Art Dudley Listening

I am not in the mood for whirling.—the Beatles, "Revolution 9"

On two occasions I've caught myself wondering how to afford a pair of Wilson Audio loudspeakers. Interestingly, both happened within the past year. The first was in April 2009, at the Son et Image show in Montreal, during a demonstration of the MAXX Series 3. The experience was notable for its blend of genuinely great sound with genuine musicality: Each performance unfolded of its own natural accord, with human randomness and nuance, and without the fussy, mechanical, shallow artifice that attracts some audiophiles in the way a carnivorous plant attracts flies—and, if they're lucky, kills them (the audiophiles, that is).

She responds as expected to the only sound: hysterical voices!—Brian Eno

It's a guy thing, dating from those sandbox days when such declarations were not only socially acceptable but expected of us: Mickey Mantle could run the bases faster than Whitey Ford, the Chevrolet Corvette was cooler than the Ford Mustang, Jimmy Page played faster than Jeff Beck, Superman was stronger than Batman. (Women, those devious serpent-hearkeners of Old Testament fame, are for once blameless: They never argue that Charlotte Bronte wrote better tea-drinking scenes than Jane Austen, or that Hugh Grant looks better in a powdered wig than Daniel Day Lewis.)

I used to be with it, but then they changed what it was. Now what I'm with isn't it, and what's it seems scary and weird. It'll happen to you.—Abraham Simpson

Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen.—Hebrews 11:1

During a century of development of the phonograph, dozens of different things have been considered crucial to its performance: lack of bearing noise, lack of motor noise, freedom from runout error in the platter, high moment of inertia in same, immunity to all manner of unwanted vibration, and so forth. But now I wonder if the most important factor of all hasn't been overlooked, or at least misunderestimated, throughout much of that time: Could it be that motor torque is more critical than any of us imagined?