[Gary Eickmeier]

Do you ever sit down to listen and find yourself getting bored with it,
unless it is one of your all time favorite recordings? Have you ever
auditioned a few other people's systems, or gone around at an audio show,
and been amazed at first but unamazed later?

I have been saying that the reproduction problem is less about accuracy and
more about acoustics, and I think these observations are a subset of that
principle. You know that there is no system that can be made to sound
exactly like the real thing, because if it is an acoustic problem then you
just cannot get away from the problem of the smaller space. It is not long
before your ears "glom on" to your acoustic situation between your speakers
and room, and the suspension of disbelief gets messed with because you
realize that you are not in Symphony Hall or the Concertgebeauw. So you make
a few adjustments, tweek something, change something, if only to put on a
new recording. But soon.... well, you see what I mean.

But this is the source of this whole industry called The High End. They
convince you to try all these silly tweeks, real or imaginary, and you go
along with it happily just to change something. Not me any more, thanks to
double blind testing and learning what matters and what doesn't, but still
it is good to get away from audio for a couple of weeks and then when you
turn it on again it sounds so... so fresh, new and amazing! The best deal
for me is when I go travelling, maybe listen to a few other people's rigs,
then come back home to "the real thing" and enjoy mine all the more for the
comparison - and the seeming newness!

We thrive on variety and change, and I wonder if one could become bored even
listening in the same concert hall every time? Any thoughts on that? Do you
always sit in the same seat, or do you like to move around a little? Maybe
if a hall is good enough, you could never get bored with it and the
suspension of disbelief problem of course does not exist in the live
situation, so the principle doesn't apply live. I mean, sitting there you
never even question fidelity or imaging or balance or volume or anything
that most of us consider hi fi problems. Your brain just knows that it is
real and live, so you stop worrying about capacitors and channel balance and
enjoy the music!

I think I am getting old and sounding like Bert White.

Gary Eickmeier