Don't be too quick to condemn. There are a heck of a lot of snake oil
salesman out there.
"Our speaker wire is sung to by virgins in an oxygen free atmosphere"
etc.
They are good for a laugh from time to time "Emperors new clothes"
style.
But not everything in the audiophile realm is entirely hocus pocus.
There is some real engineering too.
The final mechanical transducers that turn electrical signals into
vibrations in the air are less than ideal loads and sufficiently
imperfect that some do sound a lot better in a real room than others.
And certain unlucky combinations of speaker and amplifier can sound
awful or even be marginally unstable. When you get to a system where
sound engineers mistakes become noticeable it probably isn't worth
going beyond that unless the objective is to waste money. Biwired
amplifiers make some sense from a network point of view.
Yup, high-end audio is mostly a useless waste of money, but at least
it's not outright harmful like cigarettes or opera tickets.
What's harmful about opera tickets? I'll have any you are throwing
out.
I suppose it depends what you call high end. There is a stratospheric
audiophool price ceiling if you are so inclined. But it is worth
having decent speakers and a better than average amplifier if you like
music. A fairly good system test is some music you know well. And if
you happen to know something like the minimalist Philip Glass
composition Songs from Liquid Days then Track 2 will easily separate
the sheep from the goats.
I was suprised to find that almost no sensibly priced home cinema
systems could render it accurately. Detail was lost and the
instruments became muddy and the tempo less well defined. Minimalist
music is rather good for this sort of thing because the short
repetative themes allow for easy and quick comparisons. And it falls
apart if the timing isn't accurate.
Regards,
Martin Brown
