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Steely Dan The Absolute Sound
"Harry Lavo" wrote:
"Michael McKelvy" wrote in message
...
"Harry Lavo" wrote in message
I said:
The hobby is still called high-fi and that has a meaning. Anything
that
gets us closer to the intent of the artist by removing distortion,
noise,
compression, or whatever might be hiding the choices made by the
artist
and
the engineer is a benefit. I don't really care about other
preferences,
they are yours and you're welcome to them, but if they include things
like
flawed playback devices, they are LOWER-fi.
Unfortunately, the hobby hasn't been called "high-fi" in many
years...high-end audio has replaced that terminology.
That should make you think. Why was the term Hi-Fi abandoned?
Because it was over-ridden by high-end a marketing and sales term that had
nothing to do with audio accuracy.
Could it be that it the real advancements have been done?
That's exactly the right answer.
No, I think the phrase "high-end" was coined by Harry Pearson in the early
days of TAS, to define companies that were primarily listening-oriented vs.
measurement-oriented, because everything was called "hi-fi" in those days,
including stuff that measured well but sounded like dreck...mostly mid-fi
stuff that was positioned as "hi-fi".
So where are the controlled listening tests that shows anything sounded like
"dreck?" Where are the controlled listening tests that show that that
"high-end" equipmnet sounds better than "dreck"?
Harry, from the beginning, made a
point of noting that he was talking about where (how high, or how exalted)
they set their company's "mission", not their price.
Oh really: so how come there have been no bias-controlled listening tests
conducted or published? Was it NOT true that you are suggesting that
measurements didn't convey an accurate picture of an audio components true
acoustical performance? So why weren't there any confirming bias-controlled
listening tests to show that this was true? A 'screen' would seem to have been
an obvious closer.
So a lot of not very
expensive gear was reviewed as well as some very expensive stuff. For
example, NAD was considered high end. Yamaha was not. And that distinction
was deserved based on the sound of the day.
There was nothing based on the "sound" of the day because there were no
bias-controlled listening tests employed confirming that the evaluations were
confined to acoustical import.
Given the time of the "day" I wonder why not. It would seem to have been so
easy.
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