High Performance Audio - The End?

ISAHWPWQTATAATDTMUOOWCBTATLTTIAO!
I sure as hell wish people would quit throwing around these acronyms they decided to make up out of whole cloth because they are too lazy to type it all out!
If it’s not LOL or OMG, etc. please type the phrase the first time and then use the acronym afterwards.

1) I like Steve Gutenberg, have a lot in common with him, but I will never trust his word on sound quality. His current “reference” is a pair of Klipsch Cornwalls!! OMG! Collect those co-op dollars!
2) If you’re looking for physical bass impact, Maggies are not the right speaker for you. If you really want to know what’s on the record, they ARE.
3) At this stage of technology almost any components will measure well and sound OK to mass market consumers. Most all of them can become truly surprising in their performance if they are given surrounding components that allow them to reveal their full capabilities. Example: I’ve mentioned before that I bought a little background system for my dining room that has two self-powered, Class D, two-ways in brightly colored cabinets that look great. $400. As an experiment, I am feeding AC to the system with a Synergistic Alpha cable into an MIT Z-Stabilizer into an AQ NRG final link. Yeah, at retail I’ve got over $1K in “extension cords.” It’s been that way for about 2 months and I can’t bring myself to disconnect it. Image, transients, bass def from cheap components. Next birthday, try handing your kid a brand new hi-def AC cable. Whoopee!
4) Remember the original vinyl release of “Sticky Fingers”? Like listening to a can o’nails! I kept it and listened to it often thankful that I had a system capable of making the recording the weakest link. That was the 70s—no big, thick, 45rpm limited editions in Victoria’s Secret vinyl. Remember: if you hadn’t suffered through those bad recordings/pressings, you would never have known you needed $6000 worth of turntable gear and rare plastic.
5) Report on first week with 2 Schumann generators in my listening room: a] The cat is almost glued to my listening chair and continues “lounging” even after shifted to another perch. b] They are very quiet. c] I feel no ill effects except an overpowering urge to listen to music. Film at 11:00.

Wait when you will know how to modify them and link them to a grid of resonators.... :)

The Schumann generators not the cat....

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

Kind of like the Heisenberg principle, the closer you look the worse it looks.
To the lucky few who get there congratulations, its like you scaled Everest ...... but now what?
For the rest of us, we keep climbing and occasionally falling.  The higher we climb the better the view, it keeps us going.
As my system improves the character and musicality of recordings changes.  Some for the better some for the worse.
Old recordings are of course different from newer recordings in many ways.  Badly mixed or recorded music will sound more so on better equipment.
Let the truth set you free....

I have never had a recording get worse by improving my system. The old recordings of Lois Armstrong sound better than ever and his playing is way better than when he was older and making great recordings.
Bad systems make bad recordings sound worse. Good systems make everything sound better.

@twoleftears,

'If as claimed above contemporary music sounds good and it's the fault of our systems if it doesn't, perhaps we should be listening to it on those giant powered professional monitors they have in studios, because evidently it sounded good (and just the way it was supposed to sound) to the producers listening to it in that environment.'


Because of audio's notorious circle of confusion you'd probably need 3 systems to do that.

The first could feature a pair of Tannoy Dual Concentrics primed mainly for UK recordings from the 1950s and 60s.

The second could feature a pair of vintage JBL L100s (or their predecessors the 4310 or even Altecs) as used in the US throughout the 1960s and 70s.

The third might employ a pair of ATC/Genelec/Yamaha's/ Neumann's or whatever they use today. 

This way you might get close to what they heard whilst actually recording.

Let's face it, no one's recording music to be played back on ultra high performance domestic systems.

No one.

Okay maybe one or two audiophile producers such as the likes of Barry Diament who according to his website uses Magnepan's Magneplanar MG 3.7i loudspeakers for monitoring!

http://www.barrydiamentaudio.com/