We’re told all kinds of things by hifi extremists. One thing these things have in common is a level of certainty coupled with bullying bravado that makes any amount of disagreement an act of war.
“As long as you like listening to distortion…”
“If you like lossy…”
“A fool and his money…”
The most important question that is perpetually in search of an answer in every extremist view is a simple one—What’s the point of listening to music on the hifi?
And the correct answer, and there’s really only one, is—whatever the hell we want it to be.
There is no wrong way to listen to music on the hifi because it’s a personal matter. We’re not putting together our hifi’s for some universal purpose, some greater good according to some master plan. We are putting together a music-making system that pleases us. The nature of this pleasure being purely personal.
I was reminded of sloppy extremist thinking during Axpona, all too often, where I heard all manner of bullying bravado. Declarations of good and bad and attractive and ugly attributed to things as if these traits are core attributes of DACs, amplifiers, turntables, and loudspeakers instead of what they actually are—questions of taste.
I have one simple solution to offer that can correct for this kind of thinking that isn’t really thinking at all—be kind.
