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It Pegged the Needle on My "BS Meter". Now, I'm A Believer. Ever Happen to You?

Okay, here you are. Feeling pretty good about yourself. Your high end audio knowledge base is extensive. Ears fine-tuned. You can sling words around like "dampening factor", "air gap flux density", and throw in the occasion "dark background" or "micro-dynamic" just to let those around you know you’re not a high performance audio lightweight.

Then, there it is: you are presdented with the utterly ridiculous. After the initial automatically triggered chuckle, the "reasonable" part of your brain assembles a list of the number of reasons why this makes no sense at all. You hit the eject button and move on to more sane topics, like alien shape shifting. But, the topic gets revisited. Most likely an acquaintance or industry associate asks: "Have you tried this?" You put on your best poker face and attempt to keep a friendship intact while explaining in no uncertain terms why they are out of their cotton-pickin’ mind.

After defending your space and putting up your best efforts to not come within 100 meters of this "thing", you give in to the pressure(s) and give it a listen. And then ... "what the heck just happened?!!" You are flabbergasted. Not only did it make an improvement. You have to look at the guys you just labeled as certified lunatics -- and admit they were right.

Ever happen to you?

The first, and most memorial for me .....

Monster Cable CD Sound Rings

The sonics first generation CD players were not, uh, as advertised. They had more grain than a belt sander with 60 grit attached. A bit later Yamaha introduced a new (lower priced) player with "oversampling" that filed the burrs off a bit But, still not even close to an analog experience in my view.

Then the Monster rep showed up and dropped off a little package of CD Sound Rings. Per the rep, these little boogers reduce "jitter" in CDs and make them sound better. I just couldn’t hide the obvious smirk, and "promised" to listen to them. He left. They sit on the desk along with literature, open invoices, and a pretty full todo list. I’m not sure what provided the nudge for me to give them a listen. But, I finally opened the package, stuck one (literally) to a CD, and closed the drawer. Music started playing. It was at that precise moment that CDs became listenable for me. And, opened the window for a lifetime of open-minded, audio experimentation.

Similar experience(s) anyone?

waytoomuchstuff

Showing 1 response by livinon2wheels

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livinon2wheels
197 posts
 

I am sure many of the more senior members of this bunch here recall their younger days and the pivotal experiences in their exposure to new and different ideas that delivered real 'aha' moments. I will share just a couple of them. When I was in college, there was a local audio store not far from where I roomed in my college town that had a fairly progressive staff in terms of the variety and quality of components they offered for sale. I was always seeking out such places and on this particular day, was blessed to discover the new Ohm A loudspeakers being handily driven by a Crown DC300 amplifier. I was experienced enough to recognize the groundbreaking approach to speaker design this represented and the sound quality was unlike anything I had ever heard. Easily eclipsing anything I had heard up to that point. That said, it remains one of the very high points in my journey. The most realistic soundstage and midrange and highs I had ever heard and the bass was really good too. I was truly amazed this inverted cone could reproduce the full frequency range all by itself and do so convincingly well enough I really could close my eyes and believe the band was in the room. Another event was hearing the ESS Heil loudspeakers in my home town at one of the local stores...I just knew the Air Motion Transformers as they were called used in those speakers was no gimmick and that design would go on to be used in some of the best designs ever penned. 

Then there was the exposure to solid state amplifiers back in the early days. I grew up hearing hifi as produced on tube equipment and accepted that as state of the art and pretty much believed that Tubes were always going to be how it was done. THen solid state arrived and Dad replaced his old Williamson type tube equipment driving an original AR2 with a pair of AR-3a's driven by a 35 wpc griefkit and I knew that tubes days were done...or soon would be. Wasn't long and then we had the Phase Linear 400 amp and Harmon Kardon's Citation 16. It was about that time I heard a pair of Kilpschorn Corner Horns driven by a Citation 16 - wow! Blew me away! Never had such impactful sound pressure levels except at a subsequent grateful dead concert.

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