Somewhere on teh intarwebs
wrote:
J. g. holt the founder of stereophile at the end of his life was of
the mind that audio is near death for having neglected this:
Interview in stereophile, of which the entire thing is worth the
timed to read.
http://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/1107awsi/
Audio as a hobby is dying, largely by its own hand. As far as the real
world is concerned, high-end audio lost its credibility during the
1980s, when it flatly refused to submit to the kind of basic honesty
controls (double-blind testing, for example) that had legitimized
every other serious scientific endeavor since Pascal. [This refusal]
is a source of endless derisive amusement among rational people and
of perpetual embarrassment for me, because I am associated by so many
people with the mess my disciples made of spreading my gospel.
It is ironic the very mag he founded was in the forefront of this
neglect and of promoting voodoo audio., as it and fellow travelers
continue.
Here's a short piece I just read that is sort of relevant:
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/09/27/te...em/index.html?
# # # # # !!Warning - Reminiscing follows!! # # # # #
There are some truths in it. I remember when I went (from my home in New
Zealand) to live and work on Norfolk Island for a year or three at the end
of the 70s - I guess similar to the author's move to college. I had a
component system and five 'beer crates' of LPs (about 25 to the wooden
crate, leaving 'flipping room' - they were a real boon to the young carefree
budding audiophile as they were *very* strong and LPs fitted into them
perfectly).
I didn't take my system and LPs with me and rather foolishly let myself be
talked into letting a friend 'look after' the records rather than put them
into storage. On my return in 1980 we had a party at said friends house as I
was gagging to hear some of my music again... Two hours later, after having
listened to scratches, skips, pops and 'loops' I gave him the whole
collection! So much for looking after it - he'd turned into a real party
animal who let just anyone change the records - usually not worrying about
putting the last one away. :-( I was so stressed out by the experience I
embraced the small part of me that was still hippy and divested myself of
material wories.
I started buying CDs a while later and didn't look back.
--
/Shaun.
"Humans will have advanced a long, long, way when religious belief has a
cozy little classification in the DSM."
David Melville (in r.a.s.f1)
[Sent from my OrbitalT ocular implant interface.]