When I was young and playing tournament racquetball there was this one young kid Keith who was always there hours before I got there after work, always there when I went home. Not just playing games, he would practice drills, run the court, and whenever he wasn’t doing any of that he would be searching out and picking the brains of all the best players. He was playing them when he was getting trounced. Badly. Until one day he was the one trouncing them. Easily.
This kid Keith started getting racquets and balls and stuff from manufacturers. Didn’t go to his head. All I ever heard from him was frank evaluations of how the stuff performs.
The smarter players would seek him out for whatever tips they could get. A few would complain, but it was easy to tell they were just jealous. I never was. Nobody gave him success. He worked for it. He earned it. And as far as I could tell he never was anything but straight up about what was what.
Like I said, that was when I was young. Since then I’ve gone deep into marine aquaria, rock climbing, cycling, autocross, Porsche, and of course audio. Seen the same sort of thing play out in all of those. With just one difference. With all the other stuff the haters were few and far between. This is the only one where it seems there are as many ignorant malevolent haters full of jealousy as earnest sincerely dedicated audiophiles.
I don’t know if this is due to the public nature of the internet, the policies and people running this site, or something deeper to do with audio.
What I do know is guys like Frank and myself, we are like Keith. We have this crazy drive to create something captivating, magical. Beyond merely good sound. I would put Ted Denney right up there in that same category.
Main difference being he has some kind of crazy special genius hooks him up with ideas he is somehow able to bring into the world. This ain’t no mean feat. In 30+ years the best I have come up with is a rubber band.
Ted is not alone. Others come up with great ideas too. But then you have to build the darn thing, figure out how to sell it, and somehow make enough money to keep building and selling it. All the while with competitors and government doing their level best to put you out of business.
It is easy to write off the haters as mindless zombies. Because to a large extent they are. But even so it is no fun to read, and hard to see how they do anything to move us forward.
