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Is Upgrading Degrading?

Is the search for the "perfect system" a kind of vulgarity?

We don't tend to say "I' had an old Bach recording, but I've upgraded to Schoenberg!" We appreciate the wildly diverse character of these two geniuses on their own terms.

ok--it may make sense to say "I've upgraded from the Spice Girls to Bartok" but once music reaches a certain level of seriousness, it seems to me the correct approach is to bask in the aesthetic differences and perhaps the same is true of music systems.

Are we really getting "better sound" along an imagined continuum that runs from ghastly cacophony to some auditory Valhalla or are we just experiencing different wonderful systems with personalities as varied and unique as human beings are?
marburg
hifiman5's avatar
hifiman5
1,832 posts
 
I have noticed recently less of an interest in reading reviews in Stereophile and TAS as well as the many online publications since I finished "tuning" my system after years of investment in gear of all kinds. My shift is clearly to music and I find myself opening up to new genres. I am on a huge bluegrass kick right now. I've been in this hobby for decades and never really appreciated the musical chops that the finer bluegrass musicians possess. As I write this I'm thoroughly enjoying the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's "Will the Circle be Unbroken" Awesome stuff.

For me at least, settling on the performance of my system has sifted my focus to the music. Good thing that.
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uru975
684 posts
 
Jult52 it was for Dostoevsky here on Audiogon it is more like All happy audiophiles are like all other happy audiophiles, all unhappy audiophiles are unhappy due to their system, room, individual pieces of equipment and anything else that might be part of the audio experience and each to their own varying degree of unhappiness.
rok2id's avatar
rok2id
7,859 posts
 
I AGREES WITH MARBURG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
tobias
1,534 posts
 
Well any change I've made to my system, and kept, was because I thought the change gave me more music. Often that has meant more detail, because it seems more basic equipment loses information or hides it.
marburg OP
14 posts
 
What seems to me a possibly related question turns on the issue of "naturalness" as the most sought-after attribute in a fine stereo system.

To what degree do audiogioners agree (or disagree) that approximating a live performance ought to be the highest goal? If a violin sound is pleasing to us but significantly enhanced through technology to the point where it is no longer a close equivalent to a real instrument, is this an abomination or a natural extension of our abilities to play with sound to an almost endless degree? After all, many recordings are heavily edited to remove performance mistakes and artificially create a performance that may not be duplicable in "real life."
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