Hi, Everyone. I'm the new(est) guy. My name is Alex and I live in the Washington, DC area. I first came to audio in the mid-70's as a teenager. I have always loved music and shiny things, so audio was always an attraction, but then life happened and really cut into my spare time. Wife (2x), kids (3x), dogs (Jake, for example, to your left), career. Now that I have a little more spare time (still working, but not strained) and before my three small grandchildren are joined by more and I get overwhelmed by succeeding waves of ruthless and demanding ankle-bitters [joke], I have been pursuing with renewed vigor several of my life-long passions -- squash, kayaking and, of course, audio! This began a couple of years ago as I started going about refreshing my audio system and reading on-line about current developments in audio.
As you can imagine, I soon came across the now-dominant publications (Stereophile, Absolute Sound, 6 Moons) and sites (head-fi, Steve Hoffman forums, Audiogon, SBAF, really too many to name). Since I got back into the hobby, having come of age in the era of Julian Hirsch testing, I have been uncomfortable with the prevailing subjectivist tilt (cant?) and the astronomical increase in prices of audio equipment with, in many cases, no data at all to back up the prices. (Can I get an amen for Synergistic Research?) I have also been quite uncomfortable with the brutish level of discourse on-line. How many posts have we seen that go like this: "Speaker X positively [slays] [destroys] [kills] [humiliates] Speaker Y" that get little or no pushback and a bunch of likes? Huh? What are they talking about? Putting aside the knuckle-dragging aggression, if we're talking about, say, a top of the line Magico vs. a dilapidated 40 year-old Realistic speaker with its surrounds falling off, I'm happy to accept "slays" as short-hand. But, often there's almost no justification at all. Maybe a few adjectives or the like: "deeper bass" and "more air" being two of my favorites. (Always reminds me of Christopher Walken's "more cowbell.") [Ok, rant over.] I had come to accept this state of affairs as "the way it is" until , to be honest, I was recently on the SH Audio Hardware forum and observed Amir getting bashed from all sides with arguments that one could charitably describe as specious. At the same time, Amir was, as everyone here doubtless knows, more than holding his own. So, I checked Amir out and that soon led me here -- where the level of discourse seems higher, the air is "fresher" and the members better looking.
(Amir, if you're reading this, you'll recall the post about "This guy must be new to using his Audio Analyzer." I haven't laughed so hard in a long time when I looked up your background then and realized "that guy" isn't qualified to carry your golf clubs, were you so inclined to golf! Too funny!)
More seriously, I should say that I am not well-educated in technology, however some (but not all) of my grandchildren think I'm pretty smart and because of my formal education and career (let's leave it to one side, largely irrelevant), I can usually spot an illogical argument from 50 paces. So, I have that to contribute, I hope. I also hope to be someone who reminds us from time to time, lest hubris not grow too great, of Einstein's great saying "not everything that counts can be counted." I hope to add something positive to the community.
Cheers, Alex