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Technical and scientific discussion of amps, cables and other topics.

tubeguy, you don't know what you are saying

You like most other audiophiles have fallen into a common trap and it is very understandable. You have neither the perspective of an experienced engineer nor of someone experienced with the most demanding forms of live unamplified concert music. I have both. You therefore are under the mistaken notion that if somehow the current concepts being used to record and play back music were perfected to their ultimate logical limit in the extreme, they would do what they now make only a vague pretense of doing, they would reproduce music perfectly. This is a bold and inescapable lie. Worst of all, developments have gone far past the point of diminishing returns to the point of no return as prices for the most prestigious of equipment skyrockets into a ludicrous spiral, witness the $50 3 tube preamplifier using 50 year old technology selling for $10,000.

I am not a defeatist, far from it. Quite the opposite, I am absolutely confident that sound can be captured and recreated so convincingly that it will be indistinguishable to any human being from the original. But not by the people who are in this business today and not by current means. That is why for me it is a waste of time and money to buy their products which will lead to nothing but disappointment and the need to keep looking for more and better of what I already have. In fact, insofar as loudspekers are concerned, even I can produce much better ones than are on the market and I've even surprised myself at what improvements I can make to other people's best efforts. But that's besides the point.

Think about this, many audiophiles claim to be able to hear the difference between one wire and another, one tube and another, one capacitor and another. Yet they pay a fortune to buy sound systems whose obvious distortions from live music is so blatant as to be inescapable practically every single time. Yet most of them keep shopping for more of the same at ever higher prices.

This is a dead industry. There is no real talent in it, just mostly hacks who can't do other useful work. They have no imagination. There are no real innovations, just a few refinements and endless variations of what they and other people did decades ago. Their market for many reasons has all but dried up. If any real progress is to come, it won't be soon and it won't be by any of the people whose names are now familiar. You can call that cynicsim, I call it reality. BTW, the Citation 11 preamplifier performs it function as perfectly as is needed. In A/B testing with all tone controls and filters defeated, it sounds identical to the same signal bypassed. This is uncontestable proof of its adequacy just as the similar tests of wires I've described are. It's is a test of the kind people who make and sell this stuff hate because it puts the lie to the value of their far more expensive super improved models. They will use any arguement they can think of to refute its obvious logic. You and other audiophiles may buy into it. I don't. I can't. Not after a lifetime of dealing with the real world on its own terms.


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