HP's Rocky Mountain Seminar Speeches
The Context:
I was asked to lead two seminars, one each evening after the exhibits were closed for those participating in the show itself. On both evenings, there were SRO (standing-room–only) crowds lining the walls of the moderately-sized amphitheater. (Both sessions were video-taped and will, in time I’m told, be available.) I coerced Roy Gregory, former editor of Britain’s HiFi+, into moderating the sessions. I worked from a list of points I wanted to make about the past, present and transition to the future of High End audio, after which a Q&A session followed. Since I was not working from a prepared text (no spontaneity that way) what follows Is an idealized summation of what I said and not at all a literal one – for instance, most of the humor has vanished.
The Past:
I began each seminar noting the loss of both Gordon Holt and Wilma Cozart (Fine), and the influence both have had on me, each providing a matrix upon which I modeled The Absolute Sound. To Gordon I owe the idea of an alternative publication that could succeed on its own grounds and to Cozart, the muse of Mercury Records, who oversaw a series of recordings (a sonic track record unequalled by any other American company, then or now) a model for judging the truth of equipment, one based on recreating the truest possible facsimile of an absolute sound, of real music in a real space.
I made the motto of my remarks, Cozart’s oft-repeated maxim: “Trust Your Ears,” adding to that, if recreated music doesn’t sound like the real thing (when that is the source), then it is a distortion and, ergo, wrong.
What the magazine, at its outset, really represented was an abrupt departure from the measurements-uber-alles approach of the commercial magazines of the day. To wit, if the measurements these magazines arbitrarily chose to make were “good,” then there was nothing much more to comment on, except the price, the power and the features. They called this “objective” when, in fact, it was nothing of the kind. They picked and chose the measurements (a subjective decision) they would use as paradigms.
Instead, we turned to “observational” reviewing, which our critics and the British labeled “subjective.” I outlined the difference between the two: in reporting our observations, we were, under controlled conditions, describing the “sound” of the components we were reviewing – the only subjective thing about such a review, given that no component is perfect, is which of its shortcomings the reviewer could live with, after stating his listening biases in this regard.
To use the observational matrix, I created, along the lines of psychological insights, several views of the same component, assuming that certain unanimity of observation would approach the truth. As it happened, this procedure led to the creation and development of an audio language on my part, in other words, a common set of definitions about the way things actually do “sound.”
J. Gordon had done work along this line in describing colorations, euphonic or otherwise. What I did was expand these definitions into three dimensions; I developed a language to describe the acoustic space and the elements thereof, that is, instrumental dimensionality, depth of field, stage width, and further down the line, more detailed words to describe distortions within that ambient field.
To make sure our readers could hear first hand, on record, what we were talking about, I started a Super Disc listing of the best and most authentic (true to the absolute) recordings of the day (mixed in with a few sonic spectaculars, just for the hell of it). Little did I realize that out of this would arise a market in classic vinyl recordings, especially when the CD made the LP seem obsolete. And I did not pass up the irony of noting that many of the most “valuable” LPs in my collection were destroyed in a 1985 house fire and that I could not afford to replace them.
One other thing I emphasized was how crude the components of the early 1970s were in comparison with what we have at hand today. There were, aside from electrostatics (then in their prime because of their coherency), almost no speakers that were coherent, top to bottom. Speaker cabinets were so clumsily designed that their diffraction effects prevented the recovery of a true soundstage, something I almost stumbled into in creating a hybrid speaker, composed of Magneplanar Tympani bass panels and a linear array of midrange ribbons and tweeter planar units from Infinity, hence, the QRS-1D, which allowed wall-to-wall recreation of the width of a recorded soundstage as well as its depth, along with a then unparalleled degree of coherency among the drivers.
And of course, there was our leading the charge back to tubed electronics (and thus the rise of Audio Research, conrad-johnson et al.) away from the crude-sounding solid-state units of the time, which were soon to be followed by the coarse, distorted and unlistenable early generations of CDs, which we correctly identified as anything but “perfect sound forever” -- neither perfect, nor forever, and not even sound by our definition.
In citing the prescience of our first female reviewer, Enid Lumley, about noise pollution and designer John Curl’s estimate that she was a decade ahead of her time, I encountered JC himself in my perambulations through the show* [*Ftn. He had two words for me, the first of which I don’t wish to repeat here, blaming my review for the failure of his Vendetta Research phono stage, a failure, said I, not mine, but his, since I didn’t design it.] He informed me that dear difficult Enid had died in ’07 of lung cancer, a fact I duly reported in the second seminar, thus building a bridge to
The Present
After noting the fact that observational-based reviewing and a descriptive language had helped designers eliminate most of the gross distortions of the early 70s, even in transistors and the CD medium itself, I stressed the need for a new language to describe the different and more subtle distortions of today’s best gear. And said I found myself somewhat stymied, even in trying to define my most provocative concept, “continuousness” (which I liken to the continuous flow of electrons in a tube, a steady stream, or “waterfall”).
Then I discussed, in brief, today’s transitional audio developments:
(1) Magnetic-drive turntables for LP playback, with the remastering of classic tapings using today’s far superior disc-cutting technologies to breathe new life into turntable sales
(2) High-definition digital encoding, with a special nod to DSD
(3) The struggle to eliminate power-line noise polluting the ambient spaces of playback, either via battery operated electronics or power conditioners of all sorts and varieties, including some with near mystical-seeming properties
(4) Multichannel sound, particularly SACD encoding, which has finally begun to achieve the potential of the medium in creating an acoustic space in which we can lose ourselves more fully in the sensations of the music, taking particular note of one of the last official Telarc recordings, John Adams’ On the Transmigration of Souls, as the most spectacular example.
The Future
It was toward the future I had been headed during these talks, discussing the potential represented by the huge audience enamored with Iphones, Ipods, the other MP-3 like devices, countless millions, mostly young and open to deeper exploration. I told the SRO crowd that if we could “convert” but a fraction of this audience to really good sound, we’d have no worries about the future viability of high end audio.
I asked Mike Mercer, a long-time (former) TAS employee to expand upon an idea he had written about, namely, how high-end audio dealers should and must have computer listening stations in their shops, set up in such a way that the listener could switch from a budget system to one slightly better and on up the scale. On the first night’s seminar, this led to an argument among members of the audience about the problems with high-end dealers in general, from their disregard for women to a similar disdain for the youth, a kind of age- and sex-related bigotry.
I closed out the speech, both evenings, by calling for a deeper, more serious set of critical standards, while pointing out the need for refinement and expansion upon our descriptive language. And declaring that we need, as well, new methodologies (yea, even measurements) to correlate what we are hearing when trusting our ears, with what the equipment is doing electronically, particularly the anomalies - some of which we can hear but cannot yet, using either language, define.
Discussion Topics
- Speaker recommendation 2-channel, for paycheck to paycheck music lovers
- Magico V3 vs Magnepan 20.1
- Quad 2905
Speakers
- Bad Firmware Update to Oppo BDP-83
- Anyone bought the new Sony BDP-S350 BD player?
- Oppo BDP-83 Blu Ray Player
Comments
Fascinating - always admired your work - thank you!
Interesting. I am still troubled by turntables being part of a report like this -- mostly because it suggests the relatively slow pace of industry progress in the digital realm.
Thank you Harry for commenting in this Forum where gear worship seems to have trumped the search for the Absolute Sound. It is nice to see you enter the discussion and welcome to the web.
Elliot Goldman Front Row Center- High End Pompano Beach , Florida
Sheesh Harry, what took you so long? It was about eight years ago I said hook up with the web and say "Audios"
Lets hope he keeps active with this....Would be great to have him on here.
Great??!!
It would be the bees' knees fo' shizzle, and it's unlikely we'll ever see an equal - let alone a better. HP is a singularity amongst simple polynomials. HP is the definition of a limit "iff" all others are approaching 0. Are the Pyramids of Geza just big triangles? Did Mozart diddle on the piano?
Great??!!
Gosh...golly...something's amiss...
Mr. Pearson:
The last paragraph of your RM Seminar speeches "more SERIOUS set of critical standards" I couldn't agree more. My experience shows that it is possible to have 2 speakers (drivers) made exactly except for the cone design (shape). The resulting electronic testing said both speakers were saying the exact thing, but to the EAR there were differences that were noticable in female voice upper registers. I beleive there are so many things that can be done to set standards for audio IF ONLY the manufacturers could agree. I beleive there is more work that can be done to capture harmonics, which will and can totally make a recording sound superior. At some point not only should the electrical engineer do his job, but also musically trained professionals lend their ears and knowledge to further define all that Audio has and is offering.
Steve
I attended the talk on Saturday.
You mentioned encountering John Curl at the show:
"He had two words for me, the first of which I don’t wish to repeat here, blaming my review for the failure of his Vendetta Research phono stage, a failure, said I, not mine, but his, since I didn’t design it"
That's a cop out and you know it, Harry. JC clearly pointed out to you while you had the unit that it inverted polarity (an SCP-2A; later units such as the SCP-2B did not) and that adjustments elsewhere in the system had to be made in order to compensate for that and properly evaluate the unit. You failed to do that, you heard the effects of inverted polarity, which led you to fault the unit and pan it in the review, which had devastating effects on Vendetta Research. Whose failure was that?
Given the circumstances, I can't blame JC for his reaction.
Brian Walsh
Essential Audio ~ Chicago area ~ (773) 809-HIFI
Thanks HP for everything you have done for the home audio industry.
I'm a long time fan and it is great to see what you look like. Also, even in a little blurb you can get a snitty reaction. (JC) reference above. Anyway, because of you I have been salvaging/updating vintage tube gear and having a blast listening to music through these old designs. I remembered when you mentioned the Hegman desinged Layfayette KT-600 preamp. Well I finally found one and had new resistors, caps and power supply put in and WOW. The Quicksilver, ARC, VTL and CJ preamps are on the shelf for a while. Later today I am going to pick up a Citation II (which you never really liked, zippy?? harsh ringing???) that I had update and I had some of the negative feedback loops reduced. Also, have you seen your buddy Bob Carver on ebay selling a few custom made tube amplifiers???... He is still a hoot. He doesn't put his name in the Title and people still find him.
Thank you again and I wish you and your family all the best in the future.
Larry from Stillwater, OK and Manhattan, KS from the old letter to the Editor days.
We can all find things to criticize and nitpick HP about. Forty years of opinon, and an opinionated one at that, makes for an easy target. I, too, have been bent out of shape at times.
But my enjoyment of music, one of the treasures and blessing in my life, owes a great debt to Harry.
On balance, I cannot offer enough thanks.
HP ,
This is an amplifier question : Why do you seem to prefer high powered amplifiers, it seems as that throughout the years you have infered that low powered amps, even those around 100W, are insufficient at reproducing dynamics on a proper basis?
Lastly, why was the ASR Emitter that you have raved about left out of the last Buyer's Guide (Golden Ear listing too, I think)?
Also - why does he like line-source speakers so much...when the vast majority of top brands are point-source. What do lines do that "points" don't ? He never says....
And is he listening to any top digital sources ? He was three to four years ago (remember - report on Zanden, Jadis, etc.). But this seems to have passed - just as digital got a lot better ! HP *still* prefers LP...but is he up to date on apodizing-CD ?
I also prefer line source speakers. Usually my reason is that I like power music and point sources just cannot move enough air especially in the bass frequencies. These speakers are not small and thus are not in vogue. They are also usually very heavy and expensive. Two current companies are Nola and Genesis that still makes these speakers. It is my understanding that these cannot be phase coherent (Vandersteen's opinion). I also would like to hear Pearson's views on this. Please Harry jump right in.
Dear Harry,
Thank you for the many years of thought provoking reading of your fine prose. You taught me to listen and improved my appreciation of good music & audio. You led me to Audio Research electronics & Magnepan's Magneplanar loudspeakers. After owning many generations of both brands they are still the foundation of my system & much of my pleasure & happiness in life.
All I can say is thank you.
Kind Regards,
Glyn Ruck - Llandudno - Cape Town - South Africa.
I have been reading harry since somewhere in the early 80's when I found TAS on a coffee table at a friends house. I often found myself in disagreement with harry as he seemed inclined to only reference acoustic music as a source - having grown up with Cream, Jimi, The Who I found some equipment to sensitive to handle my "source" music.
But what I learned was to be critical, to ask if what I was hearing was true to the original - live representation. In the years since, I've had many friends who knew of my background in working with early members of Fleetwood Mac - that would ask if I would help them find something for their "room".
Many times, I had to find what touched the hearts of their wives in order to get permission to put speakers in a room that were larger than a tea cup, but always I would think back to the original sound and what it was like to hear a Strat through one of the old Fender tube amps. The warmth, the touch and the connection to your heart.
Thanks Harry for furthering the conversation --
Rip
Can I enter a mild caveat to all the praise of HPs contributions over the years, which were seminal. But, there was another side...a kind of overbearing arrogance and apparent disdain for colleagues (at least that is how many of the older 'Absolute Sounds' read to me.) Coupled with that has been an overblown use of language and a thinly disguised sense of self-importance; that, I am afraid, began to be reflect in the attitudes of other writers such as Roy Gregory.
However, HPs editions of the 'Absolute Sound' were still among the greatest hifi mags ever produced . The mag is far better balanced now, but no-where near as much fun!
Well - "The highest trees catch the most wind" - I still have TAS back to issue1 - Far more fun, insightful & thorough than today's sterile efforts.
Speaking of Roy G., notice how HI FI+ is morphing into Absolute Sound which is morphing into Audio?
edited, as accidentally repeated. Sorry!
Moving away from the realm of the ideal and the possible (Harry's quest), to the real and mundane, one absolutely has to acknowledge the heavy degradation of sound quality imposed by the ubiquitous mp3 format, which is found in iPods, satellite radio, cable/satellite TV, i.e., the media most people encounter most often.
MP3 sound quality is significantly worse than even the most mediocre mid-fi solid-state analog sound of yesteryear. Even the heavy equalization this sound often goes through cannot rescue information which is simply not there. About the only glimmer of hope comes from the Wadia iPod sound dock, which can retrieve acceptable sound from WAV format.
Thus, high-end seems to me to be an anachronism kept alive, sadly, by a handful of aging afficioinados.
Audiophiles don't listen to mp3........
Hi Harry,
Good to see you're stil around - sad to read about Gordon and Wilma - a local friend, Graham Thirkell had the pleasure to work with Robert Fine when he was commissioned to set up studios here in Melbourne Australia.
It's a pity there isn't the equivalent of "TAS" for the professional recording world. It almost seems pointless to have improved the standards of playback when there are very few modern recordings worth playing on these systems.
Recently I was in Vienna and had the huge pleasure of listening to a performance of a large Baroque ensemble in the Musikverein - what an epiphany! All serious students of the art should visit this venue to hear what the ultimate playback system should sound like. I also visited the Bosendorfer factory in south Vienna - thank god there is still a market for these sublime instruments.
Another highlight of this trip was to visit Charles Beares in London [around the corner from Wigmore Hall] to hear a $10million Violin "shootout" - between a Stradivarius " Golden Period" , Guarneri del Gesu and a few others - luckiy I recorded this!
It would begreat if the next period of Hi-End would focus on the "source" of music. Otherwise we will be playing the same 1960's recordings forever!
sincerely,
Kostas Metaxas
Harry has left the room
Harry's comments refer to the period where audio reviews were in the "measurements-uber-alles approach" and the subsequent rise of "observational reviewing." I suspect the shift was due not only to a poor choice of measurements by the reviewers themselves, as Harry refers, but were driven as much or more by the limitations of available test equipment, back in the day, as well as by poor measurements themselves.
Like everything else that technology has brought, the advances in test equipment since those dark days of the '60's is analogous to going from hand-crank telephones to cellular phones, in terms of what can now easily be acccomplished, and with much greater speed, accuracy, and precision. Contrast that with humans, where a trained listener was (and still is) like a finely tuned audio spectrum analyzer, dwarfing the measurement systems of those days of yore. Not only that, but the reviewers working with the old measurement systems available to them were, at best, engineers, at worst, something less, not trained metrologists, whose skill and training is focused on the measurements alone, not as a sideline.
But things have changed. Humans are still as good a listener as they ever were, relatively speaking. But the technology available with which to make measurements has equalled, if not surpassed, what a trained listener can do, in most instances, not to mention being much easier to use.
Another area, I believe, that is a weak link in the argument of resting too heavily on "observational reviewing" alone, is the lack of consideration of the listening environment in which the review takes place. For example, the $158,000 Wilson Alexandria X-2 speakers may sound great in Robert Harley's listening room (have you seen the pictures of it on the web?), but there is no guarantee that they will sound spectacular in your room. While measurements don't tell the whole story, it is as good a place to start as any, at least giving an outline of the performance that the speaker (in this example) can deliver (usually) in an anechoic chamber environment. With either approach, however, the final choice has to be with YOUR ears in YOUR room. The relevance of the listening environment to the ultimate performance derived cannot be overstated.
While most reviewers state what ancillary equipment was used during the review, it should also be an explicit requirement, when rating any component, that it applies for this one, right here, right now, period. Truthfully speaking, there can be no other guarantee or implication.
One of the 'snob' audio rags was once accused of "never giving a bad review." If other reviewer's listening environments are as specific, task-designed as Robert Harley's, there may be a reason for that opinion. Of course, taking that to the next step means that, given a 'perfect' listening environment, any technically capable speaker (using the Alexandria X-2 example), regardless of price, could sound much better than sheer cost alone might suggest. High End manufacturer's do not like to hear that. I'm not saying that the Alexandria X-2 isn't a fine component, but there are likely others that perhaps have been dismissed that are quite fine in SOMEBODY's listening environment.)
In short, I think that there needs to be a balance between 'subjective' review and high quality measurements, without placing excessive reliance on either, except by the prospective buyer in his or her listening room, listening to music that they enjoy. That should be the ultimate test upon which any component is judged.
Sorry to hear about Enid. What happened to Sallie Reynolds?
For far more realistic stereo sound use the "Hafler Hookup." Google it or Wiki it. Two speakers in front of you, two speakers behind you, preferably all four speakers of the same species. Run lines to the rear speakers from both positive poles of the stereo amp (or amps). Wire the two rear speakers in series. Insert about a 20 ohm resistor between the two rear speakers. Now your system will play everything that's on the disc. The two positve poles of the amps give you the difference signal that is on the recording but that you never hear with ordinary two-speaker stereo. The 20-ohm resistor reduces the SPL output from the two rear speakers to about ten per cent of the SPL of the front speakers. Unless you walk to within about three feet of the rear speakers you do not hear them playing. Yet they add that ineffable ambience that is on the disc and the result is---well, let's just say you will say to yourself: "What have I been missing all these years!" You'll never go back to ordinary two-speaker stereo.
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