Posted by manualblock [ 69.112.43.172 ] on March 24, 2006 at 21:45:53:
In the past three weeks or so I have come across a couple three observations made by audio afficianadas' of note that struck me as serious food for thought that do not follow the usual script we are subjected to mercilessly in redundancies.
Mr. Geddes in his observations on RMAF_ Further Comments essay observes his wife saying this about the high end purchasing descisions of audiophiles. She expresses surprise at the price tags on some of the equipment and why anyone would spend such sums on wires or other accessories. Her conclusion is that because there are fans of audio who cannot afford to buy 10k$ loudspeakers they can assauge their need for audio approval by investing in expensive accessories.
We always had a running joke regarding that very situation that went; ..why did the audiophile spend 600$ on two 3 ft wires? Becuse his wife wouldn't let him buy the 20k$ speakers.
But this observation was very cleverly interpreted by MS. Geddes and has a signifigance for all of us in the hobby. Why? because it is a real intuitive attempt at understanding the motivation of pschycic reward that impacts the descision making process of many of the people participating in the hobby. To find an astute comment anywhere in the literature concerning the real motivation behind choice that doesn't seek to employ the usual suspects dragged out at every opportunity as explanations for behaviour is so refreshing to see that it catches one off guard as to it's importance.
We had a small dialogue attended by few but earnest individuals on the Dungeon regarding some comments made by John Broskie of TubeCad Journal fame that again involved a unique perspective that was refreshingly candid.
Here's another; "When designing an amplifier my simplist goal is to reproduce music. I then consider music as an emotional expression transmitted in three dimensions through a pressure modulation in the air. It comes to me encoded as a time varying voltage of one or more channels. I wish to return this to an emotional expression but I do not have all of the original information; by the very nature of the recording process information is lost. I therefor DO NOT feel guilty about dramatising what I have to work with to increase the emotional content in keeping with my INTERPRETATION of the original performance. The Engineering interpretation of this gaol in building an amplifier involves the easy stuff....Distortion is a concern ofamplifier design. As you can tell from the previous paragraph I am not particularly worried about harmonic distortion. The amplifier should be able to deliver low distortion of the components of the that are important to communicating the emotion. To me this means making sure the distortion inherent in all amplifiers does not get in the way; but not to chase measurements of distortion just because it is POSSIBLE." Ed Simon.
Rather than provide a tedious reflection on why these types of observations are critical to the maturity of thought we must chase in this hobby I leave the opinions to the readers except to say thank you to the authors for some refreshing perceptual observations not seen on a regular basis amonsgt all the equipment fetishism and engineering hype displayed on the internet hobby forums.
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