to the original emotion?
Editor: I think we have to accept the fact that Stereophile is no longer committed to high-fidelity sound reproduction. That conclusion is inescapable after reading the first of Markus Sauer's "God is in the Nuances" articles (January 2000, Vol.23 No.1).
Sauer argues that, since most music listeners prefer distorted sound, and since these listeners should choose audio components that distort the sound in the way they find pleasing, it is regrettable that "You cannot tell what your emotional response to a component's sound will be from a description by a critical listener..."
This carries us back to the days of the console-model and table-model radio/phonos with distortion engineered in to create a characteristic "sound" for the brand line: customers shopped for the Stromberg-Carlson "bass," the "mellow" sound of the Philco, the varying frequency ranges and the distortions therein of the Zenith, Silvertone, Majestic, Magnavox, RCA Victor, Emerson, ad infinitum, sets. The playback equipment was lousy, so we shopped around to find sets that sounded good to us when we played the recordings (also, for the most part, lousy) that were available to us.
High fidelity is the opposite of that approach. The goal of hi-fi equipment is accurate reproduction of the signal fed into it. In the beginning, that meant live sounds, usually orchestras and bands. But since some of the early adherents were interested in sound but not necessarily music, they tested their systems with everyday sounds---jingling door keys, the snaps and crackles of a Volkswagen motor cooling, even the sound of rain, captured when a hi-fi radio station hung a microphone out a window one rainy day. High fidelity meant fidelity to actual sounds.
That changed. More people became interested, bringing in more of those who listened to the highly processed, distorted, never-heard-in-the-real-world sound of bop, bebop, rock'n'roll, rock, heavy metal, synthesizers, et al. The initial population of sound nuts, classical-music freaks, and jazz freaks enlarged to include people who, knowingly or not, wanted the sounds coming from their "stereos" to produce the same effect in them as did recreational drugs. More and more representatives of this mindset became reviewers of audio equipment.
J. Gordon Holt warned us about this. He insisted that evaluation had to be based on real sounds---did the oboe sound like an oboe, the trombone like a trombone, the orchestra like an orchestra, the hall like the actual recording venue? For this position, the old coot was derided, and Stereophile proceeded to publish reviews describing how sounds that had never existed in real life sounded when played through certain components. But, since there is no reference sound to compare these sounds against, reviewers talked about how a certain component "kicked butt," unaware that what they were really praising was the way the equipment distorted the sound in ways that they found pleasing. They stopped comparing sound systems against reality and instead compared sound systems against each other.
Markus Sauer's article is an inevitable result of the movement away from high fidelity. In the article, Sauer establishes premises, supports them by citing a study conducted by Jürgen Ackermann, and comes up with the conclusion quoted (in part) above. But I find many of Sauer's premises questionable and/or insupportable, and the Ackermann study poorly designed (although rigorously conducted) and fatally flawed.
I would dearly love to go into detail about my problems with Sauer's article and Ackerman's study, but I doubt that I would ever be allotted the space necessary to support my slanderous accusation. So I will confine myself to addressing what I consider the "fatal flaw" in Ackerman's study: Ackerman compares the "emotional" reactions of test subjects to three varying sound systems, telling us which of the three systems that particular test panel preferred. That's all. We can't extrapolate from that, or draw any general conclusions, or decide which set is best, or even how other test panels would rate the same systems.
Ackermann's study, as described by Sauer, is fatally flawed because it did not establish a reference standard, such as comparison of the three systems against live music or a reference system of known quality. Without that, his study has no relevance to high-fidelity reproduction.
Sauer's self-described "far-reaching" conclusion is that "you cannot tell what your emotional response to a component's sound will be from a description by a critical listener." Why would any music-loving audiophile want to? What we want are components with the least possible sound of their own; components that will pass through, with the least possible distortion, the music we feed into them. If there is distortion that arouses emotion, let it be in the source itself---the tape, the CD, the LP, the DVD, whatever---but not in the equipment.
It is true that, in the old days, we compared the "sound" of the components---the HH Scott against the Fisher against the Marantz against the McIntosh against the Dynakit against the Heathkit against the Bell against the Bogen against whatever---and we made our choices on the basis of what "sounded best" to us. But the choice was based on the absence of sound created by the components themselves: We picked equipment that we thought imposed the least distortion on the signal fed through it---the equipment that gave us the closest illusion of real music coming from real performers on real instruments in real acoustic spaces.
Now, on the rare possibility that some reader has stuck with me this far, I want to make it plain that I do not want to deprive people of their right to listen to any kind of music or any kind of sound system. I do not want to stop reviewers from writing for those consumers who want their components to have characteristic sounds. I do not look down on magazines that cater to that taste---after all, such listeners make up the majority of listeners, and catering to them makes good economic sense. I do not in any way feel superior to people who want to play distorted music through sets that impose more distortion. I'll let them ride their horse if they let me ride mine.
But I think Stereophile is at a crisis point and needs to make a decision. I see three courses of action: go back to dealing with high-fidelity reproduction; stick to the present course into the sound-for-sound's-sake camp; or split into two separate publications. I strongly doubt that one publication can serve the needs of two such disparate populations.
Let me make that even stronger: It is impossible for Stereophile to keep a foot in each camp and remain the highly regarded (although frequently attacked) and respected publication of record that it has been.---Paul A. Alter, Pittsburgh, PA,
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