RMAF 2009 – Rocky Mountain Audiofest – and Show Reporting
OK.
I am not sure what good it will do. And it is not like I think the entire Audiophile press is corrupt – which I don’t.
But we have been the only ones doing a show report that talks about the sound for a long time – and, like the very very few honest news programs out there that have actual real facts [you know, from Reality] and lots of bad news – people just do not know what to think about our ‘odd man out’ show report so to speak .
I think the parallel is the Miss America contest [or Miss Universe, or Mr. Universe for that matter, although Schwarzenegger in his day was the clear winner]. An audio show for 99% of the press and attendees is a Miss Universe contests with no ‘talent competition’.
She walks out in a bathing suit, people vote on looks and their preferred measurements, and that is it.
At an audio show, people vote for what they think sounds best with respect to their preferences. That’s it. A beauty contest that is all about the eye of the beholder.
It is like a car magazine where everyone takes a test drive and they all vote based on appearance and their experience about which is the best car. Who cares to talk about what the car will be used for. Or safety. Or reliability. Or price/performance. Or suitability for the average person. Or maintenance costs.
It is a very shallow ‘opinion’ by someone with no vested interest – they will not have to marry Miss America nor purchase the car with their hard earned money.
Yeah, so maybe the press is populated by shallow people and shallow people read what they write and all is as it should be in a shallow world.
So where is the place for people like us, and I sincerely hope, some of you?
People who want to know what is the best – REALLY, HONEST TO GOD. People who want them ranked and their weaknesses and strengths pointed out in a clear, straight forward manner.
I mean, audio is so much easier than cars. A car might be ruled out by many people because the driver’s seat is just too uncomfortable for some unknown reason, that the head room is just 1/2 inch too low, the suspension is just a wee bit too stiff.
Things like this is audio: the speakers too heavy to get up the stairs, the design requires too much space and your room is too small, whatever are easy and obviosu for us all to deal with AFTER we know which is the better speaker and which is not.
Given a kind of an average over types of sound, a sound that is not so over the top in some areas that it will be off-putting to most people, what room sounds the best. It will have very high if not the highest marks in what makes a good sound reproducing system – and doesn’t do anything so bad that invalidates all the other high scores.
——————————
OK. Two thought experiments.
1.
Imagine an art show occurring in the Marriott. Each room has works by a single artist.
The press does not know the names of the artists. One of the rooms has a few unknown pieces by Picasso, a few unknown by Leonardo Da Vinci and the rest of the 100 rooms or so have art by local artists, some of which advertise in the magazines the press represents – so they are familiar with and know the artists and recognize their work.
Who gets best of show? What percentage give best of show to Picasso and/or Leonardo?
2.
Same art show. The names of the artists are posted on the doors to each room.
Who gets best of show. What order are the best of shows after the first 2?
—————————–
What does this mean?
It means that show reports are by and large useless [and I would expand this blanket statement to reviews as well].
The only cases where they are useful is when a reporter (when they have the ability to understand what they are experiencing) gets really excited about something they see [hey , that local artist COULD be the next Picasso].
As someone who came from the outside, thinking that as press I should report an accurate and honest account of what things sound like, well, I was the first one at the time (and I was clumsy and inexperienced) – and still the only one now.
A lot of people read the show reports, but they do not really like hearing bad news. Those real new channels only get 1%(?) of the listeners, and that is for presumably the same reason. Sure, I could accuse all the bad sounding rooms of being terrorists – and probably get my own cable channel – but I doubt if I could do it and keep from cracking up [laughing I mean :-)] at the blatant absurdity of this world.
So, do I continue bring bad news to people about how things really sound? It is not really ‘bad’, it is just that there is usually some bad and some good and some ho hum. It is not all BEST EVER like people have been trained to expect by the press.
Or do I put the real poop here in the blog, and let the masses see and learn about what is at the show without any independent coverage on Spintricity? I do like helping the ‘small guy’ get the word out – one of the reasons I do not talk much about the sound in their rooms unless it is actually better than expected – and this approach of segregating the show report would probably help them….as Spintricity show reports would probably get even more visitors that would then see the small guy’s wares.
A little rambling, I know.
But, as you might expect, this is a subject that I think about quite a bit.
————————
Summarizing:
*Preferences of the reporter have no place in a real show report – some sound is REALLY better and some is not for 90% of the listening public
*99% of the Press does not do their job
*Every system has some things it does not do perfectly
*Most people do not like to be reminded of reality
*Some people, however, will suffer facts in order to make informed buying decisions.
*All people are so inundated with lies and hype that they do not know what to believe
*Our show reports, now on Spintricity, is the only one [although Stereophile does darn good] to cover the small manufacturers
Our goals are two-fold: bringing audiophiles and manufacturers together (especially small ones, Musical Fidelty does not need our help). And to help our readers make informed buying decisions.
Perhaps these are best served by bifurcating the show report, putting analysis here on the blog, and leaving Spintricity to focus on helping connect audiophiles with cool equipment.
Opinions anyone?
These candid comments and observations are sincerely appreciated; and, I agree with pretty much most of them. However, I think it would be difficult to exercise such objectivity. For example, in regard to the preferences of a given reporter, that would be a tall order. IMO, it’s difficult to be 100% objective. While I try to be as objective as possible, my “sense” or “senses” of objectivity is oft colored — no pun intended — by my music/sound predilection.
Thus, in short, I think it’s acceptable to have “some” level of preferences, but the reporter should state those up-front so the readers can read with a point of reference. I definitely agree there are a lot of great gear and a lot of bad gear out there, but the ones in the middle are the ones that are difficult to ascertain. While some gear are certainly better than others, I think, more often than not, listeners just prefer one to another (be it music, sound).
Just my two pesos worth of opinion…
Ken
Hi Ken,
Thanks for your insightful comments. Yes, there are two things: what listeners think of as good and what the press reports as good.
There is a lot more to say about listeners and what they think they like 🙂 They get so little guidance from those who have learned several lessons the hard way that they might as well flip a coin.
Take an example from the art world.
As we bought art off and on [much cheaper than audio gear :-)] at first we bought art that looked good to us in the gallery – and when we got it home it was OK. But we didn’t really think about what it would be like to Live With It as opposed to how nice it was to look at for a few minutes in a gallery. This is a hard lesson to learn.
The second lesson from the art world, some art is nice to live with – for awhile. Then one gets tired of it. It’s cuteness or bright colors or whatever that attracted us to it did not wear well over time. The ability to pick out art that will continue to communicate new variations of whatever the piece communicates – year after year – this is another hard lesson to learn.
There is a lot more to all this. But let’s look at the press. Yes, being objective is harder than falling off a log. But not that much harder. This is not politics or … art even. It is much easier.
At a show. You go into a room. Macro dynamics. Is is better than average? Its the big Focal speakers. Yes it is. Is it natural? It is a big custom horn. No it is not.
How about the midi-dynamics. Micro-dynamics. Harmonics. Decay. Resolution. Soundstaging. Imaging. Transparency. Naturalness [aka HP’s Absolute Sound] even.
So one can specify if this is a good system on an absolute scale, and then on a scale based on the average system at the given price point [perhaps even subdividing into which major speaker technology is being used].
For example the Acoustic Technologies speaker system at CES. Midi-dynamics were very good, fairly linear across the important frequencies, with micro dynamics average and harmonic color slightly above average. For a speaker at $2,500 this was very good need and got one of our best of shows.
Another speaker, very expensive, very popular, with very large expensive solidstate amps from… Switzerland I believe, sounded cold with truncated decays, it was a little bright on several different songs. The separation was poor. I did not give this best of show. But many of the so-called independent objective press did. I would prefer the Acoustic Technologies system and, if they were the same price – so would everyone, especially one’s spouses and children. 🙂
Take care,
Mike.