High Performance Audio - The End?

Agree, there probably are better speakers than Moabs for background music.

Well, lets see. Mahgister acknowledged your point of different people having different preferences. He goes on to say this can be achieved with tweaks (embeddings) that are mechanical, electrical, and acoustic. His thesis is that these are key and not secondary problems. 

Then, to be clear, he reiterates that for any one component you are right, and people choose by preference. But then says never mind the gear, embeddings matter more, do them first.

When he says few know this transformative truth, he's talking about me, who knows it. You, it seems, do not. Well he did say there are few of us.

Personally, I don’t buy the “certain gear for certain music” approach. Only a system that can reproduce the impact of a great Rock band can, in my experience, do justice to a recording of a great symphony orchestra going full tilt playing Stravinsky. Of course, pragmatism dictates that we aim for some sort of balance between ultimate transparency and the realities of the quality of most recorded music.

You had me- right up until that last little bit. I used to think something like this myself. Its not even true. You just have to do it right. 

For a long number of years I was just about convinced there was a point beyond which its just not worth going. Some recordings just aren't gonna sound that good no matter what, and the system is kind of like a microscope revealing all these flaws, until one day its good enough they're all flawed. Pretty much everyone believes this, which is why frogman ended with, "of course." Of course! That's just how it is! Of course! 

Nope. Not even. That's the most amazing discovery of the last year. My system is so much more resolving and revealing than ever, its freaking crazy how good it is now, and what has happened instead is ALL my recordings sound even better than ever. Yes the great ones still sound great. Better than ever. Like so good you wouldn't believe. But what's really crazy is the ones that always seemed to just kind of lay there, flat dead uninteresting, now so alive they're practically demo material. Or the ones that seemed hard and bright, they're now open and present. 

Sorry. Hate to say it, but what happens instead, when you are truly revealing, genuinely revealing, no two records sound the same but they all sound great. Unbelievably great. And you only want more. I've never been so excited and eager for the next tweak that takes me even further into them all. 

Listening further into bad recordings is not enjoyable IME — the warts just get easier to hear. Yes, there are some good pop recordings, but sadly not many. When I want to listen to poorly-recorded music I like, I just fire up my Bluetooth speaker or earbuds as I can more easily just enjoy it for what it’s worth without feeling like I’m chewing on tinfoil. Anyway, that’s how I deal with it. 

Then you're not doing it right. Don't blame the recordings. My system is so revealing no two recordings sound the same. The differences between them all is clear and easy to hear. They are all enjoyable.

When Michael was here he had me play Fleetwood Mac Rumours on the 45 reissue. He said, "That's gonna be hard to beat." Then I put on my White Hot Stamper. He said night and day.

That's what its like when you're doing it right. When you really are revealing, and not whatever non-revealing crap audiophiles like to call revealing. That's one way you know your system is genuinely truly revealing: everything sounds really good- and the really good ones even more so.

That's the attitude here at Definitive. Their extra sensory abilities alert them to Goolag, Microserf and Amoralzoners, and if you're not readily identifiable as someone susceptible to authoritative techno jargon with a Street of Dreams McMansion to fill with overpriced Wilson, AT and D'Agostino good luck getting their attention.

I wonder, was Steve into goofy shirts and glasses at Singer? Or was that something he cooked up for the YT?

His videos always leave me disappointed, and wondering if he really believes his own BS or is he just okay with selling his audience short. Because every time he gets the chance to tell people the truth he instead panders to their vanity, fear and ignorance.

Revealing is nothing like what he is talking about, which is bias, hype and coloration. He's saying its actually good to make your system sound bad, just as long as it sounds good to you with certain music.

This is exactly the crap you'd feed someone if you want to sell them stuff, but its terrible advice if you're truly intent on helping someone build a satisfying system.

There's no such thing as a satisfying system that works the way he describes. Anything like this is colored, plain and simple. And so whatever it sounds good with is at the expense of making other stuff sound bad. That's literally his advice. 

So what happens is you buy something like that and you're so happy for a while, but only a while, because systems like that are boring, uninteresting, and you inevitably tire of what you once found exciting, and eventually so sick of it you just have to get something, anything else.

This site is chock full of posts every week of people asking that very question, they want to get some speaker, amp or whatever and always it "I listen to this" or "I listen to that" or sometimes even "I listen to this, that and the other thing" but always as if that matters. When what really matters is finding what makes everything sound equally good.

Which he says cannot be done. Which is strange, since I just bought Moabs and practically the first thing I say is everything sounds good on them. Not just good, but fabulous. When everything fabulous is to be had for under $5k by what stretch of the imagination is it impossible?

One thing he got right, sort of, is that with entry level and mid-fi gear, and even to a certain extent high end, when push comes to shove its better to err on the side of smooth vs detailed. But not by much, and its a total judgment call. Which is why he only sort of got it right, because he just said smooth. 

Oh well. I'm sure he knows his audience better than I do.