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The High End and Glubglub

The High End has had many arguments in which certain types of equipment were and are considered inherently inferior for a variety of reasons: among these the single-ended tube amps which were dismissed by many, single-driver speakers, the ever-popular idler-wheel drives which I espouse, let's not forget tube amps which were practically universally dismissed in the late 60s and through the 70s, and so on. So what was going on in these varoious and ongoing debates? I sumbmit for your perusal the following gem I found in a discussion of logic: "What he (the skeptic) wants it is logically impossible to supply. But doesn't the logical impossibility of the skeptic's demand defeat his cause? If he raises a logically impossible demand, can we be expected to fulfill it? He says we have no evidence, but whatever we adduce he refuses to count as evidence. At least we know what we would count as evidence, and we show him what it is. But he only shakes his head and says it isn't evidence. But then surely he is using the word "evidence" in a very peculiar way (a meaningless way?), so that nothing whatever would count as a case of it...Might he not just as well say, "There is no glubglub?""
johnnantais

Showing 4 responses by plato

plato
1,543 posts
 
Hey, as long as you can hear differences and improvements, then what does it matter what anyone else thinks. Certainly there is ample room in this hobby for skepticism. I used to get the old "double-blind-test-routine," all the time. Personally, I feel double-blind tests themselves are inherently flawed and are not a good tool to discern small differences.

My philosophy is that if I try something and I think it makes an improvement, I keep it; if not, I don't. Beyond that, I don't need to convince anyone or justify my decisions to the rest of the world. Life is just too short and there's too much good music out there to listen to!!!
plato
1,543 posts
 
Johnnantais, you raise some good points and I think it's great that we have this forum to kick around such ideas.

Basically consumers have no rights as to the type of products the corporate bureaucracy will produce for any particular demographic area. As you know, the corporate machine is driven by greed, not altruism.

Heck, we had the technology years ago to develop a "perfect" recording format and medium. All that's prevented that from happening is these corporate giants trying to protect their piece of the pie, as well as the greed of the recording industry trying to ensure that no one can own music from their artists without them getting their judicious cut. It's really quite a laughable mess when you think about it. Unfortunately it is the consumer who is once again getting short-changed.

Yeah, I was reading another thread today and thinking, well, if I go for SACD there are a handful of SACD releases that I'd like to purchase. And if I go for DVD-A, there's another handful, and wow, a very small percentage of this pool might even be recorded near the resolution level of the respective formats. Whoopie!!!!
plato
1,543 posts
 
Sorry for my rant. I realize that you are generally talking about high-end specialty companies, rather than the corporate behemoths. A lot of the smaller niche companies start out with the best of intentions and put their customers first. Some of them even stay that way. Unfortunately, others do not.

As to the low-powered, high-efficiency debate, I don't really want to get into that one. All I will say is that there are pro's and con's to every scenario and a person has to decide which set of compromises he can best live with. But from an ecological perspective, the low-power, high-efficiency route makes a lot of sense.
plato
1,543 posts
 
Gregm, you make some good points. But it is the big corporations that dictate what recording formats we will listen to, and what players will be available to play them. And a lot of the new technology they develop eventually trickles down to the smaller niche companies, usually starting with specialty companies modifying their existing models (e.g. Modwright or Bolder Cable Co.). In the case of tube electronics, I agree that this is a niche area that the big corporations don't see as a big enough market for them to concern themselves.

And I don't think it is the skeptics who are buying DIY, horn-loaded speakers... The skeptics are buying gear that comes with specifications, pie-charts, graphs, and good ratings in Consumer Reports.

Geeze, I guess I better sell my class-A amps before 2008... either that, or stockpile more of them. :)
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