by Michael

December coming right up…

[Hmmm… that last post had a crazy title for awhile – sorry about that]

Next month’s issue will feature a ‘Best of’ section.

Now, this is not the roll the dice, smoke-filled back room, KMA, what-were-they-thinking kind of best of the year kind of section. You can see those elsewhere. In fact there’s an epidemic of those.

The people most harmed by those types of lists are the people who buy gear every 5 to 10 years and look at these lists to decide what to buy [been there, done that].

And it is not even going to be a REAL Best Sounding Gear of The Year feature – which we could do but, seriously, the people who really care about good sound already know what sounds good. The may not be able to afford it [right now] but they pretty much know what to listen for and to.

No, our list will answer questions like:

Who has the coolest remote control?
Who has the fattest cables?

… and many more

You are invited to vote on these important questions, and many more – and add questions of your own – just post your votes or questions in a comment to this post.

Enjoy! 🙂

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

The Economy is Baaaack

Well, at least some of is – and this is a good thing.

And now that the press is talking about how bad unemployment is… that is about to get better as well. We all KNOW that the press is always late to the party.

So what does that mean in high-end audio?

That means the bargain basement deals on Audiogon are drying up.

That means that dealers and manufacturers are selling things again.

That means that CES attendance might be up by 150 to 200% over last year. [don’t ask me how I know. OK, I was looking at the AVN conference (Adult Entertainment Expo) next door to CES to see how hard it is to get in as press to THAT show and they said registration is WAY up by about this amount. No, I think I would be too embarrassed to take 100 close-up shots of the porn star celebrities at that show. Or… am… I? :-)]

Sure, we are all still a little scared and some losers are preaching doom and gloom [ever notice, these kinds of people NEVER preach BEFORE the disaster, it is always in hindsight and to kind of add their own special sauce to an already bad situation.]

So, with more or less full recovery around the corner [well… yes, even for audio] what should we be doing?

Many say we should be repositioning ourselves now – why things are slow and their is time, and while the prices are not quite as stiff as they might be soon. I do not know if this is wise advice or not.

I think prices were too low for the ‘out with the old’ which had to happen before ‘in with the new’. So as some life comes back into the marketplace – expect to see one hell of a madhouse as people sell all their equipment and buy what they think will be better – after all, there has been almost 2 years of pent-up-demand building and building…

So the dealers and manufacturers who will make out are the ones who can handle lots of traffic, lots of orders, because if the hesitate – someone else will get the sale.

And for audiophiles, you have to be quick on the uptake because some things are kind of rare and will not appear on the market very often – and this will be an opportunity to get just about anything you ever thought about buying.

And, by the way, this is true for the Art market and Housing market as well.

No, it won’t ‘over stimulate’ the economy – the doomsayers always like to poop on the party. I do not think a lot of people will be making money as there will be much more swapping for things of about equal value as opposed to everybody emptying their bank accounts to upgrade their lifestyles. But still, with 2 years pent up demand, there will be plenty of people buying new things as well.

I could be wrong – but think about it.

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

Warning: Reading Show Reports May Be Hazardous to Your (Hi-Fi System's) Health

As I casually read what various reviewers wrote about the sound they heard at the show a few things become obvious. This is not about the sound in our rooms, about which I have read one positive and one not so positive (about the small room – but I did not hear the system after a major cable change was made – so do not know if the reporter was right or not)

1. A lot of reviewers just can’t hear. They string together a lot of good sounding ‘audiophile words’ and hope in this way to gain some advertising. This would be shocking if it wasn’t so sad.

2. Some just mention the positive things about the sound, never the negative [same ole same ole – but only a few people/mags are this honest anymore].

3. Some lie, sometimes describing sound more or less accurately, and sometimes just negative and/or positive things in order to achieve some political or economic goal they must have in mind.

As for comments on forums, take a room at random and make it the Best of Show. As far as I can see it is completely random – aka noise. Aka no information provided.

There is not any room so horrible sounding that someone, somewhere won’t post that it is the best of show.

I used to think this was akin to ‘there is no man so ugly that some woman somewhere won’t think he is handsome’.

But this has more to do with the beholder being really confused, than it does with seeing the inner beauty of someone/something. And it has to do with people being manipulated into thinking something different happened [good or bad sound] from what REALLY happened.

Of course, this cacophony of misinformation, lies, political maneuvering, sloth, etc. just mirrors that of the current state of affairs everywhere circa 2009. The difference lately has been that so called ‘trusted sources’ do not have loyalty to the traditional reporter’s ‘creed’ to tell the truth.

That, while representing yourself as being ‘independent’, but instead telling a self-serving point of view that makes you money is AOK.

The 1984 part of this is that people have been programmed to accept this as being acceptable behavior for a ‘news organization’.

The upshot of all this incompetence and deception is that it is really hard to get any real information about the sound at a show, or, to expand our focus, any component. Even if you listen to it, if the person setting it up did not have the correct associated components, you still didn’t hear it [most systems seem to be either the random Audiogon click to buy approach or some dealer putting components together because it is good ‘politics’]. It is hard to get an idea of how something really sounds [think how poorly Wilson has been represented all these years – how many people hate their speakers. This is why].

Because of all this, Spintricity is just presenting things like specs, people, how-tos and why-tos, and ads. Because of the rampant unethical behavior of the press, we can’t even think about doing reviews ourselves, of equipment or rooms at shows, without tarnishing our magazine with the stink of the current zines. [Even though we are darned good at it with having probably the most significant and wide-ranging experience with uber high-end audio of any reviewers/reporters/audiohpiles. And our personal preferences are also 1) known to us [so we can at least try to listen around them] and 2) fairly mainstream]

in High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / Philosophy / Show Reports / Sounding Off 0 comments