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<!-- #thumb --> <p>Audio Jewelry costs. To merely spin a black plastic LP round and round, today’s Rube Goldberg-like turntables, polished like a mirror, raised on architectural limbs, can cost tens of thousands of dollars; tonearms built like fine Swiss wristwatches will reach above ten thousand dollars just for a trip down the Light Fantastic! They are drop dead gorgeous, aren’t they? Remnants of the Industrial Revolution with the aid of modernity spinning an expensive tale: Cad-Cam design, computerized CNC machining, and 3D printers. They do belong in a museum.</p>
<p>These technologies are extended to audio sculptures of the electronic kind too, and speakers, to dress up the Emperor to appear as something he is not; as in actuality what’s under the finery is nothing more than a naked black box. Black boxes were typified by the NAD 3020 of the seventies and its latter offerings. The NAD cost $150 then and did what it had no right to do: equaling or bettering the bejeweled competition of its time that were priced tenfold the NAD’s ticket.</p>
<p>Two fellows Paul and Stan, who were into the NAD-kind of thinking to compete and provide good sound for the money and to prevail in the market, decided to sell a primitive-by-today’s-standards $60 phono preamplifier that had a unique feature of import to the audiophile community: good sound.</p>
<p>The PS’ only possible shortcoming was a lack of audio sculpture surrounding its circuits. PS Audio started its mission providing honest goods without pretense. For PS to bother looking into the mirror was unimportant. It aimed not at vanity, but performance.</p>
<p>I’ve built a number of circuits myself. Some of them worked. I married a number of women. One of them worked out too. My early cars were duds. Dressed up in nice gloss, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was what was under the hood… We know some apples rot from the inside. I didn’t marry my cars. Or my apples. By the way, how’s your $50,000 amplifier dressed? Better than your wife? I understand.</p>
<p>The best products may or may not wear the best finery, and for the smarter set a black box will do. The great secret: a black box can sound just as good – possibly better – than a bejeweled box. Moreover, a black box can be silver colored too, or sporting wood panels. Or plastic ones. A black box can come in seven hundred shades of gray or four of color.</p>
<p>It can even come in black. Imagine.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.pstracks.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/NAD.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-12437" alt="NAD That AWESOME black box" src="http://www.pstracks.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/NAD.gif" width="400" height="220" title="That AWESOME black box" /></a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.pstracks.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Inside-1.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-12438" alt="Inside 1 That AWESOME black box" src="http://www.pstracks.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Inside-1.jpg" width="400" height="267" title="That AWESOME black box" /></a></p>
<p>I always liked the black box full of meaning, having built a few using the best parts. But I still marveled at the jeweled audio sculptures that cost as much as a fine automobile and couldn’t convey any meaning because they were filled with substandard parts combined with poor engineering.</p>
<p>I can understand the awe children get entering a candy store. Look, I was a child once too. Maybe. So I can understand the attraction for shiny things.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.pstracks.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/PS.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-12439" alt="PS That AWESOME black box" src="http://www.pstracks.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/PS.jpg" width="400" height="165" title="That AWESOME black box" /></a></p>
<p>Having built a number of black boxes the mysteries remaining are few, the experts are many who will rationalize anything and everything about why the black box is too little for too few or why it must take a genius to put parts into it. Alike the space in our figurative audiophile’s head searching for space in the soundfield, the black box often had lots of space inside. What goes with all that wasted space anyway?</p>
<p>I say this: If you like your black box, you can keep your black box! And the space.</p>
<p>But, if you’re pining for the bejeweled box in the candy store window, you can keep that too! As long as you don’t make me pay for it.</p>
<p>The big secret is that you will find that rare black box if you looked for it, and it might just unfurl long nights of magic for you. For in the darkened rooms, behind the pleasure sensors of our minds and fantasies, the box that produces the magic wins. That the black box can look like anything we imagine it to look like shouldn’t be a problem. After all: What difference does it make?</p>
<p>Our pleasure sensors could care less about the color, shape, reputation or of what material that box was made of once we had locked onto the magic.* What mattered back in the seventies, as well as what matters now, is the magic the black box will unfurl.</p>
<p>Look at the reviews: These black boxes were magic! Since those heady days the black boxes had advanced sonically in every way imaginable. So how satisfying are today’s black boxes? After all, all the bejeweled boxes started out as black boxes. The adornments came later . They were add-ons from the marketing department. If the black boxes were not good enough to begin with, why would they then be better covered up in regalia?</p>
<p>This only proves that the jeweled audio sculpture you have fallen in love with started out as a Plain Jane. Just a black box!</p>
<p>Which may be just as satisfying as that jeweled box that cost onehundred-fold the black box’s cost….just because of its sculpted chassis.</p>
<p>And thus a huge problem will arise if you buy the black box. What to do with all that green not deployed for audio sculpture that is now ready to be deployed for audiophile level music?</p>
<p><i>- Andrew G. Benjamin</i></p>
<p>© All Rights Reserved</p>
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[Source: http://www.pstracks.com/opinions/12436/12436/]
<p>These technologies are extended to audio sculptures of the electronic kind too, and speakers, to dress up the Emperor to appear as something he is not; as in actuality what’s under the finery is nothing more than a naked black box. Black boxes were typified by the NAD 3020 of the seventies and its latter offerings. The NAD cost $150 then and did what it had no right to do: equaling or bettering the bejeweled competition of its time that were priced tenfold the NAD’s ticket.</p>
<p>Two fellows Paul and Stan, who were into the NAD-kind of thinking to compete and provide good sound for the money and to prevail in the market, decided to sell a primitive-by-today’s-standards $60 phono preamplifier that had a unique feature of import to the audiophile community: good sound.</p>
<p>The PS’ only possible shortcoming was a lack of audio sculpture surrounding its circuits. PS Audio started its mission providing honest goods without pretense. For PS to bother looking into the mirror was unimportant. It aimed not at vanity, but performance.</p>
<p>I’ve built a number of circuits myself. Some of them worked. I married a number of women. One of them worked out too. My early cars were duds. Dressed up in nice gloss, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was what was under the hood… We know some apples rot from the inside. I didn’t marry my cars. Or my apples. By the way, how’s your $50,000 amplifier dressed? Better than your wife? I understand.</p>
<p>The best products may or may not wear the best finery, and for the smarter set a black box will do. The great secret: a black box can sound just as good – possibly better – than a bejeweled box. Moreover, a black box can be silver colored too, or sporting wood panels. Or plastic ones. A black box can come in seven hundred shades of gray or four of color.</p>
<p>It can even come in black. Imagine.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.pstracks.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/NAD.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-12437" alt="NAD That AWESOME black box" src="http://www.pstracks.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/NAD.gif" width="400" height="220" title="That AWESOME black box" /></a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.pstracks.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Inside-1.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-12438" alt="Inside 1 That AWESOME black box" src="http://www.pstracks.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Inside-1.jpg" width="400" height="267" title="That AWESOME black box" /></a></p>
<p>I always liked the black box full of meaning, having built a few using the best parts. But I still marveled at the jeweled audio sculptures that cost as much as a fine automobile and couldn’t convey any meaning because they were filled with substandard parts combined with poor engineering.</p>
<p>I can understand the awe children get entering a candy store. Look, I was a child once too. Maybe. So I can understand the attraction for shiny things.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.pstracks.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/PS.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-12439" alt="PS That AWESOME black box" src="http://www.pstracks.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/PS.jpg" width="400" height="165" title="That AWESOME black box" /></a></p>
<p>Having built a number of black boxes the mysteries remaining are few, the experts are many who will rationalize anything and everything about why the black box is too little for too few or why it must take a genius to put parts into it. Alike the space in our figurative audiophile’s head searching for space in the soundfield, the black box often had lots of space inside. What goes with all that wasted space anyway?</p>
<p>I say this: If you like your black box, you can keep your black box! And the space.</p>
<p>But, if you’re pining for the bejeweled box in the candy store window, you can keep that too! As long as you don’t make me pay for it.</p>
<p>The big secret is that you will find that rare black box if you looked for it, and it might just unfurl long nights of magic for you. For in the darkened rooms, behind the pleasure sensors of our minds and fantasies, the box that produces the magic wins. That the black box can look like anything we imagine it to look like shouldn’t be a problem. After all: What difference does it make?</p>
<p>Our pleasure sensors could care less about the color, shape, reputation or of what material that box was made of once we had locked onto the magic.* What mattered back in the seventies, as well as what matters now, is the magic the black box will unfurl.</p>
<p>Look at the reviews: These black boxes were magic! Since those heady days the black boxes had advanced sonically in every way imaginable. So how satisfying are today’s black boxes? After all, all the bejeweled boxes started out as black boxes. The adornments came later . They were add-ons from the marketing department. If the black boxes were not good enough to begin with, why would they then be better covered up in regalia?</p>
<p>This only proves that the jeweled audio sculpture you have fallen in love with started out as a Plain Jane. Just a black box!</p>
<p>Which may be just as satisfying as that jeweled box that cost onehundred-fold the black box’s cost….just because of its sculpted chassis.</p>
<p>And thus a huge problem will arise if you buy the black box. What to do with all that green not deployed for audio sculpture that is now ready to be deployed for audiophile level music?</p>
<p><i>- Andrew G. Benjamin</i></p>
<p>© All Rights Reserved</p>
<center><a href="http://www.pstracks.com/opinions/12436/12436/emailpopup/" onclick="email_popup(this.href); return false;" title="Forward to a friend and help us engage more readers" rel="nofollow"><img class="WP-EmailIcon" src="http://www.pstracks.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-email/images/email.gif" alt="email That AWESOME black box" title="That AWESOME black box" /></a>*<a href="http://www.pstracks.com/opinions/12436/12436/emailpopup/" onclick="email_popup(this.href); return false;" title="Forward to a friend and help us engage more readers" rel="nofollow">Forward to a friend and help us engage more readers</a></center><br /><!-- // MAILCHIMP SUBSCRIBE CODE --><center><a href="http://eepurl.com/eSzBY">Get new and fresh stories like this each morning by joining the folks reading Paul's Posts. Click here </a></center>
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[Source: http://www.pstracks.com/opinions/12436/12436/]