The term "High End" needs to die. Long live Hi-Fidelity!

@whostolethebatmobile, yes some form of distinction of accuracy needs to be found but ‘High End’ is obviously flawed (despite what Robert Harley may have written) as it usually suggests that high price equates to high performance.

That is just not true.

Perhaps it’s time to return to meaningful and relevant data and measurements, such as the ones that the designers and engineers themselves use.

Sure it risks us being manipulated or being ‘blinded by science’ but what other sure way of moving forwards is there?

@jonnie22, a plausible argument but are you sure that,

“Audio is advancing faster today because we keep moving further and further away from the 70s....”?

I would argue that it’s more of a merry go round. What comes around.. goes around. I don’t believe that there can be any advance until the recording industry decides that recording fidelity matters.

Currently there is no indication that fidelity matters more today than it did back in the fifties. Recordings today benefit or suffer from far more jiggery poker than they ever did back in the days of those wonderful ‘50s Capitol recordings. Fidelity is not even an issue today, it’s all about effect.

So you can play your mainstream music on any million dollar system you want but all you’ll hear better are what effects were used.

For most purposes, as things stand, chasing audio fidelity is a fools errand. True mainstream audiophile quality recordings are desperately thin on the ground, as any visitor to a show will readily discover.

@coffmanlabs, “Other experiments have noted that the huge frequency non-linearity of human hearing greatly outweighs spec measurements--and that on a person-by-person basis.”

The obvious conclusion being that our hearing differences are greater than the differences in the sound of the equipment we are listening to.

Your point about “Live music should always be listened to (a lot) by designers.” is one that’s regularly touted as a means of establishing some kind of reference point in this sometimes maddeningly abstract pursuit of ours. However the fact that we all hear differently again will have a large bearing as to what we think is correct.

Your post reminded me of reading about the work of one Alfred Tomatis. I recall reading of his results of his fascinating analysis of Caruso, and how hearing loss (or damage) gave him that unique voice. I think that one of his conclusions was that you can’t sing (or speak) that particular frequency that you cannot hear.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_A._Tomatis

Perhaps ultimately if we care about fidelity to the source, and I’m not sure anyone really does, despite what they might say, then we just have to stick with spec measurements. We humans are just not linear creatures and will all have deficiencies of some degree at various frequencies. And probably aren’t even aware of them.

Thanks again for reminding me of some of the fundamental basics. Far too easy to keep going around in circles, isn’t it?

Much of the so-called High-End is to blind listening tests what New Clothes were to the Emperor!  Suits you sir! Indeed.

How many times have we all heard the same tired excuses at shows when the audience response has been rather muted?

“It’s these hotel rooms”, or maybe “it’s the humidity”, or even the poor recordings to blame etc etc.

Let’s face it when you can pick up a pair of Harbeth M40.2s for £11.5k and a Technics 1200G for a little over £2.5k, it might be worth asking exactly just how high end do you really need to go?