thought-for-the-day

Earned Wisdom Versus Borrowed Wisdom

Record Experiments Taught Us Practically Everything We Know

Shane Parrish writes:

Borrowed wisdom breaks under pressure because you haven’t earned it.

You’re trusting someone else’s compression without knowing what created it.

Earned wisdom, on the other hand, holds up because it’s rooted in your actual experience.

You know when it works, why it works, when to ignore it and when to bend it because you created the compression.

It’s amazing how far you can get in this hobby if you’re obsessive enough and driven enough. (See links below for more on these two drivers of success.)

To achieve real success you must be willing to devote huge amounts of time, money and effort to the pursuit of better home audio.

You will really go far if you’re willing to let your ears, not your brain, inform your understanding and appreciation of the sound of the various pressings you play.

If we thought like most audiophiles — that money buys good sound and original pressings are usually the best — we would currently be very unlikely to have a business selling a million dollars or more worth of Hot Stampers every year.

(For those new to the idea, here are the short versions of what they are and how you go about acquiring them.)

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“Ninety percent of success can be boiled down to consistently doing the obvious thing for an uncommonly long period of time…”

More Entries from Tom’s Audiophile Notebook

“Ninety percent of success can be boiled down to consistently doing the obvious thing for an uncommonly long period of time without convincing yourself that you’re smarter than you are.” — Shane Parrish

Everybody knows that practice of any skill with the idea of challenging yourself will more than likely make you better at practically anything you choose to do. But where have you ever seen those concepts applied to bettering your own audio skills other than right here on this blog? (And Robert Brook‘s of course.)

Just how would you go about challenging yourself as an audiophile?

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“We want the outcome, but we need the journey.”

Experiments Taught Us Everything We Know about Records

Thought for the Day

We want the outcome, but we need the journey.

Falling in love with outcomes doesn’t move you forward.

Falling in love with the process does.

Shane Parish

It’s amazing how far you can get in this hobby if you’re obsessive enough and driven enough. (See links below for more on these two drivers of success.)

To achieve real success you must be willing to devote huge amounts of time, money and effort to the pursuit of better home audio.

You will really go far if you’re willing to let your ears, not your brain, inform your understanding and appreciation of the sound of the various pressings you play.

If we thought like most audiophiles — that money buys good sound and original pressings are usually the best — we would currently be very unlikely to have a business selling a million dollars or more worth of Hot Stampers every year.

(For those new to the idea, here are the short versions of what they are and how one goes about acquiring them.)

(more…)

Getting Older and Losing Patience

More Entries from Tom’s Audiophile Notebook

That guy you see pictured to the left has spent much of the last forty years wandering around used record stores looking for better records (ahem). Before that he wandered around stores that sold  new records because he didn’t know how good old used records could be.

Here are some of the things he’s learned since he started collecting at the age of ten, sixty years ago. (First purchase: She Loves You on 45. It’s still in the collection, although it cracked long ago and is no longer playable.)

I’ve noticed an interesting development in the world of record collecting, one that seems to be true for me as well as many of my customers.

As I’ve gotten older I find I have more money, which allows me to buy higher quality goods of all kinds, including — and especially — records.

I also seem to have much less tolerance for practically anything of mediocre quality.

And I have much less patience with the hassle of having to work to find a record exceptional sound, one that actually will reward me for the time and effort it will take to throw it on the turntable, sit down and listen to it all the way through.

As a consequence, if I’m going to play a record, I’m going to make sure it’s a good one, and I don’t want to have to play five or ten copies to find the one with the magic that will keep me involved from start to finish.

Because it’s our business, we actually do play five or ten copies of every record we judge, but I sure don’t have the patience to go through all that rigamarole for my own personal listening the way I did before I retired.

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