by Michael

How to revive high-end audio

Stereophile has a post that has sparked quite a few comments, many of which provide a perspective on the industry which can be illuminating:

How revive high-end audio

Of course, you have to rule out the comments that go something like:

“High-end audio is dying because of all the high-priced gear”. Yeah. Right. And the Lamborghini and Bugatti Veyron, etc. are killing the auto industry too.

“It is all the snake oil that is killing high-end audio.” Snake oil is essentially all gear whose positive effect contradicts their belief system. Unfortunately for these people [and one of the most awesome and beautiful things about reality for the rest of us], the fact-based universe has many things that are real but we do not yet understand. Yeah, losers take potshots at us, but they used to make fun of LPs too [ 🙂 ]

“It is the untrustworthiness of the reviewers [too corrupt]. Or dealers [too unlike their customers]. Or manufacturers [too quick to raise prices for modest improvements]”. But all [nearly] people we know trust reviewers implicitly no matter what trouble they get themselves into, will find another source of the gear they want if their dealer is lacking [or just to save on taxes], and, finally, care little about specific models of products and can always seem to find something they want at the price they want [and so do not care if the price is too high, they just go find something else that they ‘hear’ is ‘supposed’ to sound as ‘good’].

These kind of comments assume there is an evil culprit, of the author’s choosing, that is to blame. A culprit instead of a systemic change in the way we think of and interact with music.

Although the middle class no longer exists the way it did a few decades ago, and disposable income is eaten up by the banks [debt., student loans and their interest payments] and Apple, it is freed up by fewer, cheaper, more reliable and longer lasting cars [and the looming death of the consumer desktop PC] – so the relative availability of funds may be a wash.

There are systemic influences – that are not really changes but the result of decades of repeating the same message over and over. Bose is the best brand. Digital is the best media. Solid-state is the best electronics.

The systemic changes are, it seems to me:

* More convenient access to more music – searchable access to not just thousands of albums but millions

* Nobody has any free time anymore. Smartphones killed whatever free time the kids used to have. The rest of us consider 40 hour works weeks to be like a ‘vacation’. The very time itself, spent on ‘focused’ or ‘active’ listening, is all of a sudden just extremely expensive for most people.

* There is no champion of high-end audio. Strangely well-respected and fashionable dog-eat-dog business ethics in combination with the Great Recession have made most players at all levels in audio enemies of each other. They fight each other instead of fighting bad fidelity. The proposals as mentioned in the Stereophile article have no chance. We even tried one of our own detailed proposals to help save dealers from extinction and circulated it around – but nobody cared. Whether dealers are suicidal or just do not trust anyone else in the business, it doesn’t matter. It is just symptomatic of the fact that to the public, there is [and will likely not be, as per the previous sentence] no one publicizing the coolness and awesomeness that *IS* high-end audio. 😉

in High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / Sounding Off 1 comments
 by Michael

Cross product of maturity of audiophile and hi-fi system design

I was thinking about all the different stereo systems at RMAF. Thinking about how each system seems to attract at least some people. Thinking about how bizarre this seemed to us, being that some of the systems were really quite poor sounding. Thinking about how Best Buy also does manage to sell some of their hi-fi systems from time to time. And thinking about how to sell things to those mystical members of the often talked about but rarely seen… General Public.

There seems to be a discrete set of stages, or levels, a person goes through when discovering just how some systems really don’t suck.

These stages of discovery are more or less these:

0. This sucker goes LOUD!
1. Whoa! big bass!
2. Hmmm… big bass and it can do soft delicate sound too
3. Oh my, resolution. I can hear things that I never heard before
4. Weird, I can ‘see’ the instruments and musicians! Imaging!
5. Coolness, some instruments and musicians appear to be close, and some way, way back beyond the front wall; soundstaging
6. Why do some systems make be want to tap my toe or dance? PRAT
7. Wow! Why doesn’t the (harmonica, brass, violins, etc.) on this system hurt my ears like all those other systems?
8. Discovery of ones own personal preference
9. *swoon* … engagement, soulfulness
10. Discovery of other’s personal preferences
11. Naturalness, organic sound, basic levels of believably, how some hi-fis do not have to sound like a hi-fi
13. Inner detail, texture, micro-dynamics. Cocaine.
14. Realistic resolution and resolution linearity. Deeper kinds of believably.
15. Reproduced note envelopes can really be like real notes? Wow.
16. Harmonic / timbrel linearity. Deeper, ever deeper believably.
17. Separation. No more mashed potatoes. Hear every instrument using your mental spyglasses.
18. Dynamic integrity / linearity. Deep, so deep believably
19. Inner harmonic detail. 12+14+16+18 = heroin.
20. Real-life harmonics. Recognizing the almost universal lack of such.
21. Real-life dynamics. Recognizing the almost universal lack of such.
……
1000. Forget it all, where’s the bliss?

Probably forgot a few. I keep swapping 8, 9, 10 and 11, and as far as the rest of the ordering goes, YMMV.

OK. Here are some weird observations.

The Wilson demo at RMAF was designed for people between level 1 and 2 [you can watch the video of the presentation on YouTube]. The demo was largely successful among the people who type things on blogs, forums and online magazines. But not so successful among people who call us looking for expensive speakers.

Our rooms at RMAF had been designed for people around stages 15 and 16. This was fairly successful among the people who call us looking for expensive speakers. This received quite a bit less public fanfare, however, than the Wilson room. Lamm rooms typically seem designed for people around stages 9 and 10 (same Wilson speakers, more or less, as above).

Audio Note tries to convince people they should just skip to level 1000. They have some success with the general public with this idea. They also have some success with people all along the way at the other levels because of their basic approach, innate quality and the ability of some of us to create hybrid systems with the gear.

Wilson also has some success with people all along the way at the other levels because of their basic approach, innate quality and the ability of some of us to create hybrid systems with the gear.

At shows, you can find systems targeting audiophiles at all stages of maturity, just like you can find audiophiles at all stages of maturity.

Here on the blog, we like rooms where the stage of the system, as a function of the price, makes it either a good deal [like Acoustic Zen speaker-based systems, or, lately it seems, like the Magico S1 speaker-based systems] or where the stage of the system is very high, unfortunately often commensurate with its very high price.

I like all the in-between stages, not just level 1000, because I think they are really fun and entertaining in ways that just plain great music is just… not.

And I would be willing to argue that from just experiencing some of these stages one learns how to reach deeper and deeper into reality and discovers several secrets about what it means to be alive and how to better enjoy existence. Certainly more so than the vast majority of things that people do for fun in their spare time. 🙂

Anyway, the choices exhibitors make when it comes to what stage of audiophiles to design their systems for is interesting and has many consequences, many of which are not at all clear.

in High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / Philosophy / RMAF 2013 / Show Reports / Sounding Off 5 comments
 by Michael

The Sound of Silence

During the Boulder Flood, after about two days, it would actually, believe it or not, stop raining once in awhile.

At these times it was extremely foggy, even at night [so no starlight, moonlight or city lights], there was no electricity [so no lights, no refrigerator compressor or furnace fan, etc.].

We were stuck for several nights in what was a big expensive, soggy, sensory deprivation chamber in the middle of nowhereswille [formerly Boulder, CO].

With many hours to contemplate, well, to contemplate just about everything one could contemplate, the alternative being Death By Boredom. There was just nothing else to do [neli likes the dark and silence and sleeps like a baby under these conditions, notwithstanding any protests she may voice to the contrary. :-)].

So, I asked myself “what do I hear?”. What does complete silence sound like?

I heard my breathing and my heartbeat, of course.

I also heard a tape hiss-like noise. An ever present white noise. I finally figured out that it was like holding a conch seashell up to one’s ear. That this must be the sound of blood pumping through or nearby the ear. There typically isn’t a seashell to reflect this noise back to the ear, as we go about our business in the world, so this noise is a lot more quiet and fairly easy to ignore most of the time.

I also heard a high-pitched whine. No, this wasn’t me wanting the electricity to go back on so I could find out what was going on out there, to see if Boulder was really still there. This is not, I do not think, tinnitus – which I get from time to time, and which, for me, is much louder and at a somewhat lower frequency. My guess is that this is the sound of the gears in my brain, and that they are running a little bit low on oil, grinding against each other enough to make this whining / squealing type noise. Or perhaps not.

And there are of course noises when one swallows. And chewing noises are, of course, one of the loudest things we ever hear. And there is sniffing, jawbone clicking/TMJ, bone joints popping, the tongue rubbing against the teeth, and probably other, even more disgusting and yet still in the end quite noisy stuff.

Considering how LOUD the sound of silence is, it is a wonder we can ever hear anything else. Like, you know, music. 😉

in High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / Humor / Sounding Off 0 comments