|
Audio Asylum Thread Printer Get a view of an entire thread on one page |
For Sale Ads |
63.26.99.251
Where is Sam Tellig?
Follow Ups:
I will always be grateful to Sam Tellig for reviewing the MF M1DAC which has
greatly increased my enjoyment of my CD's!
Grateful to Sam for reviewing the LFD amps. Love mine!
Edits: 03/28/12
When Sam termed his CDs "beloved" I turned out. CDs have sucked from their introduction. Yes, almost all of those who defend today's digital, have been fans of crap digital FOR DECADES! "Beloved CDs" PLEASE!!!
Sam has mortgaged his home and depleted his remaining assets in order to finance a new business venture involving the manufacture and marketing of 78 rpm records. Sam is convinced that the 78s of the early 20th century provide the most realistic sound one is ever likely to experience, and he’s determined to have the last laugh on those who consider his views, uh, eccentric. Sam’s new company will either be known as Schadenfreude-Shellacs LLC or Solyndra-Shellacs, depending on proposed financing from various third party sources. And yes, the American taxpayer could be on the hook for a portion of this financing.
What's a 78?
;)
I was 4 years old in 78.
RGA, glad to know you are the same age as my youngest daughter!
Cheers
Bill
In 78 every one born in 45 was 33. ;-)
in the same year, everybody who was born in 33 was 45. :-)
just a one third rpm missing!
Cheers
Bill
I would never buy anything from a company called 'Schadenfreude' ( Schadenfreude = taking pleasure from the misfortune of others, possibly his customers as they are the only others involved here).
"I'M eccentric, YOU'RE crazy!" I always wonder just how much of 'Sam Tellig' is a put-on.
"I'M eccentric, YOU'RE crazy!"
What are you quoting?
"I always wonder just how much of 'Sam Tellig' is a put-on."
I don't know where you're going with this but it might helpful to know, Sam is an inmate.
I have no doubt that Sam can hear and describe what he has heard. And I have defended him on another forum, when an SACD advocate said that we need to 'get rid of Sam' for prefering Red Book to DSD. I said (roughly) that Sam 'is, um...eccentric (I'm eccentric, you're crazy!). He also prefers 78s to LP, but you don't see Fremer putting out a fatwah on the guy.' A plea for a bit of tolerence. But I do think Sam relishes stirring up outrage--this is what I mean by a put-on. (Paragraph) As to the quoted sentence, it has stuck in my mind for many years but I don't have a source. Google yields a not-exactly-identical dialog from the movie 'Speed' (which I have not seen) and "there's an old joke that poor people are crazy while rich people are eccentric." So maybe I pieced it together. I'm pretty sure I didn't invent it.
Sometimes travelogues are more interesting.
Cheers
Bill
We enjoy Sam's travelogues, culture and audio go well together.
Edits: 02/17/12
I have to agree. There are other writers in the magazine and each brings their own point of view to our hobbby. We don't see Mikey talking about Natalie and Nicole, and we don't see Art going on about multichannel systems.
Regards,
Geoff
Edits: 02/17/12
Quite right!
Multichannel would be 4 to possibly 6 more channels than Artie's little rat-brain could possibly handle, and he'd have to stop blathering about $3000 mono cartridges from EMT & Miyabi that he has crashing about the grooves of his poor records at downforces that are actually hard on the record mat UNDERNEATH the poor things, fer gob sakes!
And if he used a REAL hi-fi cartridge, with REAL hi-fi amplifiers & speakers (instead of Ken Shindo's parts-downgraded modified Dynaco PAS-2's & Stereo 70's, or Audio Joke's modified Dynaco A-25's that they sell for what? $8000 the pair???), well, that would be no fun, because then he'd hear all the rumble from his TD-124 pottery lathe, and he'd run out of his house screaming, pulling his wife & kids & precious possessions extremely hurriedly behind him, all to avoid the imminent collision of the large, steam-powered locomotive clearly on a collision course with his listening room (while listening to a 1948 mono 78 of some obscure flute concerto...).
And we wouldn't want to scare him the way he scares us, you know, like into thinking that normal hearing is actually bad, defective, faulty hearing, now would we?
I thought not.
At least Mr. Pseudo-Tellig understands one thing that is completely lost on Mr. Dudley, and most of the rest of the pathetic audio press, such as it is...
Balance.
Mr. Pseudo-Tellig can actually say intelligent things about matters other than stereo, and he's quite interesting with it.
As is Mr. Dudley, for that matter.
The difference being, of course, that Mr. Pseudo-Tellig can actually blend a decent, if abbreviated, audio review into his little travelogues and trivia stories.
Mr. Dudley, on the other hand, goes on and on about the underside of his latest dumpster-dive idler-monster rumblebox. On and on he goes, one page blending seamlessly, indeed: mindlessly, into the next.
Then, Hey Presto! He must get paid by the word, because there's thousands of them (or so it seems), each and every verdammt issue, and not a one of them that's interesting as pertains to audio!
Well, OK, maybe that's TOO harsh. How about: Not one word that is RELEVANT to the intelligent pursuit of decent sound?
He's a great student of human nature, master of the flip comment and "bon mot" as it pertains to a certain sarcasm as it pertains to "audiophiles".
Of which he would like us to believe he isn't.
As for myself, all right, I'm convinced!
He's NOT an audiophile, he just some weirdo Craphound, and he can listen to a 1st generation Sony Playstation for a CD player, it's probably just as good as anything from 47 Lab, anyways!
Sorry, I've heard a Meridian 808 (not even the v.2!), and it all smacks of the sort of stupid hype that went along with the Sony Discman thing years back. Remember that?
Oh yeah, the Discman sounded GREAT! No bass, no highs, the rest a completely jumbled lo-fi mess...but not a particularly fatiguing mess, since there wasn't any transient sharpness in ANY aspect of the players performance. A relatively inoffensive digital mess, detail sacrificed to satiate the Gods of Listening Fatigue.
Like they say at Arby's: "Hey! Different is GOOD!"
I think not. Different is just that, I'd like something called "Better", thenk yew veddy much...
That's what a Meridian 808 offers for $10k, flaming ripoff that it otherwise is. I can get better sound out of a $300 record player running through a halfways-decent tube phono stage, so I'll do that then. I wasn't stupid enough to throw out all MY records, and none of YOU did that either, hmmmm?
But if you want good sound in digital, shut up and pay.
Not: Play with the Station!
So back to the topic at hand then:
What about Sam's travelogues?
At least they're balanced with good, honest audio reviewing. Unlike every other (un)reviewer at Stereopiles, I don't feel an urgent need to read the measurements first before I read the subjective drivel in the review.
You know, where like components aren't compared, and where components that go out of production (or even just lose distribution!) go WHOOSH! and cease to EVER have existed! Just like that!
That's what I love about High-End Audio magazines! They're just like magic!
Everything, it seems, disappears.
Common sense, hearing acuity, structured & disciplined subjective reviewing protocol (don't you just love how one reviewer's "tonal neutrality" is another's "transparency"? Or in Art Dudley's case, how none of that can bear being mentioned, because then he'd be a "High-End Audiophile" and in his warped little mind, that would mean hating music and only loving components? Maybe he should stick to music reviews, then.
If you don't want to talk about sound or what the components do to it, do us readers a favour and retire. PLEASE.
I don't know. Maybe griping about Sam's travelogues are beside the point.
Perhaps many (and I would hope, ALL) of you agree with about the non-audio drivel that Art goes into when he plays amateur psychologist in a feeble attempt to justify the motivations of those who would dare criticize his particular brand of NON-reviewing that goes along with his obvious NON-hearing. Because I wouldn't dare suggest that he's not an intelligent man. He clearly is. And if you don't agree, be very afraid, because he's educating your children. Perhaps you're grateful that you are as old as Mr. Pseudo-Tellig, and they've all grown up are either in University or are successful Vulture Capitalists or amongst the swollen masses of unemployed who've done their patriotic duty for Free-Market Capitalism and joyfully gave up their blue-collar jobs to help the poverty-stricken communist masses in the People's Republic of China.
I know I have.
And with all this free time on my hands, I can kick back and relax and REALLY take in ragazines like TAS & Stereopiles to their absolute fullest.
And I hadn't read either in over 5 years, so fed up had I become with their mindless hyperbole & quest for the next, ever-more-expensive and different-but-hardly-better-but-waaaaaay-more-expensive latest picks.
It's nice to see that nothings changed...same mindless hyperbole, turntables are coming back, new vinyl is being pressed, tubes are still King.
Of course, these turntables all cost $10,000 or more now, even the ever-disintigrating Oracle POS, the crappy & flimsy Linn Sondrek, and the $3000 Well-Tempered Turntable that's only a bargain because the cheap old SOB Firebaugh has the damned thing made in mainland China for him.
And the new vinyl is crap, but the records cost $18-25, and they have lacquer flaws galore with all the static & exploding distortion that that implies (and not just UNI, but also Rhino/Warner), and they claim to be made from the original analog masters, and perhaps they were. But what they AREN'T necessarily telling you is that they then mix them down to some digital format, 192k/24-bit if you're lucky, but most are just 88.2khz. Charming.
And I can hear it, so back to the used bins for me...
Oh sorry, a bit off topic again. And I didn't even mention how shitty-sounding the Commie & post-Commie tubes are compared to NOS, how they knock down the sound of even the best tube/valve components to something far more heart-wrenchingly mediocre: Cold, dry, empty, dead. Oh, and unreliable, too. Let's not forget that part!
Oh, look at that! I guess I did mention how shitty today's tubes are compared to even the mid-80's...
AGAIN I'm off topic! Geez!
Kind of like Art Dudley, except that I'm giving you some information that might actually save you money, educate you a bit, and amuse you a bit more, if you're so inclined.
And so it with Mr. Pseudo-Tellig.
I could use some cool audio recommendations for a good sub-$500 DAC, or a good $1500 CDP, a musical $400 low-power chinese tube amp for my bedside system. Even those Triangle speakers may be no great shakes, but they're not exactly $50,000. Try getting some good speaker advice from Jonathan Valin at TAS!
If you have less than $10k and you think Magnepan is no great shakes, your SOL with that guy's advice!
And Artie would recommend something for pretty much that kind of money that's hardly better than a Dynaco A-35 with a crossover parts upgrade!
Alan Sircom of HiFi+ posted on another thread to the effect that:
"If Ernest Hemmingway had to knock off 20 novels a year they'd read like an episode of The Waltons".
Maybe Tom/Sam's problem is that he has to find us 2 or 3 high quality audio "bargains" every month, and he has neither the time or the luck.
I know I don't.
Do any of you?
So you get alot of "filler" in a Pseudo-Tellig column.
What you DON'T get is Wes Phillips & "Mikey" Fremer's OTT mindless they-have-absolutely-no-idea-what-they're-going-on-about-and-therefore-neither-do-I hyperbole, John Atkinson's it's-all-absolyOOtely-mAHvelous-blah-blah-blah-don't-want-to-offend-any-advertisers-potential-or-otherwise sleep-apnea inducing false warm & fuzziness, or John Marks' whiney & self-righteous (and VERY self-important and therefore, self-absorbed) drivel about overpriced mediocrity that so enamors him (and few others, I note with some satisfaction), or Steve Meijas' enthusiastic cluelessness ("I hooked it up and it played! Wow! The girls were so impressed! That's GREAT!!!). Since the young man is clearly completely out of his depth reviewing hi-fi components, his stories about his 2 lady friends, irrelevant as they seem, are his only amusing & interesting commments, so I forgive him.
John Atkinson giving this person any column space...THAT I don't forgive!
After all that, do you STILL want to bitch about Sam/Tom telling you some audio history or background on the personalities in the industry, and JUST concentrate on the components?
How WIDE was the soundstage! Such DEPTH! If only I had some, said the Audio Reviewer! Such clarity! I wish I had some of that, too, said Mikey Fremer & another dozen of his cohorts...
Or if you're Art Dudley: Such temporal GRIP!
Obviously that comment was made on a day when the TD-124 was broken, and using his Linn, Art was shocked to listen to an LP being played with less than 10% wow & flutter...SUCH TEMPORAL GRIP!
Anyways, before I lose any more of my grip, temporal, rhythmic or otherwise...leave the old man alone!
He`s the best reviewer that Stereopiles has by miles & miles, and you don't need a 3-page spread of Audio Precision measurement printouts to confirm it.
I'll take one good component recommendation a month over the constant stream of utterly lousy ones that the rest of the tired old yes-men throw at me in a mindless and relentlessly consistent stream.
Stereophile will truly be a barren wasteland of compleat boredom & audio stupidity when he's gone.
Let's hope we haven't seen the last of the funky curmudgeon!
Clark Johnson told me he also prefers 78's to 33's the last time he visited...
Listening To:
Thetubeguy1954 (Tom Scata )
Full-range/Wide-range Drivers --- Front & Back-Loaded Horns
Central Florida Audio Society -- SETriodes Group -- Space Coast Audio Society
=================================================================================
"The man that hath no music in himself, nor is not moved with the concord of sweet sounds, is fit for treasons, deceptions, and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night and his affections dark as Hell. Let no such man be trusted."
- William Shakespeare from The Merchant of Venice; Act V,i
...MF has stepped in to underwrite the project.
Old Tom had one weather disaster after another last year. I feel for the guy.
nt
(nt)
It's a nom de plume, this Stereophile reviewer who is said to make Micheal Fremer look rural. No one has actually ever seen him.
However in years there have been rumors circulating that he is a giant Russia dude with shade UK connections.
Anyone's guess really.
the savor of everything - Bob Neill
I actually met Sam once in a New Haven, CT. audio store. IIRC it was Take 5 Audio, but I may be mistaken. Actually I shouldn't say I met Sam per se, because what transpired was one of the salesmen asked me; " Do you know who that is? " and after I looked, I told the salesman I don't know him.
The salesman replied; " That's Tom G. aka Sam Tellig from Stereophile. " That's when I learned Sam Tellig was his "nom de plume" as you say. Perhaps he looks like the guy in this poster?
Listening To:
Thetubeguy1954 (Tom Scata )
Full-range/Wide-range Drivers --- Front & Back-Loaded Horns
Central Florida Audio Society -- SETriodes Group -- Space Coast Audio Society
=================================================================================
"The man that hath no music in himself, nor is not moved with the concord of sweet sounds, is fit for treasons, deceptions, and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night and his affections dark as Hell. Let no such man be trusted."- William Shakespeare from The Merchant of Venice; Act V,i
Edits: 02/16/12
I think the store was Audiocom, then in Old Greenwich, CT. The sales person was Bill D'Onofrio, one of the store's owners. If I remember correctly, a customer (was it you?) started talking about a Sam Tellig review and Bill said, he's standing right here so you can ask him directly. My memory is a little hazy. I think it was 20 years ago, maybe 25.
Sam it could very well be exactly what happened, but as you said it was some 20-25 years ago and I am often under the influence of prescribed pain medications! So my memory from back then is quite bad.
I said Take 5 Audio in New Haven because to be honest it was the only name I could recall ---{ I lived in the E. Hrtfd, Glastonbury, Manchester area back then and live in Orlando, Fla today }--- of an audio salon in the New Haven/Fairfield county area of CT.
I also remember there was another very nice audio shop in New Haven, CT that unfortunately I cannot remember the name of, just like I forgot the name of the audio salon in Old Greenwich, CT. That's where I saw the HQD speaker system powered by Mark Levinson JC-2 and ML-2 25W Class A monoblocks & finally heard what a real highend system could sound like.
I don't believe I approached you, did I? IIRC I felt if you used a "pen name" it was probably because you did't want to be bothered in public, by people who read your reviews in Stereophile, when you were on your own time as Tom G. but then again I may be mistaken because it was 20-25 years ago.
I'm listening to...
Thetubeguy1954 (Tom Scata )
Full-range/Wide-range Drivers --- Front & Back-Loaded Horns
Central Florida Audio Society -- SETriodes Group -- Space Coast Audio Society
=================================================================================
"The man that hath no music in himself, nor is not moved with the concord of sweet sounds, is fit for treasons, deceptions, and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night and his affections dark as Hell. Let no such man be trusted."
- William Shakespeare from The Merchant of Venice; Act V,i
Probably writing his latest shaving razor review for Stereophool. Or possibly regaling us with his latest trip to Italy, France, Russia, etc. for Stereophool magazine.
Regards, Sam
Guzzling Armor All out of a brown paper bag...
Read why on page 15. Sam suffered a significant power outage which disrupted his scheduled auditioning.
Kal
He was abducted.
;)
that it was not really the big CT storm but that Roy Hall cut his power cables after the latest Triangle delivery. However, Sam is off on vacation anyway.
Divorce attorney?
Travel agent?
Private investigator?
Post a Followup:
FAQ |
Post a Message! |
Forgot Password? |
|
||||||||||||||
|
This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors: