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 🙂

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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.

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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….