Skeptical Thinking Is Critical to Making Progress 

There are certain things we can stipulate as all but impossible. Nobody who says they can levitate should be taken seriously.

But are there aspects of audio reproduction that you’re not familiar with?

Are there stereos that reproduce music at a much higher level than any with which you are familiar?

Are there ways to make your stereo sound better than the ones you know of?

Are there record pressings that sound better than the ones you’ve heard?

The reason I ask is this: There is never been a case in which a person contacted me and told me that they had played a pile of copies of a particular album and that they all sounded the same.

The closest anyone has ever come is our fearless leader himself, Michael Fremer, who once wrote that he played three copies of the original pressing of Aja and that they all sounded very similar and great.

That is possibly true. The originals of that record, however you define what counts as an original, are pretty consistently good sounding.

On his equipment at the time, there might’ve not been enough difference in the sound to even be sure that there was any difference at all.

I would say that those three records properly cleaned played back on equipment as good as the equipment we own would not sound the same. They would all probably still sound very good, but it would be obvious that they weren’t all the same on both sides.

That’s because we do this for a living. We do double-blinded tests so that the records can tell us what they sound like. We don’t assume, we don’t gues.

We don’t let them all blend together, we sort them all out.

But back to the idea of a big pile of Records souding the same

That is never happened to my knowledge. Those who ridicule the idea are doing so without evidence to support their argument. You may not be able to levitate, but you are definitely able to hear the difference between 10 different copies of an album.

Played back on high-quality equipment it is child’s play to hear that the best and the worst of those ten will sound dramatically different. A small sample of them may sound similar, but if you listen critically on good equipment not very many will sound the same.