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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
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
190 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.
flex
292 posts
 
Slawney,
I believe the sense of golden age has more to do with one's own innocence, enthusiasm, and lack of experience at an early stage of involvement than with the actual state of audio recording or componentry.
Yes, the field has become impossibly commercialized, but the truth is that virtually all phases of audio, from recording to electronics design, are technically much better now than 30-40 years ago. It's easy to see backwards with rosy glasses, and to forget that your less-well educated ears in those days forgave many more distortions, coloration, poor signal:noise ratio, crummy bass, and poor microphone placement than happens now.

As to Sayas's comments on analogue, my ears are too well developed not to hear the coloration and signal limitations that are par for analogue - its just one more variation on the limits in electronic reproduction of live music. Electronic reproduction will likely always fall short of the real event - the thing is to focus on music, find the electronics that best capture the aspects most important to you, and dispense with the endless search for the impossible! (But do accept new technology when it really represents an improvement, as multichannel someday will )

danielk141
489 posts
 
The Golden Age of audio begins when you find local friends & dealers who are patient, knowledgeable & open minded.
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