Ken Fritz - Audiophile Documentary

[BobbyTimmons]

I have always the same question when the system is massively expansive. Why don't you spend the money across the world in the best places? Go to the Royal Albert Hall, Scala de Milano, Concertgebouw in Amsterdam etc... Meet people, discuss, share your experience, listen to different style of music, visit the cities and go to the best hotels. What an experience and a nice way to increase your culture and spend your money.

Why would tourism and hotels be better than what he chose to spend his time on? Maybe Fritz didn't enjoy long flights or passive activities. If you watch the video he was an engineer, he says he was expressing himself creatively building stuff. Towards the end of the video he talks about why he liked building those grandfather clocks, just because he felt a creative passion for it.

 

[gsp1971]

Obsession, in whatever shape or form, rarely ends well.

Ship those speakers to Amir for review

 

[renaudrenaud]

This is just my way of thinking when the budget is huge, a personal reflection.

 

[Ron Texas]

This is definitely an example of diminishing returns. Large rooms are hard to fill with sound as well. I did not notice if the article mentioned it, but the room looks like it was built for the ultimate audio system. I found the decor to be a bit odd.

 

[Sokel]

This is just my way of thinking when the budget is huge, a personal reflection.

Why not do both?
My gear thing never stopped me from doing all the above and much more,downscaled of course (I don't have a 1m system but it's not budget either) .

 

[Blumlein 88]

I think the WaPo article was something of a hatchet job. Not diminishing the family issues, but heck most people I know have just as many, some worse, without doing anything like Ken Fritz did. They sort of wrote to tarnish what he did without much point otherwise. Sort of a where is the victim approach which is common with WaPo. I don't know that Mr. Fritz accomplished anything great, but he ran a good business, provided for his family, and had a singular passion to an uncommonly strong degree. This lead him to build something unique and incredible at least for himself and friends.

I think the sad part is true of many of us. As you get older you cannot hear as well. Yet you have the money/experience/knowledge to put together the best system ever. In time you cannot even make use of it at much lower levels of cost than in this case. Also reminds me of articles where younger guys complain about older guys spending big money on custom or top of the line bicycle gear. But they are too old to be competitive and such articles tend to paint this as foolish or unfair or something. I think otherwise. When I was young and fit I just could not afford it. Later I'm no where near the same rider in capability, but I can afford to have some of the nicer stuff I wanted. Such is life.

 

[Anton D]

This is definitely an example of diminishing returns. Large rooms are hard to fill with sound as well. I did not notice if the article mentioned it, but the room looks like it was built for the ultimate audio system. I found the decor to be a bit odd.

He did seem to like him some grandfather clocks!

Reminded me of a favorite old saying: A man with two clocks is never sure of the time.

 

[Audiofire]

stereo = 1,000,000 $
headphones = 250 $
loss = 1,000,000 $ - 250 $ = 999,750 $

ratio = 1,000,000 / 250 = 4,000

 

[Sancus]

Those look like big line arrays to me, without the curve of a CBT, and unless he had a DSP system that could set variable delays on every tweeter I don't see how it could have worked all that well.

Definitely a bit sad to spend such a crazily unnecessary amount of time on one system. If it made him happy though, that's fine. Big if based on the story.

Really puzzled why anyone would be jealous of any of it though. I mean nothing is stopping most people(in rich countries) from doing the same thing as long as they're willing to sink all their time, energy, and disposable income for a few decades into it.

I'd be utterly miserable if I did.

 

[Anton D]

I think the WaPo article was something of a hatchet job. Not diminishing the family issues, but heck most people I know have just as many, some worse, without doing anything like Ken Fritz did. They sort of wrote to tarnish what he did without much point otherwise. Sort of a where is the victim approach which is common with WaPo. I don't know that Mr. Fritz accomplished anything great, but he ran a good business, provided for his family, and had a singular passion to an uncommonly strong degree. This lead him to build something unique and incredible at least for himself and friends.

I think the sad part is true of many of us. As you get older you cannot hear as well. Yet you have the money/experience/knowledge to put together the best system ever. In time you cannot even make use of it at much lower levels of cost than in this case. Also reminds me of articles where younger guys complain about holder guys spending big money on custom or top of the line bicycle gear. But they are too old to be competitive and such articles tend to paint this as foolish or unfair or something. I think otherwise. When I was young and fit I just could not afford it. Later I'm no where near the same rider in capability, but I can afford to have some of the nicer stuff I wanted. Such is life.

Double like.

 

[Blumlein 88]

stereo = 1,000,000 $
headphones = 250 $
loss = 1,000,000 $ - 250 $ = 999,750 $

ratio = 1,000,000 / 250 = 4,000

 

[Audiofire]

View attachment 341760

Thumbs down to room acoustics, too much loss of $

 

[Ron Texas]

He did seem to like him some grandfather clocks!

Reminded me of a favorite old saying: A man with two clocks is never sure of the time.

That's an interesting saying.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Thumbs down to room acoustics, too much loss of $

There is room for both, but one is not a direct replacement for the other. No way are your headphones equivalent to this expensive rig. Nor does it need to be this expensive for that to be true.

 

[blueone]

He did seem to like him some grandfather clocks!

Reminded me of a favorite old saying: A man with two clocks is never sure of the time.

Multiple clocks aren't a problem anymore as long as they're WiFi connected. Even 802.11 TSF is accurate to well within a second if the clocks are connected to a single WiFi access point. Of course, somehow those grandfather clocks don't look WiFi capable.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Multiple clocks aren't a problem anymore as long as they're WiFi connected. Even 802.11 TSF is accurate to well within a second if the clocks are connected to a single WiFi access point. Of course, somehow those grandfather clocks don't look WiFi capable.

Actually being supported by the same floor, if they were carefully adjusted reasonably close by the pendulum length, they probably will synchronize with each other thru sympathetic resonance and keep the same time.

This exaggerated example of the effect takes about 2 minutes. Might take longer, but could likely happen with the those two grandfather clocks.

 

[Ron Texas]

@Blumlein 88 the extreme symmetry did not work for me. If I wanted to spend a ton of money I would either get some high end Revel or KEF speakers. These days you don't have to dump a ton on electronics. The three arm turntable made no sense to me. There is only one right way to do it so different cartridges are no more than different EQ curves for different music. YMMV.

 

[Axo1989]

I think the WaPo article was something of a hatchet job. Not diminishing the family issues, but heck most people I know have just as many, some worse, without doing anything like Ken Fritz did. They sort of wrote to tarnish what he did without much point otherwise. Sort of a where is the victim approach which is common with WaPo. I don't know that Mr. Fritz accomplished anything great, but he ran a good business, provided for his family, and had a singular passion to an uncommonly strong degree. This lead him to build something unique and incredible at least for himself and friends.

I think the sad part is true of many of us. As you get older you cannot hear as well. Yet you have the money/experience/knowledge to put together the best system ever. In time you cannot even make use of it at much lower levels of cost than in this case. Also reminds me of articles where younger guys complain about older guys spending big money on custom or top of the line bicycle gear. But they are too old to be competitive and such articles tend to paint this as foolish or unfair or something. I think otherwise. When I was young and fit I just could not afford it. Later I'm no where near the same rider in capability, but I can afford to have some of the nicer stuff I wanted. Such is life.

Liked the second part of that post. Disagree with the first part though, I'd surely be sad if my obsessions affected my relationship with my (hypothetical) children in that manner/to that degree. And the overall 'balance' seemed ok to me, given that it was for a non-audiophile general audience. A bit of a tragedy though, overall.

 

[Axo1989]

Actually being supported by the same floor, if they were carefully adjusted reasonably close by the pendulum length, they probably will synchronize with each other thru sympathetic resonance and keep the same time.

This exaggerated example of the effect takes about 2 minutes. Might take longer, but could likely happen with the those two grandfather clocks.

Did not know that was a thing, how cool.

Remind me not to cross a long bridge with a platoon of metronomes.

 

[Blumlein 88]

@Blumlein 88 the extreme symmetry did not work for me. If I wanted to spend a ton of money I would either get some high end Revel or KEF speakers. These days you don't have to dump a ton on electronics. The three arm turntable made no sense to me. There is only one right way to do it so different cartridges are no more than different EQ curves for different music. YMMV.

Well, my point isn't that everything in that system made sense. I mean LP's....no not a reference quality source. Mr. Fritz's passion went beyond rationality, but then that is almost the definition of passion.

My point vs headphones is saying headphones are equivalent to speakers in a room is not true. Both ways one way has advantages over the other, but they aren't equivalent and there are good reasons they cannot be.

Oh, and the three arms deal, there are different arm weights and balance points that work for cartridges for different compliance, WTA etc. While true each cartridge is a different EQ, it is quite possible each arm be optimized for a cartridge and they aren't interchangeable. And for me if I were going way out, once I had some experience with a couple linear tracking arms, I don't think any pivoting arm is as good. So I would have put three Tri-Quartz linear tracking arms on the thing.