What Kind of Audio Fool Was I?
When I was starting out in this hobby back in the 70s, some of the audiophiles I came in contact with preferred Half-Speed mastered LPs, others liked Japanese pressings, and almost everyone thought direct-to-disc recordings were the ne plus ultra of sound quality.
Now audiophiles appear to prefer SACDs, Heavy Vinyl and pressings mastered at 45 RPM on multi-disc sets. Same mediocre (at best!) wine, different bottle.
It is our opinion that none of these are the answer to finding and acquiring higher quality pressings.
They are relatively cheap and convenient temporary fixes, but as a solution to the actual problem facing the serious audiophile they are little more than stopgaps, and, worse than that, many will retard the progress you are hoping to make in this hobby.
For those of us who never wavered in our commitment to radical and revolutionary progress, they can be recognized in hindsight as the dead end they always were.
The path forward is exactly the path we have taken and charted for everyone.
With our approach to finding the best sounding records, cleaning them the way we do, playing them against each other the way we do, using the sound improving devices and equipment we recommend, we know you can succeed.
If we can do it, you can do it.
Who Shall Guide Them?
Most audiophiles have no one to guide them in this devilishly difficult record and audio game. They are mostly self-taught, which is precisely the heart of the problem. You can teach yourself pretty much all you need to know in this hobby, but it requires a huge expenditure of time and resources: thousands of hours and ten of thousands of dollars at a minimum. A few hours a week just won’t get you far.
I should know. I was one of those guys who put in a few hours a week for about the first twenty years I spent in audio.
In the end I didn’t have much to show for it, although I sure thought I did. [1]
It was only when I seriously dedicated myself to audio and records sometime in the 90s that I started making real progress. With more than ten years of nose-to-the-grindstone effort I was ready — eager even — to give up on audiophile vinyl with the knowledge that it was a distraction and, even worse than a distraction, an impediment to further growth. [2]
How Bad Are They, Really
How many see it that way? How many audiophiles know how mediocre their audiophile pressings really are? One per cent? Two per cent? Five? (The customers of ours who’ve done their own shootouts know exactly how bad they are, but there are not many of them.)
However many it is, it’s about the same percentage who actually take the hobby seriously and constantly work at it. That’s my guess anyway.
Just try telling that to anyone on an audio forum. You will be shouted down in no time by those who can’t abide the idea that the latest audiophile pressings on which they’ve spent their hard earned money aren’t the best of the best and way better than whatever you seem to like.
Of course they’re the best! What else could they be? Everybody says so. Everybody knows it’s true. The reviewers in the magazines and the youtubers and my fellow forum posters all told me they were the best, so who the hell do you think you are to say otherwise?
Hearing Is Believing
This is the problem. Unless you can clean and play your “old” records right, and you actually have some good copies to play, none of what we say here will make much sense. You really have to hear it for yourself, but to hear it for yourself you have to do quite a number of things right.
You can do it anyway you like, but if you truly want to succeed, you might try doing it the way we do. It works for us and we know it can work for you.
There is such a thing as progress. The word is getting out, slowly to be sure, but it is getting out. These things take time. Hell, people are still digging their way out of that rat hole called the Compact Disc, the one that boasted Perfect Sound Forever and now fills up the music section of every Goodwill in town, so I guess we’ll all just have to be more patient.
[1] Audio is a lot harder than I thought because I didn’t know enough to know even that much.
[2] We crossed the Rubicon in 2007. And there was no going back.
Me at the controls of my system, taken sometime in the late-70s.