Reactions to HP's review of Antique Sound Lab amp?

What's not to like about the TAS review. It's an outright, unequivocal rave. Furthermore the product seems to be an "honest" product. No bold innovations, fancy CNC cases, no silly acronyms -- it's just a simple circuit executed right. Furthermore, while the price is not real world, at least by audiophile standards it's relatively cheap. 200 watts of tube power for under $5k. That's something to get excited about! Whether the ASL is the world's best amp (whatever that phrase means), or whether it's simply a very fine sounding amp is really beside the point. Last month Stereophile raved about the Parasound monoblocks and now TAS is triumphing the ASL. It's seems that it's a good moment in history to be into high powered amps.

Onhwy61, you may be quite right, but you also may have been able to find similar evidence for your conclusion 5 years ago, 10 years ago, 15 years ago...it's a wide market, and full of 'moments'...

Asa: Huh? I hope you're not confusing comments made about Harry or made in general with thinking they were made about you...(and wouldn't your definition be of a nihilist? Anarchists are utopians, and I admit identifying more closely with the former as a skeptic...)

A "nihil-ist" is a label in reference to the emotive reaction to what is being reacted against, in this case, reaction of alienation to perception that reality has no ground, ie if reality has no ground, then all is without meaning. In this case, the "I" becomes its own God because, without ground, it is its only ground.

An anarchist is someone focused on societal structures, in this case an assumption that an absense of strucuture is "good", itself based upon an assumption that all hierachies, pathological or not, are "bad" and inherently coersive. In this sense, the "I" of the anarchist is defined by the authority he is against, rather than being predominantly orientated towards formulating a solution beyond structure. But this is not what the anarchist does - look for solutions - because his recoil is directed towards authority rather than its transcending; he defines himself by what he against, and that action of thge mind prevents him, in its operation, from looking to what we all could be. Do you know any anarchists who pose evolutionary solutions that lead towards the world of other-to-other that they say they want to go towards, or is it just bitching? It is not utopian if a movement towards a utopia is not made.

On reaction, I think you are responding to what I said on the other thread where we are talking. Please refer there.

Of course it's just bitching (and so too all is without meaning or ground), but I'm afraid that's what this is becoming as well. I'm keeping my threads separate except where so referenced (I don't change dead horses mid-stream :-), and I'm done on that other one, maybe here too. Depends on what if anything is said subsequently, since I was only dropping by to begin with and probably overstayed...

Zaikes, a pattern: every time you and I get to the point of discussing the nature of the silence of the mind as ground to perception, even in the context of musical perception (the concept that not all knowledge is your thinking, which, in turn, constitutes your "I"), as on the other thread, or begin addressing a solution past bitching, as here, you recoil and quit, and each time you leave in a way that seeks to characterize the discussion at that point - and, hence, the ideas approached - in a negative light, ie bitching.

You assert that you are, effectively, an anarchist, then concede that all anarchy may be bitching, but then, rather than look beyond that bitching, instead characterize the conversation that might lead you there as itself bitching - which is, of course, a convenient way of never discussing anything on ground itself, which itself is a logically strained means of trying to stay with the assumptions that you maintain, your "core values". Turning away from a discussion of ground, which, in your mind, operates as a denial of ground (remember, nihilism?) - tell me, how can that ever be "utopian"?

I know, I know, everything you said before was relevant to the thread, but now, I'm just getting toooo abstract and off the topic, and you are too busy being the one who listens to the music to really bother and you just now have to get back to that, and for the sake of everyone else listening...my, my.