Macca
01-12-2017, 11:30
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=av+showrooms
I sort of watch these with grim fascination, don't know if I'm alone in this?
They always start with a tour of the equipment, which is almost always stuff you have never heard of that costs a fortune. The commentary is reverential in that way that only Americans seem to be able to do; where you might initially be forgiven for thinking it is meant ironically but then realise, with a frission of fascination, that it isn't.
Having talked it all up, sometimes for ten minutes or more, they finally play some music so we can hear what the system does. The needle is lowered in solemn silence and we hear the glorious tones of ... plinky plonk. Some ridiculous 'audiophile' recording that has only two instruments at most playing one note at a time.
'Plink, plink, plink, plonk, plink'.
And it goes on almost forever.
When it finally finishes there is then some mutual backslapping and comments on how great the sound is.
WTF?
I mean seriously folks,
WTF?
Then the next video cues up, different room, different system, same plinky plonk. Well probably not exactly the same but it might as well be. What is this all about? You can't tell me that these blokes, some of them clearly into their seventies, really think that this sort of programme is in any way a test or even a demonstration of anything except one's will to live?
If anyone of them is reading this here's some news for you. Playing this sort of thing is no test of a system whatsoever. I wouldn't mind if you played a minute of that and then put on 'In Rock' or maybe 'Exile On Mainstreet'. What about a bit of Journey? Maybe even some Bach or Beethoven. You know, the sort of thing that the people old enough to afford a fifty grand amplifier actually listen to?
Or maybe I am wrong and am just in some tiny subset of enthusiasts who has a hi-fi that flatters the music they like to listen to, not to play music that flatters the hi-fi. Maybe most enthusiasts do spend their listening hours playing the sort of music that comprises of one string of an acoustic guitar being plucked while someone knocks on a block of wood with stick. And that was what they were into back when they were twenty years old as well. But I suspect not.
Sort yourselves out, AV Showrooms!
I sort of watch these with grim fascination, don't know if I'm alone in this?
They always start with a tour of the equipment, which is almost always stuff you have never heard of that costs a fortune. The commentary is reverential in that way that only Americans seem to be able to do; where you might initially be forgiven for thinking it is meant ironically but then realise, with a frission of fascination, that it isn't.
Having talked it all up, sometimes for ten minutes or more, they finally play some music so we can hear what the system does. The needle is lowered in solemn silence and we hear the glorious tones of ... plinky plonk. Some ridiculous 'audiophile' recording that has only two instruments at most playing one note at a time.
'Plink, plink, plink, plonk, plink'.
And it goes on almost forever.
When it finally finishes there is then some mutual backslapping and comments on how great the sound is.
WTF?
I mean seriously folks,
WTF?
Then the next video cues up, different room, different system, same plinky plonk. Well probably not exactly the same but it might as well be. What is this all about? You can't tell me that these blokes, some of them clearly into their seventies, really think that this sort of programme is in any way a test or even a demonstration of anything except one's will to live?
If anyone of them is reading this here's some news for you. Playing this sort of thing is no test of a system whatsoever. I wouldn't mind if you played a minute of that and then put on 'In Rock' or maybe 'Exile On Mainstreet'. What about a bit of Journey? Maybe even some Bach or Beethoven. You know, the sort of thing that the people old enough to afford a fifty grand amplifier actually listen to?
Or maybe I am wrong and am just in some tiny subset of enthusiasts who has a hi-fi that flatters the music they like to listen to, not to play music that flatters the hi-fi. Maybe most enthusiasts do spend their listening hours playing the sort of music that comprises of one string of an acoustic guitar being plucked while someone knocks on a block of wood with stick. And that was what they were into back when they were twenty years old as well. But I suspect not.
Sort yourselves out, AV Showrooms!