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When is the golden age of high-end audio?

When is the golden age of high-end audio? When and where is the exaltation of music by the component and the component by the sound, the exaltation of buying and consumption through the sumptuary spending of high-end production? Whatever the subjugation of high-end audio to the management of capital (but this aspect of the question--that of the social and economic impact of high-end audio--always remains unresolved and fundamentally insoluble), high-end audio always had a more than subjugated function, it was a microphone held out to the universe of great music, great orchestras, great conductors, it was for a moment their glorious imaginary, that of a technical one, but an expanding one. But the universe of high-end audio is no longer this one: now it is a world that is both saturated and involuted. At some point, high-end audio lost both its triumphal imaginary and, from being in some sense a glorious microphone and playback device, it passed in some sense to the stage of mourning.
There is no longer a golden age of high-end audio: there is only its obscene and empty form. And high-end audio advertising and marketing is the illustration of this saturated and empty form.
Gone is the happy and displayed high-end component, now that it is suddenly like a man who has lost its shadow. Thus the high-end store these days closely resembles a funeral home--with the funereal luxury of the component buried, transparent in a black light, like a sarcophagus. Everything is sepulchral--white, bnlack, salmon, marble. Built like a tank--in deep, snobbish, dull black. Total absence of colors.
So, I ask you, when and where was the golden age of high-end audio. What individual component, in your opinion, is the testimony of a triumphant artistic-technical industry that was at its apogee? Why not save this golden age from decomposition? Later the historians and maybe our grandchildren will rediscover it, at the same time that they discover a culture that chose to bury it in order to definitively sell its soul to the devil, to bury its seduction and its artifices as if it were already consecrating them to another world.
slawney
hdm
1,062 posts
 
You only live in one "age". The golden age is now, my friend, so make the best of now. This is not a message of hedonism, simply a suggestion to make the best of what you can. As an analogue fan who has to make the best of digital, I'd rather embrace the technology, and most importantly, the music that is available to me now than pine away for days gone by. And in terms of technology, and most importantly, music, there is always something to be excited about. What the equipment looks like will always be secondary to me. I am a cheapskate, as unsnobbish as it may be to admit it. I just want the closest emotional connection with the music; if that's basic black boxes that look kind of ugly, so be it. So if the high end has a choice of delivering the music from an ugly box, or ugly music from a pretty box, I'll take the former at the lowest price possible.
slawney OP
242 posts
 
Hdm, thanks for your modern, practical, democratic response in which the bargain hunter unites with the man of emotions. Like you, I try to "make the best of what I can" but, unlike you, I do not think that the present age is the golden age. Of course, some things nowadays are even far better than the past (i.e. phono cartridges, primarily, and vinyl re-pressings). However, returning to the golden age is something more than an empty, supplementary subterfuge ("pining away"). Of course, we cannot act as if nothing has happened since then (digital, OpAmp and integrated circuitry, etc.). Ugly black boxes are a symptom of an industry able to realize economies of scale in a mass market, or wanting to cut costs on cosmetics and are accordingly not a sign of the "sumptuary spending on production" I was referring to--actually, just the opposite But this forum is not an invitation to indulge in retro hallucination. I am still waiting for someone to name a component that for them embodies the golden age of high-end audio.
detlof
1,899 posts
 
Slawney, to me the "golden age" is a figment of our imagination and nothing else. It is a state of mind, best described in terms of psychology. MY golden age was, when I innocently first stumbled on the high end and was carried away by and rejoiced in the way it made the music sing. That was the day of the tubed Quad electronics, their ELS, the ML1 and ML2, the SP6, the D-150 and D-79, JGH's Stereophile and the first stumbling steps of TAS. Dealers seemed friends then, who were just as exited about these products as our closely knit pack of afficionados. We were innocent then. The "Golden Age" is indeed an age of innocence. We slowly woke up to commercial realities, when we saw our dealers drive Porsches, Ferraris, BMW M1s and discovered that they loved money, rather than music. We woke up, when we saw TAS take advertising and the new salons full of jaded, rude and musically ill educated sales people. We woke up, when all the hype nearly drowned us in disgust. By and by, we became educated and knowledgeable. We picked and chose and the more intelligent, musically discriminate amongst us, usually avid concert goers, would settle on a system, which they would stick to for years, if not decades. The golden age turned to golden moments in the listening room and often those speakers, turntables and electronics, which had first opened the door to a deeper involvement in the musical experience became "classics", long cherished and held on to, because they stood for that golden age of innocence, which for many of us later sadly degenerated into "audiophila nervosa", a vicious circle of addict and purveyors, which Slawney, you so rightly seem to deplore!
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