Ken Fritz article

@yesiam_a_pirate 

The WP writer seems to imply that striving for excellence is a mental illness. 

Antisocial personality disorder, sometimes called sociopathy, is a mental health condition in which a person consistently shows no regard for right and wrong and ignores the rights and feelings of others.

Obviously, Ken did not care about the feelings of others. All the attributes are there of one who has a mental illness. Someone mentioned OCD, and that would be validated by his obsession and compulsiveness, but not his disregard for the feelings of others. That has to be explained and I find it unlikely he was bi-polar (which would explain his lack of empathy and sympathy for others), but the signs of a sociopath is evident. How mental illness manifests itself is tricky, and only recently (last 20 years) has it been tackled within the pharma industry to provide medical solutions for many of the mental illnesses that have inundated our society. 

Ken was of age that in his youth there was no treatment for these diseases. Back in those days, we called people who had such diseases "fidgety" or "excitable" and/or any number of adjectives that described being different. None of them were very kind. 

Having family members who are dealing with such diseases - most successfully! - I see many of the attributes in Ken that I have personally dealt with. I do not profess to be an expert on the subject, but the lack of empathy hits home and is a crushing emotion when your child does not care about what you ask of them. Certainly, the other way around - having a parent that is disinterested in their own offspring can be devastating. 

Ken's room and system has some oddities. He incorporated four of the exact same grandfather clocks into his room plan. His stereo setup had three speakers. His plan for extended bass had two other speakers instead of say, subwoofers. And subwoofers are the easiest DIY assignment. I am just pointing out that what he did was not what most of us here would do with a room like that. Sure, you may include some RCA dogs (nipper and chipper) but IMHO, no one on this forum has ever said, "Nice listening room, have you thought about adding a grandfather clock? Or four?". Hey, grandfather clocks may have nothing to do with mental illness, but four of them have something to do something that no one here can explain.

I find it amusing how we view his system setup and immediately feel that it MUST have sounded heavenly. It is a visceral reaction. Perhaps confirmation bias because, well, a million dollar system HAS to sound good, right? But truth be told, it may not have sounded good. While I did not watch the youtube video in its entirety, what I read and saw of it, there was not one person who claimed it sounded great. Is that important?

Did he post on this site?

Antisocial personality disorder, sometimes called sociopathy, is a mental health condition in which a person consistently shows no regard for right and wrong and ignores the rights and feelings of others.

Are you diagnosing a deceased person who you never met based on a biased WP article?

I doubt Ken had antisocial PD. He had personality features possibly of some other PDs, but there isn't enough here to say more. Having a dysfunctional relationship with his older son is unfortunate, but not enough to make a diagnosis of anything. His son wanting a vintage car his grandfather owned and a vintage turntable as his only bequest is telling of not much, except that it was met with a smallness of spirit by someone who could have afforded to do better. The unsaid part may be bitterness over how unhappy his mother apparently was due to living in a home Ken dominated, but that is speculation. It is hard not to wonder whether he liked things more than people.

He built a big sound system of his own design, choosing a big line array design and using his experience in commercial polymer molding to build it, filling in with extra low-end speakers and driving it with stacks of Krell amplifiers and separate crossovers. The video suggests he enjoyed it even if he realized it wasn't perfect: "you lie to yourself and tell yourself it sounds great."

The grandfather clocks are an oddity, though. They aren't particularly great at timekeeping, they are delicate and cumbersome, and not anyone's idea of modern room accent. These weren't antique clocks which might make an interesting piece in a modern room, they looked like reproduction pieces.

Is anyone else on this forum divorced?  Is that evidence of mental illness?  Ken owned his own business, and maybe that was one reason he didn’t take vacations.   We don’t know if he took his profession as seriously as he did his sound system.  At least 2 of his kids were featured in the article and video, so they apparently got along with him.  A few select quotes from a writer are not enough to make any valid conclusions about someone.  Has anyone else employed their kids to help them with projects, and had their kids remember that is was fun?  We don’t have any information about how many friends he had and what they thought of him.  It’s clear he liked building things, and that was part of his profession.  From what I could see he enjoyed building his room, system and the grandfather clocks.  Maybe doing it himself was more important than the final result.  The article - oddly - made no effort at all to evaluate how good the sound quality was.  Yet it was supposedly an article about creating the best sound system.  It seemed to go off track and focus on flaws in his personal life.  I’m glad no one is writing about me.  But for all of us, no matter what we buy, build or collect, some day we will leave it all behind.