Relativism is the name given to the idea that whether a thing is good or bad is entirely dependent on a person’s point of view.

That there is no Absolute better and worse, no Absolute good and evil.

Relativism is most often used by people who are trying to push their particular point of view in order that they can make more money and gain more power. [it is my opinion that good people resort to relativism only because they are insufficiently schooled at rhetoric and are unable to argue the case convincingly – no matter if their case is Absolutely right].

Relativistic reviewers feel justified recommending every single piece of equipment as the ‘best’ saying that it will be the best for ‘somebody’ out there, so why not. The fact that they think it stinks means nothing, its just their personal preference.

OK. Some examples:

JV: arc-ref-610-vs-vtl-siegfried-800

And I quote:

“I’m not quite sure what is irrelevant about pointing out that even back in the day there was no single best, which is the point i was making about the VTL and the ARC amps. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that i got the VTL Siegfrieds and compared them to the ARC 610Ts. You already know how I feel about the 610Ts–I prefer their neutrality, their luminousness, their bloom, their naturalness to any other tube amp I’ve heard in my home or at shows. For the sake of argument, let’s say that I continued to prefer the ARC 610Ts’ presentation to that of the VTL Siegfrieds, at least on Magico and MartinLogan loudspeakers, my question is: So fucking what? Who appointed me King of the Audiophiles? Who appointed Pearson King? or Cordesman? “

Besides the fact that luminousness and bloom is just not the ARC’s forte, ARCs are better amps than VTL for everything but the ultimate “I don’t care about anything else but raw nuclear-strike level macro-dynamics” Boy Toy systems.

Based on JVs comments in that thread, and the rooms he likes at RMAF 2010, I would say that he prefers a cross between Boy Toy and Practical systems [i.e. big loud systems that you can kind of casually listen to music on].

From the relativistic point of view, JV is off in his own personal universe and his preferences mean nothing to anybody else but him.

From the absolutist point of view, he currently prefers a particular type of categorizable system and his preferences are completely valid for all other people looking for that kind of system, as well as to those off us who can write off his preferences because we are NOT interested in that type of system. In fact, the more he talks about his preferences and what he likes, the MORE useful it is for absolutists.

Another example:

Jacob Heilbrunn: vtl-siegfried-power-amplifier-75-series-ii-preamplifier

A couple of quotes:

“It was wide open, passing a tremendous amount of information—the most that I have heard from any preamplifier, excepting the Messenger, which passes a pinch more. Once again the VTL trademarks were there: an extremely dynamic, transparent, and fast sound. No part of the frequency spectrum was unduly emphasized, but the presentation was far from the traditional tube one. Lovers of a more romantic sound will find the 7.5 to be too stark and neutral. I didn’t. The verve and zest, the dynamic power and scale with which it reproduced music made it hard to fault”

I am not familiar with Jacob’s writing. Some of this is reviewer CYA speak, some of it is [sometimes I think deliberate] inexperience.

“the most I have heard from any preamplifier” – this is Absolutist-speak but using relativism to cover his ass. Does the casual reader know just what preamps Jacob HAS heard? [No. They interpret this as an absolute comparison with the ENTIRE WORLD of preamps – this is a reviewer for gawd sakes, they know and have heard everything! – this pre has the mostest].

Jeez, a treasure trove of reviewer-speak here:

“Lovers of a more romantic sound will find the 7.5 to be too stark and neutral. I didn’t.”

The first sentence is vacuously true for any amp: Lovers of a more romantic sound than what amp X is able to provide will find amp X too stark and neutral. The ‘hint’ is that the VTL is stark and neutral. The “I didn’t” is to move the statement from any absolutest conclusion into the relativist’s personal preference domain. He, the all-knowing all-powerful reviewer writing the review did not find the amps too start and neutral, which tends to call out lovers of more romantic sounds as having personal preferences that are somewhat ‘abnormal’.[this is reiterated and confirmed later on in this review where he also later devolves into referencing the trumped up small tube / large tube/ solid state wars].

Not picking on Jacob in particular; this is how 99% of reviewers absolve themselves of any responsibility for describing what things really sound like and moving all observations firmly from any tint of absolutism over into the subjective relativism domain.

In fact, the VTL is NOT overly stark and neutral. Their sound has a dark veil over the harmonics [maybe that is what stark means?], little or no micro-dynamic capability, has difficulties with note decay and other things that are off-putting to lovers of these other, critical, parts of the music. It is not their use of any particular technology, which so many relativists would have you believe, that is off-putting to people who do not favor these amps over some others.

“There are few other tubed amplifier in production that can challenge its dynamic sweep.”

Now, this statement in the concluding paragraph goes the other direction. Making an absolutist statement, but coaching it in so many qualifiers that it is near useless.

I think one can safely say that “This amp is currently lord of macro-dynamics.” [referring only to home audio amps and not the monsters at, say, the Stone’s concerts!]. Just tell people what it sounds like. This way, if someone really wants macro-dynamics above all else, they can get these amps and be very, very happy. Dealers are happy, the reviewer is happy, VTL is happy. But with these reviews obfuscating the situation with his personal preferences this, and your personal preferences that and referencing tube vrs solid-state wars and etc. the review is just confusing to most people who are trying to figure out what amp to buy.

The point here is then that personal preferences can be categorized into just a few absolute kinds of system sound [a simplification, yes but a very useful simplification, like many, many other models of reality we use everyday], and equipment can be described using language that refers to its absolute good better best for each [limited set of] attributes of sound, and with respect to the kinds of system(s) that the equipment is targeted at.

Does Love == Micro-dynamics?

No.

Well, maybe I should not speak for the rest of you on that point…

I think micro-dynamics is one of the more obvious things you hear on a system that is able to render the fine details of individual notes.

Uh Oh. I feel a couple of Photoshop picture graphs coming on…

But before we have to go there…

Is the ability to render fine details of individual notes REQUIRED for a drug-like sound? I.E. we should ask ourselves whether they are truly Necessary, and whether they are Sufficient.

The answer to whether it is sufficient is, I think no, not entirely, based on the idea in previous comments that there must be some amount of ‘truth’ in at least some part of the music that sounds real enough to get the rational part of the mind to shut up about how stupid all of this is. Like Jim says “Something that takes your attention away from what is wrong and to focus on what is right”.

We see this all the time: people HAVE to have lots of realistic dynamics, or soundstaging, or imaging, or harmonics. That is THEIR particular thing that their brain demands [assuming they are being truly introspective and not just parroting something they read in a forum]

The idea is to give the rational part of our brain something to chew so it will allow us to then tailor the rest of the music for our more imaginative part of the brain – stuff that the brain can start free-associating with [and generate interesting and transformative ‘experiences’]

I think micro-dynamics are just slightly more well-defined inner-details. I think that these fine details ARE necessary for transformative experiences because I think it is in the complex patterns and messages of music that all the magic lies.

First, fine details of a note are found in its harmonic transitions, frequency transitions and dynamic transitions – and it is these complex transitions that communicate Information, and of course, we then can add all the information created by the interplays between these things within the note – and all the interplays with all the other notes….

For example, think of a word in a song sung by Neil Young, or Sinead O’Conner, or any expressive singer. Or any child. The fine details of the word, as it is spoken, transmit TONS of information to us [we learn to hide this as we grow older, not wanting to publicly broadcast what we are really thinking this way.]

If our systems cannot reproduce a sufficient level of fine detail, then all singers sound like politicians… fake. [and some singers always will anyway, they are just not all that good at this].

Second: A lurker on this blog [hi F! :-)] talked to Neli today about how quiet backgrounds were synonymous, necessary, or at least related to micro-dynamics [Hey, she’s my wife. You can never get a clear concise message from your spouse. It’s a law ;-)]. I thought about F’s speakers and realized that lower noise floors do help on those, and, looking at the extreme cases of lots of noise and no noise, a lower noise floor helps on all speakers.

Given any system then, a lower noise floor will help us to better hear any micro-dynamics that the system is capable of. For some systems this might be all that is required. Their design is sufficiently adequate that it may only take a slightly better cable to lower the noise floor enough to bring out quite a bit of fine details. However, other systems may never have appreciable micro-dynamics because there are just too many design decisions in that system that are going in the other direction – mostly amp designs that try to hide detail because they think some people will see it as ‘bright’ because detail on solid state is often bright, or because they just suck at their job [I Love the ’50 First Dates’ movie :-)] and speakers designs that are way too hard to drive with cones that just can’t respond to such subtle changes within notes, they can barely respond to the massive ones without requiring a billion watts to do it.

So.

The greater the ability to render fine details of notes, the greater the number complex patterns that our mind can use to our benefit. The lower the noise floor the better we will be able to hear those fine details.

Next… pictures?

Next… the various kinds of ‘messages’ found in the complex patterns of music

Can’t find the previous post on this topic, several years ago, but I did find our ‘coming out’ story on our experiences with the Marten Coltrane Supreme speakers at CES 2006…

A funny thing happened on planet Abraxas

and a description of a related more ephemeral experience:

More on Number 4 Setup of the Powercord Shootout

The background idea is that our brain organizes things using relationships between these things and that all these billions of relationships form lots of patterns. The music we listen to also has lots of patterns, and when these two patterns resemble each other enough, the patterns in the brain are ‘excited’. We perceive the excitation of these brain patterns in various ways, and some of these are what I think is the ‘drug-like’ experience we get from music.

A visual pattern for the months of the year.

I think we all organize the world into patterns; patterns in 2D [heights of family members in an atomic family] and 3D space [mountains are larger than molehills], of color, texture, sound, … moving things,… using various values of attributes that we are familiar with through our 5 senses [bright versus dim, red versus orange,. sharp versus dull….]. Studies of extreme debilitating versions of this is apparently called Synesthesia.

[For myself, the colors of the calendar here are pretty close – but colors do not play a large part in my mental patterns for months (but my patterns for various people does use colors). However, for me, the months are rectangular, like a sidewalk; my head is also close to the current month, facing slightly ahead of the current week, and I think there is a characteristic note (of a specific frequency and duration) associated with each month, I just haven’t worked out quite what it is yet since I never really thought about it until now].

The point here is that the patterns in the brain do NOT have to be sonic patterns in order to resonate with the patterns in music, they just have to be related in some structural way. Our brains are good at matching patterns that are similar but not exact matches for each other, as in ‘you look just like this other bloke I know’ [but of course he does not look exactly like the bloke you know, he only ‘reminds’ you of him, otherwise you would ask him what the hell is he doing here at this Justin Bieber concert too?].