Tubes Do It -- Transistors Don't.

Pity I cannot meet you all in person. We'd have great discussions over much beer until we were so out of our brains, that in listening to 6chac's beautyfull ML -20 from Mark the Man, we suddenly would find, that ASA has been right all along! Cheers to all!

No Asa, my apologies. I was reading your discussion here at work and was taken aback if not a little envious of the stream of consciousness dissertation you laid out.
Thanks

Just read Tubegroover's response above. Excellent point. Moved my system recently to a new room - more acoustically dead. The FIRST thing I noticed when I turned on my SS amp is that the sound of individual instruments was decaying too rapidly to be satisfying. My more live listening room had concealed this with its high level of reverberation.

If you accept this premise, it raises an interesting question: It seems to me that a tube pre should not be able to compensate for shortened decay times determined by a downstream component.

You know, I know that I can shoot the wind with the best of them, but having dialogue, at all varying levels of (so-called) cognitive sophistication, is good. I try not to obfuscate, but realize that there are also some people out there who will challenge the ideas because I haven't defined my terms well enough. Its a line, and tough when you try to be as concise as you know how. That said, I know its a mouth-full.

On relevance. In the hiend, you have (so-called) Romantic Idealists on one side arguing that anything "scientific" is rigid denial and wanting "warm" music and on the other side those attached to scientific/technological explanations, each arguing from an absolutist position. This creates a "negative feedback" dialogue loop where the discussion has nothing to do with the merits and is propelled by intellectual territoriality (rationality defaulting to prey/predator instincts). Interestingly, this is the same situation in general culture: science has been shown to be great at manipulating matter and finding all kinds of truth that we can use to make all kinds of gadgets, but now we find that it can't tell us everything that is "human" (it provides functional knowledge that can lead to pleasure OR meaning, but doesn't, inherently, gaurantee the latter). Yet, we can't go back to mytho-magical medieval thinking either. The result of this is science arguing with anyone who wants to move beyond it on one side of the fence with people who want to move beyond science on the other side arguing that science is flawed (it isn't, only our use of that power is misguided). So you have people attached to form on one side arguing with people who define themselves as people-who-are-against-people-who-are-attached-to-form on the other (which is their own attachment, ie they define themselves not by whast they go towards, but by what they are not). This is a "negative feedback loop" of ego.

There is a third alternative: that science is not negated but fully integrated into a next sight, one that is not attached to being active (science vs. nature, pulling from the "what is", etc.) nor is attached to not being that (attached to their limited exposure to receptiveness, ie so-called "New Agers"). The mind that sees beyond both these attachments is the mind that transcends both and integrates both.

The hiend is interesting, at least to me, because unlike any other microcosm I can think of, you have the Romantic Idealists and scientific empiricists in such close proximity AND both engagaing in an activity together - essentially, a parallel run experiment on the mind, ie listening to music through technology devices. In other words, in the hiend, the matter-attached and the attached-to-against-matter-attached are both conducting the same experiment, something that can't be escaped by either in dialogue.

But what is truly interesting is that the people attached to active thinking to derive truth actually are listening to stereo and reaching states of listening (where they derive perceptive information, or truth)that are without thought; they are conducting an experiment on their own mind where they disprove their own assumptions. This can not be escaped by the materially attached: the mind moves from active thinking to a silence-absent-thought that itself reveals to them other information. Their denial of it, and their argument that only thinking and/or technology produces listening (truth), is symptomatic of their attachment.

OK, enough. I know I've tried everyone's patience.

Muralman: I love off the topic, which as I've said above, it really isn't. I don't think, however, that anything I said would regress to "traditional myth." In addition to categorizing any idea outside their own matrix of ideas as unknowable or non-existent, science also - in fact, its oldest recoil - claims that you are nothing but the mythological past, ie. all ideas not ours are regressions to mytho-magical worldviews, characteristic of the medieval Catholic Church that we've just moved beyond, says they. This is then used to claim that such ideas are inherently irrational, ie regressions, which, not surprisingly, we then don't need to consider because they are irrational. Nice irrational circularity, eh? You have to be more careful with these types of characterizations in this context; you've gotten it from a worldview that, I know looking at the rest of what you say, you don't identify with. You are too smart for that, truly. Apart from that, I think we see things about the same. You are a good writer to, BTW.

Zaikes: I agree its your brain - but again, not simply material: its your MIND. And not simply subjective - its your mind and "what is" out there, stereo or not. Subject/object, mind/matter are integral, participatory. The "what is" is SUSCEPTIBLE to your mind - and the scientific active thoughts it produces. "It" is not inert with your mind the only God.

Barefooted and naked of breast, I mingle with the people of the world.
My clothes are ragged and dust-laden, and I am ever blissful.
I use no magic to extend my life;
Now, before me, the dead trees become alive.

Ten Bulls

:-)

Fire, fire, run...