What Audio Religion have you converted others to successfully?
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Sometimes the sparring and jesting is hilarious, sometimes thought provoking but sometimes just plain redundant and boring. You be the judge. Back to the original topic. I'll leave vinyl and oils out of it. My desire to get better gear as others here have said is to be able to hear things in a passage of music that we've never heard before no matter how familiar we are with it. I want to share that with others. If I do have someone over which is rare and they have the time I don't really talk about the system, I play music. I let them decide what they want to hear because it will be familiar for them and they'll be able to hear things they've never heard before. One time I had to do a hard pass on Quiet Riot. Nothing against them but not exactly dynamic. Then if they are able to listen for longer than a perfunctory period I'll break out some other things they might not be familiar with. My favs for this are from Pink Floyd especially their early work. When I listen to Grandchester Meadow I see the reflection of the vocals in the water flowing by and I am lying on my back on grass with a blade in my mouth. It tells how a seemingly quiet place is fraught with danger while relaxing you at the same time. Strange. I put on Caress of Steel by Rush and from the Necromancer on I am taken on a journey. Geddy Lee's voice on this while raw is extremely expressive imparting on me every emotion he is dealing with in each phrasing of Neil Peart's lyrics. Doom, fear, jubilation, frustration, wonder, anger, angst, love and adventure are lain bare. I'll put on some Steely Dan to get in a groove and chuckle and wonder at their absurd lyrics while at the same time knowing no other words would be right. I'll try to introduce people to The Flaming Lips, a group that while I am not crazy about everything they do they are definitely different from anything and have some material that is sonically amazing. When I listen to music sometimes I feel as if I can sense electrons firing in certain regions of my brain, I can feel the skin tighten across my face in different areas during different passages and I can watch a movie behind my eyelids. That's the secret magic I want to share. |
@erik_squires , You won’t get far in any attempt to understand the nature of audiophilia by asking the patient. The 2 most well known journals of the classification of illnesses the ICD 10 and DSM IV are already threatening to engulf the entire human race. Of course whether you regard your passion for audio as an illness is going to vary from individual to individual. We audiophiles are rarely a danger to others, only ourselves. Whether we are aware of the dangers of being sucked into one particular audio cult or another there’s little doubt that many of us have been at various times or others. You only have to look at some of the over enthusiastic product recommendations from some of the presumably non financially invested members here. For my part I have been a fervent advocate of analogue over digital (vinyl over CD) for well over a decade. Nowadays I tend to not get so partisan. There is good vinyl, bad vinyl, good digital and bad digital depending upon the recording etc. The ’threat’ of digital (remember how its arrival was denigrated and ridiculed by Linn, Naim and Rega?). After being an ardent magazine bound subjectivist (if it ain’t got that zing it don’t mean a thing) I stumbled first upon the wonderfully clear headed and resourceful Harbeth user forum and then upon Peter Aczel’s no holds barred The Audio Critic site. Initial outrage and an immature smugness of knowing better both prevented me from revising my previously held opinions. Yet there was much of interest here, even if some of it seemed highly heretical, if not downright blasphemic. You know, all well designed CD players sound the same, so do cables, so do DAC’s. The most heinous claim and the most worthy of excommunication, if not ruinous apostasy, was the notion that all well designed amplifiers are also sonically indistinguishable!! Needless to say, there has been a good deal of swallowing of humble pie these past few years. Apologies to any I may have mislead previously. Thankfully me and friends never too crazy with expensive cables. We all took a hit, but we can live with it. A similar process often happens with political affiliations but usually more gradually. Many young people start off with left wing views (Marx and his Communist Manifesto make so much sense, why can’t everyone see it?) but gradually they get to see that there are just as many selfish, deluded, unpleasant psychopathic individuals on the left as there are in the right. Even worse, once you start working and settle down to family life you may suddenly find yourself in sympathy with figures who were always portrayed as unforgivably right wing. I always used to enjoy watching the Australian journalist Clive James on TV but regarded him as a somewhat hopeless cynic back then, but lo and behold, today his words seem to make great sense. Sorry Clive. I got there in the end. That’s more or less where I stand today, and here I shall remain until I am able to recognise some evidence to the contrary. What else is good mental health/ sanity, but a beneficial adjustment to one’s environment? |
We warned Sigmund about the black ice on the driveway. Sigmund was the type of guy that would never listen to others and he took a bad fall. Sig was never the same guy after that slip!! https://www.goodtherapy.org/blog/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/freudian-slip.jpg |
Hi @millercarbon It hurts my soul to know you run around using words you don’t understand in an era when Wikipedia and Merriam Webster are online and free. Please have an essay by Monday explaining what the two criteria are for a "Freudian slip" and why at least one of them is missing. 500 words. Have another 500 words for the term "projection" and how it applies to your reply. Another 500 words on the phrase "obsession" and, for bonus points only, why "transference" is also a bad description of anything which is going on, focusing on how it differs from "projection." Best, E |
