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RE: Herb Reichert: Our Man At Stereophile

Posted by Joe Roberts (M) on January 11, 2016 at 05:59:10

In Reply to: RE: Herb Reichert: Our Man At Stereophile posted by Paul Eizik on January 10, 2016 at 22:31:11:

I wouldn't say that the vintage audiophiles themselves are superior but perhaps the aesthetic is a bit more open in some ways. There is a lot of received wisdom in that field that is also beyond questionable.

One issue is that there are loaded terms with positive and negative cultural connotations. It sounds silly to say "I prefer a somewhat colored, less accurate speaker with less detail and more poorly-defined imaging" but some might prefer just that.

Audio language takes on a life of its own, often independent of experience. and steers the discourse in various ways. I think a lot of bad audio gear results from designers chasing review-speak word images rather than musical "truth"... whatever that may be for individual listeners.

Funny how "transparent" has become a watchword of what I'm calling "naive objectivists," used to indicate some idealized sonic correlate of low distortion and low noise--something like that. As I recall from the 80s, that was a term employed by TAS metaphorologists discussing sound relative to different photography filters and lenses. Over time, the metaphorical aspect was lost and was taken literally, even though it really has no meaning in sound perception? Ever hear a sound block a sound behind it?

If many of the people who employ the term transparency as a banner for objectivism understood it's roots, they would die. Also, it strikes me as an ill-defined subjectivist notion masquerading as objective evaluation. The objectivists are falling into the trap of liking the positive connotation of the word, even as an objective definition of the term is elusive.

I use the term "objectivity" advisedly, since there is no such thing. Objectivity is itself a cultural, hence subjective and contingent, construction.

I think that the 80s writers at TAS were trying to be objective in a way, or at least craft a language to discuss sound that would offer some intersubjective commonality. Just as scientists would translate phenomena into mathematics, which they could then use to describe and calculate, early TAS translated sound perceptions into visual metaphor, which offers a much richer palette of descriptive language. Unfortunately, the calculation part doesn't work so well in metaphorical systems.

30 years down the road of high end audio, I think it would be useful to ban all of these stale metaphors and frozen review-speak terms that constrain and prevent rather than facilitate discussion, evaluation, and comparison. I doubt that this will happen however.

As an anthropologist focused on such matters, I can find problems and inconsistencies in any discourse/knowledge system, but this is simply a universal condition of human existence. All systems leak, as they say. Life goes on in spite of such trifles.

What no one can argue with is taste. And the ossified language of audio evaluation often pits itself against the freedom of choice and variability that underlies taste.

More personality, individuality, and less rote repetition of audio-speak is what I'd like to see in audio discourse.

That is what I like in Herb Reichert's contributions. I find it exciting to read one of his essays because I never know where he is going to take me. He was always that way. An interesting and thoughful guy and a good writer.







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