High Performance Audio - The End?


Steve Guttenberg recently posted on his audiophiliac channel what might be an iconoclastic video.

Steve attempts to crystallise the somewhat nebulous feeling that climbing the ladder to the high-end might be a counter productive endeavour. 

This will be seen in many high- end quarters as heretical talk, possibly even blasphemous.
Steve might even risk bring excommunicated. However, there can be no denying that the vast quantity of popular music that we listen to is not particularly well recorded.

Steve's point, and it's one I've seen mentioned many times previously at shows and demos, is that better more revealing systems will often only serve to make most recordings sound worse. 

There is no doubt that this does happen, but the exact point will depend upon the listeners preference. Let's say for example that it might happen a lot earlier for fans of punk, rap, techno and pop.

Does this call into question almost everything we are trying to ultimately attain?

Could this be audio's equivalent of Martin Luther's 1517 posting of The Ninety-Five theses at Wittenberg?

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Can your Audio System be too Transparent?

Steve Guttenberg 19.08.20

https://youtu.be/6-V5Z6vHEbA

cd318
Mahgister, I’m not reading a book every time you reply lol, tl;dr.

Not sure which part of my post was confusing. I’ve been super up front on this board that when it comes to DAC’s, I consider the units with very high SINAD measurements to be technically superior to whatever flavor of the month tech AudioGoners are obsessing over. FOTM right now is old technology (R2R Ladder), which people seem to be choosing because the nature of that technology means that building an r2r ladder network that can resolve greater than 19-21bits of information becomes very cost prohibitive, and so when most models encounter bitrates higher than that, the additional info is truncated. From peoples reviews, that truncation can be graceful and sound pleasing, which is why manufacturers are even bothering to make new DACs with this design.

I’m not interested in using a tech like that for the same reason that I don’t want a tube power amp or preamp. It’s like adding a distortion pedal for a guitar amp, you’re purposefully adding noise. 

Just not my thing.
Ok i understand , you are very clear...

Each ocean own his fishes species....

I promise not to wrote a novel in response next time...

My regards  to your gracious answers...

My best also....
Is English your first language Mahgister? Not giving you a hard time, just curious. 
No my English syntax and vocabulary are a catastroph of Shakespearian proportions.... French is my natural tongue...

i read english all my life, never speaking in english really with no one, and reading only philosophy or sciences and these 2 fields dont have the reputation to be very litterate at all...

Except George Santayana for example, whose prose are marvellous....I read it without even thinking about his ideas for the pleasure to read english....

:)
You’re way ahead of me then, I only speak English and very bad Spanish. 

In that case it makes sense that your posts are long sometimes, you’re just making sure your meaning is accurately conveyed.