I'm glad to see Michael Fremer weighing in and weighing in strongly. I think it's quite unfair to him to assume that his positive evaluation of a speaker is because he is corrupt. It's so unfair, and it's unfair precisely because it's a non-rebuttable allegation. It's too blanket.
The inescapable madness of discussing this hobby is that people can't even agree on the meaning of a term like "accurate." And even if they can agree IN WORDS on what "accuracy" in a speaker means, their ears often don't agree when they sit down at the same time to listen to the same speaker. (So forget about listening to the same speaker with different associated equipment, in different rooms, with different musical preferences and different listening histories to compare the present speaker against. And totally forget about it if I don't agree with your definition of "accuracy" or if I don't rank "accuracy" that highly among my preferences.)
And by the way, when did all these audiogoners become socialists such they are so quick to charge corruption whenever commerce is involved?
Just because Hardesty runs no ads in his mag does not mean he's more "objective." He could have his own quirks and biases and limitations that are present even without commerce figuring in.
Hardesty would be much better off acknowledging his preferences and biases in sound (we all have them) and then explaining why his preferences are the way to go.
Michael Fremer is honest enough to say that every speaker is "colored" or flawed. For that, he wins a lot of credibility from me.
The inescapable madness of discussing this hobby is that people can't even agree on the meaning of a term like "accurate." And even if they can agree IN WORDS on what "accuracy" in a speaker means, their ears often don't agree when they sit down at the same time to listen to the same speaker. (So forget about listening to the same speaker with different associated equipment, in different rooms, with different musical preferences and different listening histories to compare the present speaker against. And totally forget about it if I don't agree with your definition of "accuracy" or if I don't rank "accuracy" that highly among my preferences.)
And by the way, when did all these audiogoners become socialists such they are so quick to charge corruption whenever commerce is involved?
Just because Hardesty runs no ads in his mag does not mean he's more "objective." He could have his own quirks and biases and limitations that are present even without commerce figuring in.
Hardesty would be much better off acknowledging his preferences and biases in sound (we all have them) and then explaining why his preferences are the way to go.
Michael Fremer is honest enough to say that every speaker is "colored" or flawed. For that, he wins a lot of credibility from me.