1. 

   Dan Schwartz

   December 10, 2011 at 7:04 am

   Your friend may feel like a dope dealer, but the reality is that to a music-lover (as opposed to knee-jerk consumer) high-end manufacturers are more like doctors seeking a permanent cure – for poor reproduction of music. A system that gets it right doesn’t need any more purchasing beyond the music itself.

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2. 

   Paul McGowan

   December 10, 2011 at 7:27 am

   Better analogy I think. Thanks.

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3. 

   Soundminded

   December 10, 2011 at 9:55 am

   The connection between music and the human nervous system has been observed and documented by among others Dr. Oilver Sachs, a neurologist at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in NYC. In his book “Musicophilia” he noted physiological changes exposure to music causes and states that in 50,000 years of archelogical evidence of human societies, none has existed without also having evidence of some form of music. The importance of music to humans is therefore instinctive for reasons yet unkown. It is therefore understandable that many people will want some form of music in their lives, if not the real thing than facsimiles created artificially by machines. Question; is the truer facsimile better or merely different from the poorer one? If it is, why is it better, what makes it better? That is a very hard question to answer, it’s one I’ve been thinking about for 36 years. To this end, those who are most compelled to get the best facsimile they can are obsessed with finding ever better machines. The marketplace has not failed to accomodate them with a bewildering array of products which offer both real and non existant improvements over other products. Audiophiles seem driven by compulsion to root out every one of them and decide for themselves, endlessly arguing over which ones work best.

   Unfortunately for them they might just as well be arguing over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. At the current state of the art, the point of diminishing returns for better and seemingly ever more expensive equipment is reached rather quickly especially when taking the widespread availability of used equipment on the market into account. The best facsimiles our science can produce are almost invariably a poor substitute for the real thing and easily and quickly distinguishable to those with normal hearing. Meanwhile there are people working on radical ideas based on entirely novel concepts and technologies. Some are openly advertised, some may be secret or undiscovered. So far as I can tell, none disclosed to the public has gained more than passing interest and has not been translated into commercially successful products. Here’s one I only learned of last summer that I’m looking at now. It does not seem particularly promising to me.

   http://www.wave-field-synthesis.de/3D%20Wave-Field-Synthesis.htm

   And here’s where it seems to be studied most intensely

   http://www.idmt.fraunhofer.de/en/Departments_and_Groups/acoustics.html

   That such efforts are made at all and at a high level at very high cost shows that this “addiction” is hardly limited to those merely hunting in shops and drooling over magazine articles and equipment reports. It is difficult to reconcile that human society which has technology that can send people to the moon, split atoms, and decode DNA molecule by molecule can’t crack this problem but so far its solution has escaped the best efforts by those most able to grapple with it.The hunt goes on.

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4. 

   oliver T. Finch

   December 10, 2011 at 7:37 pm

   Interesting observation. Obviously audiophiles are in excellent company. Think of all the addictions. Palatial homes, expensive cars, expensive watches. fancy restaurants, expensive foreign vacations. I could go on and on. It’s about what one likes and enjoys the most. Nothing more, nothing less. Regards.

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5. 

   Frank LaFond

   December 11, 2011 at 11:29 am

   I think this relates to something that you’ve touched on several times here Paul. The “old guard” of the audio industry long ago gave up on growing the customer pool, so with a fixed (actually shrinking) customer base the only strategy for staying in business is to sell to the same people over and over. Maybe you’ll (not you Paul, you the old school) take some market share from your competitors, but it’s just as likely they’ll take market share from you. So you come out with a Mk II, then a Mk III, then the Mk III Improved, then the Reference. I’m not disparaging companies that evolve in their design skills or manufacturing abilities and are making true improvements to their products. Many though are just looking for ways to keep squeezing money from the same customers and keep getting column space in the (e)magazines.

   Audio will move out of the drug dealer ranks when it focuses on growing the market rather than reselling to the same (shrinking) market. Until then, the only way to stay alive is to keep the afflicted hungry for their next fix. Like drug dealers.

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