How much money do you want to waste?

Yes, it goes without saying that nothing can recreate "experience", and, as Zen would explain, any attempts to reconstruct retrospective phenomenon is further from reality:

I think audiophiles have often experienced a temporal sense of accomplishment where they've reached a point where they think their system is perfect until the next better cd player, speaker or cable comes along. Our subjectiveness is often fooled into thinking how much more real or better our system sounds by a tweak or an upgrade, but, like I said, it is only temporal. I would explain that their image of reality is projected onto their system rather than the system recreating reality. And we only realize this when we compare to a better system or live music.

This doesn't mean our enjoyment is diluted because it is not a perfect copy of the original live performance. However, we have intrinsic want to achieve the ability to replicate that live "experience".

Yes, the need to upgrade and the end result of an audiophile's achievements are nothing objective. However, in achieving this goal, the actions and science are purely objective.

Yes, Viggen, people screen their world thorough a lens of subjective interpretation. Kant told us this many moons ago and Kuhn showed us how it even applies to the subjective lens of a scientist conducting scientific method (favoring confirmation of existing scientific truths as opposed to refutation). What I am saying, though, is that as one "seeps" into the music and the mind releases the attachment to objectify sound, the lens of subjectivity necessarily fades. In other words, "subjectivity" is composed of several prisms of interpretation. The surface lens composes the sense of subjective self and is structured of thinking about the "self". It is this level of cogniticizing that I am saying fades in its influence over the preceptive mind as a whole and this DYNAMIC precipitates greater receptivity to the musical message (their are other perceptive lens that do not fade, such as Kant's a priori space/time lens, which is why, in the deepest listening experiences we are more sensitive to spatial discontinuities in the stereo rendition at that time and less sentitive to "detail" that bounds perception of sound as an object, i.e. why with SE amp's detail seems less important an issue when you finally seep into the music and the more natural spatial presentation, in terms of its existential correctness, becomes intoxicating.) Subjective interpretive matrices CHANGE as that same mind, in whole, releases its instinct to objectify that which it experiences, including music.

Yes, in order to catalyze this experience, at least in stereo, the (objective) stereo piece must be used, but that does not mean that the objective is separate from the mind that created it or arranges it in a system. In fact, the subjective is causually prior to the objective; the mind that chooses a component is prior to the arrangement of that technology-component in his technology-system (just as the inventor's subjective mind is prior to the objective creation). Objective is casually dependant on subjective; they are not separate, except in the mind that wishes to make them separate (as in, the mind that desires to separate reality into objects).

Regarding neurosis in audio, yes, many people's ego structure (reflection of their self to their self) requires that they compete with others. These are the same people who are atached to the objectifiacation of reality, then carried into their stereo experience. All listening minds are not the same, however - regardless of our knee-jerk egalitarianism to the contrary. Pointing to this type of mind as what I am talking about misses the point. They may be the mean, but I am talking about a different subjectivity that is not tied for its identification on its powers of objectifiaction (hence, able to release that level of subjectivity easier and seep into the music).

Yes, I agree, the notion that the subjective sound - the "absolute sound" - of live music is transferrable into all subjective experiences, stereo included, is a nice marketing idea, but it is not realizable through objective means, IMHO (somthing I once told HP when I wrote for him in another lifetime). But, it can be replicated in subjective ways: the beauty I experience, beyond thought, when enraptured by the sight of the sunset, or her face, or the beauty in the music, is the SAME beauty. At deeper levels of perceiving - as the sense of subjective fades as its delf-defining objectifying fades - the experience of beauty converges into one. This is why, regardless of our self structures, we are all drawn to music, or the sunset, or her face. There is no-thing more "Zen" than that.

As I said, though, you must be willing to engage the experiment - to let go of you self - to confirm what i am saying. Until then, you will only interpret the experiences that exist beyond your-self as non-existent. That's the way the "absolute beauty" in all of the above has set it up.

Thanks for your response, sincerely.

time for my two cents worth. i am a brick mason. nothing more nothing less. i change the innerconnects, and i can tell the difference. this is a blue collar point of view, and hearing of course. good thread craig. i love it when we all come together.. can't wait to go camping with everyone.. just joking. have a great 2002, and keep the questions coming.. i keep learnin everyday..

Wow, really interesting we can try to pull Kant into the picture of audiophilia. This sort of begs the question of whether the enjoyment of music via hi-fi is a physical or metaphysical one: i think most true audiophiles such as yourself will agree it's the latter. Just to make things clear, though, Kant never delved into subjectivity. Rather, he reinforced the validity of Hume's objectivity by combining it with a lens of a priori, which is super-real, not subjectivity.

It is also quite interesting how we audiophiles have a sense of space and time (would this be considered prat?). However, is this sense of space and time, in audio terms, a priori or synthetic? I would argue it is synthetic because it is an conglomeration of many things we've experienced before audiophelia such as the pace and rhythm of live performances, different degrees of spaciousness such as sight-seeing at the Grand Canyon (yes, space and time is deemed a priori by Kant, but, I think reproduction of space and time is semantically and realistically synthetic).

Regarding subjective vs. objective in terms of building a hi-fi system. I must maintain my position that it is an objective means to a subjective end. I have to say building a system of physics, engineering and trial and error. Let me make a strawman example, if subjectionist is in charge of producing stereo equipment, we might have a stereo company composed of surrealists that are trying to sell us breadmakers and claiming they are Krell amps (which reminds me of the king's new clothing).

Regarding audio neurosis, these people who are competing with the Jones can have both good and detrimental effects, based on their intelligence and taste. Their money is obviously going to the pockets of audio researchers and designers who will improve on the status quo. Lets hope these money go to the right people who have integrity and dilegence to reproducing true audio sound for the enjoyment of the end users. These people with neurosis have good ears too, I hope.

This being said, I am some what neurotic too. I enjoy audio, yet I am never happy truly with it. Maybe I should pick up an instrument and learn to play for myself. Nah, I rather like immersing myself in my own system; sort of like Zen and Motorcycle Mechanic...(or whatever that book is called).

The intermediary step between objectivism and subjectivism is rationalism, why things sound the way they do (or at least more rational answers as to why they sound the way they do, not just because I changed a cable, but what about this cable and its particular design is changing the sound, and express this in even more precise manner, mathematize it, scientifically audible terms). From there we could lay the truth as our source and say some things are more accurate than others (now whether or not they sound better is another story since the source itself may be bad), more faithful to the source, and then we'd have objectivism. What's amusing is their very methods, and/or the things they espouse, could never have even come to exist under their philosophy in the first place, nothing would have ever progressed to this state under subjectivism: lets bash current mirrors on the input stage of an amplifier and praise some simpler asymetrical resistive loading? That said the subjectivist ideology and its place in the current audio world certainly lacks, consistency, if nothing else.