referencing vs plug & play

Back in the early 80’s I was an engineer in TV and Sound and thought it would be cool to have a stereo store. I was still doing some touring but it was the first time I was somewhat settled in one spot for a time. I had done "audio chains" before with my own stereos and studios but having a store of my own gave me many systems to play with. I had some great listening friends who made my place their home away from home and many times they would watch my place for me if I had a concert or show. Every time a component would arrive it would get the royal treatment. I don’t recall ever just dropping a component into a system replacing another component. When a product came in a system was designed around it anew. The Stereophile Class Recommendations was a trip the first time I saw it. I had extra cash so I started ordering many of the products right from the Recommended Component section.

What I noticed right off the bat when doing this was how each component needed it’s own set of conditions to get past that basic box soundstage. If not the system would stall out in certain parameters and never really get exciting like I was use to. Didn’t matter what component I used or what the price doing a plug & play setup was boring at best for me and my friends. We would visit the other stores in Atlanta and the soundstage "box" was all we heard. We started going to the CESs and again that same basic "box". When we would come back to our place even our least expensive setup pretty much blew away the "box" soundstage.

fast forward to RoomTune

When RoomTune came out and news got around I pretty much was on listening tour from then on traveling around the world and doing every reviewers system on the planet it seemed as well as every trade show. How did the reviewers systems sound? That same "box" so I would give them a tune up. How did the systems sound at the trade shows? "box". There were a few folks starting to get into more of a real size/ real space stage in the early 90’s. That said, I have never heard a plug & play setup even come close to a realistic soundstage. There are I would suppose hundreds of thousands of audiophiles out there that have and are able to maintain killer soundstaging and do it consistently with big music collections. I’m not sure those people are here on this forum, why would they be? I doubt any of them are interested in equipment collecting. Some might be on the music forums here. The ones who come up to make smart A** comments about others certainly have no idea what a good soundstage is, or they would be listening to it instead of all their efforts to be rude to others.

How do trade shows sound today? "box". You can't make a soundstage at a trade show in 3 days. Dealers? Well if they're hooking up equipment for others not tuning them in "box". The only way to really get your mind around a real soundstage is if you know what it takes to create one, and if you know that then you also know dropping a component into the middle of a system that is tuned to another component doesn't do it. You're for sure in "box" stage mode.

MG