Dear James,
What do you think is happening to "High End" these days?
In my opinion it's starting to get out of hand. Well-heeled
audiophiles are spending hundreds and thousands of dollars
on high priced interconnects (and I mean $500/meter and up),
"treatments", mats to place equipment on to absorb vibrations,
wooden disks, etc. And this "equipment" is springing up like
weeds.
Is the audio industry running out of ideas?
If, for example, the current crop of audio (ahem) designers
REALLY have no idea as to how to advance sound reproduction
or they realize the development (and I mean REAL research and
development) would be prohibitively time consuming and
expensive, wouldn't the logical course be to end up where
we are now?
That course would be:
1) Repackage circuits in new clothing
2) Sell mysterious tweaks
3) Build up such a mystique around it all, nobody is
really sure of what they are hearing anymore
As a result, #1 can happen again and the cycle begins anew.
That way, development costs are kept to a minimum and
the "develoment" can be confined to areas that accountants
and manufacturers can get a "grip" on such as: faceplate
thickness, gold plated resistor leads, hospital grade
electrical plugs, the same Russian 12AX7 being "branded"
27 different ways, etc. And since features are now
a bad thing (isn't this clever?) manufacturers can save
money by leaving out phono sections, tape switching,
tone controls, etc.
Take, for instance, Stereophile. Components are rated
Class "A", for the very best. Eventually, the component
quietly slips off the list as either "unavailable" or
"not auditioned for too long a time to be sure of current
rating". If people are forgetting how components sound
and not revisiting them what keeps the manufacturers from
selling the same thing over and over?
Perhaps Stereophile could get a Thaedra, listen to it,
test it, and then determine if audio has really gone
anywhere in the last 25 years. Would you think they
would like the idea? Maybe I should propose it to
them.
In my listening, I have a wide range of equipment:
McIntosh MA6100, Luxkit (Monarchy Engineering) A1033
tube integrated amplifier, GAS Thaedra, Fisher 400 receiver,
Dynaco PAS-3x, ST-70, FM-3, various tuners, CD players, etc.
Every so often, I go on a "reality check" and swap out all
my pieces of gear and listen to them with "fresh ears". Then
the questions begin anew:
1) Am I hearing new faults or strengths?
2) Are what I thought were faults in the past not faults but
errors in listening?
3) Was I duped by something I thought was a strength?
Do you do the same?
Whew! Off the soapbox.
Best regards,
Paul Bigelow
