Ken Kessler.

You can be a serious music lover without being an audiophile.  Being an audiophile is about the equipment and the music.  The level of gear you have and the joy it brings a very subjective.  I was a serious listener before I was a serious audiophile.  I love gear and the technology.  I have four systems in two rooms.  Each room has a tube and solid state system.  There is no right or wrong.  If you are judging someone because of how little or how much they spend on their equipment, then bad on you.  I like going to someone else's house and listening to their systems and their room.  It is such a cool hobby, I see no point in having a negative attitude about someone's gear or their music.  Lister on !

What caught my attention was 

"the first music in the home was probably the player piano so in a way we've regressed "

Also he brings up that Artificial Intelligence can recover and enhance very old recordings.   This was a very interesting interview.

"Since then, his reviews have helped me greatly with my decisions to purchase"

@richardbrand 

I find Kessler’s reviews to align with my opinions on gear I use. 

After seeing this interview, I will not be reading Ken Kessler reviews. 

The guy WEARS 2 WATCHES🤣🤣👎

I bet your new Holbo/DS rig sounds exquisite.

@tablejockey

The guy WEARS 2 WATCHES🤣🤣👎

So do I but let me explain!  

About 10 years ago I bought a Japanese Citizen quartz watch from Hong Kong.  The watch is solar powered and contains a small battery.  I have never had to change the battery or anything else, except the minute hand once a year or so. Although the watch has a titanium case and sapphire 'glass' it was cheaper than some records. 

Then my Doctor persuaded me that I needed a smart watch which amongst other features would let my partner know if I had died, and the GPS coordinates of where to find my body.  All these smarts cost battery life, and I have to take it off to charge it every day. To conserve power, I keep the screen blank, so I can't even tell the time without poking it.

So I have my trusty timekeeper on one wrist, and the death watch on the other.

@tablejockey 

I bet your new Holbo/DS rig sounds exquisite

I've only spent a couple of weeks with it, but I have found it totally involving.

So much so, I have gone to load SACDs and wondered which is the A side 

The clearest illustration of what the rig can do comes from a Telarc recording of the Saint Saens Organ Symphony.  The second half of the second movement contains thunderous organ passages, but I was never really aware that the second half of the first movement contains some really quiet underpinnings from the organ.

The Holbo / DS Audio combination presents these very quiet, very low notes with crystal clarity.

I put this down to the fundamental difference between MM and MC cartridges on the one hand, which measure sideways velocity, and DS Audio optical cartridges which measure the sideways position.of the stylus.  Very quiet, very low organ notes don't produce much sideways velocity, which becomes zero at the peak intensity.  This is exactly where optical produces its peak output. 

The much greater output voltages (70-mV versus 5-mV) probably significantly raise the signal over the MM masking noise floor.

Getting back to the real subject of this discussion, the rig reduces the effects of surface noise but it is still there at the volumes I use for classical music.