Below are some excerpts from "As We See it". The first, is from
Stereophile's "As we see it", Sept. 1992 issue and the last is from the current Nov. 2007 Issue. The first is a speech that J. Gordon Hilt gave at CES 1992.
"At the core of high-end audio is the pursuit of the live-music experience The dream continues."
"Or does it?"
"I've been getting the impression that we don't believe our own hype anymore. No one today would claim seriously that a reproducing system sounds "just like the real thing." And we're right. I've heard hundreds of classical concerts, a few stadium rock concerts, and a number of electric instruments playing in nightclubs and music stores, and I can attest that the vast majority of so-called high-end systems don't come CLOSE to reproducing those sounds."
"But what's worse is that, among ourselves, we seem to have come to a tacit agreement that it's no longer necessary, or even desirable, for a home music system to sound like the real thing."
"We design the all-important musical midrange out of our equipment in order to try—vainly, I might add—to re-create the illusion of three-dimensional space through what is essentially a two-dimensional reproducer.""Because that's where we're at. Real sounds very different from reproduced."
"This does not need to be so."
"The idea that all we are trying to do is make equipment that gives the listener some sort of magical emotional response to a mystical experience called "music" is all well and good, but it isn't what High End is all about."
"I think it's because we've lost our direction."
"But the pursuit of that Holy Grail of perfect sound—even temporarily, if not forever—could give us back the sense of purpose we have lost in recent years."
"It might even bring back some of the old excitement.—J. Gordon Holt"
The following are from "As we see it" in the current Nov. issue of Stereophile. It is 2007 follow up to Holt's speech. Questions by John Atkinson are in italics. Repsonses follow from Holt.
Do you still feel the high-end audio industry has lost its way in the manner you desribed 15 years ago?"Not in the same manner; there's no hope now. Audio Actually used to have a goal:perfect reproduction of the sound of real music performed in a real space. That was found difficult to achieve, and it was abandoned when music lovers, who almost never heard anything except amplified music anyway, forgot what "the real thing" had sounded like. Today, "good" sound is whatever one likes. As Art Dudley so succinctly said, fidelity is irrelevant to music."
"Since the only measure of sound quality is that the listener likes it, that has pretty well put an end to audio advancement"
I remember you strongly feeling back in 1992 that multichannel/surround reproduction was the only chance the industry had for getting back on course"With fidelity in stagnation, spatiality was the only area of improvement left."
Power conditioning, dacs etc. etc. are never going to give you perfect reproduction. If you want that, you need to have a grander view. The first step involves realizing that 2 channel, equilateral setups are never going to get you there.
