Stuart Leichter wrote:

In article , "Pete AF" wrote:

snip


And a wonderful thread it has been.

But I miss hearing about the learning benefits of higher and highest
fidelity, how you can hear things as if for the first time, and how your
musical and over-all sonic knowledge increases. Then you change, forever.
Do you want that? In the 1970s I lucked into a set of ESS AMTs with
electrostatic mylar tweeters, and I started to buy music to feed the
tweeters.

I also miss hearing about Moore's Law or its audiophile equivalent if
there is such a thing. All I can think of is that since "hi-fi" became
"stereo", you buy one channel you get a second of equal or lesser value
free, speakers not included.

The Rich are Different. In 1961 $20,000 would get you The Beatles in
person in your basement for a couple of months, or Lester Lanin's
Orchestra for a few days.

I would pay attention to silence also, especially since the interval is
crucial in music or any intelligible sound. Frost-free refrigerators are
spiteful, as are water pipes and forced-air HV/ACS.

Cheers,

Stuart

I'll take a stab at high cost...

I think there are two camps here.. those "techies" at various levels who
wish to persue musical reproduction accuracy from an
engineering/scientific analytical view, and the "non-techies" who prefer
to evaluate music repro based on their perceptions and attitudes about
what sounds "right" to them, regardless of the cost and/or merit of the
perceived "high-end". While I was a musician during my youthful years,
I've moved into the "techie" camp when I started building speakers some
40 years ago( Big folded horns, with a single EV SP8B driver)... they
would fill the Jag School assembly hall at UVA during grad student happy
hour driven by an 80 watt kenwood amp and my cherished Sony reel-to-reel
tapedeck.

Back in '79, I bought some Infinity RSII's on the cheap... loved the
tweeters, but they had a nasty impedance curve that popped the fuses on
my AA1600 Heath amp, so I beefed it up with some big fat 500,000 uF caps
and bigger rail fuses to handle the current and capacitive swings. Then
I sold the heathkit and picked up a used Nak 730 receiver. I'm still
using this, have 3 others I swap out from time to time when I repair one
of them (the receiver has phenomenal sound, but somewhat quirky
electronic switching, so it's kinda like exotic car maintenance) The RS
II's now exist only as the cabinet, as I've ripped the original
woofers/midrange/EMITS /xover (after several re-foamings) and replaced
the drivers with high power woofers/midranges.. and the gorgeous
sounding panasonic leaf tweeters EASxxxx I picked up in the late 90's.
I then built a cylindrical subwoofer with a 12" titanic driver, tuned to
19 Hz that'll shake the entire house.. driven by an Adcom 555 II in mono
mode... 650 watts rms or so. The naks are good for 150w/channel rms..
so I've got ~ 1KW of amplification, in a roughly 900 square foot living
room, 2 stories tall. The RS II's are dipoles, so the sound is
exquisitly detailed and localized, with a huge sound stage, yet they
fill the entire space within the room at a very uniform level. Many
folks who've heard them say they posses a "jump factor" rarely heard
elsewhere (as in, if you're in another room and you suddenly feel like
there's someone playing live music in the room).

Alas, I'm now embarking on a new project, with Bohlender/Grabener
RD-75's planars and more EASxxx ribbons in a 6 foot line source dipole
setup in a cherry cabinet/baffle. Never satisfied, I guess. The
existing dipoles will move to our theatre room for more re-inforcement work.

What's the point of this post? I've done all these decades of fine
music listening on the cheap, carefully buying and rebuilding used
equipment (I've currently got 2 TEAC X2000R open reels I use for
mastering/listening that I rebuilt to better than factory specs) I've
probably blown no more than $6-$8K over the 30 years I've been seriously
pursuing this hobby, and have yet to hear anything under $100K retail
that sounds as good or better than what I'm hearing right now. And many
people who've heard my systems agree with me, as I've built systems and
speakers for them as well. SO, for me at least, High end doesn't mean
High cost. Of course, I've an advanced degree in electrochemical
engineering, hold several patents, and play reed instruments and putz on
the piano, so my perspective may be a bit warped. Plus I run my wife's
medical practice, (she actually has learned to enjoy and appreciate the
exceptional quality of the sound she hears from the systems) I've got a
plain vanila Sony 300 disc changer, and it sure as the dickens beats
anything coming off of vinyl (yes, I've played with all the high end
vinyl stuff too). I use zip-cord wiring, and can't, for the life of me,
undestand why anyone would try $2K Scheister Stones (sic) or $5K power
cords. But that's another post.

Of course, ymmv, and... if you've got money you don't know what to do
with... go for it..

John L.
Auplater