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The worst sentence in audio writing

. Literally, hearing new details and delicacy in music I’ve heard a thousand times before.

I read this sentence from another thread but didn’t want to pollute it with this thought or to harp on my own opinion about the gear being discussed.

What I did want to do was point out that this sentence is one of the worst, most fraudulent sentences in all of audio, and we have all read it from a dozen different reviewers.  Anytime I read this I shudder. It’s not that I don’t believe the reviewer who writes this, it’s that I do. To understand why I hate this sentence you have to know my own personal values in audio.

  • Smooth frequency response
  • A laid back presentation

In order to make gear which has details never before heard the gear must exaggerate some sounds to the detriment of others. There’s no such thing as a neutral piece of gear that also makes you hear things yo have never heard before.

It’s a type of con, in that sure, you get new details, but they never talk about what you are giving up. The beauty of this con is that there’s all sorts of frequency response tricks and distortion gimmicks which will make you feel this way, each different, each not neutral. Each time we experience this "never before heard details" is like a new hair cut. It isn’t better, it’s different and that is exciting.

erik_squires
noromance's avatar
noromance
9,967 posts
 

Not true. I'm surprised you don't understand that you absolutely can pull out more detail from the medium by improving the process. 

erik_squires OP
16,402 posts
 

Not true. I'm surprised you don't understand that you absolutely can pull out more detail from the medium by improving the process. 

It depends, but every single time I've read this from a reviewer they equate "different" with "better."

mapman's avatar
mapman
22,483 posts
 

It can happen in some cases.  No worse than many other things people say. 

fsonicsmith's avatar
fsonicsmith
964 posts
 

Just not true. I wish it were though. It would invalidate about 99.7% of Mikey Fremer's audio writing. As an aside, does anyone want to participate in a one year over and under and to when Mikey will finally shut up about his new electrical scheme? To be sure, there are audio writers who have equally valid perspectives that align with your own, even going to the extreme that it is how a system makes you feel that is most important since nothing in home audio reproduction is real anyway. 

As just one easy example, all audio enthusiasts who prefer low powered SET amplifiers with very efficient transducers live within the latter domain. The DCS stack/CH Precision/Nordost Odin/Wilson Audio crowd are the present torch bearers of the "more detail is better" netherworld. 

frogman
7,478 posts
 

By this “logic” it could  be said that there has been no significant improvement in what audio gear is capable of since Victrola days.  

**** In order to make gear which has details never before heard the gear must exaggerate some sounds to the detriment of others. ****

Could not disagree more.  To reveal new details does not have to mean exaggerating those details; as has been pointed out lowering the noise floor is one way to do it and it certainly doesn’t have to be to the detriment of other details.  

Perhaps the reason that you feel the way you do is your preference for a “laid back sound”.  The sound of music and the way that it is recorded is not always laid back; and often far from it.  I agree with you that there are no neutral components and the closer they get to true neutrality the more they will reveal both the laid back sounds and the abrasive in your face sounds.  A component or system that makes everything sound laid back is the antithesis of neutral.

 

 

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