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Does anyone know where this J. Gordon Holt comes from?

Interviewer: “Do you see any signs of future vitality in high-end audio?”

JGH: “Vitality? Don't make me laugh. Audio as a hobby is dying, largely by its own hand. As far as the real world is concerned, high-end audio lost its credibility during the 1980s, when it flatly refused to submit to the kind of basic honesty controls (double-blind testing, for example) that had legitimized every other serious scientific endeavor since Pascal. [This refusal] is a source of endless derisive amusement among rational people and of perpetual embarrassment for me, because I am associated by so many people with the mess my disciples made of spreading my gospel. For the record: I never, ever claimed that measurements don't matter. What I said (and very often, at that) was, they don't always tell the whole story. Not quite the same thing.

Remember those loudspeaker shoot-outs we used to have during our annual writer gatherings in Santa Fe? The frequent occasions when various reviewers would repeatedly choose the same loudspeaker as their favorite (or least-favorite) model? That was all the proof needed that [blind] testing does work, aside from the fact that it's (still) the only honest kind. It also suggested that simple ear training, with DBT confirmation, could have built the kind of listening confidence among talented reviewers that might have made a world of difference in the outcome of high-end audio.“

fusian

Showing 2 responses by ghdprentice

ghdprentice
7,543 posts
 

@clearthinker 👍

About a year ago I pulled out a classical album and put on to play. I was really disappointed in the somnics of the venue… not natural at all. The back of the record cover extolled the incredible lengths that were taken to capture the venue and ambience of the concert. Then showed all the partitions that were put around small groups of instruments… each with their own microphone. The narrative went on and on how great the concert hall was. I was completely flummoxed. There was no sound of the concert hall what so ever… it was a dead… terrible recording. I couldn’t believe the description vs reality… No correspondence, what so ever.

 

This is not the norm… but hilarious if you know better.

 

 

ghdprentice
7,543 posts
 

@clearthinker … “Hey, which of us DOESN’T want our rig to SOUND LIKE THE REAL THING???”

 

Honestly? I think many (most?) try to make it sound better to them…. More detail, more slam… microdetails. That is what I did for the first twenty or twenty five years of my pursuit of the high end… I wanted it to sound better to me. Which was Gordon’s point.

I found when I did that I would make a change that would make one kind of music sound better, then others would not sound as good. I realized I was chasing my tail. 

I needed a ruled with which to judge. I quickly realized that had to be live acoustic music. Only after careful listening and tuning in to what live acoustic music sounded like did my system truly start sounding great… for all forms of music. Over a decade going to the symphony and small jazz concerts… or sitting next to a piano calibrated my ear. My system went from an interesting thing I liked to listen to for a half hour to a completely involving system I have to drag myself away after hours of listening.

 

I think Gordon was right on point with the pursuit’s goal should be recreating the real musical experience. After all, the musicians have worked endlessly to make tell music as appealing as humanly possible.

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