Simplicity, Complexity and Price
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The frequency extremes are the big rabbit hole -- and one can get lost in the journey. How many audiophile lagomorphs become gear-centric and lose sight of a music-first system along the way?
Getting very believable and enjoyable midrange can be accomplished at relatively modest cost.
agreed. However, there was the rest of the sentence...They are allowed to. This is a hobby.
there is gear for gear's sake and there is gear that is meant to disappear and music to remain.
I have no horse to flog here, just commenting from my own experience of getting lost many years ago chasing high resolution files and losing musical enjoyment along the way. Found my way home, though.
A Sonos soundbar is surprisingly good. Watching a performance on YouTube, thus having the visual as the focus, so to speak, the sound is well-balanced.
I find that euros also add much better middle frequencies. Should we consider it an high finance debate?
Yes, and both are legitimate sub-hobbies, in my opinion.
(I omitted originally the second clause because it seemed pejorative. If somebody enjoys collecting shelf fulls of vintage SET amps even though he/she rarely plays music, God bless.)
Oh, here I totally agree. I actually think this happens to a significant plurality of people when they first get into the hobby, when they think that the type of sound they hear in dealer showrooms is the type of sound they're supposed to want.
I am glad!Found my way home, though.
Sorry micro, no offense, you are completely incorrect. The Ref 10 linestage is two Ref 2se with each channel having its own Ref 2se power supply, dual mono in two boxes total. Different screens. You tend toward blustering, maybe back off from that and do your homework.
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Did he? I remember he talked about his cat. Maybe that stuck with me because he had clues on the spine of his magazine that related to the cat. He was such a gifted writer. At one point he said that he didn't understand jazz. Since I listen to that genre a lot, it puzzled me. Eventually, he said it was making better sense to him and he was starting to appreciate some of the music. I'm not sure if that after his magazine folded or not. RIP. We lost him too early.
With ideas from the 1950,s 
Surely it is a semantics affair - "new" can have many gradations. Some can consider that cars are not a recent invention because man invented the wheel 6000 years ago. Topology can mean different things in electronics.
But IMO Peter Walker contributions to audio were innovative and deserve such epithet. The use of delay lines to create a point like source speaker were innovative - I would risk to say "new."
Also as far as can remember David Berning RF OTLs are a new concept in amplifiers. They were developed in the 90's.
There was an ARC Ref2 mkII circa 2001.
There was an ARC Ref2se circa 2012
I errantly referred to a Ref 10 linestage when I meant the phonostage, given that the Ref2se is a phonostage. The Ref10 Phono is two Ref2se with a power supply for each channel as I described.
I was thinking in terms of Class A, A/B, D, etc.
Julius Futterman patented an OTL (Output TransformerLess) design in 1953. His OTL amps in the '60s were not reliable and became a burden for future OTL manufacturers. Atma-Sphere amps are a Circlotron variant as was Tenor. I believe the "Zero-Hysteresis Output Transformerless." (ZOTL) developed by Berning is another variant of OTL design although technically not an OTL.
Yes, dollars can buy extended frequency extremes, but it doesn’t guarantee good sound. Good sound comes from knowledge, experience, dedication, and experimentation -factors that matter far more than simply achieving frequency extremes in an audio setup.
I heard extremely expensive setups sound like crap and very affordable ones making music that I like to keep listening. The very distinction between them was always knowledge, experience etc.
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