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In Reply to: RE: Audio System Performance (a rant) posted by Goober58 on December 05, 2012 at 08:49:34
nt
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I agree their is no "best" that everyone will agree is best at any price point. I suppose some might argue that with "proper training" we would all agree. Maybe but I've got better things to do than to become properly trained.
Edits: 12/05/12
Well, training is only as good as the system you are training on. Most systems, even expensive ones at high end audio salons and shows, are simply too generic sounding, too lacking in the attributes that audiophiles strive to obtain. You know, things like transparency, height of soundstage, air, slam, liquidness, puffiness, etc, Given the generic, blasé, lackluster, undistinguished sound most people actually have access to, how can one call himself "trained" on high end sound, and how can one make practical decisions based in such training? So, I know what you're thinking, where do I go to find a real high end system, one with real high end performance instead of make believe high end performance, to train on? Answer at 11.
I was kind of thinking you become trained when you believe that what the person training you tells you sounds best is actually what sounds best. The typical way it works is some hifi dealer or guru tells me what sounds best and when I monkey his rants back at him he makes me feel more welcome in his shop or his home and when I buy the same equipment, new from his shop or used from him when he upgrades I become a cherished member of the inner circle. That's what I call training and contributing to the evolution of high end audio....
Edits: 12/18/12
With no reference standard for achieving/reproducing lifelike sound might as well take whoever has the tastiest kool aide. Though I can certainly appreciate the advances over the past 50 years of stereo, it seems to me the industry should be looking forward to more 3D realism rather than more dwelling and training in the ways of the ancients.
My system is anything but generic; I believe I have one of the best systems on the planet.
I am sure you believe it too. Kind of like a self fulfilling prophecy.
Just like a subjective evaluation of an expensive tweak. You have to believe, don't you?
You wrote,
"Just like a subjective evaluation of an expensive tweak. You have to believe, don't you?"
Uh, if you say so.
"Folks would be better off if they believed in too much rather than too little." - PT Barnum
"It's what I chose to believe." - Dr. Elizabeth Shaw in Prometheus
Your first quote from the circus guy is a better fit.
Apart from the question of individual listeners having their own perspective, even with one listener there may not be a "best" over the universe of possible systems. Preference is, at best, a partial ordering. One might have two systems A and B which end up tied. Both are maximal, in the sense that neither one ever loses a match, but neither always ends up as a winner.
Worse, preferences aren't even ordered in a logically consistent fashion. It is possible for A to beat B, B to beat C, and C to beat A, as in the game of "Rock, Paper, Scissors". When this happens to an audiophile the result may end up a financial disaster.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
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