Why We're So Mean, Vindictive, Arrogant, Negative--and Truthful (Vol.1, No.6: Spring-Fall 1978)

For the orientation of our new subscribers, and as a quick refresher for our regulars, we sum up our observations, insights and reactions to date regarding the extraordinary polarization of knowledge and ignorance in the mad world of audio.

Our established format of sequentially numbered topics is continued here for indexing purposes only; there's no need to refer back to earlier editorials.

24.

In the mind of the average music-loving lawyer, accountant or dry cleaner, high fidelity sound reproduction is lumped together with other achievements of the electronic age into a single image of splendid technological sophistication. The moon landings, digital watches, satellite TV transmissions, pocket calculators, Bell Laboratories, laser micro surgery and stereophonic hi-fi are thought of as different manifestations of the same scientific glory. This misperception is probably the main cause of the occasional bewilderment of new subscribers upon initial exposure to The Audio Critic.

To understand our somewhat jaundiced view of the hi-fi industry (not to mention its press), you need to appreciate certain historical facts and unmentionable present-day truths. To begin with, audio was until very recently regarded by the rank and file of scientists and engineers as the shabbiest, least prestigious branch of electronics, the one to stay out of.

Today's 45-year-old engineer, for example, if he graduated with honors from MIT in the mid 1950s, would have laughed in your face if you had suggested that he go to work for Fisher or McIntosh instead of taking a job in aerospace.

Audio? That was for the poor slob who didn't know a Bessel function from his rear end.

Especially consumer audio, i.e. hi-fi. There were, of course, a few notable exceptions; here and there a really bright and possibly even superbly trained young technologist would decide that music was important enough in his life to justify an all-out involvement in audio de sign; but by and large the audio companies of the fifties and sixties were under the technical leadership of engineering-school dropouts, self taught hobbyists and other semi-educated types.

(One of those notable exceptions, a man who revolutionized the loudspeaker business and then sold his company for millions, recently re marked to us: "If you want to make a lot of money, you don't go into a field that's full of brilliant people. You go into a field where there's a bunch of dummies."") Needless to say, some of these marginal practitioners who dominated the formative years of the audio industry managed to come up with quite decent equipment, aided by good luck, good ears and completely virgin territory where anything that wasn't totally wrong was ipso facto right. Furthermore, just as the Dark Ages produced Charlemagne and his brilliant court, this not quite enlightened era in audio produced designers like Lincoln Walsh, Julius Futterman, Stew Hegeman, Peter Walker, Mitch Cotter, Sid Smith and other heroes in our pantheon. Even so, the prevailing engineering climate in the industry remained strictly bush-league until just a few years ago.

25.

Today the situation is somewhat different. The music explosion of the latter sixties and early seventies turned the attention of many outstanding engineering students to audio, and a certain amount of synergism seems to have taken place between the best of the old-timers and the sharp new talent. The general tone has improved tremendously. At the same time, as is often the case when new knowledge and en trenched ignorance exist side by side, there's confrontation, conflict and confusion, often to the point of chaos. These are precisely the conditions that bring the muddleheaded mystics and opportunistic quacks out of the woodwork.

The resulting "dynamic range" from pure bull to sheer brilliance that characterizes today's audio scene is by far the widest in history and requires special reflexes on the part of the equipment reviewer. We consider it one of the obligations of responsible audio journalism to weed out the parasites, crazies and know-nothings of the business from among the genuine contributors, otherwise the present chaos is bound to become the accepted norm and progress will be very chancy at best.

One designer of expensive audio equipment whom we respect and with whom we agree more often than not expressed to us some misgivings about the way we had punctured the hot-air balloon of one of his competitors in our pages. He felt that one high-end brand's loss of credibility, even if richly de served, is bad for the credibility of the entire high-end business. Our reply to him was that, first of all, our job is to tell the consumer the truth whether or not it's good for business and, secondly, a man who designs $2500 speakers that sound terrible would be socially more useful if he took a job as a men's room attendant in a hotel and should therefore not be encouraged to remain a speaker designer. That just about sums up our feelings about the negative aspects of reviewing; on the positive side we feel that small but knowledgeable and conscientious makers of audio equipment need all the publicity we can give them so that they can survive in the commercial jungle. If our voice occasionally becomes a little strident or hoarse in the pursuit of these journalistic goals, at least you'll understand the intensity of the underlying convictions.

26. What are the most polarized issues in audio today? Reference criteria in listening evaluations must certainly be placed at the head of the list. Most manufacturers and most equipment reviewers form their conclusions about the sound of a component by inserting it into a third-rate system, poorly set up at that. (Example: The widely publicized ''scientific" finding that all preamps that satisfy certain elementary requirements sound alike was based on listening to a cheap moving-magnet cartridge, unaligned, and AR box speakers.) Furthermore, most manufacturers and most re viewers are quite insecure in their recollection of live music. Their values derive from hi-fi, not from the concert hall. If an eight-year-old violin student who has somehow been miraculously kept away from hi-fi walked in on their listening sessions, he could instantly tell them that they're nowhere near duplicating the sound of live musicians. To our mind, an ideally authoritative statement about a listening test would go something like this: "I'm the cellist of our local amateur string quartet. I go to a concert or an opera at least once a week. I aligned this new cartridge for optimum lateral and vertical tracking geometry, and I tested it on my favorite records, first through a Beveridge sys tem and then a Mark Levinson HQD system.

Here's what I heard." As for A-B comparisons, the obvious but apparently unspeakable question, even before preference for A or B is established, is whether either A or B sounds remotely like music. What does it prove if garbage A sounds better than, or indistinguishable from, garbage B? The other main cause of polarization and confrontation is our old demon, simplistic science. The mathematical models representing the hearing process and the various components of a chain of reproduction are exceedingly complex and in some cases still incomplete. Any one, therefore, who claims that flat frequency response or vanishingly small harmonic distortion or any other one-dimensional specification is a proof of quality in audio design automatically becomes one of the bad guys in black hats in our script. On the other hand, the complexity of scientific analysis doesn't signify its futility. Since the ear itself is a measuring instrument, anything that can be heard can also be measured; the question is merely how. Just because we don't have all the answers yet, it shouldn't be concluded that totally objective equipment evaluation will forever remain an impossibility. (The golden-eared techno-illiterates sure hope so, though.) The only defensible approach is to measure everything you possibly can and then listen. Listening without the backup of laboratory data won't reveal the truth, either; not even in a purely pragmatic sense. When the typical underground reviewer tells you that the midrange is hooded and the highs are whitish, it could mean a poorly de signed circuit or a defective capacitor or a low line voltage in his house or just wax in his ear. His readers will never know.

27. Speaking of polarization, confrontation and underground journals, it seems that the oldest of the latter ("Since 1962") really has it in for us. They've been irritable about our mere existence for some time now, but in their latest issue they really blow their cool and make a snarling attempt to hurt our name. Even though we never considered this haphazard little periodical to be an authority on the subject of audio (nor do any of the genuine authorities of our acquaintance), we had always considered its editor to be basically a gentleman, so we were a bit shocked as well as saddened by this incontinent baring of teeth. He must be very frustrated. (To tell the truth, we'd be frustrated, too, if we ended up where he is now after 16 years in the business, 11 of them without com petition.) In any event, we've decided to put an end to the whole unpleasant affair by never again referring to him or his publication, no matter what he writes about us in the future.

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And now let's turn our attention to the nuts and bolts of audio, not just the nuts.

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To All Subscribers: Consultation by telephone on individual purchasing decisions or installation problems emphatically isn't part of the services offered by The Audio Critic for the price of a subscription, even if you're resourceful enough to track down the Editor's home phone number.

By Peter Acze,l Editor and Publisher, 1978

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[adapted from TAC]

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Also see:

Two More Headphones: Infinity ES-1; Signet TK33; Headphone Summaries and Updates

Various audio and high-fidelity magazines