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Not Making It On Your Own Revisited!

Dear Stephen,

It really is not a matter of what I think, the way I approach the subject of music reproduction is that the job of the equipment is to reproduce what is embedded in the software with the least possible interference, for good or bad what is on the software is "absolute" as far as I am concerned and if we want to access as much of the message that it contains, then we have no choice but to design equipment which extracts this information properly and that means finding the relevant technologies to do so.

The sound of a given recording is therefore not a matter of "taste" (you may not even like the music), it is a matter of getting to the core of the sound of the recording, that, and only that, is what we strive for, because at the end of the day the equipment that achieves this is the most accurate and so far I have not been disappointed, as each step closer to this goal has exposed unexpected improvements in most recordings.

I agree with you that at the end of the day, it is an unachievable goal, but it has to be the end goal regardless, because what else is there to aim your efforts at??

Unlike mountain climbing, where there are, or at least may be, several routes to the top, in audio there is only one road to the top in each discipline and the quest is to find which one and then combine it with the same in each part of the system, take speaker magnet systems for example,

At the bottom of the "sound pile" are,

Cheap ferrites, then
Better ferrites, then
Neodymium or samarium cobalt, then
AlNiCo and last but not least,
Field Coils with copper windings, only improved upon by,
Field coils with silver wire

To prove the validity in the above, it can be shown to repeat itself with moving coil cartridges' magnet systems, where a field coil wound with silver wire is clearly superior to any other magnet system, provided it is fed by a clean source of DC.

Similar hierarchies exists in every other area of audio, what is lacking is a general understanding of why this is so and a general agreement that this is so and then a way of proving it technically (in most cases it is actually quite easy to hear), so whilst everything is a compromise, there are compromises and then there are "compromises" where a lack of understanding hampers the end result or where the emphasis has been weighted towards cost, either to allow for low price or a great advertising budget, both of which are effective sales tools to the uninitiated and especially the illinformed and selfserving press!

If we are talking absolutes, then cost is not a consideration and cost is after all the final bar to achieving this illusive goal, is it not.

I don't think this end goal is beyond anyone with the intellect, determination, commitment, time and money but especially the openmindedness required to disregard conventions for long enough to realise that travelling uncharted roads can yield great and unexpected results, although it will always remain the domain of the few.

I realise fully that for most people to deal with this level of uncompromising zeal is at best uncomfortable, but without it little real progress is ever made.

Sincerely,
Peter Qvortrup





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