Ken Fritz article

Nothing of the sort... retired and with no more social contacts...

And with no money to play with new toys... Being unsatisfied by my gear system ( even if my choices were good to begin with) I had no choices only to go homemade and studying acoustics by experiments... You cannot tune 100 resonators by ears in one month... You cannot modify your speakers on the spot and you cannot adress vibrations and resonance with no money on the spot and buy as some costly Townshend platform... You cannot solve some electrical grid problem on the spot too ...

I was one year full time but few years many hours each week...

My luck was having no money to really invest in audio and to buy ready made solution and then if not learning nothing learning way less because purchase dont imply acoustic understanding ...

Now my system is ridiculously good for his price... Rest assured i own the best possible for this lowest cost ... It is my pride...😉😊 and rest assured i am not frustrated in a stopgap , but most people will not believe me on that...Most low cost system to begin with , are, if not horrible, not at all optimized ...Most people dont know what to do and anyway will not do it as modifying the speakers and the headphone design of what they just bought etc ...

Audio is about being creative and learning not about price tags at all ...

Which is better : my system under 1000 bucks rival more costlier system ... Mine is satisfying 😊i will make exception only for system in a designed acoustical room nothing else as Fritz or mike lavigne acoustically designed room ...

I am in this level what i call : the minimal acoustical satisfaction threshold with my speakers system... For the headphone system i am near the maximal acoustical satisfaction threshold anyway ( out of the head holographic perception and timbre realism and deep bass ) ... Cost : under 1000 bucks... Beat me ! and good luck ....

Every one has his own idea of acoustical perfection ; mine is the acoustical quality experience ratio related to the lowest possible price ...

I am the "Fritz" of what may appear to some as the garbage audio products...😁😊 But trust me my gear choice is not garbage at all especially after optimization ...

Most had no other way to improve what they have except buying... I improve it so much that i can live in ectasy with music...Yes this is possible, i am here to motivate those who cannot purchase anything costly... The fun is the creativity way more than buying....Fritz was creative ...I admire him for that...

@mahgister "I was myself consumed by the fever to create my acoustic room 24 hours by day for at least one full year..." Were you a cloistered monk or just certifiable?

@emergingsoul 

Ken was not a part of Audiogon because he could not have cared less of what others thought of him. 

I tend to believe that most who post here have learned something from interaction with others who have similar interests. If there is a lesson here to be learned from this article it is not to lose $800K on a lifetime dream of building something for yourself. 

And that was it. It was all about him and his system. His family grew tired of it, and it was a hard read because of that fact. Had he cared about others, he would have used that $800K to build a commercial sound room and system that others could have enjoyed and perhaps even could have made a profit. 

@tcotruvo 

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.

So true. At the end of the youtube video, he states, "I'm Ken Fritz and I believe I built the best stereo system in the world." Maybe the WP author went off track because during the time it took for Ken to build it (5-years) his marriage fell apart and his son became estranged. Now that he and his system are gone, there are only hard feelings left. The long-lasting flaw of fulfilling your own dreams while blatantly discounting others. 

@deep_333

All the  stereo purists appear to be suddenly in awe of Ken, who was very much a multichannel audio enthusiast..

Isn't that the truth. As Ken stated, he used Krell amps with four balanced inputs for home theater. I use 4 speakers in my stereo setup and I can't mutter a word about that on this site without getting dissed by those that claim anything beyond two speakers is a transgression against somebody's god. 

@erik_squires

Sociopathy gets overused and thrown around when a number of obsessive compulsive disorders could be used.

Sociopathy (Antisocial personality disorder) is triggered by a genetic element or environmental factors such as neglect and abuse. Sociopathy is not related to OCD. OCD is about having too much conscience (living with guilt). Sociopaths have too little; or none whatsoever! 

I don't make this stuff up. This is clinical data:

Below are estimates of the prevalence of “Cluster B” personality disorders listed in the American Psychiatric Association Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition (DSM-5), according to various scientific papers.

• Antisocial personality disorder (including psychopathy) — 3.05 to 3.8 percent
• Narcissistic personality disorder — 1.0 to 6.2 percent
• Borderline personality disorder — 1.9 to 5.9 percent
• Histrionic personality disorder — 0.3 to 1.8 percent

All together, therefore, 6.25 to 17.7 percent of the adult population are sociopaths — people who could be diagnosed with antisocial, narcissistic, borderline or histrionic personality disorder, or psychopathy.

I will never judge someone i dont know with a list of symptoms from the Handbook of psychiatric disorder... ( psychiatry is a drug based practice then study psychology with Jung and astrology to balance its limited view at least )

I will never judge someone i did not know anyway...

What i know suggest an ordinary man with a great passion with all family problems many of us here goes through ...

I am appalled by the way some disparage a human being reading an article...

This say a lot ....Not about Fritz but about them....

@goodlistening64   As I read your comments, I thought wow…before you criticize the splinter in your neighbors eye, you should remove the timber in your own eye.

I think the WP columnist knows that a ‘good news’ article doesn’t create nearly as many clicks as a deeply critical one.  I’m thankful that no one has published a story about my life.

@tcotruvo 

Do you know something about my life that I don't? How am I a hypocrite?

The WP columnist, Geoff Edgers, is a superb journalist who frequently writes about music and starred in a documentary called "Do It Again", about his attempt to reunite The Kinks. It is on youtube. I have followed him for years at WaPo. Suggesting he merely "click baited" about Ken's system has no basis in truth.

What is truth is that Ken was not a good father - clearly displayed narcissistic behavior - and wasted seven years of his life creating something that caused a breakup of his family. Yeah, maybe he wasted his children's inheritance on himself. Maybe he thought he deserved it. Maybe he had good intentions. But the results speak for themselves and Geoff Edgars is hardly the target for you to aim your arrow. Maybe mainstream media is the cause of your dismay?

before you criticize the splinter in your neighbors eye, you should remove the timber in your own eye.

That is not the correct passage you used. It is Luke 6:41, which states, "Remove the wooden beam from your eye first; then you will see clearly to remove the splinter in your brother's eye."