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RE: what is your most shocking wikileakesque revelations about the audio industry in the last 3 years?

First both characterizations you make about what I believe are incorrect.

To the point and in all honesty you've been ignoring(I don't think intentionally) the most important aspect of my position throughout both threads of this conversation. Your responses have been reasonable so I haven't pushed but in the clarity of your responses I have to go right to the heart of the matter - which is why we have a disagreement.

"Go for best possible reproduction first. I know you don't like that approach, but in my experience, you can't nurse the best possible sound out of a bad reproducer no matter what the quality of a recording. This isn't an abstraction -- take a superb reproducer (and there are several in the high end audio market, although a surprising number fall short) and put a relatively unprocessed recording on it, and it will take you a lot closer to the original performance than anything else."

You are wrong I do like that approach. However any decent mid fi stereo will take you closer to the original performance given an unprocessed recording.

The difference between the original performance and what you hear at playback is a result of a filter. That filter consists of the recording chain and the playback system including environment/listening space.

As audiophiles we can do nothing except adjust our systems to give us what we percieve as the best possible performance.

Unfortunately using unprocessed recordings to evaluate high fi performance has a number of obstacles.

1.) One needs to assemble a comprehensive test set of unprocessed recordings capable of being used to completely characterizing hifi performance.

2.) One needs to be capable of quantifying the results of listening to those recordings.

If someone is capable of doing #1 and #2 correctly all recordings will benefit from components chosen given that methodology even bright foward ones - remember you have to turn down the volume!

If someone is NOT capable of doing #1 and #2 correctly some recordings will benefit from components chosen given that methology but others will become even more alienated.

In fact I would suggest that doing #1 and #2 incorrectly WOULD lead to system inaccuracies that make the test recordings more preferable, more real and more live, than when they are played back on the accurate system.

"(I know you don't agree, but it's no secret that poor recordings tend to be too bright and forward, and if you compensate for that by tilting the balance you'll compromise the good ones).

But you are wrong I do agree. The point I am trying to make is that there is no guarantee that by using unprocessed recordings one is not being fooled by subtle (or not) colorations that tend to make such recordings sound more real or more live. Also if using such a methodology is alienating other recordings (again remember my volume adjustment comment) one is selecting components with colorations that favor such recordings.

In a nutshell - surely I can't disagree that rolling off high frequencies and limiting low end extension will reduce the goodness of many high quality recordings in order to facilitate reasonable playback of the world of recorded works. It seems like a small price to pay. On the other hand I find any coloration that increases the goodness of any recording at the same time making other recordings sound bad or unlistenable to be simply intolerable.





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