Emotional rollercoaster

boxer12,

Thanks for sharing, I might check them out myself after I've stopped playing the last Dylan album.

Good recording too.

Good to know cd318, I'll check that album out / Thanks

Perception versus reality is a powerful thing. On that note, this may be my favorite group of old bastards...ever! It takes a long time to develop your ear but we are all seaking "Rubicon". Could you imagine a group of Millennials having this discourse? My people...thank you for the perspective! More "must have" recordings please! What lights your fire? What makes you crank that dial when you hear that song? Peace!

@cleeds

In regards to cd318’s comments, there may be more truth to it at times than I’d like to contemplate.
As I have worked for some years in the industry, I have met successful salesman and managers of hifi stores. Their purpose was to move product, and make revenue for the store and thus themselves.

Not all actually cared particularly for the quality of the product, not all would share their actual opinion, and were rewarded financially for being helpful in letting a customer with less or little exposure to the plethora of options spend up big on attractive packaged devices that simply didn’t have the sound quality some of the less bling looking
understated devices had.

They were happy to sell pride of ownership to those who didn’t know or somehow didn’t appear to care about the sound.

I have often wondered what kind of a system could be built on a reasonably sane budget if we the consumer
could actually line up, side by side the cream of the crop, that actually perform at value driven pricing.
I do believe that many really talented craftsmen are good as designing and building audiophile equipment, however they aren’t skilled at marketing, and many great products have simply failed to capture sales in the market place.
However, they didn’t fail at excellence in the devices they crafted.

In as much as we all in here can’t possibly know which of all of the speakers, amplifiers, DACs, cables around the World would work the best to make for a system that is optimum for us - because we simply don’t have the resources to explore them all; the salesman in the stores can’t possibly know either.
There’s simply not enough time, floor space and access to everything out there.
As for me, I’m happy to be in here as opinionated as I can be, and have people boldly tell me I am dead wrong!
When people can back up with an intelligent response with reasoning, I’m so glad for challenge to my opinion and the opportunity to weigh it up and learn something more.

Due diligence takes time and experience to cultivate, especially in curating a system. One of the posters mentioned about building a system from reviews and specifications - which pulled together a system that was very good sounding to him and others. This selection of items took only a small percentage of the time to actually understand what to look for, how to make devices work together with a synergy that worked well.

I’d guess a person with good knowledge could build systems with reasonable consistency, how do the customers know who to trust?
Maybe the salesman is honest but simply doesn’t know as much as another who’s not selling, he’s in it for the love of it.
It’s not because of a lack of integrity, it could be a lack of knowledge, or just less knowledge.

I’ve made some hifi purchase mistakes, and some automotive ones and the list goes on... I’m on my second marriage - need I say more?

I don’t know what cd318’s experience actually was, but I can see there’s plenty of opportunity for misfortune in trusting
someone who either doesn’t care to know, or honestly is misinformed, and sadly will make the sale with the biggest margin.