CG

I suppose that if these are all solved problems, then there really is no point of pursuing any of it. You've convinced me. This is my last post here. Not going away mad, but I don't believe I have anything further to contribute.

Well, then! I guess I'd better pack up all my physics and engineering textbooks, test gear, soldering iron, computer simulation tools, and so forth and put it on sale while I still can!

One of the challenges to all this is that people hear and subsequently interpret sounds and music differently. That should be obvious, simply based on how there's a wide range of tastes in different musical genres. As my wife has reminded me, over and over, most musicians don't give a fig about home audio systems. That's often because they listen for something entirely different than other people do. Many even derive pleasure and an emotional response just from looking at the sheet music or the charts - no actual sound is required. There's been a lot of research over

I figure the routine service is just the rental you need to pay... There's no question that these are paper gains and can be completely illusionary. But, it's still better than somebody saying that you need to give them $100 to take whatever it is away.

I have a funny story with regard to that kind of thing. Maybe two years ago, my wife gave our daughter the fancy watch that she bought years ago, but stopped wearing about years minus three ago. (She now wears one of the aforementioned Apple watches.) The kid had it redone at the authorized dealer a couple blocks from where she works. She's quite happy with it. But, here's the thing. Although my kid's about to turn 30, has a fancy academic pedigree that entitles her to be put a fancy title on a business card after or before her name (which she doesn't), a

Dunno about that one. My wife bought me what she considered a very nice expensive watch 35 years ago. (It is very. nice and was very expensive foe the day.) Today the same watch is worth roughly 30 times what she paid. I know - had it appraised somewhat recently when the stupidly expensive maintenance came up. The resale value has gone up far more than it should have in a sane world based on reality. I agree with this. And, to be sure, there are audio companies out there who cater to the jewelry perspective of audio gear. No names from me, but alt

Well, I think that a lot of audiophiles just like different. So, they change their systems to get different. A friend of mine told me yesterday that he'd swapped his loudspeakers in a big way recently, from time coherent models to horns with giant woofers and compression drivers. He was clear that he wanted "radically different." He got it! This wasn't a $67 proposition, either. To some degree, it's a lot like buying and trading expensive watches. Most are pretty close to getting the time right, so the desire for more or different comes from someplace else. That's caring, bu

"If the phase relationships of the fundamental and harmonics are altered, everything from perceived pitch to timbre can change. This is true whether the changes stem from construction of the instrument or from distortion in recording and/or playback. " Hmmm... This suggests then that only loudspeakers with first order crossover networks have a chance to get it right. (There may be other way more sophisticated solutions, too...) And, associated with that, the associated loudspeaker drivers must also be operated in the frequency range where they don't break up much and

I was specifically referring to movies, but I feel your pain...

This is a real challenge. I pretty much build all my own electronics - DAC excepted - so I can take a more incremental approach to system evolution. Hobbyists who rely on buying gear really are pretty much thrown into a chaotic adventure with random results. It used to be that having a knowledgeable dealer could really help with that problem, but that's not so accessible for most folks today. In addition, I know a lot of guys who just want something radically different from what they were listening to last week or last month. That's a whole separate thing. But, it's

Yeah. Between that and the wretched, easily predictable plots, I don't even bother to watch. Too bad, too. It's funny... With HD video at home, it's stunning how great older black and white movies look. (Much as how great black and white photography often is.) I wonder why that is. The mono sound also is more real, even though the frequency response is sub-optimal and the distortion and noise are certainly obvious. I'm finding that more and more, I prefer to watch older stuff from before I was born and to listen to music from then, too. Listening to Alan Lomax re

Unbelievably great! Some of this I sorta intuited along the way, as my wife (the music school grad) kept insisting that most audiophile dogma was from one particular observation point only. It's simply stupendous to see this all explained so eloquently and in one place. Side story number 1: Said wife and I were once at a high priced audio store listening to some gear and loudspeakers that we quickly found were not to our, ahhh, "taste." But, the store owner kept insisting that with this loudspeaker, these cables, this amplifier, and so on, you could tell that the pia

Not hidden at all... I'd be *very* interested in an equivalent display for 1/3 or even 1/2 the price! Chris - have you been holding out on us??

Good to know. There's rumors of a less expensive monitor coming out Any Day Now. (The only things really coming out Any Day Now are the rumors.) As you alluded to, this monitor is overpriced. Just because they can overprice it. For example, the stand doesn't appear to be that much different from what you get on an $1800 27 inch iMac. (Is the stand $1000 and the rest is only $800? Somebody should go into the boutique stand business.) Anyway, if there's a lower priced alternative, that might be the way to go for us puny humans. Thanks for the report. Back to the s

It's truly amazing how uninterested companies are now. Customers are really pains in the keister, aren't they? Somewhat off topic... I'm typing this on a somewhat more recent vintage iMac than your previous computer, but Apple in its great and powerful wisdom haa decided to not update the firmware in it for the past year. That may not be a problem now, but it could be. Their answer is that it's up to date, but I keep getting eficheck notices that my firmware is not up to date. Apple is about as interested in my (and other people's) issue on this as Roon is with th