That sounds great! But first we have to have some idea of what we want. It seems to me it is easier in the visual realm. Architects can draw up plans, even quick sketches which give some idea of what is possible, though it may still be difficult to grasp at the 'walking around' perspective. Sound is effervescent, less tangible, almost impossible to imagine.
I suspect most audiophiles don't get too far past "sounds good" ... maybe "better bass" ... at least until you actually hear what you want, or something close to it. For many of us that turns into randomly trying one thing or another. I cannot speak for Peter but I suspect he and I got to a point where we fully heard what we want when we went to Utah. "Well, there it is." I suppose we both enjoyed the concert hall yet did not know how to translate that experience into laying out goals on how to achieve it. I knew I wanted something that would unlock the full Lamm potential. It was 'easier' for Peter - he said "I want that!" and he took the steps to get there.
"I want a system that sounds natural." How does one write a plan for that, to achieve it. I may be on a weak track here but the best I can come up with is: exposure until you hear it. Until you get some notion of a reference that you can use as a guide, planning is almost impossible -- which I think translates to your "it comes to having a clearly defined set of goals it makes it easier to assess how we are going in the big picture."
Having benchmarks, determining priorities and the use of precedents can start to provide us something of a compass to navigate by and also performance criteria to test against. But having a range of experiences is definitely the go. Also then having usable assessment criteria that clearly resonates for us also is part of it… for some the notion of natural sounding is some part of an indecipherable language yet for some understanding the nature of it comes just completely naturally. I do find atomistic assessment (the analysis of the parts) without holistic assessment in tandem to pull it all back together again is for me incomplete.
From my experience design process largely tends to crossover from discipline to discipline so whether it’s industrial design, graphic, architectural, landscape and even art and music… the ways that we can seek to define the context and the spirit of a thing (or an experience of a thing) to act both as a functional and characteristic outline can then be used with a mix of analysis and holistic reflection in a summative assessment process.
Design aims can (and often do) change during developmental process and I’d think for most of us this becomes more an ongoing cycle of system design, assessment, review and refinement.
Unfortunately nominating design objectives in itself isn’t a magic formula to get to a solution on its own and research, trial and discovery are still the go but at least having clearly defined goals becomes an active guiding element in the process to help us to navigate design choices with more focused awareness and a more structured pathway. The design objectives themselves are also a work in progress.
Definitely as nice a goal as it might sound I think just saying blah blah I want to get to nirvana blah blah is way too loose a parameter to work with, especially given the time and resources we channel into this… but then we each have our own journey in this.
It amazes me how much time and effort we easily spend over great periods of our lives without trying to get some vision or defined sense of what our systems might ultimately become or even just jotting down a simple list of indicators that we can use to see if we are on track or at least travelling roughly in the right direction… and let’s not get any of us started on the notion of having an end goal
… unless of course our own timely senescence is also the definitive audiophile end game
.
