My apologies to all...


..this is in association with the past few weeks of my posts/responses that seem to divide everyone.

I started a thread entitled "Extraordinary Recordings On Vinyl". That thread, I felt, needed me, the OP, to kind of oversee things. Right or wrong, who knows? A member posted Ric Okasek 'This Side Of Paradise" as one of this poster's recommendations. I quickly cleaned and listened to this one and another Cars lp for my response. Things began to spiral out of control after this. In my defense, no one, including the original poster, offered their reasoning other that this, and I may be paraphrasing, "A great soundstage is the major factor for me to post a recording in this thread". I think all reading this will be opposed to that statement. I never heard otherwise. In fact, I was admonished for my opposition to this posters' statement! I received NO positive comments or even the slightest inference that anyone reading would make a mental note or even entertain that the other party involved may be mistaken. (These posters weren't even familiar with the (said) lp of concern! Also, I held back from what little the OP provided as their stance for their conclusion. All I knew was some iteration of an ET arm and a BrightStar sand box platform. (I then gave a brief synopsis of ET set-up, free of charge). Meanwhile, my front end system was on-line ready with the upgrades I had performed over the years. Still, no love at all from the "overseers of Audiogon". The only thing I received from the OP was an Ortofon Bronze/BrightStar platform. Although I didn't want to say it at the time, those (two) factors by themselves, way underperform what I offered by way of my virtual system posts. Still, for some reason, I'm seen as an outsider who doesn't (understand or have the ability) to discern others' systems.

The problem, as I see it is "I'm not obliged to anyone or any entity for my posts, my history of audio knowledge, my ongoing pursuit of all things audio, my lack of anyone here that I'm relying on or am in someway obliged to is here for all to see/read. I enjoy/pursue/evaluate/listen/dream/live all things audio. It's all I do.
128x128slaw
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I didn't see the post or the reaction to it, but I know from hanging at Brooks Berdan's shop on Saturdays that some audiophiles will spend great sums of money to maximize their system's capabilities in that one area---"soundstaging". The obsession with being able to "see" where the instruments and voices are located in physical space (especially front-to-back) started, it seems to me, with it's introduction into the Hi-Fi vocabulary in the early issues of TAS. I don't recall J. Gordon Holt being all that concerned with it in the early days of Stereophile. I've never cared as much about that particular aspect of reproduced music as I guess I'm supposed to, undoubtedly because most of the music I was listening to in my earlier years was recorded in studios, multiple-mono channels arranged in pseudo-stereo at the time of mixing. As I started listening to "Classical" music, I was more concerned with how my Hi-Fi made the instruments and voices contained therein sound (timbre, tonality, etc.), and played the music itself (dynamics, timing, etc.), than in it's ability to recreate the physical locations of the instruments and voices. My one desire in that regard is in the height and size of the images---most speakers place instruments and voices too low (around waist high) and in a miniaturized version of their real-life selves. Voices, to me, should appear to be five to six feet from the ground (or higher, as from a stage), not three. A grand piano is huge, but sounds like a little toy being squeezed through the drivers (the tweeter especially) of many speakers. Very unsatisfying, musically speaking.
I think having your seconds contact his seconds and handling it like gentlemen would be more appropriate. It's clearly an affair of honor!
if we are talking about stage...I agree with Bdp24....the height is the most desired in the system reproduction of the recording...if your speakers/gear are not able to pull it, you will never have the "real" music illusion in your home listening room...