Over the years I've come across quite a few audiophiles or psuedophiles, who seem to be on a mission to either prove that their gear and ideas are the best, everything else is either bunk, snake oil or doesn't hold up to conventional wisdoms.
These folks are pretty much against everything that claims to make an improvement.
How can it? Show me the proof!
Yet, inspite of all their objections, they have no experience with the things they are arguing about.
The other observation is that a lot of the same folks have limited experience.
Limited experience, for instance with amplifier designs.
If they use a solid state amp, then all tube amps are flawed.If it's a tube amp, then solid stae is flawed.Add in whatever stereotypes you want to describe the deficiencies of each.
And yet they never seem to get it, that matching the right amp to the speaker and actually listening to the combination is what has to be done before you can make any claims one way or the other.
This applies to the whole accuracy debate,most everyone has an opinion about what accuracy means to them, but there is no clear way to measure what we are hearing.
And no two poeople will hear the same things from the same systems.So is the solid state amp more accurate than the tube amp?Even if they both measure the same?
How come some folks prefer the sonics of one over the other.
If both measure the same can one be better than the other in some unmeasurable way?
Ah, yes, I believe that is the case with all things audio.
Over the years and with experience to different systems and approaches to listening to music(stats, cones, tubes,solid state, SET, class D)you start to understand that there are merits to every approach, that none are perfect, yet any can be enjoyed.
What sets one audiophile apart from another is not golden ears, it is experience, and with that experience comes wisdom .The kind of wisdom that would never say system A is better than system B or is more accurate,. All that can be said at the end of the day is that they were different.It's also the wisdom that was acquired hands on, not read from a white paper and either agreeing to what has been written or disagreeing if something seem outside your frame of reference.
And forgive me for being so long winded,but if the mind is kept closed, and one only limits themselves to limited exposure of "safe" components, then there is a whole world out there filled with people who would beg to differ with you.
So who is right and who is wrong? Digital vs vinyl, tubes vs solid state.
No one will ever win the "argument" that this audio hobby has turned into. |
Lacee,
I think often here, the existence of more esoteric products (high end turntables, tube amps, etc.) has to be justified to generate interest. Nothing wrong with that, these things are easily justified.
But the thing is I think often rather than merely letting these products stand on their own merits, there is a tendency to try to categorically debunk the mainstream competition, ie SS amps, digital, etc. Mainstream products from mainstream vendors are a bigger threat to the competition than vice versa. The little guy always has to work harder to justify their existence.
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Vertigo wrote (among a great many other things): "..make a recording where all things are equal from your perspective(ie, your ears/the mics... are both 2ft from the bass and 5 ft from the drums and directionally the same)and play it back on a system with great tone, heft, speed, no blurring of transient, plays low(so not a ls3/5)(or with a myriad of other brands that are colored and distorted)(not with a myriad of colored, muddy, slow cables, cartridges, amps, etc)but gear with superb timbres and i say the differences between how you heard it while you were standing there playing it and how the playback is...the difference would be negligible. Or to the point where the differences are vanishingly low and unimportant."
I am truly at a loss here. It greatly saddens me that anyone, let alone an audiophile, could possibly believe this. Yes, Vertigo, I understand your points. And yes, I am a professional musician who experiences live music literally every day of my life. My job has also exposed me to the very best of audio reproduction, both past and current, and I have experience with a great variety of recording techniques, mike placement, etc. And no, I do not claim that my own system is the be-all end-all, or that anyone's is, for that matter. And yes, I do have both very good and very well trained ears. In fact, I have been trained to train other people's ears. And yes, I still say that if you really cannot hear the HUGE differences between the live and the recorded in your own above example, or you truly think they are negligible and unimportant, then I truly pity you, as you are clearly missing a very great deal of what the musicians are trying to communicate to you. |
Lacee,
I really liked what you said in your last post. And if i have correctly understood what you are try to say...I agree with you.
I adopt Robert Harley's attitude...and i read this in his book as a fledgling audiophile and transfer it to all approaches of gear design and to each audiophiles system..."the perfect solid state amp and the perfect tube amp sound exactly the same because they are both perfect"
I like that. So, i am open and skeptical at the same time and try to learn and admit when an old prejudice has been overturned by a new experience or by new evidence and continue on the path.
Like, all good chefs say...cook with the best ingredients, fresh and in season! so too, i will argue with gear, synergize with the highest quality gear [as you understand it] to get the highest quality results.
You can't make as good a pasta sauce, [all other things being equal]with regular tomatoes as with organic tomatoes. The differences are fine but perceptible, at least to the connoisseur, who cares! So, too, i think, with cooking with gear.
I dont care if someone is solid state or tube,if his system is ridiculously expensive or cheaper ,etc,etc, etc,etc...the way i judge or try to judge is...how does it sound? Period. But we are human and we are subject to our human bias's and weaknesses so we try to remain as objective as we can... |
May I offer a little more insight that over the years has led me to where I am at today in this hobby.
I mentioned the great argument, or the great debate,divide that has developed over the years.
Audiophiles all seem to be on one side of the fence or the other.
It wasn't always that way, at least not when I started.
So,when I say that everything is flawed,what do I think you should do?
Throw in the towel and give up?
Some folks do.They sell all the nice audio toys and retreat in defeat to a simple integrated amp system or a vintage pawn shop set up and sing the praises that the Holy Grail was there afterall back in 1970.They've "gotten off the merrygoround" of endless component swapping and trying to find the absolute sound and damned proud of it.They are no longer "audiofools" they tell us, we, who must still be audiofools.
They finally found out that all gear is flawed,and what they decided to do about it was mostly out of anger and contempt because nothing that they had bought at any price made them happy.
So what's left for them to do but lash out at the evil High End and call it all snake oil?
Well they could have done what myself and others have done when we came to the conclusion that irregardless of how well that amp or speakers meet spec, and how well reviewed they were, or how high they scored on the must have scale,something was always missing no matter how much you paid for it.
The gear's not perfect afterall.
Yet the real audio junkies(the folks who are the most educated in specsmanship and flaunt their knowledge of why things can or just can't be)maintain that a perfectly measured amp or component is well, perfect, and that if they just happen to own one, well that's all you need to do to arrive at audio Nirvana is to follow their lead and buy what they have been listening to.Accept their stamp of approval or fall prey to the snake oil salesman.
I like how they care about what you spend your money on.
Their ears have become immune to the flaws and deficiencies of thier system partly because they just haven't heard that many other good systems, and partly because they are so wrapped up in the measurements that listening for flaws just isn't in the equation.Flaws? How can there be any? My system measures perfectly.I have the specs and papers to prove it.
And then there are some folks like myself who have lived with a great deal of components over the years.Tried more than one amplifier technology, owned different typees of gear, and who can listen to vinyl and digital replay and find some good in both.
What some of us have done is to also get off the merrygoround, but where we differ is that we don't exchange one set of flawed components for another and then try to convince ourselves and the world that "my flaws" are the best there ever was or will be things have never improved, only gotten worse.
No we post on audio threads that adding a dedicated line improved the sound of what we had.That a fuse, power cord upgrade made as big or bigger improvement than interconnects or speaker wires.We treat the room, which is now starting to gain approval,in other words we accept the system that we have at the moment, knowing that it is flawed and not perfect(even if it is a perfectly measured kit)and try to make improvemnts to what we have.
This is to me the more logical next step in the game and makes more sense to me than chuking out good gear every six months looking for the next "fix" as a mentor of mine from years ago so apptly called most of his customers "audio junkies".
But ,try and post that something that can make something already perfect more "perfect" and you set off the next flame war.
You'll see every reason why(mostly quotes from years ago) such tweaks are nothing but snake oil.
Yet the posters supporting this side of the debate seldom if ever have even seen never mind tried the device in question.For most it's the first they've ever heard of such a thing, but "my years of study in electronics tells me it just can't be so" is usually the trump card.
Or so they would like the nebies to think.
This was as still is a great hobby.
It's filled with great surprises and you can improve your sound and in so doing improve the listening experience.
My advice is to try some of the things others talk about and decide for yourself if something so small and insignificant as a fuse or demagnetizing an lp or cd really works.
All you have to do is to try it.
You only have to buy it if it works for you.
And forget about "you can't trust your ears"from the debunkers,because they are the only two things you can and should trust in this hobby.
And when you do, you'll understand that topics like "which is more accurate"really are just a starting point for everything that polarizes this hobby.
Better to think about how can I make vinyl or digital more accurate in my system.
To me that makes more sense. |
