Arthur Salvatore WoW comments??


Anyone ever read about this audio critic? his site is at http://www.high-endaudio.com/ but for the real deal go there and scroll down to 'audio critique' and click on that link and you will not be able to stop reading. i recommend reading his 'philosophy' first and then his 'recommended components list' - although i know you guys will reverse that order; it was worth a try.
This guy has some very interesting things to say about audio and has really gotten hot and heavy with the top magazines and he's published his heated correspondences with them and you'll love it.
Please comment here after reading about this guy.
kublakhan

Showing 8 responses by slawney

I am new to audiogon and I am trying to find the threads: "international audiophile carnival"; "how to get the system you want through one simple applied action"; "hot tips for jail and looney bin"; and "twiddle-dee-twiddle-dum" Have I found them?
Detlof, now that you are cranked up to Joyvcean pitch again, here is a question (already answered by the posts here, but ...): are audiophiles psychoanalyzable? Seriously, aren't we all those schizophrenic little boys with their desiring machines (that metonymic desire leaping unpredictably from circuit to circuit), unable to be Oedipalized except (maybe, the nerd suddenly shows guts) as passionate sub-heroes who (symbolically) murder (Krell, or ML or some other big daddy in audio, maybe even Arthur S himself) and commit incest between Eve's warm glowing tubes (Eve Anna, paradisial first woman of tube technology, pardon me, but are those cathodic ovaries on the Stingray sinking their paralyzing electric charge into me?).
Stereokarter--why would you never read this thread again? What displays of folly and sarcasm! What skilled turnabouts! What practical advice and comradery! What a style of lugubration! Agon--we all know the danger was everpresent if the censors ever fell asleep at the wheel--has finally evolved from a virtual audio club to an international lost weekend. Component reviews, manufacture ratings, criticism, troublesooting advice, tech talk: what are they but grotesque norms which, suppressing the naivete of our experiences and introducing analysis into music (its dissolution, passion, lyric waste, sentimentality, blindness...) and accessories, brings us to scorn our own instincts. Listen to Detlof: "who would let the fun be spoilt ..." As for Mr. Roger Ashby, I think he is on to something: "connoisseur," where have I heard that word recently? Oh yes! In the name of a phono stage: ScanTech CONNOISSEUR 4. And, stereokarter, it WOULD takes a very "bent" "detached" "selfish in the extreme" audiophile to buy this connoisseur trophy. It costs $30,000 minus tax.
Gregm, 30,000 USD for the Scantech. With your budget, you better stick with the Spectral Limited Edition Phono: another con ... (what did I say? I am starting to sound like Detlof) connoisseur BARGAIN at $15,000. Why doesn't a very wealthy agoner loan Arthur S.--the critic in question--a million USD so that he can test these phono stages and some other connoisseur components: I want to see a true Class A phono stage in his list (not the Counterpoint/Aesthetix default win). Is this the reason why he is getting overly concerned about price/value even in the "cost-no-object" Class A, with all of the price-breaker components (first, the Coincident IC, perhaps the Shelter cartridge soon) displacing the previous winners. And, finally: someone wake up Detlof and get him to tell us what he is dreaming about! I think my rhetoric put him to sleep. He needs a little erotic frisson to perk him up: maybe I can get Deutsche Paket Dienst to push Eve's hot tubes under his blanket. Detlof, there's a stingray Flittchen swimming down the Rhein towards you.
Detlof: your warden told me today: "Not a day goes by, without the guards complaining about D. First, there was the 12 hours of you acting really trashed, laying in the corner begging for some "serotininereuptakeinhibitors" then the vomiting, and the mumbling about "no bare-breasted blondes, no pretty milkmaids in a Dirndle, no ultra horny sunshine Flittchens, where are my sunshine Flittchens!"" (whoah Detlof! guess J's advice paid off) The next day, you gave your Muesli to some two-fisted giant from St. Moritz who (under the harmless cover of a chocolate factory) allegedly spread a computer virus that infected all of the SACD discs around the world in order to make them repeat the Ballermann top hit "Zehn nackte Friseusen", and you--Detlof--tried to to convince this thug that it was a once-in-a-lifetime-opportunity for him to start up a criminal fraternity with someone with a "party-with-no-holds-barred pharmaceutic expertise." What you didn't know was that this Alpha-male you were trying to finagle into your schemes (Katharina is right, Detlof is planning something) is a key informant in the Salvatore clan, and quickly informed the don of your habits (Detlof, this is a matter of life and death, please be careful of any "Canadian" cognac from the outside, even if Katharina gives it to you--the guards switch it around while they inspect it-- because it is laced (by the don himself!) with some seriously disjointed lo-fi gnarl that will have you hallucinating you have a "secret sex friend" who can stand on their head while you sink in their quicksand hearing "Glühwein, Girls, und Gipfel-Gaudi" played backwards at the wrong speed. But, you know what kubla (he has some inside connection to the police where you live, I don't know how, something about "Thailand Teens at the Schatzi Bar") e-mailed to me after I told him what your warden said? That they (I mean, the authorities watching you closely right now), as a last measure, have called in some phonopsychologists (some former colleagues of yours that are angry at you for dismissing their experiments as "scantily clad sonic Pavlovianism" in your last essay for the "Zurich Psychoanalytic Blätter") preparing a good-old-American saturation therapy for you: you know, what the white-coated prison doctors tried on that unlucky Beethoven fanatic in "A Clockwork" with the eyes pried wide open, only with you they plan something through the ears--with Bose loudspeakers and a Minidisc player left over from Sansui's R&D into data hyper-reduction (the good Dr. of Bose is even flying in as we speak on a plane under Cornfedboy's pseudonym). Wirehead, we have to get the timing right, we have to get Detlof out of the "Knast" fast, scot free, and put him immediately into a de-Flittchen-ization program. I know a good one near Baden Baden; and while Detlof is squirming in his bed screaming vainly for an ultra-horny Tüssi, we can smuggle his rig in a storage container marked "Schweizer Butter Ist Besser" to Gregm and Dssmann.
Stereokarter, Albert actually plays an inconspicuous but not insignificant role in the "web of fate" encircling Detlof right now: we must never forget the small detail of Albert shipping Detlof a bottle of RR (what is this code for? we can only guess) a few weeks ago with the (seemingly innocent words): "Having just shipped samples of RR cleaner to ... Detlof ( in Switzerland) ..., I look forward to reading comments as to the outcome of the tests." Just what tests was he referring to, I ask you?
Thank you Katharina. This is getting more serious every minute. An inside source (I bribed a prison guard with a Power Snake, saying "you can't get these in Switzerland, can you?") tells me that the sound from the prison is actually the warm-up for the "audio-ero-gon" saturation therapy (AEG treatment, for short) they are preparing for Detlof: something about tape loops of Donna Summer's "Love to Love You Baby" mixed with the most brutal hard-disc noise art from Merzbow (he brought the Sansui minidisc player over from Japan). They even have a new 5 channel 2000 Watt Swiss Home Entertainment facility hooked up, and are getting Detlof himself to tweek the sub-woofer settings under the cover that the warden is an audiophile and will give Detlof early parole for a bass reaching down to 2Hz (the subliminal messages in the AEG treatment are all encoded subsonically). Alberto Porta, I am told, is bringing the key ingredient, I heard, something top secret, something with the code name "RR cleaner SE" (so Wirehead, we ARE on the right track here) but the guard did not have high enough security clearance to tell me. To naturalize him better, the Swiss authorities added an "umlaut" to Dr. Bose's name (he sneaked in through the Swiss-Austrian border, having arrived in Vienna, so there was no chance the Swiss Air Station Manager could inform you, Katharina): now, he is referred to as "Dr. Böse." As I said, this is looking very serious. Thunders, another round of Flittchens, please, before ...wait... I can hear them banging on my door... the voices of the Swiss authorities..."get the Spritze ready, Schwester"...Zzxxzzxxoo...ooooover....RRSE...zzzZZZxxxzzz...Alberto...chen...
Mhubbard, I think of A Salvatore as a "romantic of lucid disappointment." ... Detlof, glad you got the Siemens Geräte I smuggled in and that you are now safe and sound.