Is “disciple” Resnickian for a person who buys audio gear from an experienced and knowledgeable friend who happens to be a dealer? Why such silly language? David was once your friend too, and you spoke to him for years about audio and the development of your room and system.
No; a lot of people buy audio gear from experienced and knowledgeable friends who happen to be dealers without becoming disciples of such dealer. I still consider David to be a friend.
Why does the characterization of "disciple" rub you the wrong way? I would think you would be proud to be David's disciple.
Through specific tests you conducted over time based on David's advice you became more and more confident of the value to you of David's philosophies and practical implementations. Eventually, you adopted his philosophies and practical implementations in their entirety. You now actively advocate those philosophies and practical implementations. You speak of David and your experiences with David in a very reverential way.
You found somebody whose knowledge and experience you trust, and you have chosen to follow that person's advice. You have described how David has bestowed upon you valuable and proprietary audio wisdom which you are not at liberty to repeat. This is all great, and I'm not criticizing any of this in any way.
But I will leave to readers to judge whether all of this, as well as your reflexive propensity to jump to David's defense, rings as kind of disciple-y -- something much more than just a typical friendly dealer relationship.
You told me you solicited David’s advice for all sorts of things, from the room design, acoustics, and grounding schemes, power delivery, to the turntable, arm, and cartridge choices. The rack, cables, final table assembly and set up, and then overall system set up and fine tuning. You engaged in discussions for years, and sought his advice often, including how to deal with the wood panels your contractor installed and window treatments.
You should not now diminish the role you had asked David to play in the final result of what you had hoped to hear from your system.
I am not sure what this means, but I think you are suggesting something broader and deeper than what actually happened. I enjoyed discussing audio with David and getting his opinions, just as I enjoy discussing audio with many people and getting their opinions.
David has a lot of experience in a lot of major areas of audio. Also, before David got into horns and SET I believe that David spent years with Apogee panels and high-power tube amplifiers. So I like that he had an appreciation for why I love panel speakers. Panels provided a common starting point of sorts.
By saying I "engaged" David on the turntable I did not mean to suggest that I did not enjoy discussing a lot of different audio topics with him. By "engage" in that sentence I meant that the turntable was the only David suggestion which resulted in a business transaction.
We also discussed the impact of canceling your turntable order would have on set up and final results.
I don't know what this means.
You solicited David’s advice for other things too and chose not to do what he suggested.
I took David's suggestion on the Belden cable, and I took David's suggestion not to use a wool carpet pad.
David has a different personal preference than I do about the level of audio reflections in a listening room. We also have different views about the value and utility of commercial acoustic room treatments.
We also have different views about cables. David believes that fancy expensive cables are deleterious to the sound, or a waste of money, or both. I believe that all cables function as fixed parametric equalizers (thank you Phil Ressler) regardless of whether they are expensive or inexpensive. This means that in a particular application an expensive cable may be preferred subjectively to an inexpensive cable.
You told me your method is to solicit the advice of multiple experts and then you sort it all out yourself from the various options what to do. This seems to be behind your frequent solicitations here on the forum too.
Yes, this is correct. I ask lots of people about their opinions on things. David kindly gave me his opinion on lots of audio issues.
These types of cables are cheap. There is nothing preventing you from trying the Mogami wires. Just buy them and listen. You are in fact left to your own devices. No one is preventing you from trying alternatives to what David suggested.
I am not sure to what this is a reply. Yes, nothing prevents me from trying other cables. But presently I am happy with the Belden even though I have not compared it to anything else.
You chose not to listen to many of his suggestions.
This is correct. Nonetheless I think David is the world's leading expert on the SME 3012R tonearm. I think David is one of the world's leading experts on turntables.