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
A great reminder that there are three sides to most debates.....one side, the other side, and somewhere in between resides the truth.


Then,,,I guess you take issues with most of my post above 
I think this hooby is not all biased opinions,,,forensics is involved, a  good hunch,,a  fair listening, ,,where luck has no place.
research research research
High fidelity ain;'t gonna drop out the sky in ones setup. 
There was a time when High Fidelity could be bought without all the snake oil.When it could be bought  without going bankrupt. Buyer beware.You can be very happy with a system that will give you endless hours of enjoyment if you just listen with your ears.
High Fidelity Audio is like the air that we breath and the water that we drink, been polluted (by snake oil) that make people think audiophile are silly and crazy! sigh,....
Jadis DPL, like the 1st preamp Jadis ever designed,,just arrived its ancient, simple,, but plays,,, honestly the jadis clone LS9 pre.modded with M  silver caps,,was just fine, but had to see if i could go higher for $1350,,, put my system at a  slightly high base  camp, Then new caps, like 16, should get my system een higher up Everest. ,,,why do we  have this desire to go higher and higher,,what drives us, to reach ever new heights,,when we know our sound is just fine the way it is,,, trying something new, modding what we have,,, we have that urge to go for it, ,,,add new debt to our paypal...At times out choices went sour,, we made some slips on rocky cliffs, but we  hold on,,and look for another route. ,,,maybe we should follow paths laid out by those who are experienced,,and tahts why we post here,,,to question our choices, thereby not making simuliar mistakes other mountaineers made.
Til at last, in our old age, when our hearing is at a loss, we have acheived The Goal,,and hopefully not too late in life where we can sit back and enjoy what we constructed,,w/o any thoughts of tweeking and modifying. 
 at times i find more attention goes into how my system sounds than actually listening to the music for music's sake.