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Speaker Asylum General speaker questions for audio and home theater. |
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Speaker Asylum General speaker questions for audio and home theater. |
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In Reply to: RE: excuse the odd question - why buy controversial speakers? posted by middleground on February 11, 2012 at 09:00:16:
Who mentioned "hifi" to this point? I thought the poster was asking something else. Oh well, now that you have raised it...Hifi - or the accurate reproduction of some event or series of events coded to a playable medium - is a simple, easily understood ideal or goal. However, when describing what we think accurate music reproduction is we rely on personal opinions, influenced by myriad internal and external factors. The ideal/goal may be the almost the same, but our understanding of the criteria and methods we use to define and achieve it at a personal level might vary considerably.
Even with the live event, where there is no reproduction per se, the reasons we attend differ; what we experience differs; how we hear and interpret it differs... by extension, audiophiles might create systems that get them to heart of a performance better than competing products. They might describe their systems as more real, more able to replicate some event and simply more accurate to them; their fi is higher than others. Of course, what they consider real may not be what you consider real, or hifi. There is no absolute truth in personal opinion.
But what about 'absolute hifi' or 'audio truth?' Such 'absolutes' belong more in the realm of objectivity. Having developed research protocols for living in a previous life, I doubt that (m)any significant studies - clinical or population - exist that do not involve some personal judgement: what methodology, what measurement instrument... what statistical tool, what assumptions underpin said tool... how do we reconcile internal and external validity?... now we are back into the realm of the personal, albeit more completely informed and hopefully with minimal bias.
So, for most audiophiles hifi is an ideal that we might choose to move towards, some distant goal that shapes our direction; let us not confuse it with our present reality or oversimplify said reality to such a label. The enjoyment of reproduced music is personal, as is the enjoyment of wine. Of course the are distinctions between the two, but both are enjoyed and can involve complex decisions at the personal level, no matter how much we are focussed on the high in fi.
At least, that is my take on it for now. I might change my mind tomorrow.
Cheers.
"In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, in the expert's mind there are few." Shunryo Suzuki
Edits: 02/12/12 02/12/12
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Follow Ups
- I was wondering if someone would play the hifi card. - RC Daniel 21:42:47 02/11/12 (0)
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