The Absurdity of it All

@mijostyn,

"My mission has always been to reproduce that thrill at home but still maintain timbral accuracy. Imaging and accuracy are good things to shoot for but if the system does not feel right it is all to naught."


I still want that at home but I'm more or less resigned to never being able to hear my favourite music in an uncompressed form.

The loudness wars may or may not be over but recorded dynamic range remains a poor facsimile of a live performance. At least for the music I normally listen to.

Just take look at the first 10 pages of the dynamic range database and you will notice that Pop/Rock music hardly makes an appearance. Even after some 60 or 70 years, in terms of recording quality it still remains a second class citizen compared to the likes of Classical and Jazz.

Therefore I'd suggest a sense of humour as well as a feeling of eternal optimism is essential in this pastime since absurdity and audiophilia seem to clearly go hand in hand. 


https://dr.loudness-war.info/album/list/dr/desc

@stuartk ,

You're right, I think the absurdity must be part of the attraction.

Let's face it, we're not like the other 99% of the population.  Unlike the vast majority for whom the medium is little more than about conveying the message. We seem to be far more passionate about our interest in the entire field of audio playback.

It's not always about maximising  absolute performance, some of us might also care about cosmetics, about brand/tribal loyalty, the relationship between ownership and self image, or perhaps about what someone else has said or written about a particular product, or what's domestically acceptable, and financially viable etc.

The main point of contention, perhaps the only point of contention, seems to be when strong disagreement erupts over the suggestion of better sound quality / performance. 

This 'suggestion' (it's never more than that) can be conveyed by a multitude of channels. It might be coming from a reviewer, or perhaps some clever ad which tries to distract and bypass our critical faculty, or maybe even some enthusiastic poster on a forum like this.

Perhaps the last 60 years of audio and it's lapse into relativism (nothing is objective) is merely a symptomatic of a much larger malaise. 

The world today seems more divided than ever, and trust in politicians, banks, global commerce must be at an all time low.

The only thing we can be sure of is that money remains the only global language. The rest is very unclear.

"And you know something is happening but you don't know what it is
Do you, Mr. Jones?…"


Suddenly we all seem to have become Dylan's Mr Jones. A quite absurd situation.

@stuartk

"But, back to my main focus, audiophilia would appear to require a willingness and an ability to rapidly shift our primary focus from one lobe of the brain to another."


Yes, this is perhaps the most unpleasant and challenging task faced by thinking adults in the world today.

How to bypass over self awareness?

I first noticed this phenomenon as a student when I became aware of the pitfalls of pursuing a path of academia - especially an arts based path, but maybe sciences too.

How was it, some of us wondered, that some untutored musicians could write such beautiful and timeless music (eg Lionel Bart) and yet some of most highly qualified professors of music couldn’t write anything interesting?

Ditto for writers and professors of literature as well.

That’s when the dreaded realisation that creation and analysis are entirely two different things!

Suddenly the self imposed prisons of academia became visible as you realised why people like Lennon and Dylan thought so little of critics. In fact it was Dylan who wrote the lines that me and my friends sometimes liked to quote to excuse our laziness.

"Your sister sees the future
Like your momma and yourself
She never learned to read or write
There’s no books upon her shelf"

Of course in real life Dylan was extremely well read, but we kind of saw his point.

Anyway I guess you could say the same for listening for pleasure and listening to monitor. As soon as you become conscious of listening it seems to detract from the enjoyment side.

Perhaps this is why so many hearken back to the days of childhood before they learned to analyse anything? Pink Floyd seem to have virtually made a career out of this phenomena. Perhaps it’s no wonder that so many artists prefer to leave this business (adult) side of things to managers so that they continue to play in their childlike creative state.

For us audiophiles this transition between the two modes of thinking sounds fairly simple when we write it down but unfortunately this journey can be virtually impossible on occasion.

I still remember the words of what one dealer wrote some 30 years ago as I was climbing on the lowest rungs of the Hi-Fi ladder.

He casually confessed that even he with his top of the range incredibly out of reach uber expensive (Linn/Naim) system had days when it just didn’t do anything for him.

That’s quite a daunting thing to read when someone is writing that about a system that costs 30 or 40 times more than yours.

A respected Hi-Fi dealer at that!

@stuartk,

I guess what I’m suggesting is that it’s a matter of mental discipline to manage the part of us that craves novelty and try to keep ourselves (mostly) focused upon that "child-like" pleasure, if in fact, that’s one’s top priority. I recognize it’s not this way for everyone.

No, but it probably should be. With so many conflicting priorities and demands and only so much money and time it’s far from easy. Demands can come thick and fast and from surprising directions.

Audiophiles I think tend to be the cerebrotonic ectomorphs that Eric Berne wrote about. I’m guessing that we are prone to getting mentally overloaded from time to time and thus it’s extremely important for us to have our place to retreat to.

We also need understanding people around us who can also appreciate the level of support that we tend to provide.

@mijostyn,
"what is going on is we are being screwed, all of us, every last one of us.

Our money is being forcibly removed from our pockets and spent on maintaining political power and accumulating wealth usually to make corporations and certain voting blocks happy.

We should all be fighting together to stop this.

They are getting us to fight instead with each other.

We need term limits and campaign finance reform fast before we become a police state.

Humans need a reason to perform. Without that reason they devolve into apathy. The second amendment is not about guns. It is about keeping our government at bay.

Watch what happens when they are not scared of us any more."

Very wise words indeed.

But what to do?
The ancient tactic of divide and conquer still seems to be working remarkably well in 2021.
Don’t get disheartened, the sun will still shine. Everything else will come and go.
Look after yourself, your loved ones and spread the word where you can.

Everyone must discover and learn for themselves.
That means being able to focus, to asses and understand, and then be able to later recall and explain to others - nothing less than the Feynman technique in a nutshell.

Sadly it’s not for everyone.

All of Freud’s warnings about the death instinct being a subversion of libido seemed ridiculous when I read them 30 years ago. I always thought the old man was too pessimistic.
Ha, but I don’t now!

Is this really 2021 or is it 1921?

The terrible shock of WW2 seems to have totally worn off now and who knows where we’re heading now?

Some of us might still want to live in a civilized world where equality of opportunity is available for all, but sadly all human beings are not like this.
Any car driver will tell you that.

All the best.