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 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. ______________________________________________
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 …
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ISSUE #210 CAST OF CHARACTERS Contributors
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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.