Imagine this. You are a high-end HiFi reviewer, you have a high end HiFi setup and a dedicated listening room all set up to try out any new HiFi product that arrives in your mailbox or is sent to you by a magazine or website. Then, joy upon joy, a new product arrives!
Being the modest and fair person you are, you fit the new device to your equipment, kick off a piece of appropriate test audio and settle into your listening chair to experience the new device.
Then it happens! Beginning slowly, as the new gear “burns in”, there’s a perceptible improvement in the oft-listened audio source you have playing. Yes! The noise floor has dropped away! The quiet phases are quieter…. blacker, so black. Then as the track continues, veils are lifted, vestigial parts of the music, barely audible before, are now present! The music sounds tighter, more balanced, individual instruments are riveted to the soundstage! But wait, there’s more! Muddiness is gone, the music sounds more in tune and rhythmic, so much so that it becomes danceable! Then the big rush, the walls of the room melt away and you are transported into the venue, into the performance, you’re sitting in front of the soloist and he’s playing just for you! It’s rapturous, it’s life changing and all from one exchanged/added component!
You start hammering out your review in barely adequate words. Dictionaries and thesauruses are pored over, looking for new and hitherto unknown superlatives, hell! You invent your OWN superlatives! Your review runs for three ecstatic pages, gushing your transformative experience to the hungry audience. As you finish with the last sentence, you’re spent, drained of creative fire but you have achieved the almost impossible in describing your experience.
WOW!
But what goes up, must come down. The vendor wants the component back. So you reluctantly remove it from your system, pack it up and send it back. You plod despondently back to your listening room with a heavy heart and put on a familiar piece to help you relax. This of course has the opposite effect. Sitting in your listening chair, new component removed, HORROR! What has happened??!!?? Noise! The noise floor is back up? The blacks are now mid-grey! AAAAK! What’s that?! I can’t hear the click of the octave key on the third Clarinet! It all sounds loose and unbalanced, the instruments are wandering around the stage… the second Bassoon has left to get a sandwich! It’s muddy and veiled……..oh tragedy…… . What’s happened to the tune and the rhythm, it’s all gone, not danceable at all!!
You slump in your chair, life has ceased to be worth living. Your mouth hangs open and your eyes droop. You try to prise yourself out of your chair but your muscles have become weak and atrophied. You manage to croak out a plea for a stiff drink to your partner which is duly supplied. Before they leave the room, you instruct your drink provider to switch the power off on the HiFi, maybe never to be re-energised…. All is dark and gloomy, your hobby has dealt you a cruel blow. Is there any point in going on?
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Image created using the MidJourney AI engine.
