I stumbled into an interview with the guy who owns Danielhertz.com- you may have heard of him. /snark. Actually I was on youtube watching @OCDHIFiGuy who had an interview with the guy you may have heard of. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cc16zy73Kg
Anyhow, I watched about 2 hours of Mr. Mark talking about the backasswards Hi Fi industry and how hedge funds have bought once venerable names and turned them into mass market Mid-Fi. For example Harmon Audio owns his name and brand and has diluted it. McIntosh is another example of corporatized Hi Fi. Post W. Zane Johnson Audio Research seems to have fallen away as well. (I'm hoping the new owner is a purist)
What really struck me was how Mark detailed the variability in the original studio gear as it recorded a session and how it can make for some really lousy recordings. "Audio systems don't reproduce music they reproduce recordings of music"
He talked about the Holy Grail original highspeed analogue master tape and how it cannot be reproduced without discernable loss. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4l_SKycM4o
He also had what I considered a brilliant observation on how inefficient speakers are turning wattage into heat (like your car brakes do) and the result is lost detail. He likes -100db or better efficiency. He quoted Nelson Pass on "The first watt is the most important watt" and cited the Bell Labs 1936 papers and how advanced they are and how they influenced great audio men like Klipsch and Pass.
Some hours later I am re-thinking my entire (apparently mid-fi) existence.
