Ok, I guess the Kitty is getting self-conscious….

When people visit me I ritually ask them to offer critiques to Sound they hear in my room. Because people in audio are no accustom to express their audible sensations in holistic verbal form and become many of them abrade idiotic and phony political correctness that they feel come with status “visitor”   many of them  in their judgment as useful critics as turkeys that are walking around my yard. So, over the year I been inviting the “ideas” how to make people not just hear something and to ask stupid question what kind driver or cartridge I use but rather to express some attitude listening and share with me own listening personality.

My favorite trick the always work is to ask to my visitors: if I die tomorrow and sigh off in my will my entire installation to you then what you will be changing in Sound? This removes from the people the need to be “polite” and they are trying to talk a bit, thought it take for them to long time to get going…

Most of the people who visit me in one way or another red my site and my surprise for the last 2-3 years I caught myself to asking them another interesting question. I really do not know why I do it but I do.  I ask them if what they read in my site has any correlation or discrepancy with what they actually are witnessing in my room. I would like to say to you that what they hear is better or worse then what they expect. The irony is that no one ever told me about it. All people, with no exceptions, who visited for a first time and heard my audio answered that the expectation they had before visiting me, the expectations formed by my site, were very deferent then what they actually experienced in my room.

Sure in some case it was because people underestimated or over estimated me but if it happened with everyone who visited me for a first time then can we talk about pattern of wrong exceptions we have toward to unknown playback installation?  Interesting is that I always an interested if the expectation were better or worse but the answer is unavoidably the same: different. People insist that my playback plays music differently.  I would not argue with that. However, what we have this discussion in my room I uselessly point out that I have many-many posts at my site stating exactly that.  The people always say to me: unit you hear the actual results whatever you say are just meaningless words.  Also, people confess that after visiting me they begin to read my site with other understanding the meaning of the said.

So, in the light of the above I would like to proclaim the surprising thing: whatever I express at my site I truly mean it. Surprised?

Romy the Cat wrote:

When people visit me I ritually ask them to offer critiques to Sound they hear in my room...

What do you expect? Most  audiophiles have absolutely no idea from reproduction of the real thing. More or less they blabber something they have read in a magazine before. That question is interesting, when you have visitors who KNOW what is on the software, who KNOW something of tonality, of space, of mastering the records, how they were recorded and so on.

Most Audiophiles I know rate something out of their stomach. They "like" something. Any conversation with them is ultra boring and like rolling a dice. When you know something, made something outstanding and your System is definitely different in sound reproduction than 95% of the usual ear cancer Systems, then there is only 1 listener interesting for you:

The one who owns a System - or units - you are interested to listen to ....

I never listened to System which moved me, or made me stay longer than 1 min, which had a LP12, Schroeder Arm, Idler Drive... as main source, or Mark Levinson, Burmester, Pass Electronics and the other way, no owner from really outstanding Systems (for my kind of Standard) had any of these units.

Romy the Cat wrote:

whatever I express at my site I truly mean it.

Markus wrote:

When I go to hear someone's system, I ask the owner to show me why it sounds the way it sounds. Some people understand the question and play me the music that is emotionally important for them, the music that has to "work". Sometimes, I learn something from the visit.