
Are There Any Audiophiles Anymore?
As I allowed the tonearm to make its slow decent down
toward the slab of vinyl sitting on the turntable’s platter, a hard,
four square realization washed though my mind as if I had suddenly and
without notice come across something new, something previously
unconscionable to my way of thinking, something that I, for the most part
until then, had compartmentalized and had been able to comfortably live
with without a great deal of fretting – I’m getting old. Not the
"don’t trust anyone over thirty" old that had become the
battle cry of a generation when in my teens. No! It was the realization
that I was approaching an old age land mark of sorts in that "I’m
old enough to join AARP. and I’ve only got seven years to social
security," that kind of old. Age has its positives. At 55 I was
eligible to start receiving half price buffets and coffee discounts at a
number of restaurants in the area. It was fun at first, paying half price
for the same meal that just a few weeks before cost twice as much. But
even free food becomes a latent joy when one plate becomes enough to
satisfy and you have to watch how spicy the food is if a full night’s
rest is valued. Recently I became a regular AARP magazine reader. I think
my wife ordered it for me when she saw an article at a friend’s house
about foods one can eat without the necessity of chewing. They also
explore investments designed specifically for the geriatric among us, you
know, short term things that pay off sooner rather than later…
Problem is, my mind doesn’t feel old. I still like
fast motorcycles and flashy cars, but I'd look out of place driving
either. If you’ve ever watched one of the auto auctions on TV (Mecum or
Barrett), you’ll notice that many of the cars to hit the block are 60s
and 70s muscle cars with low lines and high horsepower engines. You’ll
also notice that over 90% of the people buying those chick magnet cars are
pasty textured white guys with bellies hanging over their belts and
balding pates. Like me, they see themselves sitting in a 1969 Camero with
a 409 cu. in. engine tearing up the asphalt with the girl of their dreams
in the bucket seat next to them. The guys plunking down $50,000 for a 45
year old car could be addressing feelings of elder age and inadequacy –
they oftentimes go together.
Musically I’ve always felt that my tastes were in
line with mainstream America. I enjoy Coldplay and I really enjoy some of
the music by Radiohead, October Project, Dream Theater and Porcupine
Dream. But most of that isn’t really contemporary music either. I
realized that when I saw a list of the top ten selling recording of the
week and didn’t recognize a single artist on it. At least if Ice Cube or
Snoop Dog had been on the list I would have recognized someone! Even they
are old news now.
As the reality of being a senior sinks in there is
another issue I must address – How come I have absolutely no interest in
the new music mediums? It doesn’t makes sense, after all, I’ve had BFS
readers decades older than myself tell me how wonderful the marriage
between music and computers is. Not to me! Music servers and Hi-Rez
downloads leave me cold and with no interest in them whatsoever. I tried
liking them, I really did. I started by putting music on my computer and
then burning that music onto a CD with a Nero program. It was interesting
for a while, but it soon became boring. Then I purchased a high-end music
burner from Alesis (around $600). With the Alesis I put old vinyl onto a
hard drive within the burner and then made a series of "best of"
recordings which I shared with friends who liked to burn analog onto CDs
too. I compared the results of "ripping" the same records with
different phono cartridges and different phono stages, burning them onto
CDs (LPCDRs as we called them) and then listening to hear if I could hear
the differences in, say, phono cartridges. Unbelievably, I could hear
meaningful differences in pick ups playing records even with all the
digital interference that came with ripping, storing and burning analog
music onto CDs. Same for the other guys in the small group of hobbyists I
hung around with who liked doing the same. But now, the Alesis sits in a
corner with hours and hours of music, analog as well as digital, on its
hard drive. I never pay attention to it unless I need something that sits
behind it. None of it held my heart.
As I write this there is nearly 50 years of vinyl in
the other room as well as 30 years of digital. I regularly go back and
forth between them, sometimes not playing a record for 6 months. Then, all
of a sudden, the desire to hear everything from L to P alphabetically in
my analog collection strikes and the time machine back to my youth is
energized spinning record after record. Sometimes I’ll spend a night or
two listening to nothing but Captain Beyond and Focus… but my records
and CDs are always there. I can touch them, see them and collect them. How
does one do that with music downloaded off of the internet?
I had the opportunity to audition an Olive music server
some years back, but when the manufacturer started playing games, I
decided quickly that he and it weren’t worth it. I’ve had several
friends offer to set my home computer up with an internal music server (?)
so that I could download music off of the internet. I admit, some of the
Hi-Rez downloads almost pushed me over the edge into music downloading,
but when it came time to purchase the required hardware and have it
installed – I stalled. Why do that when I already have thousands of
vinyl records and CDs in my listening room? Seemed like overkill to me,
with no discernible benefit. That was unless I wanted to be able to choose
from anyone of 100 thousand songs at the click of a mouse - where is the
pride of ownership in that? To me, computers are for working, writing or
buying vintage gear off of e-bay. Putting music into that group leaves a
bad taste in my mouth.
Reading Stereophile and TAS has in large
part become a bore. Aside from the contributions of Harry Pearson, which
mostly follow in lock step with my own interests, those two publications
seem to have lost entirely the spirit of the high-end and of being an
audiophile – it’s gone. Greed and convenience are the unspoken buzz
words of the day, and without advertisers to placate, I need neither.
There was a time when inconvenience of use was a sign
of sophistication and dedication to sonics and quality. Having separate
componentry without tone controls and turntables without an automatic tone
arm lift at the end of a record were seen as the horse hair tunics of the
day. The goal was to create a sound system that was uniquely YOU, as well
as one that sounded better than everyone else's. Does that kind of mindset
even exist today?
I pray that I’m not pining for the "good old
days" just because I’m getting older and my short term memory is
starting to leave me. But there was a time when true, state-of-the-art
equipment came without a state-of-the-art price. The finest the industry
had to offer was open to almost everyone, a no holds barred design
oftentimes costing less than $500. An NAD 3020 integrated amplifier, which
for a period of time represented the best sound available sold for less
than $300. Today, the most exciting part of the industry, the no
compromise part, is reserved exclusively for the ultra rich and audio
reviewers. Worst of all, the big bucks one must shell out for a truly
superior system today won’t buy you innovation and creativity; all it
generally buys is overkill and weight.
For example, driver technology and speaker design has
stagnated. The brilliant concepts behind the Ohm/Walsh or ESS Heil drivers
seem to be gone. Were all the innovative speaker ideas exhausted with the
Magneplanars and Beveridge ribbons? Have designers become so complacent
that a 10", 3-way with dome tweeter is about the best we can come up
with today? Where is the modern day equivalent of the Dahlquist DQ10?
Looking through some of the many "Recommended" lists in TAS
and Stereophile, one sees row after row of mega buck two-ways with
drivers designed 15 years ago. How far have we advanced? Let’s take
tweeters for example. Over the last 23 years of doing BFS I’ve
auditioned just about every tweeter that can be taken seriously. I
survived the metal dome craze of the 90s and 00s, while reviewing soft
domes, ribbons and units employing magnetic fluid in their gaps. Why then
did a Burhoe tweeter (circa 1973) auditioned in my listening room in an
aging EPI, 2-way loudspeaker last month sound every bit as articulate,
detailed and natural as anything I’ve heard in the last twenty years? I
take that back - it sounded more natural than the vast majority of
expensive exotica I’ve ever heard.
Why does it seem that we were so much smarter back
then? Actually, we weren’t smarter back then, but audio designers as a
whole were a lot more practical thirty years ago, and we as purchasers
were less gullible; refusing to spend large sums of money on questionable
technological advancements and generally baseless babble. And while bad
products could on occasion trick us into a purchase years ago (I think of
the Harman-Kardon turntable with Rabco arm as one such ridiculous purchase
I made), the damage was relatively minimal and not coming close to the
thousands of dollars demanded for today’s snake oil.
In giving a great amount of thought to the matter, I
perceive the difference between now and then to be one of character rather
my sentimental musings for the "good ol’ days." Character. It’s
not something that is easily defined in strict terms, at least not in this
instance anyway. As I look back in time, it’s apparent that even the bad
equipment back in the 70s had a character about them that was not
dependent price or origin. Ideas were fresh then. Zero negative feedback
and pure class A operation were exciting concepts that carried with them
futuristic ideals. Phase alignment and lateral tracking arms were hopeful
gateways to better sound. Moving coil cartridges and DC coupling were
areas of exploration, none of which had five figure price tags or an aura
of elitism. The playing field was much more level back then and a designer’s
goals shown through into his products. Bud Fried told me one time that
loudspeaker designs reflected the character and personality of the man
designing them. He insisted that you could personally know the designer by
listening to his products; he used B&W as well as Quad speakers to
prove his point. At a CES held in Chicago he said that if he wanted to
understand what a particular person in the industry was like before he met
them, that he would spend some time listening to a component designed and
manufactured by them first – he felt it gave him an upper hand in
dealings and negotiations. Of course, such an approach to discerning the
character of a man or product in that fashion requires the intimate
development of the product, not by a team of consultants or hired hands,
but by the individual from beginning to end. That simply isn’t happening
any more. Too many things manufactured today are done so by teams, which
in turn are influenced by surveys and buying trends determined by
questionnaires, which originate with CPAs and sales estimates – Where’s
the character in that?
So, where have all the audiophiles gone? Not the psuedo
audiophile that lives for convenience and thinks that the entire story
music-wise can be told from a set of numbers derived from a scope and
analysis. No, I mean the guys and gals who would talk new amps and preamps
well into the night; I mean the guys dead set on building their own
speakers, speakers that employ drivers never seen before, while (barely)
conforming to the laws of physics. Where are the modern day equivalents to
the Ohm, Heil and Iverson plasma drivers? Where is the enthusiasm for
beautiful music in the home? Where is the excitement that arises when a
new ground breaking product arrives looking unique and truly is
affordable!? Why have so many manufacturers decided to go the salon,
exclusive boutique route as an approach to consumer sales while at the
same time dumping highly discounted gear out the back door to grinders
with cash in hand? When will normal folks take this hobby back? Are there
any audiophiles anymore?
________________________________________
This is very difficult to write. On Wednesday,
November 17, 2010, Rich Rodgers (aka "Big Jim, as big as all
outdoors") passed away in Sequals, Italy. He is survived by his wife,
Maria. Rich was a very close friend of mine and someone that I knew to
have a kind and gentle heart while always being ready with a huge laugh.
He was a Southern boy transplanted to San Francisco. Taking his love of
audio with him cross country, Rich combined the rare qualities of down
home humanity with San Francisco savvy. He had the ability to make people
feel relaxed with his southern drawl and easy movements, while keeping you
on your toes with insightful comments and a razor sharp mind. He
understood complicated things easily and quickly, always being able to
distill the most complex situation into a few words or appropriate
illustration – he loved to teach and he had a memory for persons, places
and things that was my envy. Rich loved people, and if you were his friend
he was as loyal as an old bloodhound. He and his wife were a refuge for
homeless cats, blind dogs and lame horses, whenever possible taking the
animals into their home (or finding a home for them), making the orphan
their pet while keeping it comfortable for the rest of its days. Not
looking to take from a relationship, Rich could be called a giver, always
offering a helping hand or a kind word. Rich wrote for BFS for nearly 15
years and during that time refused any sort of payment other than I send
copies of the issues he was in to some of his friends so they could see
his handiwork or lighten their spirits. He truly was a Southern gentleman…
I have several entries of the Rodgers Report on file
here that are yet to be published. I am going to edit and print them as if
Rich were still in eager anticipation of seeing them in BFS. With each
issue of BFS he received in Sequals, Rich would e-mail me minutes after he
got it just to tell me it had made it to Italy and how much he enjoyed it.
I can’t tell you how much I am going to miss those e-mails.
______________________________________________
It’s been a source of confusion
in the past, and I think a word here can remedy the situation. On the front
page of every Bound for Sound is an issue number and a publication date. For
this issue the number is 210. The publication date is December 2012. Even though
I would like to, we do not come out on a monthly basis. Hence, you will not
see covers with publication dates that closely correspond with consecutive
months. So, don’t be surprised when one issue says "July" and
the next one says, "September." It means nothing other than one issue
came out in July and the other in September. It doesn’t mean that you missed
the August issue. On the other hand, the issue number means everything. We
number our issues consecutively. Our last issue was #209 and this one is
#210. If you are missing #209, you have missed an issue. It’s as simple as
that.
And while on the subject, there is a way for you to know
the issue number of the last issue of your subscription. Simply look at the
label on the outside of your envelope. Just to the right of your name is a
number. That number corresponds to the number of the last issue of your
present subscription. So, if it says 208, this would be your last issue.
If, however, you don’t pay attention to the expiration
number on the envelope, we always send two notices of expiration before you
run out. After all, we want you to stay current …
Our cable and broadband had been furnished by Insight
Digital for a number of years. That has changed, and with the
change the purchaser of consumer base (Comcast) has changed our
e-mail address. The new e-mail address is bfshifi@comcast.net.