Art Dudley Listening

That last quality is especially relevant. While certain of the most expensive wares have a finite life—the car you drive, your kitchen appliances, perhaps even your computer and mobile phone and business suits—traditional consumer attitudes hold that most big-ticket items should be handed down from one generation to the next. Before mass production dominated the consumer marketplace, no one would spend a dime on a house, a piece of furniture, or even a set of tools without considering its potential as an heirloom. That was even truer of luxury goods, such as musical instruments, works of art, and the like.

Purveyors of "high-end" audio regard their wares as luxury goods—so let me ask: Have you seen, in the shops or at the shows, more than a very few expensive audio products that appear worthy of heirloom status? I doubt it.

This is where the disconnect lies. It has nothing to do with attracting "new blood" to audio. Young people aren't migrating in flocks to fly-fishing or wine collecting, either, but you don't hear those hobbies going all Chicken Little. It has nothing to do with people who continue to tout "old technologies" such as analog and tubes and horns. As every American guitar maker learned during the last quarter-century, any industry whose contemporary products cannot stand comparison to their vintage counterparts must either change—said change usually taking the form of backing away from mass production—or die a richly deserved death. It has to do with an industry that continues to crank out electronics so pointlessly enormous, so gaudy in their styling, that their appeal is limited to adolescent boys. It has to do with an industry that would terminate an enormous, plastic-coated set of cables with massively unwieldy, jewel-like connectors, decorate the whole shebang with trademark symbols and juvenile logos, sell it for the price of an automobile . . . and wonder why people from other walks of life aren't lining up to join the Church of Stereology.

It has to do, on the part of some companies, with a little bit of greed, a little bit of stupidity, and a little bit of fear: fear that if they stop doing things a certain way—stop wrapping casework that costs $2000 to make around amplifiers that cost $1000 to make, stop making ever-more complex and expensive cables, stop making products designed to be revised and repackaged year after year after year—they and their profits will fall like hailstones.

We are all, at times, a little bit greedy, a little bit stupid, a little bit fearful—all of us. But for those who have made a career of it, the time has come to leave the stage.

I remain an optimist: I believe we're on the verge of a new age of the audio artisan. Actually, I suffered a second of doubt just a few weeks ago, when the audiophile community received news of the death of designer and manufacturer Ken Shindo. Shindo-san was, in the minds of many, audio's preeminent artisan, owing not only to the breadth of his successful product line but also to the depth of his experience with the artisanal audio of yesteryear. Owning a Shindo product in 2014 is not unlike owning a Stickley Cube Chair in 1954: One suspects that it will increase in value over time, but that consideration is minor compared with the beauty it brings in the here and now.

Shindo-san is gone, but his company lives on, thanks to the knowledge and experience of his wife and sons. And we continue to be blessed with the work of other artisans, such as Keith Aschenbrenner (Auditorium 23), Don Garber (Fi), Taku Hyodo (Leben), Junji Kimura (47 Laboratory), Greg Roberts (Volti), J.C. Verdier (Platine Verdier), and scores of others whose work I have yet to hear. And there still exist a number of pioneering manufacturers that make high-quality goods in small, independent factories where individual craftsmanship still counts—companies such as Magnepan, Naim, Ortofon, Rega, VPI, Wilson, Oswalds Mill Audio, and a host of others.

I am less a socialist than an idealist: In a free world, not everyone has the same access to luxury, and among those who do, not everyone wants the same things. I suppose that's one of the reasons there will always be mass production—so that people such as I, who don't really care about movies or margaritas, can always find cheap DVD players and blenders. At the same time, I see evidence that enlightened consumers who can't afford luxury in all things are more savvy and more demanding of real quality—not just an extra layer of gaudiness—in the few luxuries they can afford. It's time for our industry to give them what they want.

Swing generation
In at least two Stereophile pieces over the past few years, I've touched on the question of why recorded music always sounds more physical and forceful when the playback source is an LP—even when the latter is mastered to disc from a digital recording.

Until recently, I was content to brush away this problem with a shamefully weak non-explanation: Why shouldn't a physical medium sound more physical than a purely electronic medium? Further consideration reveals an answer as simple as it is obvious—and that augurs for the validity of listening as a basis for cataloging the LP's points of superiority.

And there are plenty of those: LP sound has greater body and warmth. LPs of virtually any era lack the brittleness and glare that characterized the first 10 years' worth of CDs. LP sound is more involving, with lines of notes assuming a more realistic flow and momentum. LPs, when subjected to light or moderate damage, nonetheless remain at least minimally playable, whereas digital discs subjected to the same ills exhibit everything from severe arrhythmia to static-like dropouts to complete silence, the latter owing to the disc's rejection by the player. Properly stored, analog discs can last literally forever without losing the information encoded therein, whereas digital discs cannot. And, yes: Analog sound is far, far better at communicating a sense of human touch and force.

Most of the CD's comparative shortcomings have been explained, a few even corrected. Could the lack of flow and momentum in early digital playback be explained by various subtle timing errors (ie, jitter)? Probably. Could a subjective lack of sonic color and "body" be explained by sampling rates and word lengths that were obviously inadequate to the task? Yup. Has a generation of listeners been forced to cope, subconsciously or not, with the fact that digital's distortions are inextricably woven, DNA-like, into the recorded music signal itself—whereas many if not most of analog's distortions sit alongside the signal? Sure. Has that same generation also learned that, hey, sorry, too bad, but CDs can delaminate over time? Yes indeedy. Must some enthusiasts contend with the fact that, owing to a number of factors—not the least being the ease with which a digital disc can be forged—CDs will never be as collectible as LPs? I'm afraid so.

But here's the big one: Considered against literally every music-playback medium ever conceived and created, the analog disc is the only one that generates its own electrical signal. Every other medium in existence—even analog tape—depends on an external power supply to create a source signal.

A minor consequence is apparent right off the bat: Because the signals produced by the digital-disc player, the digital-file player, and the tape player all begin as electricity originating in either AC line current or a battery, a considerable variation in quality must be presumed—and the quality of the design of the power supply thus becomes critical. Really critical.

But there exists a distinction of far greater consequence: Because a mechanical LP groove and a phono pickup work together as an AC generator, that combination naturally and automatically produces the most powerful signal when it is most needed. In other words, the greater the physical size of a groove modulation, the greater the voltage output of the phono pickup. Again, the word natural comes to mind in describing this ultimate lack of compression.

Yet in every other system, extremes of amplitude have the opposite effect: They stress rather than enable the signal-producing system. The quality of the source component's power supply—the very first power supply in the playback system—can make a difference for the better. I will wear my heart on my sleeve for just a moment and wonder out loud if that is why I believe that the best-sounding CD player in existence is the CD 555, from Naim Audio: a company whose dedication to power-supply development is second to none. But the fact remains, a source component incorporating even the best imaginable power supply can never be a match for a source component in which the recorded signal is allowed to generate its own power—and that's an advantage the LP has all to itself.

On the level
The backstory is mildly embarrassing, but the upshot of it all is that I recently acquired a quantity of subminiature cylindrical spirit levels, each about 15mm (½") long. Owners of the classic Decca International Pick-Up Arm will recognize that as the precisely correct size of the spirit level, often AWOL, applied at birth to their favorite tonearm's bearing housing. I assure you, however, that that is a coincidence. Honest.

If you or a loved one requires such a thing, please send me an e-mail at the address below: I'll be happy to give away my surplus: first come, first served, one per customer. Thank you. [As of June 1, the spirit levels had all been been given away.—Ed.]