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Just a thought. I listened to this dude speak:
There's this streak of saturated... I don't know what to call it. Guilt? Comes with spending a lot and then realizing you didn't know what you were buying because you believed the manufacturer or the reviewer, who might be deceitful, but who is more likely sincere (as if that guarantees something). Or who is utterly convinced of their own position. In that case, guilt also comes with being unsure, doubting your own reasons and your ability to make judgements.
I read Robert Harley's book, The Complete Guide to High-End Audio (2015)—he tries to cover everything under the sun related to audio. There's a long section on tweaks and other suggestions broken up into two- or three-sentence paragraphs, the most useful of which is to clean your gear (and there's a product for that—some sort of liquid coating mechanics use to improve conductivity). They tend to end in a promise: "It will sound better."
There's something to be said here about refusing to believe that any manufacturer could be dishonest or plain wrong, that some kernel of truth does not stand behind every assertion. I think that haunts Harley and other professionals/near-professionals in the industry. One of the most uncomfortable recorded seminars I've ever watched was this one, "How to Read Between the Lines in High-end Audio Advertising":
Fremer was irresponsibly dodging the question, and Merkel (a regular speaker at RMAF on acoustics) was far more quiet than I expected him to be. Some exchange of opinion, a nice joke by Fremer on Bose vs. Klipsch, but very little discussion in the end. This talk takes the prize since they had a chance to say something really significant about the industry, as insiders (not a big one, given the pressures they likely feel about saying too much—except for possibly Fremer, "What are you talking about? There's nothing to talk about.").
An uglier seminar was this one:
But then I didn't expect much better. The chairman would ask very leading questions like, "Why buy power cable/interconnect exotica?" And the respondents (from Kimber, Kubala Sosna, Cardas, Shunyata) give their company line, sometimes verbatim from marketing materials. I would love to ask each of them, in turn, "How do you know?" Which is what I expect from a seminar.
In my daily work I'm an intrusive sort of analyst. I basically read docs and then interview senior managers about how they run their business ops, how they structure certain things. One of the usual runarounds when I'm asking a pointed question is "I don't have the information right now—I'll get it to you as soon as I have time." At which point I press them (either at the meeting or offline, later on) until I get a point-blank refusal or that revealing bit of info. I've idly imagined doing the same thing with audio manufacturers and making the findings public, basically like an independent review of the whole business, but then there's no reason to let me in.
I get that there is so much money and legal obligation tied into everything that saying too much about your product is tantamount to giving the business away. That's almost the history of the industry. Frederick Hunt, who wrote a small history of transducer design in the introduction to Electroacoustics (1954), said in complete seriousness that a large part of the material he mined to establish a clear sense of design changes and innovations was found in various patent offices (i.e., and not in academic libraries). There's not many people with the skill and knowledge able to evaluate those designs and and give them their historical place. Hunt is unique in that sense. And I don't know of any texts outside of this one that were written to examine the evolution of knowledge in this field. Most of what I've found are technical manuals or papers, and the "historical" part happens in me, as I note the changes from design to design or topic to topic.
All this is to say that there is a lot of reliance on expertise, and that reliance has in some sense saturated the market. It's probably why some people feel so terribly guilty when they reach a certain breaking point, since concluding that you made the wrong buying decision because you were too reliant on some authority quickly spreads to touch almost everything.
I read a lot so you can expect more stuff like this. If you need it in one sentence it's that, despite all the reasons not to, I'd like a franker sort of conversation. It would likely help some people feel better and be a bit calmer. The least you can offer someone is clarity (instead of a promise of improvement). It's why I like ASR.
There's this streak of saturated... I don't know what to call it. Guilt? Comes with spending a lot and then realizing you didn't know what you were buying because you believed the manufacturer or the reviewer, who might be deceitful, but who is more likely sincere (as if that guarantees something). Or who is utterly convinced of their own position. In that case, guilt also comes with being unsure, doubting your own reasons and your ability to make judgements.
I read Robert Harley's book, The Complete Guide to High-End Audio (2015)—he tries to cover everything under the sun related to audio. There's a long section on tweaks and other suggestions broken up into two- or three-sentence paragraphs, the most useful of which is to clean your gear (and there's a product for that—some sort of liquid coating mechanics use to improve conductivity). They tend to end in a promise: "It will sound better."
There's something to be said here about refusing to believe that any manufacturer could be dishonest or plain wrong, that some kernel of truth does not stand behind every assertion. I think that haunts Harley and other professionals/near-professionals in the industry. One of the most uncomfortable recorded seminars I've ever watched was this one, "How to Read Between the Lines in High-end Audio Advertising":
Fremer was irresponsibly dodging the question, and Merkel (a regular speaker at RMAF on acoustics) was far more quiet than I expected him to be. Some exchange of opinion, a nice joke by Fremer on Bose vs. Klipsch, but very little discussion in the end. This talk takes the prize since they had a chance to say something really significant about the industry, as insiders (not a big one, given the pressures they likely feel about saying too much—except for possibly Fremer, "What are you talking about? There's nothing to talk about.").
An uglier seminar was this one:
In my daily work I'm an intrusive sort of analyst. I basically read docs and then interview senior managers about how they run their business ops, how they structure certain things. One of the usual runarounds when I'm asking a pointed question is "I don't have the information right now—I'll get it to you as soon as I have time." At which point I press them (either at the meeting or offline, later on) until I get a point-blank refusal or that revealing bit of info. I've idly imagined doing the same thing with audio manufacturers and making the findings public, basically like an independent review of the whole business, but then there's no reason to let me in.
I get that there is so much money and legal obligation tied into everything that saying too much about your product is tantamount to giving the business away. That's almost the history of the industry. Frederick Hunt, who wrote a small history of transducer design in the introduction to Electroacoustics (1954), said in complete seriousness that a large part of the material he mined to establish a clear sense of design changes and innovations was found in various patent offices (i.e., and not in academic libraries). There's not many people with the skill and knowledge able to evaluate those designs and and give them their historical place. Hunt is unique in that sense. And I don't know of any texts outside of this one that were written to examine the evolution of knowledge in this field. Most of what I've found are technical manuals or papers, and the "historical" part happens in me, as I note the changes from design to design or topic to topic.
All this is to say that there is a lot of reliance on expertise, and that reliance has in some sense saturated the market. It's probably why some people feel so terribly guilty when they reach a certain breaking point, since concluding that you made the wrong buying decision because you were too reliant on some authority quickly spreads to touch almost everything.
I read a lot so you can expect more stuff like this. If you need it in one sentence it's that, despite all the reasons not to, I'd like a franker sort of conversation. It would likely help some people feel better and be a bit calmer. The least you can offer someone is clarity (instead of a promise of improvement). It's why I like ASR.
