I, for one, am source driven.
I manged to at one time, find out the real truth in that.
A situation emerged where I was sleeping in the 3rd floor apartment of what was essentially an older Victorian style house.
I heard a loud knock on the bottom door, that work me up. I went downstairs to see who it was, and saw, while advancing down the stairs.. that the very close next house over..was on fire. I then knew what the knock was about.
I ran back into the apartment... and looked at the audio gear....and looked at the records. I had to start moving some of it, down the back 3rd floor fire escape exit.
I went for the software, the records.... FIRST.
Equipment is replaceable.
I had the gun literally to my head and I had to chose..... a fully blown real and honest test, based in a moment of finality.
I chose music over audio.
It's all about the music.
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It's somewhat hard to tell if a person or thus, potentially, a company or group is gear or music (source) driven. Or, if this position they may hold, if it affects their capacity to actually search out the best sonic representation, or not.
High end audio, as subject on it's own, naturally requires that the business be gear driven, even if it may be in the context of serving the music. Business models require the creation of product and the adoption or sale of the product, by the given consumer, and in that context the model is only capable of being gear driven.
The hobbyist market, the DIY market, by it's nature, is going to be music driven, as it is about the orientation of best sonic creation at any price, via the self involvement in the process.
As a participant on and in DIYaudio, as a forum, and on other forums, it is easy to see this distance and situation erupt into confrontations due to differences in orientation. It is also easy to see in the distance between some consumers and some companies who produce equipment. To see the different types of mentality and psychology play out, in interaction.
Mental awareness and how we hear, how we idealize and the differing levels of this that we each have, in our various ways and in the various components, how this expresses in the given mind and life.
How some companies live and exist to move gear, all while projecting the concerned, enlightened and prophetic-like perfection in the decoding of audio signals, in the form of slick advertising.
How some, with no advertising, live in a somewhat opposite world, where they are concerned solely with the best reproduction and find customers via word of mouth only.
Due to the bell curve of how human exist in groupings, the company with the best public projection, is the one that 'wins' in the world of sales figures. In that, there is absolutely NO guarantee of any kind that the given company cares about music first and foremost, over that of sales. thus J Gordon Holt's saying/adage (I paraphrase from memory), "The better the advertising, the worse the gear". His was a well learned opinion on this subject.
In the world of audio, almost all possible variances to these sort of extremes are noted to exist.
