As We See It

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As We See It
As We Listen, So We Are
Jason Victor Serinus  |  Jan 26, 2014  |  First Published: Feb 01, 2014  |  17 comments
You don't need me to tell you that listening habits are changing. Although those who predict that the end of our beloved home stereo systems is near (footnote 1) have more than a little in common with those who predict the imminent destruction of humankind, there's no question that listening via computers, iPods, and headphones has become the order of the day among a large segment of younger Americans.
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As We See It
As We See It: Between the Ears
Robert Harley  |  May 29, 2009  |  First Published: Nov 01, 1992  |  0 comments
Audiophiles constantly seek ways to improve the experience of hearing reproduced music. Preamps are upgraded, digital processors are compared, turntables are tweaked, loudspeaker cables are auditioned, dealers are visited, and, yes, magazines are read—all in the quest to get just a little closer to the music.
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As We See ItHistoricalJ. Gordon Holt
Audible Wallpaper
J. Gordon Holt  |  Dec 31, 2000  |  First Published: Feb 01, 1968  |  0 comments
We're not really sure who coined the term—it is usually attributed to Alistair Cooke, former host of the "Omnibus" TV program—but "audible wallpaper" is an apt term for something that is of more than passing concern for the serious music listener.
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As We See ItAudio Advice Live 2022
Audio Advice Live: a solo audio show in Raleigh
Jim Austin  |  Oct 19, 2022  |  1 comments
For years, Audio Advice Live has been an annual event, drawing enthusiastic audiophiles to the dealership's showrooms on Raleigh's Glenwood Avenue, next to Virgin Cigars. This year, Audio Advice Live was different. It was a fully fledged audio show, held like most such events at a conference hotel: the Sheraton Raleigh Hotel in that North Carolina city, with rooms sponsored and presented by a wide range of hi-fi and home-theater manufacturers and distributors.
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As We See ItAudiophile Essentials
Audio Conflicts: Home Theater & The High-End Put-Down
John Atkinson  |  Dec 10, 2007  |  First Published: Jun 01, 1994  |  0 comments
Have you noticed how developed the art of the high-end put-down has become?
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As We See ItHistorical
Audio McCarthyism
Robert Harley  |  Jan 11, 1992  |  1 comments
In the early 1950s, a quiet, undistinguished Senator named Joseph Raymond McCarthy began a crusade against what he imagined were subversive, dangerous elements in American government. His tactics included irresponsible accusation, militant attacks on his opponents, and self-aggrandizing witch-hunting. So virulent were his methods the term "McCarthyism" entered the language. McCarthyism came to mean any unjustified persecution and the false conformity this strategy engendered (footnote 1).
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As We See ItAudiophile Essentials
Audio Observations
Robert Harley  |  Oct 24, 2007  |  First Published: Dec 02, 1996  |  0 comments
"If the midrange isn't right, nothing else matters." Stereophile founder J. Gordon Holt's decades-old observation of the musical importance of the midrange has become a truism cast in stone. Gordon's other famous observation, "The better the sound, the worse the measurements," was made only partially in jest.
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As We See ItRe-TalesThink Pieces
Audio Retailing: Change is Certain
Larry Archibald  |  May 28, 2010  |  First Published: Sep 28, 1992  |  0 comments
People of my generation have learned that change is certain. You can't know what the change will be, but you can bank on the fact that there will be serious change over the next ten years. Look at the historically most important change in ten years: microcomputers.
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As We See It
Audio, Meet Science
Jim Austin  |  Mar 07, 2011  |  42 comments
For a field based on science, high-end audio has a relationship with its parent discipline that is regrettably complex. Even as they enjoy science's technological fruits, many audiophiles reject the very methods—scientific testing—that made possible audio in the home. That seems strange to me.
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As We See It
Audiophiles Perfect What The Mass Market Selects
Jon Iverson  |  Jun 17, 2007  |  1 comments
As I write this in the first quarter of 2007, CD sales are off over 22% compared to this time last year. The music industry as we know it, based on sales of some kind of physical medium, is over. While CDs and even LPs will remain available—they're so easy and cheap to make—they've become irrelevant to the mass market and to the future of audiophile recordings. The major labels have also become irrelevant (not to mention highly irritating).
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As We See It
Audiophilia Nervosa
Robert Schryer  |  Jan 28, 2015  |  First Published: Feb 01, 2015  |  5 comments
Audiophilia nervosa. It's a running gag with a mean streak. As audiophiles, we know its effects intimately. We know how it can turn what was once a source of pleasure and pride—listening to good music over a good sound system—into an irritating itch that can't be scratched.

The UrbanDictionary.com defines audiophilia nervosa (AN) as "the anxiety resulting from the never-ending quest to obtain the ultimate performance from one's stereo system by means of employing state-of-the-art components, cables, and the use of certain 'tweaks.' Although the goal is supposedly to achieve maximum appreciation of the music, those afflicted with this condition are merely obsessed with their electronics."

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As We See ItAural RobertHistorical
Aural Robert #1
Robert Baird  |  Jun 05, 2005  |  First Published: Jan 05, 1997  |  0 comments
Please let me explain. Because I've never been especially adept at making lifelong commitments and irrevocable decisions, when it came to naming this new column, Managing Editor Debbie Starr and I decided that we would gather the passionate (and supremely efficient) minds of the Stereophile production staff, add a near–life-threatening amount of margaritas, and put the question to them.
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As We See ItAXPONA 2023
AXPONA 2023 was Cool Like Jules
Herb Reichert  |  Jun 19, 2023  |  5 comments
The Stereophile crew at AXPONA 2023, minus Herb Reichert (L–R): Jason Victor Serinus, Rogier van Bakel, Michael Trei, Jim Austin, Ken Micallef. Photo by David James Bellecci-Serinus.

At AXPONA 2023, I saw teenage besties cruising rooms together. I saw fashion-conscious 20-somethings listening in sweet spots, and young parents with younger children. Yeah, there were a few gray boomers like me, but only a couple were wearing Hawaiian shirts. AXPONA 2023 vibed like a tribal conference at a sacred pilgrimage site, and I've never enjoyed an audio show this much before.

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As We See It
AXPONA!
Jim Austin  |  Jun 15, 2022  |  2 comments
I'm writing this one week after returning from Schaumburg, Illinois, where I attended my first real audio show since the Florida Audio Expo in early 2020, just as the pandemic was starting to gain momentum. Everyone I talked to was hopeful, but no one could predict what attendance would be like or what people's attitudes would be.
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As We See It
Balance
Jason Victor Serinus  |  May 16, 2017  |  16 comments
Balance is certainly a lovely concept, as well as a lofty ideal. But achieving an optimal sonic balance in a high-end audio system—whose final sound is determined, in part, by interactions among any number of components and that great bugaboo, the listening room—while maintaining some semblance of psychic equilibrium can be the hardest goal of all.
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