When You’re Just Getting Started in Audio…
Mine is typically “what an idiot!“
But then you might step back and, with a moment’s reflection recognize that you yourself have written seriously mistaken reviews back in the days when your equipment was inferior, and have to recognize “that could have been me, and maybe not all that long ago.“ Here’s one from the mid-90s, about twenty years after I had purchased a pair of rather large floor standing speakers and a number of highly-rated, very expensive hi-fidelity components to drive them.
But all that hardware and all that money could not tell me how awful sounding some records were, and there are plenty more like that ridiculous remastered pressing from my past.
In fact, there are so many that we thought they deserved their own special category here on the blog, under the heading dubious sounding records I once liked.
The explanation for all the nonsense one reads on the web could not be simpler or more obvious.
The lo-fi to mid-fi crowd doesn’t know what it’s missing and telling them doesn’t do them (or you) any good because they are not where they need to be yet. They are not where you are — they are where they are. And that just happens to be the same place you were at some point in your journey.
They are in the hole you used to be in. The difference is you managed to climb out of that hole. They’re still in it.
Keep in Mind
Anyone who has been on their audio journey for any sizeable length of time has made a lot of mistakes along the way.
Uniquely among reviewers and record dealers, we go out of way to admit when we’re wrong.
You might even say we are proud of the fact that we used to get so many things wrong about records and audio.
Our experimental, evidence-based approach, requiring that we not only make lots of mistakes but that we embrace them and learn from them, is surely key to the progress we have made in coming to a better understanding of recordings and home audio.
Further Reading