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Musings from old school on High Fidelity

Old interview in Stereophile of JA interviewing G Holt.

Do you see any signs of future vitality in high-end audio?

Vitality? Don't make me laugh. Audio as a hobby is dying, largely by its own hand. As far as the real world is concerned, high-end audio lost its credibility during the 1980s, when it flatly refused to submit to the kind of basic honesty controls (double-blind testing, for example) that had legitimized every other serious scientific endeavor since Pascal. [This refusal] is a source of endless derisive amusement among rational people and of perpetual embarrassment for me, because I am associated by so many people with the mess my disciples made of spreading my gospel. For the record: I never, ever claimed that measurements don't matter. What I said (and very often, at that) was, they don't always tell the whole story. Not quite the same thing.

Remember those loudspeaker shoot-outs we used to have during our annual writer gatherings in Santa Fe? The frequent occasions when various reviewers would repeatedly choose the same loudspeaker as their favorite (or least-favorite) model? That was all the proof needed that [blind] testing does work, aside from the fact that it's (still) the only honest kind. It also suggested that simple ear training, with DBT confirmation, could have built the kind of listening confidence among talented reviewers that might have made a world of difference in the outcome of high-end audio.

Yet you achieved so much, Gordon.

I know I did, and my whole excuse for it—a love for the sound of live classical music—lost its relevance in the US within 10 years. I was done in by time, history, and the most spoiled, destructive generation of irresponsible brats the world has ever seen. (I refer, of course, to the Boomers.)

High Fidelity means REPRODUCTION with as little distorion and color as possible and a flat neutral FR within the range of human hearing that retains as much of the original source as possible. This day and age we have the ability to come close but we have chosen the path where High Fidelity means whatever subjective opinion I choose. It might be what one prefers but it isn't HiFi.
djones51

Showing 2 responses by mahgister

mahgister's avatar
mahgister
12,519 posts
 
I will add that what we listen to at the end comes more from the interaction of the speakers with the room, and comes better if the noise floor of the house and room are low, better if resonant gear are also controlled and tuned and isolated for sure, what we listen to comes more at the end from these controlled conditions than from the choice of any electronic component, be it a dac or a an amplifier in particular most of the times....

That is my experience....

In audio history some evolution of engineering design for recorded sound transmission seems to come first, but the acoustical conditions for the experience were always there, for example in the acoustical design of concert hall or church acoustical function or Greek and Roman theater...

High-fidelity and audiophile experience are 2 hands from the same body.....Anyone who want to say otherwise is confused....

:)
mahgister's avatar
mahgister
12,519 posts
 
HIGH FIDELITY
noun Electronics.

sound reproduction over the full range of audible frequencies with very little distortion of the original signal.

Ideally, high-fidelity equipment has inaudible noise and distortion, and a flat (neutral, uncolored) frequency response within the human hearing range.

In radio, sound recording, etc., an approximately exact reproduction of sound achieved by low distortion and a wide range of reproduced frequencies, from approximately 20 to 20,000 hertz
Very interesting....

This official definition makes me understand many thing, that was not obvious for me...I am not an engineer so far, nor a working specialist in the audio field....

Only an "amateur" looking for a good sound....

This definition makes me conscious that " high fidelity" is restricted in the very narrow sense of electronical engineering....

This is normal because in the last hundred years it was engineers that gives to us the gear that makes possible the reproduction of recorded sound...

But i am an audiophile who dream to gives to himself the maximum S. Q experience possible at the least cost...

Is electronics components the only variable able to do so?

The answer in my case is a resolute no....

Embeddings mechanically an audio system, controlling resonance and isolating it from external vibrations is not necessarily the results of electronical new application or the results of buying new electronic component...Different passive materials or device can make it happen....

Embedding electrically an audio system to controls the noise floor of the house and room is not necessarily also the results of placing a new active electronic device all along the road of the electrical grid, i succeed with passive materials of my owns all along the road...

Embedding acoustically an audio system can be partially the results of using electronical device, i use for example many Schumann generators modified, but generally most use passive materials of requisite properties, and i use also active resonators of different size and kind, and many other passive device of my own....

Then high-fidelity concept is not synonym with audiophile concept....

Distinguishing the 2 concepts is important.... Separating them and opposing them is useless and only the proof of a misunderstanding...There is NO objectivist versus subjectivist war.... Only ignorance on the 2 side....

« Distinguishing without separating»- old Groucho Marx
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