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In the Forum: Audio Discussions
In the Thread: RMAF06 Show Report
Post Subject: Let look at audio shows slightly more serious.Posted by Romy the Cat on: 10/30/2006

 Gregm wrote:
I used an inexpensive dsp ....I had excellent response from the auditorium.

Yes, I hear what you say but still - “the excellent response from the auditorium” is quite meaningless judgment. Well, it is all depends what the objectives are.

For vendors, and presumably you were the one the only meaningful definition of “show’s success” is the amount of the revenue that the show created. The shows are costly, require a lot of work and if a person/company had no business compensation form the show then the show’s affords were wasted. A vendors could pick at show some dealers or distributors, could create opportunities for the idiots-reviewers ™ to mention the rooms/company, could use the show’s publicity to introduce new products, but mostly vendors, show after show, reassure their customer in their existence. Most of the high-end manufactures work for a small hitch of own customers and the trade shows are a good tool for manufactures to cheer up their customers: “Hew, look, I still can afford to rent a room and pay those stupid exuberant fees, therefore my company presumably is not dead yet”. So, this way manufactures do the shows mostly in order do not be mentioned as “somebody who did not show up”.

However, the import thing in here is that the actual quality of sound is very much irrelevant entity. Any person who know how “real sound” might be accomplished understand that the framework under which the show get formed is not the peace where the “real sound” might be born. A single element of playback that a vendor doe - would it be a speaker, an amplifier or a cable elevator - do not responsible for Sound. The “real sound” is the results of much more evolved efforts then juts dumping a bunch of the audio elements in a one pile. Yesterday I spoke with one manufacturer from the last show, the one that was the most warmly acclaimed by cretins who went to RMAF06, and he said that despite everyone were completely thrilled with the result in his room but he feel it was not really interesting. Knowing the vendor product (and his it being used - that is more important) and knowing those people who “loved the sound” I am very confident that if I were in that room I would find the sound very-very medical, closed for being “poor”. It is not necessary because the product of the vendor is faulty but because the vendor itself perhaps havs no knowledge if his product is good or bad. In order to facilitate a framework within witch the given product would act at it’s “best operation level” it require a LOT of other affords in the very different regions – the areas where the vendor never unfortunately went. Ironically, if this vendor operate at the level where it’s product were “nakedly exposed” then he might to learn a LOT about own products, including making own product MUCH better. This pattern is very typical for most of the manufactures that do the shows; however what would happen if a manufacture did hit a G-spot and get some flash?

First of all nothing happens explicitly. A few years ago a dealer spent zillion dollars showing in the biggest room in the Vegas show the largest vintage loudspeakers. Sonically, I feel, the result was very unfortunate but the Morons out there were drooling and publicity for the room was wonderful. Still, the vendor generated zero revenue from that splash – who the hell need such a business?

So, what we have? We have vendors who are not being reimbursed to spend more efforts for “better” sound. We have generally idiotic public who runs like a wounded in ass animals from room to room in order to “discover” something for themselves. We have the idiots-reviewer ™ who understand that the audio shows are made for them and that they own the game. What we do not have is a situation on the shows where the most demanding “sound hunters”, the ultimate arrogant snobs of Audio, like me for instance, might go and to learn. This is absolutely ridicules. In any field of human activities,  for any high-end manufacture  to please the “ultimate snobs” is the very noble task for any vendor. If you make high-end cars, cook high-end food or if you “high-enddly” conduct music then for you, to get a satisfaction of a cold-shoulder aficionado-connoisseur is the very ultimate goal - any high-end makers live and die for this task. In so called “inverted” high-end audio everything in different. Instead of breeding highest demands and evolutioning listening requirements the stupid audio industry dumbs down the consumers until it brings them to the level of the primitivism that manufactures are capable to address. The audio show are the ultimate culmination of that dumbinization were the visitors and the vendors are juts the hostages of the very same unfortunate process.

Yes, there are exceptions and from time to time some interesting things do happen at the shows, mostly accidentally. What the worth of those accidents? It is hard to say but I do not value accidents very high.

Anyhow, within an absents of any more or less civilized framework for the audio shows I do not see why a simple DSP EQ-ing of use of any other barbarian methods would not be suitable for the shows. In Vegas I have seen 25% of the systems run with inverted channels and the vendors “see no differents”. In Vegas I have seen a TT manufacture who sell his TT for $80K and he can not hear that his TT runs at wrong speed. If I were a vendor at the audio show I would run some TBM jazz 33rpm records at 45 rpm and I am sure that some kind of idiot like Michelle Framer or Jonathan Valin would drool then that “they were the best high frequencies I ever heard”…

Pathetic? Nope. Unfortunately too realistic…

Rgs,
Romy the Cat

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