Reading this thread has been for me like going to a high school or college reunion--You go from one story to another, trying to understand what the other person is saying, what is their bias, what is true, and then when you get home, finally ask the key question, what did all of this have to do with me and how will my life be affected around the next bend? Don't get me wrong, I love trips down memory lane, but sooner or later I have to return to reality and that, for me is where the rubber hits the road, or should I say when it comes to audio where the sound waves hit my ears and soul.
If you are not interested in reading about my take on the all important interface between music, audio and personal happiness, you should do yourself a favor and skip this post. If, on the other hand you believe as I and many others do, that music and audio can have a profound impact on how we feel and thus our happiness, are curious how the past 24 hours have demonstrated that relationship in spades for me, then welcome to my most recent story and sharing of my most honest day in audio.
First a little background so you will have enough info to judge my comments. Let’s start with the physical setting and my mind set as I write this post. Like most people my life is comprised of both good and bad things, although all too often I focus too much on what is wrong and miss the forest for the trees, especially in relationships and with audio.
I am sitting on my rear deck on a beautiful warm and sunny Sunday morning, having fresh brewed coffee and eating organic melon pieces, overlooking my boat moored in my back yard next to one of the bigger bays in the country. In the background Ravel’s L’Enfant et Les Sortileges is playing on my somewhat respectable system that I am currently revising to sound better and to be honest, become a better tool to help me enjoy life more. (I promise there is a link that will hopefully become evident quickly).
Marty's and my path have crossed an incredible number of times both in person and on the phone. We have known each other, incredibly well, I must say, since 1970 when he came to my college dorm room to hear my system after I heard his dorm room system and also met the woman who would become his better half and grounding strip for his life, Lisa. I remember this day as if it was yesterday because what was true that day is still true today. I thought Marty's Advents had very good midrange and essentially no top, and he thought the best thing about my system was my bedside hard wired remote control for my Teac R2R-but we were both happy with our respective toys that produced noise that we considered sound.
Something else happened that day, we each knew that we had met a kindred soul and likely incredibly close long-term friend who would not only become an audio buddy, but a life buddy and learned with time that it was better to focus on what was common rather than get sidetracked with our differences, as Marty has said many times, “we learned to disagree”.
Our common paths have intersected hundreds if not thousands of times in the time since, including an incredible number of listening sessions in each other’s various homes along the way until the sun rose the next morning, going to probably more than 20 CES's together, an incredible number of audio stores and private listening sessions, taking a weird benchmark trip to hear John Iverson's fabled "Force Field Speakers", swapping many stories about each of our respective experiences when the audio ventures were solo (including for me 5 visits to the fabled Sea Cliff to listen with HP on various systems). Along the way Steve Williams joined our duo to make a menage a trois that has changed the audio dynamics and perspectives considerably not to mention creating new and important personal friendships.
You may have read the Tres Amigos thread from a couple of years ago when the three of us visited the NW, Shunyata, Mike Lavigne, Bruce Brown, Ki Choi ecetera. I could go on and on about the specifics of each experience, but I will spare you that because that is much more fun in person because then it is more about the experiences than the technology. And besides you have other much more important things to do today than spend a lot of time reading about my experiences when yours are much more important.
As we sometimes forget during our obsessive audio pursuits, there is life beyond audio, at least occasionally, and without a doubt this fact plays a huge role in not only our audio interests, but also our audio needs, and if we are honest and introspective as part of our overall life needs as we hopefully pursue personal happiness.
As Marty so often reminds me when I am struggling with something, we are both, for better or worse, coming to the final quarter of our lives and thus should think about things differently than we have in the past. As I read Marty’s opening post, I heard his words repeatedly, because unlike most of you, I have been both a real and virtual partner through the past 50 years of his audio adventures, including the most recent and the impetus for this thread.
Although, unlike you, I know the outcome of this most recent voyage and will tease you with his words just prior to his sharing his final decision with me—“You will probably think I am crazy, but this is what I decided to do on the speaker front!” While his choice is probably different than what I would have chosen, I totally understand and respect why he made his, and must say I am very proud of him because he is taking his own advice—less about the technology, more about the music and how it impacts his life. I am trying to follow his lead as I hopefully approach the end of what has been the most aggressive audio buying spree in my life, including new speakers (Vivid G3’s in my case).
So it is only fair that I offer a disclaimer at this point for those of you who are not familiar with my personal quirks, beliefs, past and present postings about my most recent audio dilemmas. I am a psychiatrist who has many of the problems attributed to many mental health workers, namely trying to obsess about many aspects of my life to increase my personal happiness and, for me, my drug is to frequently hide in audio when the hard parts of life become more than I care to face at the moment. When I realize my true relationship to audio, I feel that it my responsibility to this community to share what I have learned on my personal/audio happiness front.
Fortunately, audio for me is not only about hiding; it is also about joy and a place I recharge when the incredibly intense parts of my job and live become overwhelming to the point that I need a break. I am lucky that I live on the water and have a boat in my backyard, which also serves many of the same functions as do my audio pursuits. This is probably why my boat has a killer sound system that I play almost all of the time while cruising, unless things are so overwhelming that silence is more important than music.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, a week ago a relationship that was very important me, ended, a sad but wise decision, and thus I am in hyperdrive obsessing about audio, in the name about finishing my quest for audio nirvana and just listen to music again. Yesterday was one of the most intense audio days in my life, talking to Marty several times; a couple of hours on the phone with Steve Williams who opened and new obsession that I should not be worrying about at this juncture, Masterbuilt cables; Terry Menacker of Overture A/V and my Spectral dealer and friend finally cancelling my Spectral SDR 4000SV order; Scott Warren my long time MIT dealer and personal friend; a wonderful man named Ken in NC who is in the throws of selling his beloved system so he can pay his divorce settlement (something I know all too well, especially having to sell the house that contained my pride and joy, my custom designed acoustically wonderful listening room) and then sell my system piece by piece to survive the depression of not being able to work as I processed the end of a 30 year marriage and a serious disruption in my relationship with my daughters. I contemplated buying Ken’s CD-9 and then decided against it as I struggle with the issue behind my most recent thread on this forum that apparently many share or at least have thoughts about based on the incredible number of posts and views in just a week, let alone the first day.
http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showt...buy-a-state-of-the-art-CD-player-at-this-time?
Through these calls and endless time looking at the same info on Audiogon over and over again and endless Google searches (a review of my Google history yesterday is down right scary because it shows just how much I obsessed), I tried not to think about the love relationship that unfortunately did not work and tried to focus on my personal happiness going forward and determine how audio fits in, while remembering that for me there is a budget since I need to feed my divorce-depleted retirement.
Periodically as I became tired of relating to the internet articles commercial promo’s and reviews, I reached out to one of my audio buddies, Caelin Gabriel of Shunyata fame because I respect his insights and he is one of the few people I know who can help me sort of what to do next because he has direct experiences with each of the options that I am considering (Ayon DAC, Lampizator, ARC CD-9, the absolutely incredible Spectral SDR 4000SV Redbook CD player with no digital inputs, and we have the same speakers, Vivid G3’s). While not yet formerly a friend, I have spent hours on the phone with a wonderful sales rep, Paul, from USA Tube in Scottsdale who has been kind enough to share his personal listening and ownership experiences with the above mentioned equipment. The more I have talked to him the more I believe that that I am getting his true feelings.
Periodically I remembered that none of these activities matter if I cannot hear, much less too unhappy to care or for that matter possibly have a serious medical problems that would render all of this OCD’ing a mere avoidance that is costing me a lot of energy and another day of my life.
Back to this thread
As I read this thread and especially Marty’s posts, I smiled many times because I have been with Marty, both literally and figuratively on many, if not most of his audio sojourns, as he has with me during the past almost 50 years. I read the incredible number of responses to his comments in such a short period of time with great interest from both an audio and life perspective because I have great respect for how Marty solves problems and the results his efforts produce, especially on the audio front.
Of course, all of the comments are valid because more than the physics of sound they are based on personal biases and needs, and thus are all correct in some form or fashion, regardless of how good a scientific tool a smart phone might be or not be. We are all on this forum because we get some sort of personal return and satisfy some sort of personal need as we pursue our version of audio nirvana.
Having said all of this, I am struck by one missing aspect of almost all of these comments, although I know it is important to Marty despite his audio OCD and scientific approach—The personal ability to hear, literally, for each of us. Frequency response curves whether B&K or iPhone generated are useless unless they compliment how we hear them.
Unfortunately, this fact has been driven home to me recently when I started to lose my hearing in my left ear several months ago. Several weeks ago it become so severe that I could barely hear the left channel, even with the balance totally to the left. As I was awaiting the delivery of the Spectral SDR 4000SV CD player, a piece that I have been so excited about since ordering it a couple of months ago, despite its $20k price tag and lack of digital inputs, I kept asking myself why I would buy such an amazing piece of technology that is all about resolution and noise floor if I cannot even hear the piece out of one ear? Unfortunately, the ENT and audiology work up during the past several weeks has clearly demonstrated that I should spend no time, energy or money on this front since my audiogram is so bad that hopefully there is no speaker on the market with a complimentary curve.
The answer was easy, I had just spent much more than $50k on two other pieces of Spectral SV equipment and the associated MIT cables and love what the changes produced, but that was sadly several months ago when both of my ears worked and I could truly appreciate their value and deemed the cost worthwhile.
http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showt...-4000-SL-vs-the-SDR-4000-SV-The-SV-difference
http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showt...-Ever-Had-amp-The-Best-Preamp-Amp-Combination
Now I am faced with other issues: is this purchase wise considering my hearing problems? Am I making sound decisions when I am so off kilter due to the break-up of a relationship that was so important to me. And, oh, yeah, is my sudden onset of one sided hearing problems due to some truly serious medical problem like an intracranial tumor pinching my 8[SUP]th[/SUP] nerve that supplies the sound impulses to my brain? Unlike previously when I have successfully hidden in audio purchases when upset, this time it is different, because my audio future may be coming to a rapid end, as might my ability to make money that has fueled it over the years, and although unlikely, maybe even my life!
Even audio OCD is not sufficiently powerful to help me avoid for long these concerns, although I tried my best yesterday to hide and feel better with a myriad of audio endeavors and better than 10 hours of audio-related activities, while not listening to one piece of music BTW!!! Exhausted by my endeavors, confusion and heartache, I eventually went to bed after watching a terrible movie Now You See Me 2, using my sound system for the audio playback so the day would not be totally absurd from an audio perspective, only to wake up and figure that I would waste another day solving the new problems from yesterday’s audio OCD.
Then I stumbled on Marty’s post, which he had not mentioned to me since he knew I knew all of details already. As I have been writing this post for more than the past two hours, I periodically ask myself why? The answer is simple, albeit it painful—it is helping me become honest about how audio fits into my life and helping me determine what I should next both with my life and my audio decisions!!!!
If you have made it this far in this post, then thank you for listening as I bare my heart about the role audio has played in my life and especially at this time in my life. I hope that there has been at least something in this post that might be relevant and helpful to your audio interests.
Russ, the self-appointed Forum Shrink LOL!
