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Thread: A view from the writer in The Audio Critic

  1. #11
    RothwellAudio Guest

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    Quote Originally Posted by Pharos View Post
    2.The principal determinants of sound quality in a recording produced in the last 60 years or so are the recording venue and the microphones, not the downstream technology. The size and acoustics of the hall, the number and placement of the microphones, the quality and level setting of the microphones will have a much greater influence on the perceived quality of the recording than how the signal was captured...
    I think this is true, but it only applies to classical music, chamber music, maybe some folk and jazz which is recorded at/as a live performance. The vast majority of recordings sold today - ie rock/pop - just aren't made that way.
    Quote Originally Posted by Pharos View Post
    3.The principal determinants of sound quality in your listening room, given the limitations of a particular recording, are the loudspeakers—not the electronics, not the cables, not anything else. This is so fundamental that I still can’t understand why it hasn’t filtered down to the lowest levels of the audio community.
    Yes, loudspeakers have the most obvious effect on the tonal balance but even quite modest speakers can sound great when powered by a great amp.
    Quote Originally Posted by Pharos View Post
    8.The gullibility of audiophiles is what astonishes me the most, even after all these years. How is it possible, how did it ever happen, that they trust fairy-tale purveyors and mystic gurus more than reliable sources of scientific information? It wasn’t always so. Between the birth of “high fidelity,” circa 1947, and the early 1970s, what the engineers said was accepted by that generation of hi-fi enthusiasts as the truth. Then, as the ’70s decade grew older, the self-appointed experts without any scientific credentials started to crawl out of the woodwork. For a while they did not overpower the educated technologists but by the early ’80s they did, with the subjective “golden-ear” audio magazines as their chief line of communication. I remember pleading with some of the most brilliant academic and industrial brains in audio to fight against all the nonsense, to speak up loudly and brutally before the untutored drivel gets out of control, but they just laughed, dismissing the “flat-earthers” and “cultists” with a wave of the hand. Now look at them! Talk to the know-it-all young salesman in the high-end audio salon, read the catalogs of Audio Advisor, Music Direct, or any other high-end merchant, read any of the golden-ear audio magazines, check out the subjective audio websites—and weep. The witch doctors have taken over. Even so, all is not lost. You can still read Floyd Toole and Siegfried Linkwitz on loudspeakers, Douglas Self and Bob Cordell on amplifiers, David Rich (hometheaterhifi.com) on miscellaneous audio subjects, and a few others in that very sparsely populated club. (I am not including The Audio Critic, now that it has become almost silent.) Once you have breathed that atmosphere, you will have a pretty good idea what advice to ignore.
    Yes, I agree, there does seem to be a lot of nonsense held as truth by audiophiles. However, on the other side of the fence there seems to be too many engineers who are too quick to believe that if their measuring equipment can't measure it, it doesn't exist. That seems entirely unscientific to me.

  2. #12
    Join Date: Aug 2009

    Location: Staffordshire, England

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    I'm Martin.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Yomanze View Post
    Yes, point 7 is something I absolutely agree with.
    It's the only one where he has got it absolutely bob-on. Don't agree with him about loudspeakers at all and some of the other points are a bit absolutist.
    Current Lash Up:

    TEAC VRDS 701T > Sony TAE1000ESD > Krell KSA50S > JM Labs Focal Electra 926.

  3. #13
    Join Date: Jan 2015

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    I'm Dave.

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    I do tend to struggle to give a shit what journos say.

  4. #14
    Join Date: Mar 2017

    Location: Seaford UK

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    I'm Dennis.

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    Yes I do too, my brain just drops out when I read; "The high hats on X were . . . . . ".
    Last edited by Pharos; 25-07-2017 at 08:53.

  5. #15
    Join Date: Apr 2016

    Location: Gravesend and France

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    I'm paul.

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    Basically he has it right and as he said about the delusional, I'll say no more, you know who you are.
    Bakoon 13r Denon DP80 Stax UA-70 Shure Ultra 500 in a Martin Bastin body with jico stylus, project ds2 digital Rullit aero 8 field coils in tqwt speakers

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  6. #16
    Join Date: Mar 2010

    Location: France

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    I'm Julian.

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    This makes sense to me; when I listen to 78s in good nick through a modern amplifier & good speakers ( with the re-equalization dialed in etc.) they sound great. Almost all taken from live performances, once the magnetic microphone came in, the recording process was way in advance of the reproduction technology. In some of my operatic 78s I can even hear the intake of breath of the singer!
    Julian.

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