Flights of High-End Audio Fancy
Audio enthusiasts have traditionally fallen into two camps.
One feels that audio is basically a branch of engineering, and that the quality of a piece
of equipment can be measured and described in engineering terms, such as frequency
response, distortion, and signal-to-noise ratio.
The other group takes the view that such methods of
evaluation give, at best, only the roughest guide to the performance of a piece of stereo
gear, and that the subtleties that separate the really first-class from the
run-of-the-mill can only be discerned by prolonged listening and described in metaphoric
terms such as "tight bass," "air," "sheen," and so forth.
Up to a point, this is just a matter of style. Often
enough, the technical terms and the "sensual" ones refer to similar phenomena:
"front-to-back depth" and "midrange linearity" are really different
ways of describing the same aspect of speaker performance.
The difference is in the precision of the descriptions.
Engineering terms have standard definitions, while the subjective phrases can mean
whatever the user wants them to mean. What is strange is the vehemence with which the
"esoteric" audiophiles have always deprecated the use of scientific language
when referring to sound reproduction.
When extreme audiophiles of this type first became really
visible, they were often referred to by mainstream observers as the "lunatic
fringe" of audio, and one of their distinguishing characteristics was concentration
on the equipment itself, rather than the use to which it was put. To them, audio equipment
became an end in itself, rather than a means to greater enjoyment of recorded material.
Writing in a 1981 issue of Britain's Hi-Fi News and
Record Review -- a mainstream vehicle if ever there was one -- psychologist J.
Zelinger termed this phenomenon "hi-fi fetishism." He maintained, "we can
say that members of this group have relegated the music itself to a position of lesser
prominence. This view is further justified on the basis of additional evidence: the
lunatic fringe insist that their access to musical pleasure is dependent on the special
characteristics of the audio equipment that they own or aspire to own. It is as if the
real aim of musical reproduction, to listen to an account of a musical composition, is
displaced . . . onto an object (the audio equipment), which becomes at least as important
a source of pleasure for the listener."
Of course, all stereo fans do this to a certain extent. The
chief skill most users bring to audio is not in the use of the gear -- it doesn't take
much to shove a CD into a slot -- but in the selection of it. With the large amount of
equipment available, tiny differences (or imaginary ones) tend to take on significance
that their measurements would not warrant. But most of us then sit back and enjoy our
recordings, listening through our systems, not to them.
Not so the fetishist, according to Zelinger. Canadian
author Alan Lofft, writing at about the same time, saw it more as a kind of religion:
"Once a convert, once a believer, the mere rumor of a new moving-coil
cartridge is sufficient to send followers of audiophilia esoterica scurrying out to
the nearest high-end salon with the same evangelical fervor as the faithful who flock to a
revival meeting."
"This is a religion of a very different sort,"
Lofft continued. "Its aim is not life in the hereafter, but musical reproduction in
the living room so real (highs of such transcendent sweetness, midrange of such transparency,
bass of such rock-solid firmness) that the audiophile achieves a state of true
sonic bliss, secure in the knowledge that his system has attained state-of-the-art
status!"
The downside, according to Lofft, was that "in
cloaking measurable performance in the vague, fuzzy argot of the esoteric, there is an
implicit distrust of the technically explainable, the experimentally measurable; and real
differences, when they exist, become obscured in mystique."
Audio guru Dr. Floyd Toole added, "To talk of an
amplifier having a 'chocolaty midrange' . . . is simply poetic claptrap. I think it's
delightful that people have vivid imaginations, but ultimately these terms are just not
constructive, not useful."
Over the years, the imprecision of it all led to some truly
fantastic beliefs among esoteric audiophiles -- and products (usually expensive) that
catered to those beliefs. Exotic wires, some costing hundreds of dollars a meter, were de
rigeur for all parts of the system, and especially leading to the speakers. Some
touted the sonic advantages of plugging a certain cheap electric clock into the same AC
circuit as the stereo system, others swore that any equipment sounded better if run by
power hydroelectrically generated, rather than by oil or (horrors!) nuclear reactors.
Notorious at the time Lofft was writing on the subject was
an accessory called the VPI Brick, "a smallish chunk of steel intended to be plopped
down on top of a preamp, power amp, or head amp." The alleged sonic improvement was
quoted from an esoteric audio newsletter of the day: "Transient information in
particular is helped. The electronic circuit under the steel brick sounds cleaner, less
frizzy, with less of a sandy smear. . . . [Transients] have less of a superfluous shadow
and ringing clang after them, and inter-transient silence is generally improved."
The description certainly leaves a ringing clang in my
ears, but lest you think all this is some nostalgic quirk of two decades ago, the
redoubtable Dr. Toole -- ever on the lookout for such florid material -- recently sent
this example of what he calls "high-end boilerplate" from an issue of one of the
esoteric magazines: "The [product] tightened up the sounds of a wide variety of
equipment, the improvements often most noticeable in the bass. Imaging and focus usually
improved, as did the interstitial quiet, which raised the level of overall palpability,
air, and transparency."
The product? Shelves.
...Ian G. Masters
ian@mastersonaudio.com
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