Audiophile Best of 2011
This will be a sort of overview of the most popular posts here on the blog this last year.
Another way to visualize the sonic signature of a system
More ways to make sure we are all talking about the same things when we use audiophile terminology.
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What are we hearing and what are we describing and what are we talking about – are they really the same thing? or three different things?
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Another view on magazine reviews:
Magazine Reading with Jaded Eyes
“Now, when I see a review, I think “cool, somebody is getting some positive press”. I mean, you know it is going to be positive, right? No reason to read the review. When I saw that the Edge G6 amp got reviewed in HiFi+, I thought “Good for Steven and the Edge factory, they got some positive press”. When I see the new Evolution Acoustics monitor speakers highlighted on the first page of the HiFi+ CES Show Report, I think “Good for Jonathan Tinn”. No reason to read the actual comments or reviews – they really do not matter. It is not like they are going to try and accurately place the sound of the piece under review in the context of its peers, the available associated amp [if speaker] and speaker [if amp] and with respect to the other components in its product line.
I am not sure what the next step is in my consumption of trade magazines.
But it probably ain’t gonna be pretty”
A year later, it is evolving to add some kind of respect for the talented lobbying capability of a few manufacturers/distributors. Nope, not pretty.
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Wilson Alexandria X-2 speakers
Well received positive review of the Wilson Audio Alexandria II.2 – a real contender in the $150K or so loudspeaker market.
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Audio Note CDT-5 transport and Fifth Element DAC observations
Not sure how popular this post was, actually, but this equipment had such a profound effect on my personal perspective on high-end audio I have to include it here.
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John Barnes passed away this year. He is, to a very large degree, Audio Federation’s inspiration. We will ALWAYS miss him, especially here in Denver, where he had such a large impact.
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Audio Adviser, Music Direct, Acoustic Sounds… the big time… or last gasp?
This is still an open question. The big, BIG money says CDs, DVDs, LPs, local stores, are all dead, replaced by streaming [download] media. Convenience Trumps Quality yet again.
But…
Quality of life issues. Service beyond that provided by a megacorp. The social element of listening to music with other people. All these indicate that real world high-end audio still has a life beyond this, yet another massive change to how the public listens to music.
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“I guess the whole point here is that this is really fringe behavior – where established brands are not treated any different than brand new ones, where the pedigree of the designers is not examined very closely, where products are not compared to each other so it remains this real mystery about just how good something really is.
On the other hand, of course, this is a lot of the charm of this industry too. Kind of the wild west with a lot of wild characters doing wild and crazy things. I have no problem keeping it wild, just so long as we all kind of understand and appreciate just how wild and crazy things really are.”
A rambling post but the end seems to be coherent enough and is perhaps a good perspective on how capitalism is supposed to work [albeit with perhaps a much more diligent and more passionate press] – no player is so large [and the ones that are large enough, like Harmon Intl., apparently play fair] that they can squash the smaller competition by forced takeovers, lawyer terrorism [i.e. false accusations to bankrupt the competition], selling below cost to capture the market, or massive marketing campaigns.
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There is an extremely large number of people who like both high-end audio and this site dedicated to used vinyl and the prices they went for on eBay.
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Our post on Comcast was largely misunderstood. Essentially, Comcast, with its extremely poor quality ‘Basic Service’ cable TV, which presumably 80-90% of people who watch TV use, is hastening the demise of TV. It is as if Microsoft was still pushing Vista [instead of the much better Windows 7], and was in fact continuing to make it worse, thereby speeding up the transition to tablets and phones from desktop computers. In other words, a monopoly, Comcast, is killing one of its monopolies in its hurry to make the transition and be a monopoly of THAT [streaming]. [Netflix is doing the same thing, abandoning its monopoly in DVD rentals to move completely to streaming video, wanting to focus its energies on the future, hoping to be at least a dominant player if not a monopoly – causing some amount of consternation for those who are still happy with the old way of watching movies by playing DVDs].
Fine. Cable and Broadcast TV is dead.
With Google TV, you can play any movie on the net – including YouTube, Netflix and Amazon, and music, and the spec calls for SPDIF out. IF we actually get SPDIF out then we can run sound into a audiophile-quality DAC/pre/amp/speakers. For those who, for whatever, reason, do not want to figure out what software to use and what PC card to use and to spend the several months required to burn their CDs onto a desktop hard disk, a monthly subscription to Spotify, or Pandora, etc will work just fine – IF we can get digital out
“From what we’ve seen, several major manufacturers will debut Android powered HDTVs that feature little to no Google TV 2.0 design elements. We’re not sure how much Google TV underpins these smart TVs, but the majority of what we’ve seen has been labeled as Android TV, not Google TV.
The companies debuting smart TVs at CES are seemingly determined to get the jump on Apple this time around. If Apple is in fact releasing a smart HDTV product in 2012, these companies will be ready with their own models built around Android. Ironically, since there are several such TVs coming from different manufacturers, the smart TV market might collapse prematurely under the weight of half-baked models all trying to outdo an Apple HDTV that doesn’t even exist yet.”
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CD/SACD Player Shootout: EMM Labs XDS1 versus Esoteric K-01
A recent Shootout here on the blog that was quite popular. Although the owner of the system in this shootout did prefer the XDS1 overall, he still has his K-01, and is instead spending his efforts on upgrading the cables in his system to ones similar to those used in the shootout, figuring this was the way [and we agree] to get the biggest ‘bang/improvement for the buck’.
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So, that was 2011. We also updated the look of the Blog, as well as added galleries to the main site. So, although the summer was quieter than usual, it, overall, was a very busy year here on the Hifier blog.
Maybe at the end of 2012 we will post a post similar to this – but maybe post it on 12/20/12… You know. Just in case? 🙂
