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In Reply to: "We enjoy Sam's travelogues, culture and audio go well together." posted by Metralla on February 17, 2012 at 08:23:37:
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!
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Follow Ups
- RE: "We enjoy Sam's travelogues, culture and audio go well together." - joerosen1 01:23:50 04/18/12 (0)
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