Hey Dad, if I ever ragged on the Audion 845 like 231 does the Krell amp I would be a two year old.
RE: How much of the "high end" is a scam?
Posted by 213Cobra (A) on April 3, 2010 at 20:41:18
In Reply to: How much of the "high end" is a scam?
My first reaction, looking at the list of gear you heard, was to think, "well, obviously you won't get anything resembling music from that stack." But I realize that, by itself, doesn't help.
Now, really, SET OPINION=ON. No, I'm not going to try either to offend anyone or avoid it. That stack represents most of what's wrong with high-end audio and why most people can't remotely relate to it. It's also a prime example of why the SET, widebander and Gaincard insurgencies sprang up over the last 20 years. Wilson, Boulder and to a lesser extent what Meridian has unfortunately become (after a long illuminating contribution to hifi) are the current endpoints of a toneless jag high-end set off on circa 1980. I peg the turning point to the debut of the first Krell amps, easily the bleakest line of electrified dead mass ever heaped upon an ususpecting public of music lovers. The day a leather-eared hifi journalist of stature deemed Krell a contender during our last significant economic calamity, a rush of EE entrepreneurs jumped in to over-fetishize hifi during the Reagan administration, to the point where six figures puts you in the Maxell chair wondering where the fun went?
Has a Wilson speaker *ever* produced a note that sounds remotely communicative of the emotion carried by music? No. Too many drivers, too much crossover, cabinets too dead to do anything but drain life from the sound. Of course to get any jump factor out of the Wilson, you need amps powered directly by the Hoover Dam, so you get complex, toneless Boulders that manage to reveal every transient but left the body behind alongside Jimmy Hoffa. And poor Meridian, once purveyor of digital gear full-bodied and visceral now obscuring music in a jangle of crystalline angst.
People hear these stacks of toneless metal pushing a firehose of sound through dreadnought boxes of pistonic might and they know you're nuts because it just doesn't sound right. Oh, it's *immpressive* but it doesn't sound like any music they ever heard but, you know..., you're an audiophile and the stuff looks expensive so..."what do I know?" is all they can say.
What gives is that the mainstream exotica has become totemic of wealth and conferred exceptionalism. What does it matter if it sounds like a cannonball fired at your face? It looks impressive! Those are brands 'everybody knows'! How about that bass rattling your pelvic structure? Ever hear cymbals hurled at your head like that??
And then of course 90% of this gear ends up in a "man cave" hidden and cherished, so the few times anyone else gets exposed to it who might be sensible enough to hear it and say, "Dude, WT...F?" instead gets cornered into a "demo," which is going to be about everything BUT the music. And the retailer displaying that Boulder....well, can't blame him. It's no different from a shiny Rolex.
SET OPINION=OFF.
Look, these kinds of systems are why a few adventurers prowl the back alleys to find oddities from a lost era. Have you ever heard a full 47 Labs / Sakura Systems system? Zu or Cain&Cain with SET amplification? A Shindo system or Leben amps with simple wideband or 2-way speakers? Heck, let's go mainstream. Walk into your nearest McIntosh & Sonus Faber dealer and ask him to wire up the "nonsensical" combination of Cremonas + MC1.2kws + any Mac preamp and any decent disc player or TT they have in the store.
Good sound is out there that lives up to (or beyond) its price; it's just not where you had hoped.
Phil
