Er, maybe, but it sure is difficult explaining the pleasure your high-end system gives you to someone who hasn't got a clue what you're going on about because their high-end system doesn't give them the same level of satisfaction.
Is High End Audio Gear Worth the Money?
- Thread starter Ron Resnick
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Snot elitism exists everywhere unfortunately… but I’d have thought seems to be even more so prevalent possibly in audiophile forums than among serious(?) music lovers.Why being a "serious music lover" is mandatory for being an audiophile? Or better, what is a "serious music lover"? Some one that only listens to non amplified music?
Pity it’s a contributing factor in making being an audiophile appear more petty and smaller rather than greater or more noble… throw in elitist pricing and then much of it appears as just decadent and unserious. Perhaps that’s also the generational turnoff.
So music loving is just way cooler and for good reason because music is or can be ultimately art and audio for all its fabulous pretensions mostly craft.
Very little commercial high end audio approaches art from my perspective… I teach design and the industrial design element in audio has always lagged and often is just daggy… and contemporary high end is no more graced with a sublime elevated spirit than is some vintage or some diy.
Who’d spend many hundreds of thousands or even millions on systems on many of the contemporary boxes of tacky awkward bling and disjointed design mostly coming out of electrical engineers with no art or industrial design background.
Atleast with vintage you’ll sometimes see at least good simple composition and some truth through form following function.
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Probably some others do the same, bur recently I learned that dCS has partnered with the Cambridge-based design consultancy Special Agent for their current products. See https://herring-harp-9pes.squarespace.com/work/ultimatelisteningexperience and https://herring-harp-9pes.squarespace.com/about .
The classic design of their Elgar DAC was carried in collaboration with industrial designer Alan Boothroyd, best known for the great looking Meridian 100 series - I still keep my 104 tuner.
It’s not a field of design where it’s easy to pull off timeless aesthetics though for a range of reasons relating to the context of audio components and forming up as a marriage of systems beyond themselves. Fragments synthesising into a whole.
This is the core fundamental challenge not just of the aesthetics in audio design but also in the fundamental music experience itself in audio systems especially in more complex processes often found in high end audio approaches.
The component nature of system building makes unity or cohesion more of a challenge but then the journey of pulling a system together is rarely about off the rack solutions… less is more is just a safer design pathway than when the audio ecosystem is flapping its feathers in a buy me dance and form mixing can be very diverse and conflicting.
It’s being unable to elevate function through to form that caps this off as craft rather than operating as a level of art in design.
That said often it isn’t just good basic form making at play… much of it seems unconfident so the excesses come about as engineers struggle to resolve form and add more and more design flourishes or overt materiality or complicating processes… but like I said it is a difficult discipline to be designing in.
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Perhaps a bit utilitarian, but certainly not typical. The original American Sound turntable from the 1970s.
Hmmm. Glad thats not in my room.
Audio gear as art? Ok. But would you pay for any of it based on looks if it was not attached to making sound? FWIW my wife and I seem to purchase a piece from a local artist once a month.
This article made me realize how much a speaker such as a Wilson is really a midrange and tweeter paired to a sub. The cabinets are separate. Aren't the woofers just subs? The manufacturer advantage is they made the crossover.
I just bought a certified used car from this dealer's mickey mouse program. Are you saying this was a mistake?
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