We talk to a number of people from outside the U.S. - a significant percentage of our readers are from overseas and Canada - and we often hear something like:

“Oh, only you Americans care about soundstaging.”

Soundstaging - for the purpose of this post - is depth and breadth of imaging - being able to hear WHERE the instruments are. Soundstaging is the opposite of a ‘wall of sound’ - where the sound seems to come to the listener in one big mish mash from the general direction of the plane of the speakers.

OK, it does take a larger-sized room to be able to pull the speakers out from the wall in order to hear any kind of soundstagjing. And many people in Europe do not have large-sized rooms. But we hear the same thing from Australia - which has side-open spaces like we do and presumably large-sized listening rooms.

Funny, Americans are supposed to be unsophisticated - not caring about subtle details that contribute to enjoyment of the finer things in life. Well, at least in this case - I think they are wrong.

Why? Because soundstaging occurs in real life - and one of the things our systems should do is try to mimic real life.

Certainly acoustical instruments soundstage. Otherwise we would be a dead species - hearing the lion’s roar, or baby’s cry, not knowing where it came from.

In many amplified venues, the counter-argument goes, people do not hear a soundstage. I think this is because the amplification is cheap and not setup correctly, sound coming from speakers mounted on the ceiling, in the walls, … coming from amps shared by multiple instruments… etc.

So, not much else to say - it is obviously NOT a vice, and is instead an attribute of the Real Thing. Hopefully our audiophiles overseas will catch up to us Funny though, speakers manufactured overseas soundstage just fine thank you, being a result of matching pairs of speakers (frequency response, etc) and a decently detailed treble. So we just got to get them to pull the speakers out from the wall and get with the program….

One thing I know, once you get used to soundstaging, it is hard to live without. It is addictive.

Whoo hoo, we’re one of the blogs feeding speshy.com!

The ability to talk about, to write about, how something sounds, to someone not in the same room, is so ridiculously difficult that it bears little resemblance to talking about anything else except, perhaps, emotions (like Love).

For example, take the visual arts. Take ‘paintings’.

CASUAL DESCRIPTIONS

Your friend bought a new piece of art. They like it a lot and tells you it is kind of a cross between a Gauguin and Matisse.

OK. Your mind starts churning up images of their paintings… I think most people would try and think of paintings that would be something nice to look at, rather than some kind of monsterous offspring.

So, already we are trying to interpret what is meant by Gauguin and Matisse: WHICH works of theirs? In what WAY are they combined (color palette? brush strokes? atmosphere? thickness of paint? )? What, is it a scene with blue 2D dancers with orange grass and yellow sky?

DETAILED DESCRIPTIONS

They go further, telling you that there is a lot of good detail, microscopic changes in color, along with great macroscopic-sweeps of changes throughout the piece. The colors are a little ‘hot’ in the middle palette colors, and they are counter-balancing this by choosing a dark matt for their framing of the piece.

So, now we all know exactly what they piece sounds, I mean looks, like, right?

It gets even worse….

COMPARISONS TO THE KNOWN

Let’s say they sent you a photo of the Gauguin and Matisse paintings they think their new painting is an offspring of. So that there is a common frame of reference, kind of like you and your best friend sharing a deep knowledge of how two sound systems sound.

Here are the two paintings:

So, now we all know what our friend’s new painting looks like, right?

A PHOTOGRAPH

Finally they send you a photo. Ah, finally we get a sense of what they bought - not quite the same, but at least we can see that it looks like they have wasted their money. Again.

A SOUNDOGRAPH

Eventually we will have cheap systems that reproduce sound very accurately, as well as a photograph does the visible spectrum today. As we talked about in a previous post, at this future date the hifi system designer as artist will come into their own. When a SOUNDOGRAPH is sent to you, it will likely be, if you are a dilettante , an unreal but very evocative and moving sound that you are receiving - or perhaps your friend is still wasting their money on this futuristic day, yet again.

IN THE MEANTIME

Before digital photography, one often had trusted friends and art dealers whose recommendation they could trust. These friends and dealers were experienced, shared a common approach and similar tastes, and had recommended good things in the past. Yes, they could send a photograph - but this would take several days, and perhaps the painting will not be around that long.

It took a large amount of trust on the part of the purchaser, trust in the person doing the recommending, especially if it was expensive.

It was bought ‘blind’ so to speak.

Just like we buy things ‘deaf’.

In the high-end audio world, we aren’t quite where the art world was back then, yet. Perfect strangers just met on the net are entrusted to make recommendations and bad reviews helter-skelter. Who are these people? Has anyone besides themselves heard THEIR system?

And dealers. Dealers are not tested to see if a common taste is shared, or whether their recommendations are truly well-thought out or are just a way to make a quick buck.

A sad state of affairs.

But, as another previous post said, the way out lies in the hobby centering around people who live up to their good reputations and are willing to put them to the test: dealers, netizens, reviewers, manufacturers… Not everyone will agree with everyone else, but at least they can be trusted to say what they think, and have some consistecy in their approach. And that their approach has something to do with sound, something at least, and not completely to do with dollars or getting home in time for supper or just taking pleasure from the attention gained by shouting fire! or gold!.

Yep, consistency and honesty. That is all we need.

And you might note that the best reviewers have this going for them already. Mike Fremer, J.A., Srajan, Roy Gregory, Art Dudley, etc…. [Not that we have to AGREE with them. Not even most of the time ]

There is a disturbing thread on the Audio Asylum… yes, I know that is nothing to post about… but in this case, it highlights why dealers are so despised in this hobby. And since we are a dealer, well, this is not only Annoying, but, well, maybe it is only annoying.

This is the link to the thead:

I just got phone screened by a dealer and rejected.

What is annoying is that this practice is defended by several dealers, and a reviewer. And we know several very successful dealers who do this. No wonder so many people think dealers suck.

Of all the dealers that have an excuse to pre-screen customers, it should be us. What with one $500K system and two quarter million (and one very nice $25K one, too. High efficeincy speakers rock.), are we supposed to answer the phone with “If you are not independently wealthy, at the beep, hang up.”?

Shhhhheeeeooooot, man, life is too short to spend it being rude.

I told myself, when I was starting out as a professional programmer, that if coding ever became a bummer [yes, it was a long time ago ] that I would quit being a professional and go back to doing it as a hobby. It was just too much fun and I didn’t want the business aspect of it to ruin it for me.

And over the decades, although some bosses were downright sleezy, I could still retain my love of coding. I didn’t have to become sleezy [although I did become angry and disgusted a number of times - I’m sure you all can relate].

The point of this is, the day when the business side of this hobby threatens to take the fun out of music, or threatens to turn us into a**holes - we are outahere.

And until that time, we welcome EVERYONE who is actually interested in hearing what we got. Be forewarned, you will be spoiled before you leave.

Funny, most people pre-qualify themselves with something like “I probably can’t afford anythiung you got up there…” [That’s OK, we know are out-a-control] “…but I would love to hear A, B and or C…”[Sure! When is a good time for you?]”… and maybe D too, but that is way out of my price range…”[Yeah, it is pretty expensive, but wait until you here it! It is so awesomely good at….] “…and I’m not really even looking for anything in particular, I like my current system.” [It sounds like your system is well-balanced. No reason to upgrade unless you want to. If and when you to decide to upgrade, give us a call, maybe we can help].

I cannot see how this is anything but common courtesy. I know being nice is out of fashion these days - everybody wants to be Dirty Harry [me, I’ll be Josey Wales ], but seriously, …..

Truth is, most people really *can* afford many things we sell - Audio Aero Prima CD player at around $2K, The Accoustic Zen Adagio speaker at around $4K, lots of Audio Note equipment, Edge G-series amps and preamps, Shunyata entry-level power cords, etc. etc.

But they often really want to be able to come hear the BIG STUFF.

Is there something wrong with that? It is what *we* would want to do if we were them. And heck, we *are* them.

OK, some people come up here to convince themselves (and us!) that their system, or more often: the system that they are going to be able to get for pennies on the dollar when they eventually find it, is better than all of our systems. This can be kind of awkward. But still, even these people are fairly polite and goodnatured, for the most part - especially because we are not interested in being stuck with teaching them that most of what they read about on the forums and magazines is… uh… not really about high-end audio, per se.

We are not evangelical here. We just push play, answer questions, and be polite. And meet lots of very nice people. Where is the call to be rude and nasty?

One thing though, if you want to come up here and listen. please remember… to bring some great music! [Almost all of the music we buy these days was something someone brought up here with them during an audition].

And, anyone know why people patronize these hard agressive dealers who are rude and impolite, and who sell stuff that sucks without blinking an eye? Just curious… Maybe it depends on where you live. Here in Boulder, this would be suicide. Boulder is not that friendly, actually, but to be rude is really bad karma, man.

In part one we proposed that there are other valid goals for high-end audio systems besides that of reproducing ‘exactly’ what is on the source material (i.e. 100% Real), and that these other valid goals can be thought of as being similar to the goals of artists who, say, paint a landscape.

The argument I usually hear against this kind of anarchy is that the muscians intended for their music to sound a certain way [maybe but it rarely makes it to the source material this way, given sound engineers and limited budgets], how dare we muck with their composition? They are the musicans, we but the audience. Then are we to tell painters to stop painting impressionistic landscapes, because Nature or God intended it to look a certain way?

So, this means all but one or two of us can stop beating ourselves up because we like systems that sound ‘better than real’, or communicate ‘better than real’, or are more engaging than real [this ‘better tha real’ stuff is more possible for Jazz, Pop and Rock&Roll than it is for Classical. Give me the capability for reproducing Real Carnegie Hall, THEN we can start working on better than real Carnegie Hall]

Whew! Hopefully we can all feel more confident in ourselves and the work that we are doing. I know it can be hard when we run into lots of obnoxious layabouts who give us a hard time on the forums, they have not educated themselves about how to appreciate good sounding music and its impact on the listener. We are going against the ‘common wisdom’. Why?

Because… Carrying this analogy further, many of the people reading this blog are high-end home audio system ‘artists’.

Artists, and their admirers, are never understood by lay people - and especially artists of our rather new and certainly unheralded art form.

How many times have you heard someone ridicule art with somthing like: ‘Honey, how come that guy can’t paint a face that looks like a face?’. ‘Why would anyone want more than loud bass and something that can play each of the notes from 20 -20K Hz?’. ‘What can you see in a Jackson Pollock painting that you can’t see in a bowl of spaghetti ?’

OK, I made that last one up

——————-

There are several different kinds of work habits associated with artists:

1) Most of us think of somethng they want to build, build it, then refine it, polish it up. Then start on a new system variation. Just like a painter who pulls out a new canvas, paints something, spends some time touching it up, making it as good as they feel they can without going crazy [which is never good enough] and then going on to start the next painting. Unlike painters, we cannot keep our systems around in stacks against the wall unless we are VERY rich and have a LOT of room.

But we can photograph them, like painters do, so that they have sometihng to remind them of the piece after they sell it to pay for food. See? Sounds familiar doesn’t it?

2) Some of us tinker with the same old darn painting, I mean system, for years and years, trying to get it …. just….. right. In general, systems do kind of evolve into one another as opposed to repalce one another.

3) Some of us are more radical, tearing up a lot of canvases before the paint is even dry, the canvas still white in places, so unsatisfied we are with how the system is shaping up.

4) Some of us commision systems from artists [aka good dealers].

5) And the vast majority of people buy posters that kind of look like art, and equipment that kinds of looks like systems, from wall-mart, and circuit city.

——————————-

Carrying the analogy further [I know a lot for one post, maybe this will get split out…] we can see the future of high-end audio…

As posters and serigraphs and glicees and laser printing gets closer and closer to being able to look like the real thing, so will high-end audio systems found in, say, circuit city.

What will be left?

Posters are availabe for only a relatively few masters, and circuit city systems will eventually sound good, but have only a few different sounds. For those that want something that uniquely speaks to them, something special, that has a pride of ownership associated with it, these people will always have to shop somewhere else, at a boutique, or learn to build systems themselves.

In a sense this is what we do now, unstatisfied with the ‘commonality’ of the sound found in the ‘common’ store fronts. Yes, their sound quality also currently sucks - but if it didn’t? How many of us could go back to a generic sound when we know how ‘our sound’ can make us feel? Not most of us, I think.

Anyway, just some thoughts….

OK, been thinking about the ‘Absolute Sound’ and the true ‘Real’ reproduction of what is on the source material. How a number of people focus on this as the ultimate goal of our little hobby here.

Well, I think they are wrong.

Or rather, that this goal is not the only goal.

This idea is best understood by comparing audio reproduction with visual reproduction. In particular the art of painting.

Until about the turn of the last century, as I understand it, the goal for several 1000s of years was for (most) painters to try to reproduce what they saw in a ‘photo-realistic’ fashion.

I remember there being a little renaisannce when someone discovered how to paint ‘perspective’.

It is a historical oddity that they got pretty good at it, often making a good living at portraiture, at about the same time that photography kind of made the whole point moot.

So then they came up with different kinds of reproduction. Impressionistic. Abstract. Super-realistic [not sure this is the official name, but it is when a painting of, say, fruit, looks better and more delicious and more real in the painting than in real life]. Pointalism. Cubism.

Yes, the more mundane art enthusiast still wants their art to look like photographs.

But many, many people enjoy these non-photo-realistic paintings.

And I say it is about time that we acknowledge that audio reproduction is the same.

It is OK to prefer a Sweet sound. A room pressurizing sound. A hyper-detailed sound. Whatever.

Just like it is OK to like the Impressionism of Manet and the abstract works of Picasso. I imagine that when these guys were starting out, they got the some level of flack from the traditionalists.

I think that as we get closer and closer to being able to do Real, we will also get farther as more ‘interpretive’ sound reproduction forms emerge.

It is the point of this post to suggest that these ‘interpretive’ sound reproduction forms are as valid, as enjoyable, and as worthy of a pursuit as the pursuit of the Real.

That it would be cathartic to recognize that this is happening, to embrace it, and, as a collary, to not all of us go racing off in a particular direction when we chould be racing off in all directions. To not abandon a particular art form, like Tube Analog in favor of Solid-State, LP Analog in favor of digital storage mediums, etc. All of these are valid.

Yes, the art world does the same thing, the ‘hot thing’ being Impressonism, through Cubism and Dada to Modernism and who knows what else I do not have the time. But I personally like them all, and would think the person who feels that only one of them is the One True Art Form is loosing out and a little bit of a Herbert.

So…. what do you think?

Neli came up with this one:

Digital = Cubism

my thoughts were that:

Digital = Pointalism.

I doubt if we can come up with a one to one mapping. And some of the reproduction out there is just poor. For example I think:

Bose is not equal to Velvet paintings, as Velvet paintings are clear, enjoyable and humorous, in a shallow sort of way. But not so Bose.

Or ‘Kung Fu for the Guitar’.

Back when I thought I had time (haaaaa ha ha ha) to learn how to play the guitar better, I subscribed to the Guitar Principles newsletter [Be careful with their bright red screen. Early in the morning it can be blinding, perhaps waiting until afternoon to visit might be better… Yeah, I just don’t think they got the Webdesign-Fu thing going yet].

Their approach has always been very deep, paying attention to every detail as well as paying attention to the numerous ‘purposes’ one has playing a guitar. Yes, it is very much like our hobby, but luckily we do not require much hand-eye motor coordination !

[… though, often, the amount we do require can be duanting, plugging left channels into right, output cables into the input sockets, … all sorts of difficulties can arise if we do not FOCUS. Or maybe it is just us….]

For example, here is a (small) exerpt from their last newsletter, which I found myself identifying with both as a listener to musician’s music as well as a audio reproduction system optimizer [but not so much as guitar player - free time disappears as if it were nothing but a poof of smoke from Gandalf’s pipe]:

“….in the course of developing as a guitarist, you will be forced to confront who you really are, not who you think you are.” Musical performance does not allow us to lie, it forces us to speak the truth, whatever our truth might be. If I am afraid, if I am shallow, if I am passionate and profound; the music will say it.

As we play, we must ask “where is my attention? Is it focused on what I want, or am I allowing my psychic energy to be devoted to my fears and doubts, thereby bringing me what I don’t want?” The smallest corners of our minds and hearts, though we may keep them hidden from our awareness in everyday life, will come to life in the midst of our artistic endeavors. And that is why an artist must strive toward purity, which is earned through honest, fearless, and constant self observation.

So, let us observe ourselves fearlessly, especially when we play guitar, and see if we are focusing on the problem, or the solution. Is it our fears to which we give our attention, or are we thinking of and focusing on what we want? What we get [the results we get] will depend on the answer. “

Anyway, inspirational, for me at least. And I try to apply ‘Guitar Principles’ to other parts of my life.

[Boy, some people have bad hair days, I get bad spell days [everyday is a bad hair day, but I’m a guy, so who cares]. I’ve had to look up half of the words on this post…. *sheesh*].

Well, here we are at the end of this little Blog post….

This has been the subject of a few emails lately. Some of you may have noticed the Belkin surge protector in some of our pictures (what we call the Office Depot Special ).

Here is an example of an email that we received from a nice gentleman,

“I perused with interest your Audiophile’s Guide to the Galaxy. In your Power Conditioners, Isolators and Regenerators section, I noticed your following claim:

Typically power conditioners increase dynamics and lower background noise at the expense of microdynamics, emotion and that toe-tapping pacing, rhythm and timing.

I mean this very respectfully, but as an experienced audio / video technician and avid audio enthusiast, I can’t think of any reason why a power conditioner should have any negative effect on microdynamics, emotion, or pace, rhythm and timing. Perhaps you will be good enough to share with me what experience or impart on me that knowledge which has led you to this conclusion.

I enjoyed your web site and will certainly recommend it to others I know.”

First, we thank you sir for your kind words and question.

There are two answers to his main question.

The first is my preferred answer, which is:

* We have tried a number of power conditioners and by far the common result is that we, and many other people, consistantly hear these negative effects.

So, this is that good ole scientific method of performing repeatable experiments and observing the results, The important thing here is that the observation, the ‘measuring’, is done with the ears and not mechanical or electrical instruments.

If someone has the time and genius to create a phsycial model of why power conditioners do this, build the instruments to verify their model, perform the experiements and determine that yes, their model matches the evidence of what we *hear*, then that would be great.

It is this return to first principles, to common sense, that many people [for example those that will not hear differences in cables] we see post on the net fail to recognize in their pursuit of science as religion [you won’t find a more scientifically geeky couple than Neli and I - but true science knows that it does not know, it only hypothesizes testable, verifyiable and often quite useful models of how many things work - but models often need revising if the experimental data requires it, and there are not detailed models for EVERYthing out there yet - like cables and powercords and power conditioners… ], that somehow science, circa 2006, now knows ALL the answers, and if science can’t explain it, then it don’t happen.

So, in actuality, no one knows exactly WHY most power conditoners have this effect.

Eventually someone will figure it out.

But it might not be very satisfying.

For example, the sun warms our skin when we are outside. Why? Because (and I am paraphrasing, and probably not absolutely correct, but follow my point, if you will) the photons from the sun hit our skin, increasing the kinetic energy of the molecules floating around in the epidermous layer by converting the electromagnetic energy of the photon into mechanical energy of the molecule, which our nevrve endings interpret as ‘warmth’.

I beleive that is the model that best describes what happens in today’s scientific gargon, but there are both a lot of holes in the explanation [how is the energy actually transfered from that massless photon when it hits that wonking large molecule? All we can say now, is, that it does. The apples falls when we drop it because of gravity. Gravity is created by the Earth’s mass deforming 4D (or 11 or whatever) space. Why does mass deform space? It just does. ]

.. and it is not as satifying as one might want it to be, as say ‘the sun is sharing its life force with us’, and the real explanation is not often very useful in dealing with the situation: warm sunrays, gravity and power conditioner effect are really dealt with better in the common sense mode: wear sunscreen, don’t jump off tall buildings and don’t use power conditioner indiscriminately.

But, with all that out of the way, and with the reader now knowing full well that I am Making This Model Up - just like everybody else who is not performing real experiments [that can be verified, othrewise we will have them proving gravity does not exist, the sun is not warm, and power conditioners all work wonders].

And it is:

That power needs to be supplied to components as instantaneously as possible, and capacitors, usually found in Power Conditioners, even after being charged up for a few days, absorb charges while simultaneously being unable to release a charge fast enough, and in correct proportion to the request to compete with a straight wire, and also cannot be large enough to release a charge that is FREQUENTLY needed by larger components like amps. Same with coupled transformers.

When the component asks for more current, there is some delay and, primarily, dampening of the magnitude of response in electron flow coming from the wall. The PCs seem more inept at handling small ’spikes’ in the request stream that major spikes, so that often MACRO dynamics does not suffer as much, or may even be increased.

Hmmmm…. wonder if that was clear. It also helps explain (in my head if nowhere else ) why powercords work - they hold a resevoir of electrons ready to supply the component’s needs instantly.

Oh, and just to finish up, most Power Conditioners, being unable to respond instantaneously to demands for current, these small spikes, in order to render the more subtle details in music is what puts those more subtle details, microdynamics, emotion, at PRaT at risk.

Hope this helpssssss………

[The Shunyata Hydra, that we use here when we they are not out on audition - contrary to Robert Harley remark in this month’s TAS, is not a power conditioner - it is a power distributor. There is nothing in the path of the current getting from the wall to the component. BTW, also contrary to his assertion, the Pyython -sorry wordpress dies on the correct spelling - is not 98% of the Anaconda. No one, not us, nor anyone else would pay twice as much for a 2% improvement. We’re nuts but not NUTS]

I peaked at some of the other forums today…

I know, I know, I should know better.

Somebody pokes their head up to ask people to recommend tube amplifiers… I just imagine this person, afterwards, head fogging up, eyes going in circles…

I always wonder, should I post something? Like…

Buying an amp like this is like buying wine by what is the cheapest with the highest alcohol content.

OK, admit it, most of us HAVE bought wine this way (Mad Dog 2020 anyone?) , but we were young and stupid, or rather, young and desperate

But this is no way to buy an amp.

This approach gets people to the ASL Hurricane at $5K for 200 watts. It diesn’t help that HP says wacko things like “once in a decade an amplifier comes around that redefines state-of-the-art - this is such an amp”. He just forgot to mention ‘in the $5K price category’. Kind of missleading otherwise… Perhaps not a bad amp for $5K.

——

Then there is the ‘get the wine with the most alcohol, no matter the price’ folks.

OK, this what we looked for after we got our first job, … we wanted that EXPENSIVE rot-gut, right? Hmmmmm… hope I am not the only one who went through all these fazes of alcohol abuse …. And I can’t remember if Everclear goes into this category or the one previous…

This gets us the massive VTL, ARC, and BAT amps.

——

Next, a significant other may have stepped into the picture. Now we wanted something that was impressive, it no longer was REQUIRED to have the kick of a mule, and it needed a nice label and some nice flavor.

We may have tried orange schnaps, for example. Quickly to be replaced by Amaretto and Kahluha.Or great Port.

This might correspond to say, Cary, Joule Electra or Jadis amps.

Our significant others have to like THIS, right?

And they do, for the most part.

But it may grow old, after awhile, like eating ice cream for supper every night. [Of course, some of us LIKE eating ice cream every night… or pie ]

——

Next, we start looking at the GOOD stuff. Stuff that has enough character, but not too much character, to both entertain and astonish, but with subtlety, and in measured doses, containing enough mystery to not bore us right away yet enough truth to norish us.

The stuff that is considered good now, and will be considered good in 10 years, and, hopefully, in 50 years.

I wonder how many used-to-be audiophiles no longer count themselves among us, OD’ing on the bad stuff before they can find the good stuff?

I hope at least some of them get to the pie.

Still need to update the Tour photos…

But it was time to update the Equipment List.

Much of the text that we had there (and some of it still is there) was written in the first year of our store, some 4 years ago.

I had included stuff like This Magazines Award and That Magazines Award.

I thought I was sceptical at that time of the Reviewer community… hah! Now it is all but ludicrous.

I can just see the budding reviewer as a child on career day…

Politician? Reviewer? Politician? Reviewer?

Hey, at least it keeps them away from the nukes.

We try hard to ignore that part of the industry… really we do.

The equipment page was fun to redo - we have some cool stuff here - and some cool pics:

Audio Aero Capitole amplifier. The colors! More larger pics

The text describng our equipment here has a ways to go - to sort of migrate from the advertising copy approach which we kind of cut and pasted from various manufacturer’s copy to the “What Neli and Mike Think” approach.

For example:

Our Kharma Mini Exquisite loudspeaker. More larger pics.

What we say now is:

“The best 2-way speaker technically and perhaps the most magical 2-way as well.

Ours here, pictured at left, are in aubergine - which is kind of like an eggplant purple. Subtly hallucinogenic - just like the way they sound.

That 1.0 inch diamond tweeter provides an amazing amount of resolution, seemingly much more than the 3/4 inch, and it just seems to be able to project the music from the speaker into the listener’s head.”

This is all to say that the speaker functions excellently in a technical sense from the perspective of a listener compared to all other 2-way loudspeakers (for the sake of argument please ignore the ’stone knives and bearskins’ that J.A. et. al. use to measure sound quality).

It also is trying to say that there is something going on that is hard to describe, but revelatory and pleasurable - that the mind, while focused on and enjoying the very high resolution of the one inch diamond tweeter, is penetrated on other levels which at this time there are no words for.

So we call it magic. Or hallucinogenic. Or “don’t know what it is but I like it”.

It would be easy to kind of cop out and borrow lots of terminology from some religion or another, or Terrence McKenna, or New Age Hermetics, or…. .or Cheech and Chong.

But, although once in awhile borrowing phases from Star Trek TOS (which is simultaneously both tongue in cheek and strangely technically relevent), we try to avoid letting the ‘magic’ of muscial experience be drowned by the hyperbole, nomenclature, stifling hierarchical bureaucracy or consensual irrelevancies of these other pursuits.

We have our own hyperbole and consensual irrelevancies, thank you.

Oops, got side-tracked.

So, trying to explain each component we have here in a few words to someone checking out the list to see if we have something worthwhile listening to… What to say. What to say.

If they are just looking around at various dealers to hear what has received rave reviews - well, that is not going to narrow the list at all. Everything sounds great, haven’t you heard?

So, hopefully just putting down what we think is going on, in halting English, putting it out there - exposing our stumbling around in the dark, for everyone to see, as we try to figure out just WHAT this speaker, and a few other components here and there, do that is so darn AMAZING - that this will tempt people into comimg here to hear and experience the whatever-the-heck-it-is for themselves.

[Oh, and now I see in the TAS we just got that Wayne Garcia just raved the Mini Exquisites. Don’t know whether to giggle or scream. So I guess I’ll just go to bed. G’night everybody.]

[P.S. Hope everyone had a peaceful night. The problem with a rave reviews from most reviewers is that it puts a potentially really great speaker or component on the same level as all the mediocre speakers and components that the reviewer also gave rave reviews to.

Yes, many dealers just point to the recommended lists in Stereophile and TAS and grunt a little - and so random raves do spread the sales around to a wide variety of products - but it does a disservice to the consumer interested in the sound of their equipment. Why must this industry treat audiophiles like ‘marks’ at a carnival - like they were just wallets and purses with credit cards for arms, industry sanctioned ‘recommeded lists’ for eyes, and without any ears? We can do better.]

But before we switch to the RMAF Show channel….

The reason people have so many problems with upgrading their systems in an orderly fashion is due to a lack of discipline…

We are all human… and being responsible for upgrading our systems, our human frailties impact the result.

1. Something is wrong… which component is doing the stinky? You, Sir CD Player, ARE the Weakest Link. [Human managed SA Optimization]

2. Someone else’s system sounds better in some way…. What can we purloin from their system to make ours as good in this way as theirs. Pardon me Sir, can you spare a Pair of 300B tube-based Single-ended Triode monoblock amplifiers? [Human managed Genetic Algorithm]

3. There is a sound that you dream about, a sound that is the ultimate sound. . You know what you want, and you, all the time, search and think about how to get there. Imagine if you will (and we all do), a music that is so pure, it takes your problems and makes mincemeat of them; so intricate and self-consistant it reduces reality to a charactercher of itself; … sound of thunder, speed of lightning, …. welcome to… the ‘Upgrade Zone’. [Goal directed A*Star Optimal Path Searching Algorithm]

Anyway, part of recognizing these approaches for what they are and looking at the correspondingly more disclipined, algorithmic apporaches is to try and prevent us from making as many natual human mistakes when we upgrade our system, to achieve a more gratifying result.

OK. Lots more to say - but for now… Hope you all enjoyed…