What is stopping the ultimate?

Clueless,

That joke has a peel.

I'm still brainstorming on a "full-range" plasma driver without the ozone problems or paying $2-$5 an hour to run pressurized gas tanks. If I could get one of those down to 100hz-step aside ribbons, electrostats, electrodynamics, and bending wave transducers. And spend all the loving time building the mother of all subwoofers to go with. Wouldn't have to worry about crossover points in the midband, time delay, phase problems, cabinet resonances, doppler distortion, puh.. gone. One beautiful pulsing point source. Who knows. I know they've been run down to 700hz :). Nelson Pass' "ion cloud" put him in the hospital, but it ran full-range I believe.

I would say the Audio press "Elite" are the biggest anchor to advancement. I just received a Sony SCD-777ES SACD Player
last night. It will be paired with my Pass Aleph P pre-amp
& Pass Aleph 2 monoblocs. All these pieces are state of the art to me. They're also all discontinued & essentially forgotten by The Absolute Sound & Stereophile.
Harry Pearson says you need a minimum 200 watts per channel. Robert Harley says the new multi channel Sony SCD-XA777ES player shows potential. I say B.S.
I'll settle for (I want) HIGH QUALITY 2-channel MUSIC. My music system components get moved to my video syetem as they are replaced by something better.
There's nothing more bogus than reading a review of a "totally neutral" tube amp or pre-amp. I've owned tube equipment. I bought it for "tube sound"! Why on earth would anyone put up with tube heat & maintenance issues to obtain "neutral" SOLID STATE sound?
In Absolute Sound isssue 133, Anna Logg says the BAT VK-75SE Amp "is a reference-level amplifier that produces, without coloration, exactly what is fed to it". In the NEXT paragraph she says the amp delivers the fabled triode midrange, paired with a solid state or tube pre-amp.
Aren't triode fanatics looking for "romantic"(colored)sound? Isn't that the point of tubes?
Is 9:00a.m. too early for a beer?

Daniel

Daniel: "I would say the audio press elite are the biggest anchor to advancement." Amen Brother.

Hype and gloss and big buck wannabe materialism instead of audio. Especially, as you point out, in tubes. All of the basic circuit topologies are how old? There have been a few interesting improvements but some basic old stuff stands the test. Give me an old st70 (sells around here for $250) and a soldering iron.

Where can I meet ya for that beer?

Sincerely, I remain

Daniel and Clueless - you guys are getting back to the essential fact that one does not require "the ultimate", or even a close approximation of it, to receive enjoyment from reproduced music (I often get maximum enjoyment from my stone-stock base-model OEM cassette player in the car). Regardless, I still think the theoretical question of getting past the bogus "latest and greatest" paradigm promoted by the mags, manufacturers, and retailers alike is fascinating in its own right. Will the industry all get together to try and exceed the "same-old same-old"? Probably not. Could I benefit from it if they did? Definitely not (would be too expensive). Would this matter to my enjoyment of music played back utilizing the status quo? Of course not. As I said, our capacity for the enjoyment of reproduced music can be remarkably free from issues relating to its fidelity to the absolute sound - fortunately for us! (BTW, Daniel, I disagree that "tube sound" is always sought-after for its "colorations", or that solid-state sound should be thought of as "neutral". Both will deviate from reality, but the best of both will do so less.)