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High Performance Audio - The End?

Steve Guttenberg recently posted on his audiophiliac channel what might be an iconoclastic video.

Steve attempts to crystallise the somewhat nebulous feeling that climbing the ladder to the high-end might be a counter productive endeavour. 

This will be seen in many high- end quarters as heretical talk, possibly even blasphemous.
Steve might even risk bring excommunicated. However, there can be no denying that the vast quantity of popular music that we listen to is not particularly well recorded.

Steve's point, and it's one I've seen mentioned many times previously at shows and demos, is that better more revealing systems will often only serve to make most recordings sound worse. 

There is no doubt that this does happen, but the exact point will depend upon the listeners preference. Let's say for example that it might happen a lot earlier for fans of punk, rap, techno and pop.

Does this call into question almost everything we are trying to ultimately attain?

Could this be audio's equivalent of Martin Luther's 1517 posting of The Ninety-Five theses at Wittenberg?

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Can your Audio System be too Transparent?

Steve Guttenberg 19.08.20

https://youtu.be/6-V5Z6vHEbA

cd318

Showing 4 responses by spenav

spenav
416 posts
 
@douglas_schroeder 

“If you're running a $5-10K rig, then do not expect such music to sound great.”

How much do we have to spend to expect such music to sound great?  Wow!! I didn’t see that one coming from you. You should know better. 



spenav
416 posts
 
Could it be possible that the future of high end audio be totally different in a decade or so? Maybe some day soon, nobody will be spinning discs anymore . All of your music will be either in the cloud or on some hard drive. Your cell phone will have a great DAC built in and your speakers will be hung on your wall, where DSP technology will make it sound great. Our current gears will be collectors’ items and we all will be old men reminiscing about the past on some forum or telling our grand children how our amplifiers could heat up our listening room during the winter. Who knows?
spenav
416 posts
 
@Motown

hang in there, we all will be joining you soon. 😀
spenav
416 posts
 
@douglas_schroeder 

No one is attacking you. Matter of fact, I had a lot of respect for you. That’s why I said that I didn’t expect that from you. You should have known better. What makes your comments incorrect is the generalization. Not all 40k systems sound better than all 5k ones. Decades ago, I had a 5k system that sounded great and I decided to upgrade it. I spent thousands of dollars and ended up with a much worse system. It took me a while to recapture the magic and finally surpassed it. So I learned my lesson. 
What you should have said is, everything else being equal, more money should give you better sound. We all know that. Unless you reach a limit, you can always get better hardware. Whether it’s Mahgister getting more stones or me doubling my interconnects, we all can use more dough, but knowledge and experience count for something. The best amp is not necessarily the costliest. And then you add the variables that are out of our control and things can get complicated. That’s what makes this hobby fascinating. It’s not a sport for rich guys only. 
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