audiocrats
- Thread starter tunes
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puroagave
Active member
Its a brilliant think piece that could spawn a dozen threads about our hobby. Thanks, Tunes.
"Meet the audiocrat (and take pity).
First, there were a few boffins who wanted to improve their music reproduction equipment, as the vast majority of this equipment was mostly designed to suit the production system, not the music lover.
Then, came the corporate takeover – the injection of big money and big marketing in order to dominate the sphere – with their diktat “spend more to get more” and the added insistence that modern technology will always improve upon everything that preceded it. Both are very dubious claims.
Now, a backlash has inevitably arisen with the maxim: “everything new is inferior to everything old, and the amateur is more enlightened than the professional”. This is a form of cargo cult, a voodoo club of contrarian faith every bit as dishonest and disappointing as its corporate predecessor.
Adherence to ideology and dogmatism is the province of religious zealots and political zombies, not of the rational or inquisitive man in search of explanations for his dissatisfactions. The corporate lobby (as a broad church, and whose primary motives are profit, market domination and ego) plies the untruth that there is a linear correlation between price paid and pleasure received, brushing under the carpet the exponential law of diminishing returns we have all come to observe – if we are honest with ourselves – as we go about the task of building an audio system.
The cost of corporate propaganda is high and must be recouped via high prices. These often-extravagant prices have set in motion this counter-insurgency of the impecunious, confused audiophile whose reaction is to turn his back and create his own reality. Sadly, he currently appears to be being led by charlatans of every possible persuasion peddling piffle, pseudoscience and outright bollocks. He is coerced into believing that the laws of physics are now either super-relevant-corporate-edicts or quite-irrelevant-banished-gods. Either way, conceding to fundamental belief – unquestioning faith in doctrine – will be his only route to audio heaven.
Engineers are primarily interested in results, with the processes involved being of lesser importance. Bureaucrats, on the other hand, are mostly concerned with the process itself, the results being less important. In turn, the traditional audiophile (an engineer) is interested in learning how audio equipment can best help him with the nature of enjoying listening to music. The audiocrat (a bureaucrat), on the other hand, is primarily concerned with the equipment (the process) itself, with music being of secondary concern, though he will loudly insist to the contrary.
The audiocrat is convinced that just one more tweak of his system or one final purchase of a latest gadget will bring him to audio nirvana, and will never admit that his doctrine has ever failed him. He will keep dreaming, spending, tinkering and cajoling forever, if he can. It is possible he now rents a warehouse in which to store all the equipment his addiction has burdened him with. He will cry “Listen to this!” as he leaps about, exchanging components ad infinitum for the elucidation of anyone foolish enough to ask his advice.
But no sooner has the music started, he will be adjusting something, changing a cable or a setting, talking feverishly about something he read in a magazine once, but of whose relevance he understands little. He will repeat ‘truths’ told to him in audio forums, unquestioningly and with relentless vigour. He will cock his head, straining for that elusive detail his latest purchase guaranteed would be revealed to him – but never questions if this particular detail has any relevance whatsoever to the nature of enjoying music. He does not listen; he analyses sound.
And yet, despite his pedantry, he desperately seeks affirmation from those around him. Like a child, he needs to be constantly praised just as he needs to be constantly acquiring new toys, arguments and ideology in order to sustain his addiction. His sickness, as are all addictions, is soul destroying, and his increasing soulnessness drives him ever onward with his glib assertion that only through his overarching control of the components of his system will he be able to attain whatever it is he so persistently craves.
His fatal mistake, of course, is to exclude himself from the equation. He denies that his own perceptions influence the results he achieves by insisting that only the equipment, its arrangements and settings are responsible, and his management of these variables are sacrosanct.
We have all had the experience “Yesterday my system sounded great; today it sounds mediocre”. In response, most of us will reason that this phenomena is an artefact of our own selves, but the audiocrat will prefer the conclusion “Therefore I must change my amplifier (or whatever)”.
The system has not changed, the listener has, but, so blinded by his own control-freakery, the audiocrat denies his own perceptive variance and so blames the inanimate silicon for his own lacklustre mood. We’ve all done it, but only a fully fledged audiocrat will keep on doing the same thing (blaming the equipment) whilst each time expecting a different result (the great sound he heard yesterday). This is a good example of Einstein’s definition of insanity.
One can only get back what one puts in (there is no free lunch) and denying the role of one’s own perceptions in the subjective matter of listening to music is frankly absurd. Only when one abandons one’s ‘self’ to the music – allows it to wash all over and through one’s every fibre – can one receive of its love.
To constantly intervene is to never permit a result. In so doing, the audiocrat condemns himself to forever live in a land of limbo, mumbo jumbo and ennui, surrounded always by the inanimate products which have come to disappoint and dominate him, though he continues to foolishly assert that he dominates them.
The audiocrat will never be satisfied because he does not want to be satisfied. He wants ongoing processes that absorb his time and energy, and he wants always to be in control. If he was finally satisfied, what the hell would he do with the rest of his life? Listen to music?"
"Meet the audiocrat (and take pity).
First, there were a few boffins who wanted to improve their music reproduction equipment, as the vast majority of this equipment was mostly designed to suit the production system, not the music lover.
Then, came the corporate takeover – the injection of big money and big marketing in order to dominate the sphere – with their diktat “spend more to get more” and the added insistence that modern technology will always improve upon everything that preceded it. Both are very dubious claims.
Now, a backlash has inevitably arisen with the maxim: “everything new is inferior to everything old, and the amateur is more enlightened than the professional”. This is a form of cargo cult, a voodoo club of contrarian faith every bit as dishonest and disappointing as its corporate predecessor.
Adherence to ideology and dogmatism is the province of religious zealots and political zombies, not of the rational or inquisitive man in search of explanations for his dissatisfactions. The corporate lobby (as a broad church, and whose primary motives are profit, market domination and ego) plies the untruth that there is a linear correlation between price paid and pleasure received, brushing under the carpet the exponential law of diminishing returns we have all come to observe – if we are honest with ourselves – as we go about the task of building an audio system.
The cost of corporate propaganda is high and must be recouped via high prices. These often-extravagant prices have set in motion this counter-insurgency of the impecunious, confused audiophile whose reaction is to turn his back and create his own reality. Sadly, he currently appears to be being led by charlatans of every possible persuasion peddling piffle, pseudoscience and outright bollocks. He is coerced into believing that the laws of physics are now either super-relevant-corporate-edicts or quite-irrelevant-banished-gods. Either way, conceding to fundamental belief – unquestioning faith in doctrine – will be his only route to audio heaven.
Engineers are primarily interested in results, with the processes involved being of lesser importance. Bureaucrats, on the other hand, are mostly concerned with the process itself, the results being less important. In turn, the traditional audiophile (an engineer) is interested in learning how audio equipment can best help him with the nature of enjoying listening to music. The audiocrat (a bureaucrat), on the other hand, is primarily concerned with the equipment (the process) itself, with music being of secondary concern, though he will loudly insist to the contrary.
The audiocrat is convinced that just one more tweak of his system or one final purchase of a latest gadget will bring him to audio nirvana, and will never admit that his doctrine has ever failed him. He will keep dreaming, spending, tinkering and cajoling forever, if he can. It is possible he now rents a warehouse in which to store all the equipment his addiction has burdened him with. He will cry “Listen to this!” as he leaps about, exchanging components ad infinitum for the elucidation of anyone foolish enough to ask his advice.
But no sooner has the music started, he will be adjusting something, changing a cable or a setting, talking feverishly about something he read in a magazine once, but of whose relevance he understands little. He will repeat ‘truths’ told to him in audio forums, unquestioningly and with relentless vigour. He will cock his head, straining for that elusive detail his latest purchase guaranteed would be revealed to him – but never questions if this particular detail has any relevance whatsoever to the nature of enjoying music. He does not listen; he analyses sound.
And yet, despite his pedantry, he desperately seeks affirmation from those around him. Like a child, he needs to be constantly praised just as he needs to be constantly acquiring new toys, arguments and ideology in order to sustain his addiction. His sickness, as are all addictions, is soul destroying, and his increasing soulnessness drives him ever onward with his glib assertion that only through his overarching control of the components of his system will he be able to attain whatever it is he so persistently craves.
His fatal mistake, of course, is to exclude himself from the equation. He denies that his own perceptions influence the results he achieves by insisting that only the equipment, its arrangements and settings are responsible, and his management of these variables are sacrosanct.
We have all had the experience “Yesterday my system sounded great; today it sounds mediocre”. In response, most of us will reason that this phenomena is an artefact of our own selves, but the audiocrat will prefer the conclusion “Therefore I must change my amplifier (or whatever)”.
The system has not changed, the listener has, but, so blinded by his own control-freakery, the audiocrat denies his own perceptive variance and so blames the inanimate silicon for his own lacklustre mood. We’ve all done it, but only a fully fledged audiocrat will keep on doing the same thing (blaming the equipment) whilst each time expecting a different result (the great sound he heard yesterday). This is a good example of Einstein’s definition of insanity.
One can only get back what one puts in (there is no free lunch) and denying the role of one’s own perceptions in the subjective matter of listening to music is frankly absurd. Only when one abandons one’s ‘self’ to the music – allows it to wash all over and through one’s every fibre – can one receive of its love.
To constantly intervene is to never permit a result. In so doing, the audiocrat condemns himself to forever live in a land of limbo, mumbo jumbo and ennui, surrounded always by the inanimate products which have come to disappoint and dominate him, though he continues to foolishly assert that he dominates them.
The audiocrat will never be satisfied because he does not want to be satisfied. He wants ongoing processes that absorb his time and energy, and he wants always to be in control. If he was finally satisfied, what the hell would he do with the rest of his life? Listen to music?"
Myles B. Astor
Active member
- Joined
- Apr 5, 2013
- Messages
- 2,884
A good example of fallacious and flawed reasoning. Not that all different from the beer commercial where they argue over less filling vs. tastes great or even scientific meetings where for example researchers argue over say whether say a drug works to kill cancer cells by DNA intercalation or production of free radicals. The bottom line is stop being so dogmatic and that all these phenomena are traceable to multiple reasons. The reason our systems change from day-to-day is both our mood/physiology as well as other electrical phenomena. It's more than a coincidence that the sound of our systems often suffers when everyone is home say on a Sunday morning. At least here in NYC.
