Are you really arguing that audio fidelity in gear doesn't matter? Isn't that the "fi" part of hi-fi?
What I am arguing is that what matters to
me is my own pleasure and enjoyment. And if I ultimately derive more pleasure and enjoyment from that which is less "high fidelity," that's what I'll choose every time.
I would never tell someone they shouldn't enjoy their tube amp with 5 or 10 percent distortion because it uses too little negative feedback. If they like the sound of distortion added to everything they listen to, I'm cool with it. But you can add grunge like that for a lot less than the cost of these boutique products. Two silicon diodes and a pair of well-chosen resistors can do exactly that for about 50 cents.
First, and with all due respect, I think the notion that the distortion characteristics of a low feedback SET amp can be exactly replicated with a couple of diodes and resistors is hogwash. Though I'm perfectly willing to be proved wrong on this.
Second, why do you seem to have such a dim view of what you refer to as "boutique products"? It's almost as if you're implying that there's something inherently bad or wrong with them.
It seems to me the true goal of hi-fi is to hear the intentions of the recording and mixing engineers.
I guess, if one's goal is "hi-fi." But that's not everyone's goal. My own goal as I have said previously is my own pleasure and enjoyment. And to me that trumps any intentions of recording and mixing engineers.
But let's examine this stated goal of "hi-fi."
First, the only way you can
truly hear the intentions of the recording and mixing engineers is if you were to use the same source components, playback gear, loudspeakers, and acoustical environment that was used to produce the recording.
That implies having a system that is as neutral as possible. Versus a system that adds a particular character or coloration to everything that passes through it.
But that also implies that all of the recordings you would listen to were made using systems
at least as neutral as the system you're playing them back on.
So tell me, just how neutral was the system that say, George Martin used when making Sgt. Pepper compared to the neutrality that can be achieved with systems today? I'd hazard a guess of "not very."
Engineers like Martin had to work with the limitations of the systems they used at the time. And like any good engineer, they'd have employed various techniques to get the best results from those limitations. Mic placement, EQ, etc.
To have a system that's "as neutral as possible" is to have a system which plays back a recording with as little alteration as possible. But what exactly
is the recording?
Let's say you're George Martin. It's 1966 and you're just getting started recording Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band for the Beatles. And let's say that the system you're using at the time is rather rolled off in the highs. We'll call this the system's transfer function.
To get around this, you apply some EQ, boosting the highs.
So now, given this, what exactly
is the recording itself? One thing that it's not is the intention of George Martin. George Martin's intention is what he heard through his system after applying some high frequency boost to compensate for the system's transfer function. What the recording itself represents is the
inverse of that transfer function, i.e. boosted highs as opposed to rolled off highs.
To play this recording back on a modern system which is far more neutral than the one George used back in 1966 would result in something quite different from what George intended. It would result in highs boosted above what he had intended.
So when you say "...the true goal of hi-fi is to hear the intentions of the recording and mixing engineers," just which recording and mixing engineers do you mean?
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