Nicely written Phusus.
Most folks in high end audio listen to equipment to impress themselves with their equipment. Decades in the industry have shown me that must audio guys will spend huge amounts of time trying to educate themselves about equipment but almost no time actually going to concerts or learning about music, its structure, and any other musical details. If they loved music as a first priority I believe they would know more about it, know more about who the greats were, at least know something!
It's really about the equipment and not about real music. The mantra of HP is repeated over and over "...real live unamplified instruments......" but that's lip service.
Most philes who listen to jazz know the sound of a sax from their recordings, and would not know a baritone from a tenor from an alto from a soprano sax....they know what they like coming from their speakers, which has little to do with how close it is to the real thing. And that's OK, if it floats their boats.
But, they have to have strong opinions about what sounds RIGHT, and preach to others,which is where it goes wrong. They don't know much about the sound of music, and don't put much if any effort into learning it. This allows heavily colored equipment to prosper, and dynamically flat equipment to do fine. It allows turntables with horrible speed stability to be declared as reference. Such is the industry.
The 66000 or 67000 is not for everyone, that's fine. Unfortunately, most audiophiles won't notice much of what the JBLs do right, unless a reviewer tells them first. This is what allows the flat, monotonous, strained gear to push better gear to the side. That bothers me because it means that there will be less choice for those of us who really do want the sound of music.
I am glad to see some musicphiles on this thread. Unfortunately, Audiogon is mostly guys who know little preaching to other guys who know little. I'm going to semi-retire from here and go back to music forums. Too frustrating trying to get through to closed minds, this thread and its posters excepted from that comment.
