Noticed a lack of response to our lists of Bests and Most Respected…

Is it because:

1. Everyone is overwhelmed with 100 pages of 10 referenda per page voting materials?

2. Everyone agrees 100% with the lists of Best and Most Respected we have proposed?

3. Everyone does not know why the heck we are even talking about this?

To try and clear up those who classify themselves firmly with #3 above…

We have talked over and over about how different people are seeking different kinds of sound: Druglike [me :-)], Boy Toy [boom and sizzle], Gee whiz [cool tech, often related to Boy Toy], Enjoyable, etc.

We all have components sometimes that we love so much we expect to be buried with them… but as often as not, these components do not actually match our sonic preferences. Strange… but oh so true.

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OK. Now let’s pick on everyone’s favorite [at least it was 6 months ago] speaker d’jour, the Magico Q5.

What if…

This prototypical Gee Whiz speaker was paired with front-end equipment and made to sound… sweet (say)? Or Enjoyable? Or Druglike?

In my experience and to a large degree, this is indeed possible.

What if when an audiophile went into a dealership, and was looking for the Q5, they were presented with several systems with this speaker: with one sounding Enjoyable, one Druglike, one Boy Toy-like?

Then they could hear what the speaker sounds like in systems 1) designed to show off various strengths of the speaker and 2) with a sound that appeals directly to their particular preferences [assuming their preferences lie pretty squarely in the Enjoyable, Druglike, or Boy Toy-like sound categories].

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OK. Back to the lists of Best and Most Respected.

The idea here is that when people come in looking for a product, say ‘X’, to be able to be able to show them, not a system thrown together to kind of sound ‘OK’ [usually a boom and sizzle Boy Toy] that happens to have ‘X’ as a component, but to show off ‘X’ in its best light, in fact in several different ‘best lights’.

This is opposite to the unethical well-worn cross-sell strategy where you show off ‘X’ in its WORST light in order to sell them ‘Y’ instead.

This is also different from the optimal strategy of trying to illuminate the audiophile about what components out there match their sonic preferences. Teaching is thankless job #1 in all the universe.

Here, we go ahead and sell them ‘X’ [or encourage them to keep ‘X’], which they actually seem to want [people often being reviewer- and forum-driven in their decision making process and get pretty damn convinced], and at the same time show them how to get the most out of it in a way that suits their individual taste.

For a more concrete example, say an audiophile is like me, they want a druglike sound, but they also want the Magico Q5, being impressed, like me, with the build-quality and design approach. Instead of just sending them home with the Q5, having them be unhappy because their current system does not generate a druglike sound using the Q5, and all that wonderful information on the web is geared toward, guess what?, making Boy Toy sounds with the Q5 – we show them an actual druglike system with the Q5 – they go home happy knowing they can have the Q5 *AND* the sound they actually like.

Are all speakers [or amps, or…] created equally able to be Boy Toyish, or Druglike, or Sweet? Not exactly, but perhaps more so than is commonly portrayed.

Can all be made to be druglike, or Enjoyable, or Boy Toys? If you spend enough money I am certain the answer is yes. [Otherwise, it takes a lot of work and experimentation, which might cost the same in the end]

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OK, back to the lists.

The idea is that, for cost no object systems, a person can actually purchase a component somewhat unsuited to their actual tastes [because they just freaking want to – i.e. they are a common, garden-variety human being], and still achieve a system sound that they really like [if they tailor the rest of the system, accordingly].

The lists, then, are the superset of all components that people either 1) want, or 2) need in order to get the sound they desire from the components they want.

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Hope this helps explain what the Best/Most Respected lists are about anyway…

This chain of logic is actually just common sense, if somewhat audacious and kind of upside down to the way people usually think about all this … 🙂

Hedge Funds, Investor Groups buying high-end audio manufacturers? Why? As an investment [do they know something we do not?] or as a hobby [trying to relive their 2nd, or like me, their 19th childhoods?].

I believe ARC, Krell, and Sonus Faber are in this category.

Then a few weeks ago Focal bought [reading between the lines] Naim.

Can we blame these troubles on the ipod? I saw a stat that 16 billion songs have been bought on itunes. That is 16 billion dollars that could have bought a decent system or two – but probably would have gone into CDs a decade ago.

Cisco, of all companies, conducted a survey of our youth and they would rather hang out on the internet than go on a date and rather own a smart phone than a car. That old ‘pendulum’ has swung kind of far from where it was when I was young[er].

Who knows what the future brings, but right now the sector of the market that was setup to be attractive to college students probably isn’t doing very well.

On the other hand, our part of the market, the ultra, uber, stratospheric part of the market is doing OK [would do better if so many people weren’t ‘short’ America deliberately trash talking the economy for personal gain (most large corps are reporting a bettering economy, and even the real-estate market locally is picking up, albeit our home here is still unsold – hint, hint :-).].

As for high-end audio ‘for the rest of us’ [get it? This is Apple’s old slogan], something like a wireless system headed by an iPad with DAC and Amps in the speakers might be ‘cool’ to the next generation [now Neli tells me that something like this was also proposed on c|net earlier today], the generation who will not know what to do with a CD and more than they know what to do with an LP.

… and those hedge funds must be doing this as a hobby – or a write-off – or are looking at a awfully long time-frame which has that pendulum swing back…… back to where we are 🙂

Some music genres are more dependent on various kinds of musical fidelity more than they are other kinds. If one listens primarily to one, or just a few, genres one may be able to get away with a system that has less fidelity overall, and cost a lot less.

It is always true that the more fidelity the better, but these are tough times, and sometimes we gotta do what we gotta do. For example, two of the genres we talked about last time, Folk and Opera, to not need deep tight bass as much as most other genres.

This can be looked at from multiple angles. The post will take one approach. Please feel free to correct or augment.

< --- LESS important ---- MORE important --->

Folk
deep bass, tight bass, dynamics… resolution in the voice band, harmonic richness in the voice band

Reggae
high resolution, high frequencies… PRaT, harmonic richness in the voice band, dynamics and resolution in the percussive band,tight mid bass, deep very dynamic bass

New Age, Some Electronica
deep bass, dynamics, tight bass, …. harmonic richness, harmonic and frequency resolution

Rap
harmonic richness, harmonic and frequency resolution (just enough to make the snare drum listenable, or, conversely, roll off the frequencies in the snare drum region) … dynamics, deep tight bass.

Rock & Roll
[demands seem to be even across all audiophile attributes, however, uber fidelity in any attribute does not lend as much improvement as the uber fidelity would in several other genres – because the recording qualities are typically low]

Orchestra
Deep bass… [everything else is pretty important]

Choral
Deep bass, dynamics… harmonic and frequency resolution [love when the voices resolve into individual voices]

Organ Music
Frequency resolution… harmonic resolution, deep bass

Jazz Fusion
Deep bass, tight bass… dynamic, harmonic and frequency resolution [Jazz fusion can easily become a mish mash without enough resolution]

3 or 4-piece Jazz, Simple Pop
[everything] … harmonic resolution.

By harmonic resolution we mean tonal richness and accuracy – approaching the Real.
By frequency resolution we mean loudness accuracy
By dynamic resolution we mean that notes reach their loudness level in a realistic, true-to-life fashion.

The idea then is to say, well, I am on a budget and I mostly play New Age , so I do not *need* deep tight bass, so I can get smaller speakers, smaller amps, a high-resolution amp [as opposed to a beefy one], clear sounding cables and sources [as opposed to those that are designed to hide, smother atrocities in other parts of the system].