by Michael

We Are Not Your Typical Dealership

This confuses the hooey out of some people in the industry – especially those who are salespeople who are only mildly interested in audio.

“What?!?!? You mention brands of audio equipment on your website that you don’t even sell?” “You tell people that there are pieces of equipment that you don’t sell that they should consider buying? Are you nuts??!!”

Ignoring the literal interpretation of nuts for the sake of argument…

We are not here to push equipment on people. We don’t do the lie, cheat, cajole, threaten, intimidate, techno-babble rag to make people buy something. We don’t like it when it gets done to us, and we bet our customers don’t like it when it gets done to them either.

We ARE here to help people build systems that they love and that they can grow with.

Sometimes this takes awhile – everybody has a different word for, say, detal, and everyone thinks transparency means something different from what everyone else thinks it means. It would be kind of funny if it weren’t so tragic.

But eventually we do determine what each person’s personal preferences are, and make recommendations about how they can get where they want to go, either step-by-step, component-by-component, or as a compleete system upgrade.

And, yes, we have to admit it, we do indeed carry some of the world’s most consistantly state-of-the-art equipment – each of our components provide a sound that is the best-in-category solution to several different types of sonic preferences – and which have little, if any, deliterious …side-effects.

But we don’t carry everything.

It a customer wants bottom end slam, and that is all they want – and they don’t care about any … side-effects… then we would probably recommend a Krell or VTL amplifier – they are some of the very best at this in our opinion. No we don’t carry these lines and never will – too many people (including us!) want something more than just slam. [And besides, on a near-perfect vibration-controlled system, the Lamm ML2.1 or high-gain Audio Note Kegon will provide as much slam, in a much more realistic manner, on many if not most loudspeakers – that is for all kinds of bass except that originally generated by the muscians using electronics for, say, techno – which we love but it is only one genre we love of many].

What are our preferences?

Our personal preferences, as always, are that we want everything. From Impressive to Magic. Lots and lots of everything.

We run our systems, when they are tuned just for our ears, with very low-profile tires, close-to-the-metal, red-lining the performance so that it is as real as possible without being too neutral sounding, as much slam as possible without overloading the room or causing an unbalanced presentation, as much detail as possible without the midrange calling undue attention to itself, etc., etc., etc., etc.

Neli feels like we may be leaving too many people behind, as we continue to optimize the systems as we try more and more pieces from all over the world that increase the performance a little bit more here and a little bit more over there….

However, I think that people want somebody who is going the same way they are (no, not to the loony bin, we are all already there! :-)) and want someone they can talk to about what each of these optimizations do so that they can decide which one is right for themselves at this time – and which ones might be right next month, or next year.

In any case, this will hopefully give our readers an idea of WHY we have the Audiophile’s Guide to the Galaxy, and Show Reports that talk about the sound and don’t just gawk at the pretty things, and this Blog that talks about the different purposes of different systems and components and how each of us wants a different balance and therefore different components – and the rest of our ever-evolving ever-expanding Audio Federation website.

And hopefully this will give our readers an idea of why WE are here.

in High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / Philosophy 0 comments
 by Michael

One great thing Monster Cable has done for all of us…

There was a letter to the editor in this month’s The Absolute Sound that was a little off center (Nothing new, that. Magazines like bizarre letters – it entertains readers and attracts attention to their magazine… like this Blog entry :-)).

One of the things this letter decried was that there were ads for $K cables in high-end audio magazines and this might turn off newcomers to our little hobby here.

Well, for one, ads do not often list prices – and I am sure most readers not familiar with our little eccentricities would think cables go for around $100 – $500 or so.

Why?

Because in every audio store from here to there a Monster Cable exhibit proudly displays what most people think is the best cable in the world. Monster Cable has worked hard to condition people to accept that they can pay a little more and get a better (Monster) cable. I think there are very few people anymore (outside some audiophile loonie bins) that think lamp cord is the best that can be done these days.

So, see?

That is what they have done for us. Made us all seem a little less weird to normal folk.

Oh, and I like this quote from the letter:

“These people are trying to sell me power cords for hundreds of dollars ”

Yeah. Right. If only.

Most of the TAS letters to the editor, along with responses by the TAS glitterati, are posted on the web.

“Life. Nature’s way of keeping meat fresh”. A quote from tonight’s new Dr. Who. [Shades of Douglas Adams, whut?]

in High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / Humor / Philosophy 0 comments
 by Michael

How to read and understand ludicrous equipment reviews

It has been our experience that most people who claim to not be audiophiles do ‘have ears’, as they say. From all walks of life, all sexes, they all can hear warmth and digititus and detail and everything ‘we’ hear.

So why can’t we say as much about self-declared audiophiles? What’s up with statements like this that appear daily on the net (and, lest we forget, similar nonsense from print magazines)?

    “I found the less expensive Consumer Brand X at a fraction of the price to be indistinguishable from the Megabuck Deluxe”

If one steps back, one can see how ludicrous this is, given the realities of both this being a capitalist economy and the fact that audiophiledom is just not, unfortunately, a playground of the rich and famous. A $20K CD player is not a status symbol – it is bought by people expecting and demanding very high-performance, not a fancy emblem to show off to their friends.

Here is the top ten list of reasons the poster/reviewer might say something like this.

10. An axe to grind with someone associated with Megabuck Deluxe
9. They own Consumer Brand X and want to feel good about it
8. They can’t afford Megabuck Deluxe and do not want to feel bad about it
7. They listen with their mind and their mind tells them that Megabuck Deluxe shouldn’t sound better than Consumer Brand X, so it does not sound better.
6. They listen with their emotions and they like someone associated with Consumer Brand X and so they like the way it sounds.
5. They listen with their emotions and they do not like someone associated with Megabuck Deluxe and so they do not like the way it sounds.
4. They listen from the point of view of the existing marketplace and its internal politics to decide what sounds good or not
3. They desire the popularity that comes from attacking the product at the top
2. The room/system which they are doing the listening with is so unbalanced and/or has insufficient resolution that nothing can be determined about the relative qualities of these two products
1. They quickly compare products that take more than a few minutes to warm up and sound the way they are supposed to
0. They omit the ancillary tweaks that most people likely to own the products will likely be using.
-1. Their ears are not used to the subtle differences of products of this calibur that may take weeks in not longer to explore
-2. They are one of the few who really do not ‘have ears’.
-3. They gain commercial advantage from attacking Megabuck Deluxe and/or promoting Consumer Brand X

Geez, 10 wasn’t enough.

[Personally, I try and give people the benefit of the doubt and assume #2 is the reason they say things like this. And keep saying things like this.].

There are so many reasons for posters and reviewers to post erroreous information, how can anyone believe what they read about how something sounds?

It is certainly a question that has plagued us, both as audiophiles, shocked when we heard both how good and bad things REALLY sound, and later as a dealership and high-end audio show reviewers, as we try to communicate what we hear.

How do we not get drowned out by the sea, nay ocean, of missinterpretations out there about what things do, can and should sound?

Use the ears, Luke!
All we can say is: “Use the ears, Luke!”

Oh, and if you are an audioophile, don’t forget to make sure you calibrate those ears once in awhile using a worthy system, Luke.

in High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / Humor / Philosophy / Popular 0 comments