Dr. Richard Cabot is one of today's foremost authorities on audio measurement and testing. Formerly an instrumentation designer at Tektronix, Dr. Cabot is now Vice President and Principle Engineer at <A HREF="http://audioprecision.com/">Audio Precision</A>. The company's System One, a computerized audio test set (used by <I>Stereophile</I>), has revolutionized the way the world measures audio equipment.
Tweaks have acquired a bad reputation in certain sectors of the audio world, probably with some justification. Warming the cartridge to exactly the right temperature, suspending cables from the ceiling (but not with cotton string; it sounds grainy and dry), stroking CD cases with a "magic" brush, drinking "polarized" (or is it <I>de</I>-polarized?) water before a listening session---gimme a break!
<I>"Why do rhythms and melodies, which are composed of sound, resemble the feelings; while this is not the case for tastes, colors, or smells?"</I>---Aristotle
PO/SSSLQs (footnote 1), SOs (footnote 2), & Spouses of audiophiles: Linda Tasker (aka Mrs. Kevin Conklin) has some advice for you!
Just when you thought it was safe to put green paint around the edges of your CDs without ridicule, there's yet another CD tweak that's sure to bring howls of laughter from the skeptics: cryogenically freezing CDs. They won't be laughing for long, however, when they hear for themselves the sonic results of this process.
I've been wondering whether we who write about audio will ever agree on a sensible way to express the scale of the differences we hear. If magazines like <I>Stereophile</I> and <I>The Abso!ute Sound</I> lack credibility among the broader audience of music lovers and hi-fi shoppers—and we do—one important reason may be our habit of greatly exaggerating the importance of differences that in fact are very small. A subtle improvement, one that most people wouldn't notice except in a carefully arranged comparison, is often described by audiophile reviewers in language that makes it seem like the contrast between a whisper and a thunderclap.
As a card-carrying member of the Audio Engineering Society and an avid audiophile, I was particularly disturbed by the ideas expressed at the 1990 AES Conference entitled "The Sound of Audio." (A report on the papers presented appears in this month's "Industry Update" column.) The tone of the three-day session in May was set during the Conference Chairman's opening remarks. He said that an AES conference on the sound of audio was "unusual" and "out of the mainstream." Further, he expressed a common underlying attitude among the AES that "audiophile claims" (of musical differences between components) have been "nagging us" and are "an annoyance."
When I suggested to editor John Atkinson that the subject of my first "Building A Library" be Wagner's <I>Tannhäuser</I>, furrows ploughed his boyish brow. "Why such <I>minor</I> Wagner? Why not the <I>Ring</I>?"
While the LP-<I>vs</I>-CD debate continues unabated among high-end audiophiles, the rest of the world has already closed the book on the venerable LP. All but a few specialized classical record companies (footnote 1)(and some weird magazines) have ceased releasing new LPs, few record stores sell them any more, and consumers who wouldn't be caught dead owning something that wasn't trendy have long ago dumped their LP collections for cents on the pound.