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RE: Let me get this out of my system...

Sometimes when I listen to "Sunday At The Village Vanguard" late at night in my listening room, with a good glass of wine in my hand, I can feel the ambiance of the room and locate the other patrons talking softly and clinking their glasses around me; I enter that physical space and wonder if the reproduction of a performance gets much better than that.

Other times, when I put on my headphones in the clear light of day, I understand that Scott LaFaro's bass is panned too far to one side, that the microphones must have been too close to really record the ambiance of the room relative to that performance, that the room sounds may have even been captured by a separate mic, that the ambiance is an illusion and that it was my emotions, desire and expectations that translated that extra mic into the palpable space and contents of the Vanguard.

The revelations of the latter experience have not prevented me from repeating, and enjoying, the former. But they prevent me from announcing, with great authority, that the reality of the former "has well been decided" and that "Anyone with a reasonable system has said so."

So I would say this to all lurkers looking for computer audio guidance and to all participants who have not heard differences between bit perfect players, lossless and WAV, USB cables, systems with way too much RAM and processing power vs systems with only more than enough: You're probably right. In fact the existing science and engineering says you are. These things have only "well been decided" by a relative handful of audiophiles, and their vendors, on a handful of internet discussion boards. Don't spend a moment or a nickel chasing these phantoms unless you are sure the joy of the chase alone will be worth the investment.

Your fly in the fantastic ointment,

P


Edits: 02/28/10 02/28/10
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