Manifesto time. This week we are reading Herb Reichert’s Casual Reactions from sound practices issue 12: The Resurrection of Dead Man Tate. In it, Herb investigates what is wrong with the whole value system of high-end audio, compares it to the 16th century Dutch art scene, and moves on to find a different set of values. Next there is a section about the (ir)relevance of measurements in audio and one about how analytical deconstruction has led to a focus on sonics instead of music. A deadly mixture of the audiophile recordings and the rise of the high-end movement is served, after which Herb declares them bankrupt. Finally, he calls for a new set of audio evaluation criteria.
teaser quote: ‘A few minutes into Buddy’s wake, the owner of the amp turns to me and asks, “Do you think the soundstage shrunk a little?” My eyes bugged out and I felt like I just took both barrels, right in the chest. “Lord, get me out of audio!” This kind of missing the musical point is entirely why I had to write this article.’
a gift from Joe Roberts, SP editor: from the sound practices CD, here is the original article.
my take
‘Don’t take this article too literal (especially if you felt yourself somehow disagreeing with it).’
Then again, I could not agree more. I may be Dutch—and a social climber to boot—but the 16th century Dutch art scene parable is an instant, hard-hitting classic. It so puts high-end audio in perspective: ‘overblown objects made only to impress the uninitiated.’
Relating what Herb writes to what I hear at the high-end salon, I call what happened to Buddy Tate the run-over-by-a-steamroller effect: yes, it is very wide and very tall, but it is flat and it is dead.
Herb grounds audio evaluation in its cultural scope. The new set of criteria has a hell of a lot more to do with why the whole population of this planet has been making music and listening to it for thousands of years. Compare that to the soundstage and detail agenda of high-end audio. There is really near-zero overlap between the worlds of music lovers (easy to spot: thousands of records on the shelf) and audiophiles (easy to spot: hi-fi equipment on a dedicated rack).
So is this the manifesto of ultra-fi? Can we assume that when folks are listening to single ended triodes on efficient speakers, they are rejecting the high-end sonics agenda and looking for music? Having met plenty of them over the years, I must admit: no. To my amazement, I hear plenty of them still blabbering on about soundstaging/imaging/detail. I would swear they have a music elephant in their listening room once they have hooked up their ultra-fi gear correctly, but no… Maybe they are trying to fit in; trying to express themselves through a mainstream vocabulary; trying to be understood. But I am gone. They have lost me by that point. There is nothing I can do for them, nor they for me.
Some more gems from the article: the stress on that records contain performances; test tones are steady state (in the frequency domain), hence are just as useful as DC measurements: good for debug and repairs; ‘mono-era combovers’; ‘when the wives and kids stopped listening to “Dad’s” hi-fi’; ‘hi-fi gear of 1976 or 1956 was superior.’
bonus tracks
Real ones this time. First there is Buddy Tate. Then the song that is linked to Herb’s ‘most momentous experience […] with recorded music.’ On the other end of the scale, here is Casino Royale.
Now go and read the article, see you next week.
No comments:
Post a Comment