As We See It

Evidence is nothing without judgments.—The Lord Leto Atreides II in God Emperor Of Dune, by Frank Herbert

In college, I majored in physics, but I took a lot of theater courses. Not acting—I never had any affinity for that—but all the other aspects of theater: set design, directing, theory of performance, playwriting. One professor, a playwright himself, offered some advice to his students that has served me well ever since: To learn the craft, observe your response first, then look to the text to figure out what about it caused you to respond the way you did.

"Experience which is not valued is not experienced....Value is at the very front of the empirical procession."—Robert M. Pirsig, Lila

Stereophile Consulting technical editor Robert Harley and I were walking down Brooklyn's Flatbush Avenue trying to remember where we'd parked our rental car. We were in town for the Fall 1993 Audio Engineering Society Convention, and had just had dinner with record reviewer Beth Jacques.

Yesterday, I had a brief conversation, by text message, with my 26-year-old son. He had just walked by the Devialet shop at the Shoppes at Columbus Circle here in Manhattan. Knowing my interest in such things, he sent me a photo. The Devialet boutique seems more a design exhibit than a shop, in a high-ceilinged open area.

The shops at the Shoppes at Columbus Circle include Hugo Boss, Eileen Fisher, and Floga, which sells furs, among less-exclusive brands, though even the less-exclusive stores look fancy. Upstairs from the Shoppes is the Mandarin Oriental New York Hotel, where rooms cost about $1k/night and up, and some notable restaurants, among them Thomas Keller's Per Se, and Masa, a three-star Michelin restaurant where dinner costs as much as a room at the Mandarin Oriental, per person.

Devialet is the only trace of the hi-fi industry not only in that mall but in that part of town. Innovative Audio, which carries Wilson, Focal, and D'Agostino, among other brands, is about a mile east, a 25-minute walk.

In the September issue of Stereophile, in this space, I proposed a way to attract more young people to hi-fi. To reach younger people with your products, I argued, speaking mainly to manufacturers, create products that have integrity about them and that also tell a story. Products with a message, products endowed with meaning. Use good materials, classic designs, historically important circuits. To improve value and performance, keep the parts count low and assembly simple. These products need to be reasonably affordable, but it's okay to ask young people to stretch for something fine. . .

After that article hit newsstands, I got feedback, much of it of the "get off my lawn" variety.

To put it mildly, Jack Vad (second row in photo, orange shirt) was dismayed. The Grammy Award–winning media producer and chief engineer for the San Francisco Symphony had just returned from the 2014 Rocky Mountain Audio Fest, and was trying to make sense of his experiences there. When he'd carried his latest recordings, which I think are superbly recorded, into rooms at the show and asked if he could play them, exhibitors were anything but enthusiastic.

My spirits sank as I read the comments on Stereophile's Facebook page. In the November issue, we had published reviews of UpTone Audio's USB Regen device by Kalman Rubinson, Michael Lavorgna, and myself. Michael and Kal had enthused about the positive effect the USB Regen had made, but I could detect no measurable difference. On Facebook, Dan Madden had written, "I think a device like this would need a blind listening test to verify that a listener could hear the difference in a statistically measurable way, in a very high percentage of times."