It does seem odd that it needs to be debated. It is obvious to me that "high fidelity" means accurate reproduction of the signal. If this sounded rubbish on most recordings then that would be evidence of a de facto pre-emphasis and de-emphasis going in the overall chain that should be formalised, not left to random choices of historic technology.
But it doesn't sound rubbish *and* it can be stated that a neutral system maximises the transfer of information from the recording; any form of noise, distortion, stereo crosstalk, etc. results in a loss of information;
This means that many audiophiles are saying they prefer to remove precious information in the recording that was captured at the actual event, and to replace it with noise (distortion artefacts, etc.) generated by a dumb machine! An observation: do audiophiles think subconsciously that yes, it is preferable to discard information from a $10 event/recording if it is being replaced by much classier 'information' from some highly polished gold-plated $10,000 box?
But it doesn't sound rubbish *and* it can be stated that a neutral system maximises the transfer of information from the recording; any form of noise, distortion, stereo crosstalk, etc. results in a loss of information;
This means that many audiophiles are saying they prefer to remove precious information in the recording that was captured at the actual event, and to replace it with noise (distortion artefacts, etc.) generated by a dumb machine! An observation: do audiophiles think subconsciously that yes, it is preferable to discard information from a $10 event/recording if it is being replaced by much classier 'information' from some highly polished gold-plated $10,000 box?