Castle in the air

When I decide to write, I didn't want to write something common, boring, me-too nor to please anyone. It just not my style. Not just another review, please, the world isn't short of reviews of this sort. Succumb to no pressure, I write what pleases me. I want to write something brutally honest that soul-stirring, to self-reflect. Leave if you can't take it.

Foolish pride, I can't help taking a swipe at people's over-assertiveness. It is in sound we compete, not anything else. It is in the sound we compete, not a tastefully designed room. It is in the sound we compete, not state of the art equipment. It is in sound and sound alone we judge and determine which system is a nose ahead. If you can't get over equipment paranoia that you believe equipment and equipment alone will bring home glory, consumerism will eat you alive. You will end up with a closet full of equipment and still long for the perfect equipment. Castle in the air, I got to tell you here we have no shared value here. On hindsight, audioing is about you stringing equipment, cables and room acoustics together to produce a sound, that satisfies your musical sensual and of the highest fidelity you can. The sound of our system is, without a single doubt, up to the player to lose. Ignorance tops the rank, heading in the wrong direction. Not only the sound doesn't measure up in tandem to the cost of the system, but it also sounds like no other, nothing like what we all accustomed to. Why is it difficult to find a good sounding system? Some say the know don't have the money. Not entirely wrong though, I got to say. What more, no system sounds alike, that's the hard fact.

A friend gave me a tinkle says my recent FB posting on seniority and competency was stirring the hornet's nest. You know what they say about the parable of ginger. The older it gets, the more pungent it gets, corresponding to the older you get, the wiser you become. My argument; does one puts the time to good use or just merely passing time. A lacklustre effort is as good as hot air, seniority is hollow but another meaningless number. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that. What more with disparagement, to my dazzlement you're assassinating your character openly. Pretty stupid thing if you asked me. On the contrary, a person with compassion gets a lot of respects from me. Always be mindful, be self-less and wary of your actions that may affect others in a bad way, I keep reminding myself.

Not hard to notice that audiophiles are generally not pragmatic and unbelievably self-opinionated. For instance, I got snubbed for sharing a live performance experience, I was told so and so performance is better. Instead of confronting head to head, I went on to do research on reputable and reliable sites and my findings concluded that his mentioned artist isn't well regarded for that particular repertoire. Isn't that sounds a little too familiar? Has he listened enough to draw a conclusion? I think not. Furthermore, listening live and playback represents two different standards, what more I listened live from a perfect spot. I regular live performance that I know which seat to get. I get the goosebumps listening live every single time, not so with playback. For playback, recording quality weigh in here.

With a little short of 30 years in this hobby, I must admit the last few years of work has been more educational and productive than my first 20 years combined. What can I say, it is my learning curve. Wasted time and money in the early years, I am now in a better position to figure the audio jigsaw out. By constantly asking why, what, where and how confronting issuance, I reduce my chances of taking a wrong turn. Time and time, you addressed a problem, you have one less problem.

So, trying to make up for the lost time, I need to double effort. To learn quick, I need to be a sharpshooter. Relying on people for spoon feeding will be too slow, furthermore, people might not want to teach stuff. Roll up your sleeves, go on an on the job training. You get the hang of it before long. System scrutiny is my habit to determine the secrets of good sound. Most audio secrets are laid out in the open, I will decode and employ it on my system. Common sense sadly some have little, a little too little, answers most of the questions. What I have learned, I inclined to add a twist of my own things to it. And that's not enough, I expand and explore it to develop new applications. As of today, I got some tweaks I can proudly claim that they are original (not shared out openly). Most tweaks are a zero-sum game and as always with some exceptions, some tweaks you never figure their magic, I take them as it is anyway.

I know this sounds arrogant, a picture tells a system a lot, coming from experience. However, video clips are far from the truth since it is your device that is playing, your device electronic, your device speakers. Even on the same performance, on the same seating, the audiences perceive different sound since the performance remains a constant. Even the pro guys don't listen the same way. So, what do we have here, an opening to a diversity of sound? It corresponds to sound equipment with a vast diversity of sound in the marketplace. The irony is audiophiles could immediately recognize sonic colouration, a call for multilateralism perhaps?