowledge, and have great fun and personal satisfaction. I am never bored. I feel that there are always new avenues to the "emerald city" that are not choked off by crass commercialism and stagnant thought. My current audio system employs much of this philosophy. I have not entered one high-end store in assembling it. Much of it cannot even be purchased in any store, and some cannot be purchased at all, since I designed and made it(them). A labor of love that is founded in learning can never grow cold.
lugnut
1,190 posts
 
Slawney,

The golden age of high-end audio has occured intermittently and lies in the software. When great artists, song writers, arrangers, musicians, engineers and producers all care enough to approach a project with a "no compromise" attitude, it happens. There are examples that I own dating back to the early sixties that will truely blow away most of todays recordings. If I had broader musical tastes the golden age would date back further. If you would like to see just how far we "haven't come" with all the electronic gadgets we own you should find a vinyl copy of the first stereo recording ever made. I have the two volume set of Leopold Stokowski conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra, 1931-1932 by Bell Laboratories. You simply can't mentally imagine how great this is. I guess what I'm saying is that no matter how much money we spend on high-end gear if there is garbage in, there is garbage out. Tweaks and such would become less sought after if more artists copied the studio work ethic of Steely Dan. These comments are not meant to take away from the progress made in hardware development. It's just one man's opinion on why it is so hard to find the musical "Holy Grail".

Happy listening,
Patrick
clueless
763 posts
 
Damn, and I thought My Acoustic Zen Holograph cables would lead me to Valhalla.

If you guys keep on going down this line someone is going to break out into poetry.

Twl, I partially agree with you. Lately my golden age has been DIY. Not so much to save $$ as look at it from a different point of view. I've been reading from the old Audiocraft tube mags of 50 years ago. Makes me an electrical romantic I guess. But we fall into the same pits as the retail-commercial side. It is the age of $50 designer capacitors and there always seems to be a ludicrously priced tube of the moment. Guess it's not so much which path you take as how you walk it.

I still have my first Dynaco St-70 and I guess that was a Golden Age if not "The" Golden Age. It's comforting to think so anyway.

Nice post Detlof.

I remain,
sayas
193 posts
 
It is now and has been for as long as I have been around.

The turntable is the component. Cartridge, arm & platform is the package I speak of.

Like a musical instrument it reproduces what it is fed, naturally. Unlike digital which changes the input and then only gives back what the numbers say, analogue reproduces the level that is in the play back linkage. The higher the resolution the better quality feedback is provided.

$50 cartridge (new), $50 80's used tt with a little tlc will produce a wonderful sound with a reasonably isolated platform. From that point shovel some $$$$$$ and the quality of performance increases no matter the downstream components.

Analogue lives and breathes just like a musical instrument.
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