|
High Efficiency Speaker Asylum Need speakers that can rock with just one watt? You found da place. |
|
|
|
High Efficiency Speaker Asylum Need speakers that can rock with just one watt? You found da place. |
|
In Reply to: RE: Herb Reichert: Our Man At Stereophile posted by Paul Eizik on January 14, 2016 at 21:08:59:
When I say TAS, I am talking about the 1980s when they came up with many of the terms and perspectives that were later fossilized into the review speak we know today. The writers were outdoing each other fleshing out the metaphors. It was really wild stuff. I felt left out of some of the esoteric film and lens references some of these reviewers used because I didn't even have a camera. It was very 80s upwardly mobile, yuppie scum stuff, to use a then-current jibe. The scent of Mateus, damp Italian sculpted sweaters, and cocaine hung heavily in the air...
By the late 80s, I was out of grad school and virtually unemployable with a couple anthro degrees, so I got a job in a high end store. There I got to play with much of the gear under review and I could judge the reviewing on that basis, in addition to critiquing their evaluation systems on intellectual grounds.
My general impression was that these guys were nuts. They were totally lost in their own language and losing track of the scheme. The cleverness of the review seemed to overtake the job of evaluating the gear. Tediously described micro analyses of a single violin note on some dreadful Editor's Choice Shaded Dog stretched on for paragraphs of wine and Leica references. In the end, one had little idea of what the device under test actually sounded like and I found it very difficult to recognize the review in the actual equipment.
To read the magazines, one would think this marvelous high-end gear was one jaw-droppingly fantastic engineering and aesthetic accomplishment after another. In reality it was somewhat less, much less. I built my first DIY amp at the counter in the store in the store during slow periods, which were frequent. It was a 6L6 PP amp from the old Acrosound catalog built with surplus parts from the hamfest. Turned out sounding better than anything in the store....and I wasn't the only one to think so. And I was just a ham radio lovin' anthropologist, not a high-end auteur/designer.
History demonstrates where I went with that realization.
Although many of these 80s writers were intelligent and capable folks, some went down the rabbit hole of language and metaphor and got lost in the tunnels.
I have done some reviewing and I think it is a difficult enterprise, especially if avoiding intensive navel-gazing and creating a useful, meaningful piece with general readability, entertainment value, and larger relevance are the goals. Many of the "top" reviewers have been formulaic as hell, almost to the point where one could cut and paste in new equipment names and fax it in the to the editor for the next issue. Reviewing machines.
I am not arguing that reviewers need advanced training in philosophy of science and social sciences. The ones who need that are staunch naive objectivist firebrands harshing the mellow for the chill subjectivists on the forums, cause they are way off base in both theory and practice.
What reviewing needs are inquisitive and curious people who are able to bracket out any assumed expertise they might have and share the saga of discovery and making sense of the market and the technology, while describing gear in ways that will attract those listeners who would be drawn to the unit question for sonic or other reasons.
I feel that a good review/er literary persona is humble, sincere, and simple-minded in a good way, like a kid in a toy store.
I have known Art and Herb for decades and when I read their columns, I often get the impulse that they are playing humble and innocent in some ways for the sake of the article, but the reality is that that is how they are. They really are amazed by the gear. These guys are still learning, even though they have many many years of experience and they approach writing with a natural sincerity that does not hide this childlike affect.
My experience in academics has taught me that the really smart profs are the ones who will listen to anybody and anything because they might learn something new, while the ones who are staunch dogmatic know-it-alls are often insecure poseur frauds.
For me, the aesthetics of musical sound is a deep and mysterious thing. It sure keeps me humble, more the older I get and the more I hear.
What occasionally gets me out of my shell to rage like a lunatic on forums is people trying to steal that mystery with bonehead junk science, because mystery and magic totally belong in there.
------------------------------
Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent -- Wittgenstein
Free your mind and your ass will follow -- Parliament/Funkadelic
This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:
Follow Ups
- RE: Herb Reichert: Our Man At Stereophile - Joe Roberts 05:41:38 01/15/16 (2)
- RE: Herb Reichert: Our Man At Stereophile - EduardG 20:48:27 01/18/16 (0)
- RE: Herb Reichert: Our Man At Stereophile - Paul Eizik 21:26:46 01/15/16 (0)
Top of Page ]
[ Contact Us ]
[ Support/Wish List ]
[ Copyright © 2024, Audio Asylum, all rights reserved ]
