Thanks for posting this. I had some random thoughts about this, none of which are directed at you in any way, shape or form.
My reaction to this article and more so the ones linked to it was that by the time i had waded through it all, I was a lot more interested in Placebo as hi-fi
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBlAdApfK9Uthan in Hi-Fi as placebo...guess I'm not as messed up as the blogger that Sullivan quotes. The fact that Mr. Myers has entered "audiophile recovery" must have come as welcome news, particularly to the unrepentant audiophile junkies who probably picked up the source of his anguish for a fraction of what he paid for it.
Good for them. It appears to have been wasted on Mr. Myers anyway.
I mean
really...
"
Every once in a while, I’d read a post on Head-fi about someone who was selling everything he’d bought because he realized he was listening to his equipment rather than music. I finally had the same realization and made the same decision. At the time, I felt like a recovering addict, or a victim of a con artist, reformed but slightly ashamed."
If buddy here wants to be ashamed of something, he should be ashamed of being so
lame. If he couldn't hear the difference between what he had vs. what he felt compelled to upgrade to, that's on
him. Why did he buy it in the first place ? Oh, yeah, that's right...he was
conned...he was an
addict...or maybe someone put a gun to his head and said "MAKE THE DEAL !" In the immortal words of Bugs Bunny: "What an ultra-maroon."
But why stop there? When you go to the " Placebo-philes" blog that Sullivan references, Myers goes on to attack those wacky audiophiles with the self-righteous fervor of someone who recently quit smoking and lashes out at anyone who hasn't in a desperate effort to keep from back-sliding into the abyss. He talks about the fact that
Wired magazine has declared that "burn-in" is unnecessary but the article quotes a source from Shure who
isn't so sure about that...He sniggers at the "truly insane things that audiophiles will do in search of the perfect sound " and to substantiate this madness, links to a website which advises the madmen to pay attention to speaker positioning and clean connections - what utter LUNACY! It's a madhouse...A MADHOUSE !!! He states that " Audiophiles have gotten
a lot of bad press lately..." ( which is an
obvious reach because this is such an esoteric activity at this stage that it gets
no press...) and then states
a single example : the "controversy" over Pono as outlined in some other obscure blog which in turn links to another blog by some technocrat named Dan who seems really angry at Neil Young and pretty much everything else. You can wade further into
that techno-blogger circle-jerk from there if you so choose but wear appropriate protective gear including a visor...Safety first, people !
So all in all, seems like a whole lotta feathers and not much chicken. Andrew Sullivan usually tries harder but what the hell, pays the same I guess. And as to the apparently-in-remission Robert McGinley Myers, why would he even bother with this twaddle ? Perhaps he said it best himself in his "audiophile think ( but not too hard ) - piece : " In other words, I was an idiot. "
As was so often the case, Bugs said it best.
D.D.
