A woman I met last weekend asked me a question: “What you do for own pleasure, Romy?” In response I ran with her my standard “talk to women” Feline Psychiatrist scenario but with all seriousness - the question how to name what I do is not so simple.

I kind of do audio but “doing audio”, despite that it takes considerable amount of my time and efforts, is NOT true the subject of my pleasure. I stated many times that if I had an opportunity to outsource all my audio needs to professionals, who were able to facilitate their services at the demanded level and to whom I might pay off their contribution into my objectives,  then I would gladly did it and never practice the Applied Audio in the format I do.  So, to me my entire journey into the word of those plate voltages, horns profiles, phase alignments, VTA adjustments, quality of detector diodes, bypass capacitors and sampling rater conversions is no more than building a cable car facility for a person who is willing to ski. So, what is my pleasure, and how to name what I do?

Shall the be answers be: I do music listening? Well, not really.

I always mentally differentiate my audio interests and my musical interests. I know many people would find it stupid and incorrect but they just sell to themselves the BS that they are willing to subscribe in order to feel themselves better, or in most cases: in order to keep the crap that they sale movable. In reality I feel that my musical interests, even though they have a lot of intersection with my audio interests, are truly separate domain of my awareness. I always use a visualization of me returning home and discovering that my home is burned to ground and only The Cat is wondering atop the of smoldering charcoals. Obviously my audio practice and audio interests would cease to exist then but would it have an impact to my musical interests? It would certainly not going to be an event for my musical interests with the exception of me develop even more interest in the ironic part of our lives. So, with all my fictional desire to present myself as some kind of “music devotee” , or as music servant who use the means of audio and  whose specialty and pleasures are just music listening, I clearly recognize that it would not be correct in my case.

What I answered to that woman was that I am a Collector. She asked a following question: what do I collect and I replied that she would not understand it.  She became bitchy and intrigued but I left “as is” as I did not feel that she was attractive enough to explain to her anything further.

If to insist in further explanations then it might become a bit intricate as the identification of the subjects/objects of my Collection is something that very much describes my interests. I am a Collector and I collect my perceptions of musical events. Musical events, as I recognize them, are not just musical performances, it is more. Musical events are in intricate melt of musical performances, historical circumstances, cultural references and zillion of other little things. However, there is more to it. The fact that a musical event worthy attention took place is not necessary is a sufficient condition to become an item of my Collection. I do not collect musical events but rather I collect my perception of those musical events. Here is where audio, as an expressive tool of my Collecting practice, comes to existence.

I have to admit that I am a selfish man and for me value of my perception is more vital than the value of the event itself. I am very much fascinated with my own mind’s ability to be genius or idiotic and the interpretive refractive divergences of my perception are very much valuable and in a way is entertaining to me. Here is where Audio becomes an instrument – audio is in a way a prism that accepts a raw musical event and path it through interpretively with a respect to how I would like to perceive this event.

I have to admit also that in many ways my demands for audio expressivity have a lot of to do with my creative egocentrism and my personalized collecting of musical events is my way to project my own artistic capacity to the magnitude of collective creativity of the people who came before me. In a way I vampirerize expressed musicality of others but at the same time I with my “audio-interpretive views” am engaged in a process of collaboration with composers and musicians. They have own tools of expressivity, I have mine. The collecting of recognitions of audio interpretation is what I do and how I define high-end audio. I do recognize the introvertual nature of my audio interests and have no problems with it. I do also recognize that I have very little interest in what other audio people do. It looks like they use amplifiers, speakers, cables, turntables, and other tools that I use but I do not feel any demanding discrimination or any higher sense of actions in the activities of most of audio people I know. So, “others” and me are basically practice very different “hobbies” and frankly I am very much annoyed by existence most of the “others”.

What is very interesting is that the actual practicing of my audio interests is not about soldering amps and crossovers, listening live or recorded music or learning about musical events. The true audio practicing of mine is about discovery and recognition within myself some enigmatic paradigms that have well-defined harmonic presentations and the facilitating my practical ability to manage those discoveries and recognitions…

Sure, it would be too complicated to explain all of it to a woman I met last weekend but it also too complicated to explain it to many audio Morons who practice audio for 35 years and do it for purely zombianic, semi-psychotic and unconsciousness reasons. I am sure that most of those who even read this post, since I did not make them to buy a new speaker, did not convince them to lower pate voltage and to did not insist to run a cartridge with sharper VTA, would not even consider my post as something that is audio-related. Well, did you see me to care?

? - purely zombianic, semi-psychotic and unconsciousness reasons, for the "Moron TM" ----a bit heavy all in all, hm.

? - expressivity having a lot of to do with creative egocentrism and personalized "collecting of musical events"
=> OK, here speaks a self-confessed collector, I guess.

! Now, how about just for the 'kick' of the sensuous experience, plain and simple?

Can I enjoy sex, with out 'collecting' experiences, just simply be in the moment?

Not easy I guess, since it is ‘insufficiently’ introverted (normally). But listening to music will allow just for that. Close your eyes and go with the flow.

B U T, if your system sounds ‘wrong’ it becomes just as ‘unfulfilling’ like bad sex, which is best avoided.

So, the main explanation for me is, that all this equipment ‘fiddling’ aught to lead to this MORE ‘transcending’ experience, to take you more completely out of your self, just like good sex would.

That is also an explanation why, when all comes together it is VERY hard to rationalize about the sound, resolution, detail, depth of stage, etc. etc. If all is well, MUSIC simply IS! No more no less.

If the experience of listening is right, it will suspend all rational reasoning for a least a short while, like good sex does also J . Just have to watch out it does not supplant it all together, I very real possibility with that ‘hobby’

Replying I have to say that I am a very intelligent person. No matter how much I am able to be flown with 'kick' during my sensuous experience and how far I might be drifted with flows I always try to rationalize and to learn the nature about my sensations. I do not know it care if it good or bad but I know that I do like it. Learning and discovering about myself it very fascinating and offers a lot. So, I have very little semi-psychotic and unconsciousness reasons. I have sub-consciously idiotic and deliberately foolish but they are hardly ever unconscious

Motivations to listening music? Wary, but I’m not one of those who claim that music is a some kind of summit of human experiences and quote those overly glorified comments about music. Music is one of the forms of humans’ expressivity. There are many form of humans’ expressivity, some of them more or less allegorical, symbolic or figurative and some of them more or less shaped in formal artistic form. I do no build a hierarchy over the humans’ expressivity and I like all of them that I am able to consume.  The humans’ expressivity and at very high level might be found very far from artistic environment as well.  Many years ago I was playing card with a “partner” against quite serious people and in a culmination of a very expensive game I was able to read a change of harmonics of my partner’s breathing, which allowed me to win. There was no cognitive messaged passed but the information was exchanged at the level of interpretive humans’ expressivity. A woman moving her hand across your body, can stop her hand and press it against you, passing enormous amount of expressivity. Do those experiences compete with structured artistic subliminal messages? I do not think so, thy rather all enrich each other…

Music as any other form of structured artistictism cares a promise of expressivity witnessing. Going to  a symphony hall, opening a book, going to a gallery or doing whatever else we do in a structured art are we are in away an enter an agreement: we promise to contribute our interpretive witnessing awareness and in exchange we are promised to experience humans’ expressivity. With music is it very interesting as music is easy to arrange collectively and interaction in real time with collective consciousness is possible.

Ok, where is audio sits in the view of it? Very much above of it.

I do not like dogs. They are domesticated; know the protocol of inner-human interaction and they use human awareness to live with humans. Cat on another hand do not give shit about human and they are absolutely not engaged in human “language” (I use word language wider then just speaking language), If you point somewhere to your dog then it will be looking at what you point. A Cat will look at your finger and she will not understand your intention.  From this perspective a Cat acts as an alien force that is not exposed to human “resonances”. Pretend that you have a horse and you drive it from you work to you home a half of your live. Eventually sit on your horse, say “home” and the horse would know where to go. Call it Pavlovian reflexes or whatever but it is a domestication  - a situation where an animal, or your friends, or your wife(s), or kid(s) read your intentions and accommodate the behavior accordingly. Cats do not do it. Now pretend that you ride from work not a horse but an automobile.  An automobile will certainly not read your nether expressed nor implied intention. Audio is very same…

Audio is stupid machinery that has no reference of feedback from to the humans’ expressivity. It will have as much awareness about humans’ expressivity as much you will make it to have. So, audio is a way a superstructure within which you might reflect you own expressivity, implement your own interpolation and your own understanding of the “load” of the musical even you try to reinstate by the means of your audio.

I know it might be difficult to a typical audio person to understand it - audio people mostly do not use audio as an expressive language but rather as a sonic dildo.  However, I found audio is very interesting expressive instrument as it, like Cats, free of any ego. Any exchange where human protocol involved inevitably gets converted into trading of zones of egotism (or altruism, which is the same). However, in audio, as in any other fields of human-machine interaction, Audio as a machine deals only with intentions, objectives and means. It is pretty much garbage in – garbage out… This is one of the reasons why we have so many horribly sounding playbacks in audio…..

This modulation of unconscious machines, enabling them to resonate in affinity with intentions of human expressiveness is my very favorite topic. It opens so much opportunities, raises so much predicament and mysteries! Do not be under impression that only audio people do it. Now I am reading a Katie Hafner’s book “A Romance on Three Legs”. It is a story about the “Glenn Gould's Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Piano”. Glenn did the same, he was looking for the best machine that would be able to render his intention, or in context of this thread it would be the best machine that would be able to best reflect the Gould's perception of those events.

In the signature of my posts I used the Friedrich Nietzsche’s comments that "Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts." In the 1883s Nietzsche switched from wring to typing and as a result his prose style changed. One of his critics told him that “thoughts in music and language often depend on the quality of pen and paper” and I think it is very the same in audio ….

First, you miss a reference to the phase “I am a very intelligent person”. It was the Melvin Udall’s quote from “As good as it gets”, not that I do not have meaning behind it but the meaning is bit more elusive then it is on surface.

However, the main point in following: if you pay attention I hardly ever use the phrase “soul” in reference to playback. In fact I do not like when others do it as to use soul allegories in reference to machinery is a white flag of intelligence in my view. It reminds me the audio people use word “synergy”

http://www.goodsoundclub.com/Forums/ShowPost.aspx?postID=6464#6464

– when  people have no idea what they are taking about then they begin to grand to machine human qualities, label them soul and dive into semi-religions awareness of reality. There is nothing wrong with a semi-religions awareness of reality… until you need to build bridges, hit the right piano key at the right time, wind the cartridge coils or to time-align drivers.

Yes, perception is the Reality but creativity operates by atomic noumenonal categories, arranges them in order to stricture the desirable perceptions.  Therefore I do not think that it makes any sense to talk about the “soul in the machine”. In those conversations where “soul of machinery“ involved I see just a celebration of epistolary over common sense…. and I feel myself too intelligent to be enrolled in them.

you have put one of his quotes under your post, so I guess you do.
Despite not being inclined to take much note of anything other then your own 'philosophy', (which is fine), at least in this case you seem to do go with someone else.
Nietzsche had as one of his main themes: "Der Wille zur Macht" which you practice most openly, and in most everything you express. 
Sir Allen, and 'The Apprentice' comes to mind.
As you are a self-confessed "very intelligent person" you will know all about that bit.
You had started this semi-philosophical inquiry and you may end it.
It is being sucked into a more confrontational direction, so will be of little contribution other then to establish of who is the 'main dog' in his domain.
I would agree, it is much more value added to talk about the more usual, that is being chewed over at most of the other audio sites.
It is one of the main domains of this site after all, i.e. no need for the "rotten stench of the esoteric schizophrenia".
By the way, if you'd bother to look up my system posted in A'gone you would notice that my humble set-up is very far from anything esoteric in deed.
There is no for any audio-esoteric-schizophrenia, at least not for me.
I can even understand your powerful dislike about it, which I actually share!

Axel wrote:

…  you have put one of his quotes under your post, so I guess you do. Despite not being inclined to take much note of anything other then your own 'philosophy', (which is fine), at least in this case you seem to do go with someone else. Nietzsche had as one of his main themes: "Der Wille zur Macht" which you practice most openly, and in most everything you express. As you are a self-confessed "very intelligent person" you will know all about that bit.

Axel wrote:

You had started this semi-philosophical inquiry and you may end it. It is being sucked into a more confrontational direction, so will be of little contribution other then to establish of who is the 'main dog' in his domain.

There are no semi-philosophical inquires. What I state has very practical meaning for me and if I express whatever I express in abstract and symbolized fashion then it does not make it “philosophical”. Also, my intent has absolutely no K9 intentions. Any post/expression might or might not benefit the subject of the thread/interest. Make up your mind what you trying to say and make your own judgment how contributive your expressed views to the subject of the thread.

Axel wrote:

By the way, if you'd bother to look up my system posted in A'gone you would notice that my humble set-up is very far from anything esoteric in deed.

Axel, I do not do it. I have absolutely no curiosity for looking up anybody systems if I have no specific context of interest.  So, far you did not express any explicit audio references that would require looking up the specifics of you audio installation.

Axel wrote:

Sir Allen, and 'The Apprentice' comes to mind.

Axel wrote:

As for the rest of this thread "...fired!"