HPSoundings
HIGH END AUDIO: A Time Machine
Photo by Joey Weiss
HIGH END AUDIO: A Time Machine
By Harry Pearson
Just as we use the telescope to look back in time, to the way the stars looked light-years ago, so too can we use recordings as a time machine to transport us to that day when creatures of flesh and soul once made music.
Our recordings, at their best, can be holographs of musicians playing in spaces now gone or irrevocably different, three-dimensional soundfields we summon at will, a power no magus of medieval persuasion could have imagined. We can freeze and store, in whatever fashion, moments of time, moments of human beings making their music. And we can, with our finest music systems recreate lifelike likenesses of those whose spirit we have captured.
We can make the walls of our listening room melt away and, in their stead, we have the walls of Orchestra Hall in Chicago before it was “improved” out of existence, as the boundaries of our experience. We can hear the individuality of the Chicago Symphony’s musicians, resolving them each and every one, though the recording is more than a quarter of a century old; we hear the “air” about the musicians, the distant sound of traffic on State Street outside the hall, the low rumble of the air-conditioning, and then the bloom of the sound. We, if imaginative, may even sense Fritz Reiner and his baleful eye, observing every nuance, and we forget, for the while, that it is all gone. It lives only in these moments we have snatched away from time.
John Lennon and the Beatles live on in EMI’s Abbey Road studio, four thousand holes in strawberry fields, forever. Toscanini and his men are still at NBC’s Studio 8-H, the old man yet atonally humming along in that never-to-be-forgotten dry box of a room. Flick. Bruno Walter rehearses Mozart’s 39th, urging his players to make the strings “sing”. Flick. Janis Joplin screaming her nuts off, vocal cords rusted by Southern Comfort. Flick. Jussi Bjoerling in Rome melting Puccini’s “Nessum Dorma”, a voice glinted gold and never changing. Flick. Ataulfo Argenta, early lost to us, but yet alive in Rodrigo, Halftter, and De Falla. Flick. Ansermet, Munch, Monteux. Flick. Hendrix, Holly, and Sam Cook to still send us. Like the figures on Keats’ Grecian urn, ever moving, yet frozen in a series of recorded instants.
We have a hundred years of artistic achievements at hand, in our hands. We do not know, during those hundred years, how many recordings have been made throughout the world. We do not even know how many discs are in existence. Nor do we know how many have been lost. We do not know how many we are now losing, through deterioration of the masters, nor how much will be discarded in our haste toward a digital future.
The very ubiquity of music has blinded us to its magic and to the wonder of encapsulated fragments of time encoded in our recordings.
Consider the lilies: We awake in the morning to the sound of our friendly radio clocks or iPhone docks- music and news. Something bright and not-too-rough to put us in the mood to face another day. Then it’s off to the shower, where Technology be praised, we can now bring in music that won’t let you be electrocuted. More music and news. Then, off to the car, where we have a stereo, FM or Satellite radio, maybe an iPod or other devices patiently awaiting our commands. Perhaps even some time at the computer, listening away while we check our daily inboxes and the status of the world. Note that so far, we haven’t been talking about a playback system that approaches a true music reproducing system. Just junk playback for our daily lives (Soma, but not the form Huxley supposed).
There’s probably a portable radio blasting in the parking attendant’s box as you park the car, and, once inside the lobby, there’s, maybe, Eno’s Music for Lobbies, and then Muzak for elevators. Then, in the office there’s pre-programmed music for the “work environment”, carefully selected by the subconscious manipulators at an “office-friendly” Satellite radio channel. Or more likely, you are sitting with your headphones on, as the music flows out from a portable device or computer system, allowing you to become the temporary master of your sonic domain. Lunch? You bet, music. Ever hear of, any more, a music-free cafeteria or restaurant? Then there’s the rush-hour home, and music to sooth the tangled nerves. Music beneath our movies. Beneath our favorite television shows (if indeed we watch conventional television any more). Music while you’re on-hold, waiting to be picked up. Headphones on the airplanes. Ear-buds and iPods walking the streets.
Never has there been a generation so stuffed, packed, and surrounded by an acoustic environment of wall-to-wall, ceiling-to-floor, air molecule-to-molecule music. And most of it played back on equipment that resembles the real thing about as much as the atmosphere on Mars is like unto that on Earth.
And then there’s the matter of the sorrowful quality of the music itself, this sonic wallflower. Endless instrumental versions of “The Way We Were”, “You Don’t Send Me Flowers Any more”, “Yesterday”, “Memories”, all blurring into memories of the way we were yesterday, “when I was 64”. Not even the classics are safe from the all-devouring aural satyriasis. Tonight we love a stranger in paradise with full moon and empty arms.
Combine garbage sonics and a compacted musical garbage—and know this is how Americans see music. Then you may begin to understand why some of us think music itself is in danger of being corrupted and turned into something it was never meant to be, an instrument for mood manipulation, instead of what it could be, an affirmation of all that is good about our species.
In a sense, such uses of music subsume the experience of listening to music with the attention, the concentration and, yes, even the rapture that it, at its best, requires and deserves. The experience of music is shoved aside and music itself becomes a kind of commodity divorced from appreciation of its diverse uniquenesses. Music is severed from its roots and, once removed from the context of performance and the “live” experience, exists in the background of our perception, not as a dominant force in shaping that perception.
This is where I come in. To tell you something of how we came to this state of affairs. It is a story of how the fledgling high fidelity movement of the Fifties became the Japanese-dominated mass-marketing stereo boom of the Seventies. And it is a story of how the High End, following a conceptual idealism of near Platonic purity, reversed the trend, putting American design again in the vanguard, while energizing a new industry dedicated to putting the musicality back in to audio components.
The High End is not firm buttocks on very long legs. It is not an economic measure of the cost of audio equipment. It is, quite simply, the highest end of the audio art, that often be-misted arena in which technology and art go hand-in-hand, with art always leading. It is an arena from which components emerge that, it is hoped, will move us fractionally closer to the illusion of having real musicians playing in a real space, though in our own living rooms. This illusion is audio’s grail, and the quest after it lures would-be Parsifals of design from walks of life that are virtually always alien to audio. It is, in a word or so, a measure of the intent of certain designers to recapture as much of a real musical experience as the technological sciences and their art allow in the here and now.
It arose, in the early Seventies, not precisely in rebellion to the junk marketing of high-fidelity components but rather, at first, as a striving for something beyond what the large corporations who had then subsumed the original high fidelity movement were offering to the public at large. As we shall see, there is an irony in the rise of the High End, and a historical parallel with the rise of components in the early Fifties. The high fidelity component was born in reaction to the console models of the times (made by the large American corporations, RCA, Columbia, Philco, Zenith, MagnaVox, et al.), as an effort, that is, to achieve higher levels of fidelity to the real thing than were possible through the console systems.
The High End rose at the same time my magazine, The Absolute Sound, was founded, and the two were immediately symbiotic, each’s destiny intertwined with that of the other. One can also savour another parallel/irony. High Fidelity, Stereo Review (nee Hi-Fi Review) and Audio rose with the high-fidelity component movement and were, in their early form, considerably different from the way they had become by the time The Absolute Sound was conceived. As was the industry with which these magazines identified. They moved from a pro-consumer orientation and from reviews that were part science (numerical measurements) and part art (the reviewers’ assessments of how well the components captured the illusion of the real thing) to a pro-industry bias (the magazine’s welfare became synonymous with the health of the industry) and to all numerical reviews (which increasingly denied the significance, even audibility, the all too vast differences that existed then—and now—between different products from different manufacturers).There is a commanding practical reason for making no distinctions between components of similar nature, say, for instance, amps and preamps. If they aren’t different, then the reviewer does not have to state preferences for one as opposed to another, thus providing his magazine’s ad salespeople with something bordering on paradise, a world in which all components are equal and therefore all ad space equally salable. Ugh.
The question will be one of whether the High End maintains its allegiance to music or to an accountant’s notion of profit margins and corporate growth rates. What has distinguished the High End movement so far has been the remarkable devotion many designers feel for an artistic ideal rather than to the practical implications of the bottom line.
It is more than mere coincidence that the decline in the quality of American discs, which were, up through 1964 both the best-sounding and the best-made on earth, paralleled the decline in reviewing standards in the audiophile magazines. That decay was first evident in an increasing number of record ads in the pages of those publications and a decreasing sensitivity to both the sound and quality on the discs. The major American record companies are even more vindictive than the audio manufacturers when it comes to getting even for a highly critical review. Advertising has been pulled, and more than once, when one has the temerity to tell the truth about the sound and manufacturing quality of a disc or component. The result is that today there is a complete absence of sonic criticism: Everything, record or component, sounds great. Just great. And unless one is in a monolithic position within the industry, he is likely to find himself penalized for telling the truth, the advertisers clinging to the publication with the blandest, most pro-industry editorial policy and the consumer be damned.
The High End came into being because there are people for whom music is an experience apart. One not to be wasted, not to be treated with the contempt that comes from making quotidian that which is unique. In other words, music is to be absorbed; it is an occasion to dream of the possibilities, of probable and yet unborn worlds. Lose yourself in its world, and you can dream yourself back together for this one.
This is where the High End comes in, and its justification for being. Critical to our understanding of what we mean when we say High End is that distinction between the background “noise” of Soma sounds and a kind of involved rapture that can occur when music overwhelms the barriers of the senses. The High End thus stands in opposition to the use of music as junk. Music is an absolute unto itself, and its sound is the absolute sound.
What a High End component, lowly or loftly, will do is resolve the musical information from our source material in ways that are more recognizably lifelike to those who know what the real thing sounds like. The night sky, viewed through a pair of Sears 7×30 binoculars is a gray-black field, bespeckled with wobbling dots. (Like certain receiver’s treatment of music.) But if we take a small telescope, we will see more, the rings of Saturn or the polar ice caps on Mars. (Like a modestly priced High End system.) With a giant telescope, we begin to see galaxies swirling, clouds of cosmic dust expanding, we see back into time and we derive a far more complete picture of the Universe about us. (Like the state-of-the-art.)
The best High End systems will allow you to hear not only the individual string instruments in the violin section of an orchestra, but even the spaces between the players. You will be able to hear the back wall of the orchestra, and, in some cases, you may make an educated guess about the material of which it is constructed. A hall’s acoustic signature is immediately recognizable, even its imperfections. And all of this without the usual distractions imposed by lesser systems, noise, distortions, compression of dynamics, unwanted peaks and valleys that play havoc with the orchestra’s harmonic envelope. In short, with a High End system, you are more nearly able to disregard the system itself. As the act of sex is supposed to eradicate (temporarily) sexual desire, so a good music playback system is supposed to eradicate the system itself, to make it transparent, and allow you to listen back through the system to the musical event itself.
~HP
44 Comments on “HIGH END AUDIO: A Time Machine”
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You had me at Rod Taylor and the Time Machine. What followed is the most
beautiful article on Audio that has ever been written or ever will be
written.
That it coincides with the alleged demise of both the high end and its
greatest writer, critic, linguist, analyst, teacher and philosopher and
at a time when both are exhibiting their greatest powers,reaching a
zenith from their collective experiences and the years of the journey to
this point, and when crowd and advertiser pleasing alternative packaging to the truth spoken by both
are perpetuated and flourishing, makes it all the more remarkable.It brought me to tears for
that which I so love and cherish.
Beautiful article, Harry. Beautiful comments, Alan. Well write; well said.
Another WOW, if I may.
For those who weren’t around at the beginning of the “High End”, a construct, by the way, coined by HP, please read, then reread, “Advertising has been pulled……when one has the temerity to tell the truth about the sound and manufacturing quality of a disc or component”. The result is that today there is a complete absence of sonic criticism: Everything, record or component, sounds great. Just great. “And……… is penalized for telling the truth…….”.
My point exactly in my first comment—a three paged color ad followed by the review of the component in the 3 page colored ad.
Not anymore Monty. HPsoundings is here. If it weren’t for HP’s TAS of the past many of us would be stuck in this view that
everything sounds the sound because of the reviewers’ fear of retaliation. Only Martin Colloms, remember his explanation in TAS about why the Jadis 200′s had brilliant sound but were coupled with miserable measurements, who became well known in part because of HP, tells the truth in his HiFi Critic–no advertisements like early TAS but at $35. an issue!
How can one determine if Wilson speakers are better than YG, Magico and all of the other big
advertisers. Answer: Become very familiar with the sound of live, unamplified music of various genres,
then have the dealer set up a pair in your listening room. The dealer, too, is in the same danger
of losing a franchise if he or she doesn’t vomit out “they’re the best”.
The same goes for components. Michael Fremer has liked so many turntables that it’s
impossible to keep track. With HP we’re at two, the VPI 4 and the TechDAS.
BTW, I would be more than willing to pay to have access to HPsoundings.
Again, the quarterly HiFi Critic, and yes I have every one , is $35. an issue and it’s worth it
because it reminds me of HP’s early TAS.
HPsoundings is free and mostly daily. This is as good as it gets. Superb, Absolute(ly), superb.
I also heartily agree with the eminent Dr, Cicarell. Once again: well writ; well saiD.
I have liked so many turntables because there are so many likable turntables.
“Liking” a turntable doesn’t mean it sounds as good as, or the same as another “likable” turntable.
I have also disliked some turntables too. Writing that I have ‘liked’ too many turntables is B.S. because within the review of each “liked” turntable is a detailed account of precisely how that turntable sounds.
Criticizing me for covering too many products is plain idiotic, whoever you are.
In other words, I think what you’ve posted about me is BULLSHIT.
That said, HP’s essay is fantastic.
I meant no offense Mr. Fremer but judging by your response perhaps there’s something to it.
I can name by memory many recommended products from various writers but in your case I
would need a device with at least 64GB of memory to store everything that you recommended
or “liked”.
I am siding with Mike Fremer on this one. I have been reading these mags for over 30 years. To say “…with HP we’re at two, the VPI 4 and the TechDAS…” is so disappointing to read from someone (Robert Cicarell) who says he owns every TAS published. Now you know HP has liked more than these two recent tables. On these very pages he comments about the big Clearaudio, saying he wished it were around longer. Do I have to mention the Goldmund? There is no need to go on. We naturally recoil at the idea that there can only be one or two “bests” or “adequates” because we are smart enough to realize that it is in the context of the individual’s system (and I will of course point out that includes one’s ears, room, and music preferences). The fact is that many well designed tables sound quite nice, but differences do exist. And the “best” turntable in the world (let us use this term in the “best for me” fashion) is useless without service, support, and durablility. It is the reviewer’s duty to sort these things out, to the best of his ability, in the service of his loyal readers.
I COULDN’T HAVE SAID IT BETTER, AND I AM A MAN OF FEW WORDS…..
Nicely said Harry!
james
I never expect anything less from my dear friend, devoted teacher and mentor. I’ve been sick to death for years regarding every other issue of the main high end publications featuring “Editors Choice” of “Best of.” Music is and will always be art – and so is in the eyes and ears of the beholder! What is best for me will not be the best for others, and so on… Which is why at Positive Feedback we choose what we call “Writers Choice Awards” once a year, period. We don’t claim what is “best”!
I’m honored to be on the HPSoundings editorial team because of the magic Harry produces with his pen (or, today, his keystrokes). There’s a reason we resurrected HIS phrase – TRUTH SPOKEN HERE!
I’ve also been begging Harry for years to lead us again into the breach, and he’s doing it! I will follow him into the fire, and Charles Bukowski said it best: “What matters most is how well you walk through the fire’. The flames have been burning for years, but now we see a mighty flame again!!
Though I must admit (or I wouldn’t be Harry’s student if I didn’t) that sonic commentary is not completely dead. A few of us have been fighting to keep it alive (my family at PFO, Big Black Disc, The Daily Swarm, and, especially, all the amazing young people who contribute to Head-Fi because they LOVE music and sound, NOT because they are paid to do so). I count Jude Mansilla, the founder, among the people still pushing the audio arts forward.
I’m excited for the future!!!!
and, I wish people could remember this: Harry himself acknowledged years ago, the new opportunities we have to convert millions of music lovers into sound enthusiasts as well – because they’ve been raised on earbuds and the like alone. Just wait: We’ll be tackling personal audio in-depth here – and not merely focusing on technical specs (you can get that in manufacturer literature)! We’ll be reporting on how these products sound.
TRUTH SPOKEN HERE
Forever,
Michael Mercer
All well stated, as always, HP.
However the challenge remains to engage a much different public than when many of us first started reading TAS (under HP of course) and today. In the late 60s, 70s and even through most of the 80s, we took the time to actually listen to music, sometimes together, other times in solitude.
Even in todays 4G world, many exposed to a great music system for the first time, have a major emotional response. How we handle it from the “a-ha” moment going forward will determine if this industry that we love, live and work in will make it to the next generation.
Here’s to your adding another well versed portal to the data stream…
As a long time amateur astronomer and astroimager, I can honestly say the very first paragraph nailed it for me. I have used “a time machine” analogy often with students. Great article! Thank you.
Evocative, Harry.
It was great to read more of the same passion from the man who’s passion for music in all it’s forms has been my inspiration over the years.
Opening one’s eyes and ears has always been one of HP’s greatest strengths.All we need to do is follow his direction and the path he sets before us will lead to destinations we would never have realized were there.
So much has been written about the death of the High End.
Who should we point the finger at? Who or what is to blame?
Why should it matter.
The High End only dies when you let it.
It dies when YOU forget the things that got you into this hobby in the first place.
It dies when you loose desire to take things from good enough to something much better.
It dies when you no longer want to discover new music or explore gems from the past.
It dies when you think everything is snake oil or just a ripp off.
It dies , as HP says, when the fear of reprisals from a negative review muddies the waters of every great component, irregardless of cost.
The HIgh End will also die when you loose your passion for this hobby.
When you accept mediocrity over excellance.
When raising the bar no longer matters.
Hp’s latest journal is more than just an explanation about how a great system can be likened to a trip in a time machine.
That’s not news for most of us.
What it is is a wakeup call for those who have or who are about to fall off the path that HP laid out for us , oh so many years ago.
Well said, and long overdue. Thank you.
Eric
Bravo, Harry! hpsoundings is off to a brilliant start.
HP is back! So welcomed, and missed!
It usually is a signal that something unnecessary is to follow when someone starts with a few positive words than heads straight to “However”. Proven once again to be usually the case.
Very Nicely Said.
Super! Say what you may about TAS, but with LSC 2251 as a backdrop (Hovhaness/Reiner, my very 1st stereo disc), can’t be bad at all. Glad to see ‘HP’ activity. I wonder what the audio scene would have been without HP, TAS and Holt/ Stereophile?
Many of us would never have got the exposure to listening to live, unamplified music and therefore we would be stuck
making purchases by measurements (e.g. Halcro) or listening to dealers who never stepped foot into a concert hall, or
throwing a dart at a list of “the Best Ever ” lspeakers/components/recordings recommended by all magazines except
HiFiCritic which is a throwback to early TAS.
Great to see you back to your erudite best HP; and I must say you are looking remarkably sprightly too..:)
As done so often in the past, you painted the issue in technicolor with a palette of evocative words. And you clearly spoke not only to the value of music but to the supreme value of (in this noise embattled world) focusing the conduit of our senses on the creative act and surrendering our intellect and emotions to their findings.
As I sit in front of my time machine reading the words of HP I am reminded of why we pursue this affair of the heart…it is to connect with the passion of the human spirit and of the human endeavor through the wonderment of music. From the days of the tap, tap tap of the rocks of the cavemen keeping time to voice of the tribe to the day of Gustavo Dudamel leading the hearts of the young Venezuelans escaping their lives through music we are united in this passion and pursuit. Thanks HP for the words of life, may they circle the Internet ?
Peter B.
That’s a smile not a question mark on the above post, try again :)
Harry this is one of the best pieces I have every read about the purpose of High End audio. This is a piece that inspires new generation. Nobody could have said it better.
To all of you who think highly of the Living Presence and the Living Stereo recordings and that HP is a regular concert attendee
who knows the sound of live music, I would advise reading less of High End magazines, be it print or electronic,and attend concerts often ,sitting in the better and the best seats in the house. You will be surprised how different is the sound you will hear at the concerts from the sound of the classical music recommendation on the Super Discs List.
To name two-Have you heard Elizabeth Maconchy’s Symphony for Double String Orchestra on Lyrita 116 and Dances Anciennes de Hongrie Et De Transylvanie on Harmonia Mundi HM 1003?
If your system doesn’t recreate a sense of being in front of the live musicians then something is
seriously wrong with your system, if you even have one.
I have them on LP and CD .
They don’t sound like concert hall sound.
Concert hall sound at row 12th and 13th -that’s the standard to which I compare recordings to.
I recently heard a concerto and a symphony in the Vienna Golden Hall and the sound is truly beautiful and not like the sound on the two recordings you mentioned.
Google _ Esplanade Concert Hall.
My usual seat 17/18 , stall .row 12th or 13th or centre of foyer row AA or BB.
I’ve been to the Vienna Golden Hall and I got to enjoy Umberto Giodano’s Andrea Chénier.
How do the Beatles, Klaatu, and Osamu Kitajima sound in this hall, if you get my point.
You forget to mention what type of system you have in your home.
Classical music without amplification and other speakers in that hall is the criteria for the absolute sound,as HP reminds his readers often.
Gradient, Harbeth, Spendor of Derek Hughes, SB 3/6, Quad 63 Pro, Waveform Mach 13. Big Bryston amp.
I have heard jazz and amplified music at many other concert halls and venues and even at the Esplanade Concert Hall.
Do the Lyrita recordings sound like the sound you heard at row 11th at the Vienna Hall?
YMM, ease up please. People can derive pleasure from music in many ways, recored or not. It does not need to sound like one experiences in the 11th row at the Vienna Hall. It just doesn’t. It can strike an emotional reaction in the listener even from a car radio. It can.
Thank you Richard for your explanation.
I think that a fake, phony, fraud has been
revealed.
To quote YMM, “I have heard jazz and other amplified music at concert
halls…..”.
HP’s request was to listen to unamplified
music……
A Freudian slip by YMM.
Given his system, I, too would wish for central
seating at the Vienna Hall.
Of course you can enjoy any type of music anywhere on any audio systems that you fancy. But have you read the Sonic Soundstage article by HP and his criteria for the absolute sound? I mentioned the Vienna hall sound and other concert hall sound because it was HP’s criteria for the absolute sound.
Memories can be selective……
I remember the “Hi Fi” 1950s as well as the “High End” 1970s (as well as the plutocratic 2010s) and there were many parallels. During both periods high fidelity was mainly a pursuit of the wealthy and the hobbyists. In the 1950s, the wealthy class bought top-of-the-line Fisher, Marantz, McIntosh, Bogen, Klipsch, Quads, JBLs, etc. The hobbyists bought Heathkits, Dynakits, and Knightkits. In the 1970s, the wealthy bought Audio Research, Mark Levinson, KLH9s, Infinity Servostatics, and the hobbyists bought Haflers, Apts, Advents, and AR (no kits, pity). The principal difference between the two eras was that the cost differential between the best and the mass-market during the 1950s was, at most 2:1 to 3:1, while the cost differential between the best and the mass-market (let’s look at today, taking the Devil’s advocacy) is about 50:1 (more like 100:1 for speakers).
What’s to be learned by all of this? A great performance, well recorded, played by high fidelity equipment (mono, stereo, multichannel, Ambisonic, whatever) is a thing of beauty and a joy forever (to filch a line from Keats). But the economics of the high-end are clearly out of control. If the high end had been resurrected today instead of the 1970s, Harry, you would never have been able to found The Absolute Sound because the hobbyist and “merely” wealthy could not afford the best high-end equipment. It would be in the realm of the superrich and magazines such as The Roberts Report, Architectural Digest and The Aficionado would have co-opted that market away from you.
Ron Levine
Philadelphia
Like special life scenarios or memorable sonic experiences, live or reproduced, special writing should take you away from the page, make that screen, and transport you back to special associations. It should trigger associations of real experiences or imagined experiences that were so realistic that they created a special memory that one revisits on special occasions.
As a 62 year old guy who was born with a love of sounds and became fascinated with audio when his dad started building Eico amplifiers and tuners in the 50″s, I am fortunate enough to have been around to experience the early days of Stereophile and The Absolute Sound. I subscribed to both from their beginnings (almost) and savored every word, frequently many times over. I did this out of love and passion for my most important past-time and because I was always trying to create a sound system that was beyond my means as a student where frequently some of the audio gear I bought were my largest purchases to date.
Harry’s piece transported me back to those days, sitting in a number of different scenarios reading Stereophile and The Absolute sound, oblivious to what was going on around me because I was transported. As I progressed through the piece and further transported, I likewise moved through time during those special days of my audio and music experiences. I reminisced going to the NY Audio shows and talking to Frank McIntosh and Saul Marantz, seeing new technologies and trying to understand the physics that allowed them to magically make music It was a wonderful and joyous time, a time for discovery and smiles.
Unfortunately, Harry’s writing, which truly is just a vehicle for his passion, was equally effective at transporting me back to what happened over time to these esteemed magazines and the manufactures who indirectly controlled them and then ultimately controlled the dealers. His writing reminded me about how I progressively lost interest in music and audio except for when I was in my car because as I went to CES’s annually, talked to dealers and yes still read Stereophile and The Absolute Sound, the joy was dissipating because what was written was manufactured, synthesized and designed to make money and not joy. In fact is was usually largely sonic fabrication. As the politics increased, my interest waned. I spent more and more money on systems and room designs to try to get the original joy back that at one time came from an Eico, Heath or Dynaco or Hafler amplifier kit. Unfortunately, the more I tried, the less I succeeded.
In the late 90′s I achieved my dream of meeting Harry and spending the day and several thereafter with him at Sea Cliff, partially because of my involvement with the emerging field of digital cinema, but mostly because Harry wanted to share his excitement about his then reference speakers, Wisdom Audio M-75 planar magnetic line sources. After being blown away by Harry’s system, he called the creator, Tom Bohlender, as I sat there and I ordered a pair on the spot. I loved those speakers and they loved my custom designed dedicated music from. I was transported once again. In fact, the system was so effective in transporting me to a happier place than my reality at that time that I hid there as my marriage went through its final phases of disintegration. Following my divorce, I lived off of the proceeds from the piece by piece sale of that system for over a year. In essence, I ate my system.
Harry and I lost track of each other, save for a few periodic calls and emails between us over the years where he lamented avout what was happening to his child, The Absolute Sound. However down, Harry never gave up, because that is who he is. Despite the pressures that were upon him, in his quiet moments he still felt the joy and vowed to come back without the unavoidable restraints that were the essence of the new and “improved” Absolute Sound. He kept saying to me, “I will be back in the future. I have to settle this mess first.”
Welcome back Harry. It feels like old times, less the wife of course. My joy is building again for music and the transforming experiences that music can provide. I owe this to you and your publications, but mostly to knowing you. I look forward to getting together with you after the new year and sharing with you the single, far and away, most amazing audio, music experience I have ever had, listening to John Iverson’s Force Field through his modified strain gauge Panasonic cartridge. Without you Harry, I would not have had a clue who John Iverson was nor would I have met some of the most important people in my life, including my best friend who was with me that magical night at Iverson’s, nor Jonas Miller who was like a second father to me.
Bravo Harry and thank you.
Russ Ferstandig
Bravo, bravissimo Mr. Ferstandig!!!
Not sure why YMM reads about high end audio given his apparent disdain for its goal of the Absolute Sound.To him, it’s a train wreck and he can’t avert his eyes.
We get it- you don’t think it ( the absolute sound) is reasonable or achievable and you have some other goal that should be the mark. Some of us demur. OK, enjoy your goal and shoot for that mark- whatever it may be and don’t bother with expensive gear.
But repetition of your argument is boring-
“So let’s leave it alone, ’cause we can’t see eye to eye.
There ain’t no good guys, there ain’t no bad guys.
There’s only you and me and we just disagree.”
Dearest Harry,
What a wonderful statement. It all brought me back to your very first issue of “The Absolute Sound”.
You truly tell it like it is. The article is not only informative and thoughtful, it is truly spiritual. Yes, it brings me closer to love, people and my Higher Power.
Keep it coming my friend!
Rick D’Aversa
Harry, I have been waiting for someone to write a piece like this for years and it is no surprise that it is you who wrote it. The experience of music has been so grievously devalued that a clarion call such as this is needed to remind us all why great musical experiences are so precious, be they live or recorded. Absolutely brilliant and it could not possibly be more timely.
Bravo!
Dear Harry Pearson, Thank you so much for this description. There are many of us who would like to be part of rescuing an art form, and this article is like nourishment.
Dear Neil Young,
Thank you so very much for providing such
beautiful music over the years. Your music truly
touches the soul. Well recorded, too.
Your “Harvest” on DVD-A is amazing!
Too bad that the medium had few supporters .
Again, thank you for making my life more
fulfilled.
Dear Mr. Young,
Thanks for joining us and any help you can lend will be greatly appreciated. The art form and the musical truth can benefit from the light of a new day. I hope this site, Harry and perhaps you can start the fire…again
Thanks again
Elliot
I’d like to call out the British hi-fi industry for keeping the flame burning throughout the 70s and 80s. British turntables and speakers in particular filled the void when there was no American high-end gear the poor student could afford. UK pressings were and are top-notch. The bass-shy, “polite” British sound really comes into its own in a bare apartment room, and your buddy learns how bad his huge walnut-grain “three-ways” (’cause three is better than two) sound!
However you came to the “high end,” I can almost guarantee what keeps you here: The obvious sound difference. Ever had a new component or a system change provoke a huge involuntary grin? Then you know.