Solid State Power Amp Reviews

...my remarks in this thread applied to the public commentary side of the press trajectory from High Fidelity through The Audio Critic somewhat into the joint AVS forum (where "science" completes the site name and not always the general, overall public thrust and result). As a recent adjunct to this belief system, it applies to ASR and its unexamined misapplication of the letter S.

I replied to the remark above mine with a conditional. I wrote against a subculture of audioists whose yardstick is the chart, and whose audible results rise no higher than average sound. I say this from some years of experience as a fan of better sound than theirs. I responded to their activist aggression, whatever vision you may have had notwithstanding.

Some of that better sound is darn near transcendent, by the way, rare as it is. For reference, in this comments thread I'd listed four names of those who I believe have sought it. That sound has not darkened the doorway of mass merchandisers or sound-by-numbers adherents. It can't. It hasn't been heard there.

I didn't actually spotlight ASR. It's policies and inexpert assumptions, coupled with the binary views of amateur scientist members, however could. It's those shortcomings that leave it in poor position to evaluate and critique fine audio. Apparently its chief scientist hasn't the resource to listen in stereo or while using anything approaching a high end system in a reasonable space for typically superior high end results. ASR's electronics ratings fall into categories dictated by an AP machine. The same goes for one of the surprise entrants to recent high audio races for better sound, namely extreme DACs and their obviously better results.

Generally speaking, objectivism hasn't identified better sound because it denies to grant that it exists. It's that precondition that validates a far more conventional, ears-based, human space method, discipline and outcome as favored by real listeners to very good equipment. The preferences of sensitive listeners of fine audio in their own homes goes back to the dawn of high fidelity. It works. Which so far is fine and good. As it may well be.

Preconditioned, prejudicial audio scientism is an upstart. Whether or not you experienced an epiphany attending sciency outlets matters only if it makes sound that matters. In audio enlightenment has levels, and there the subjectivists with all their blue pens and crystals and tin foil, to hear sciency types tell it, have for decades made more authentic-sounding recreations of music where it matters.

Right now this magazine is publishing brief accounts of those sounds made by great gear. It seems a shame to use its pages to aggregate gainsayer comments in threads aimed to a large degree at bashing it and impugning the good people who strive for excellence. That bomb-run remarking has tried to knock out the high end's lights and luminaries for a long time.

The word you want, incidentally, so as to avoid tainting another sermon with prejudicial bias, is not rant. It's screed. And such screeds, if that's even what they are, are quite fitting as audio wokedom sorties over the audio high end, in this thread and in dozens before it. *That's* where a line is drawn and the passive listener becomes vocal. I hope that doesn't come as a surprise.

I'd said that. Eventually you can expect push-back. Gentler folk in their homes with their stacks of better gear making better sound never needed the constant policing by their inferiors - From Hirsch readers to Internet haters - and I reckon that pattern isn't about to change anytime soon. The high end may yet go down as binary policers reduce all amplification to a race to the third place right of the decimal in a stack of file cards from best to worst, or doom all allowable transduction to this season's all-new shout and clang box with $3 parts ... combined for the fortunate extravagant with a 10" bass boomer with thirty effective watts on the back. But Harrison Bergeron does indeed seem to be the aim of armchair denialist commandos.

They've all but said so.

Music playback is not bettered by that campaign, movement, and faith. It's bettered by the open mindedness that real science relies on for its dictionary definition. And it's that science, contrary to equipment scientisim-ists elsewhere, that's given the high end an insurmountable, verifiable, and audible head start.

I imagine that frustrates binary "scientists" a lot. Next time they should grow some quiet introspection, get off the keyboard, and attend some of these shows. If they're lucky a couple of rooms will pop out and change their lives.

... and it's totally cool. I know Kal and what he thinks and the work he does. And stuff like this doesn't affect in the least the esteem I have for him. I think it's' important in cases like this to make it clear what's the writer's perspective and what's the magazine's perspective. Stereophile is a big tent, with many (or anyway several) distinct opinions reflected. I look forward to many more reviews from Kal and much more commentary in the Comments section. I hope--and trust--that Kal accepts this in the spirit in which it was intended.

Jim Austin, Editor
Stereophile

Not quite right Mr Jack L,
Here's Gordons real opinion,

John Atkinson [edited]
Do you see any signs of future vitality in high-end audio?

J. Gordon Holt
"Vitality? Don't make me laugh. Audio as a hobby is dying, largely by its own hand. As far as the real world is concerned, high-end audio lost its credibility during the 1980s, when it flatly refused to submit to the kind of basic honesty controls (double-blind testing, for example) that had legitimized every other serious scientific endeavor since Pascal. [This refusal] is a source of endless derisive amusement among rational people and of perpetual embarrassment for me, because I am associated by so many people with the mess my disciples made of spreading my gospel. For the record: I never, ever claimed that measurements don't matter. What I said (and very often, at that) was, they don't always tell the whole story. Not quite the same thing."
https://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/1107awsi/index.html

... could conceivably used to describe pressure waves in air, although to me it implies perception--and so a perceiver. But here we're talking about music reproduced by electronic equipment--about the experience of music. I suppose you need some background to understand this, but we are not talking about listening to test tones (although that experience has a legitimate part to play in subjective reviewing). It's clear to most, I think--if not to you--that the word "sound" in this context refers to perception, to experience, and not to pressure waves in air. And also that what we're talking about here is listening to music.

That very comment--"tell us what it sounds like"--was a response to an excessive focus decades ago on precisely what you're advocating here, which is, in effect, "tell us how it measures!" There's a long history here. I encourage you to learn about it.

If you want a journal that's about what physical effects electronics (and transducers) have on the air in a room, you can probably find one. But that is not what we do here. Stereophile is about experiencing music.

Jim Austin, Editor
Stereophile

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Hi

My question to YOU:-

(1) DO YOU walk upside down with your hands instead of your feet ?

(1) Do YOU dine with your eyes masked, nose & ears plugged ??

(2) dO YOU attend, if you've ever done, a live performance with eye masked ??

So why should we enjoy our music blindfolded ????????

Get real, pal.

Listening is believing

Jack L