Just this morning I received an e-mail newsletter from a very nice objectivist-leaning man who works for a very nice objectivist-leaning company. In it he writes, "I accept that the Red-Book digital standard for CDs . . . very closely matches or exceeds human hearing on music. This has been confirmed by recent experiments of down-sampling High Definition records to Red-Book standard and then doing comparisons of the two. All results (that I am aware of at this time) indicate the two standards are indistinguishable in blind testing (footnote 4). And, in my opinion, blind testing of audio gear is stringent enough to reveal any significant problems." The problem with this—an expression of an opinion to which the writer is entitled—is his next statement: "Of course, High Definition standards should be used in mastering recording since each step of the process degrades the quality." In other words, maybe there really is a difference, but it isn't a big enough difference to make a difference. And that, my friends, is subjectivism.
Get off my lawn!
Our disappointment in the quality of new luxury goods vs old luxury goods is hardly the stuff of moral outrage. It's not a big deal. We make do. We can still find the old stuff if we really want it, assuming we can afford it. (That's why they're called luxuries, I suppose.) The objectivist engineers whom we hold responsible are simply doing their jobs in the manner in which they were trained, and many are music-lovers in their own right. And the skeptics who cheer them on . . . well, some of them are nice people, too. (Indeed, the best dentist I ever had, who sadly moved away from our area a few years ago, was a dedicated skeptic—and a thoroughly wonderful, intelligent, delightful, kindhearted human being.) The trouble is, many of the loudest people in the skeptic community, by their own admission, appear to be less interested in investigating seemingly anomalous events with fairness and an open mind than in shooting down everything that strikes them as "woo-woo," foisted on innocent consumers by "flimflam artists" and "fruitcakes." (As you may have noticed, skeptic slang appears to be frozen in an era when Paul Lynde and Arte Johnson ruled the airwaves.) Many of those who would protect us from "pseudoscience" have themselves become "pseudoskeptics" (footnote 5): defenders of a strict point of view rather than unbiased seekers of truth. And it is telling that they care more about you and I being duped by cable manufacturers—and astrologers, and bigfoot researchers, and mentalists—than they do about being themselves duped by the "professional" skeptics whose livelihoods depend on a endless supply of outrage.
And make no mistake, if the debate between the pro- and anti-blind-testing factions ended tonight—poof, gone!— Stereophile would carry on as if nothing had happened: We would continue to produce, each month, a magazine of quality and integrity, reviewing products in the manner we know to have the greatest relevance to the reason for those products' existence. But if the debate ended tonight, so too would Skeptic and Skeptical Inquirer magazines, the James Randi Educational Foundation, and any number of individuals and entities that require a steady stream of donations, which themselves require a similarly steady stream of discordant debate.
That speaks to another unattractive characteristic of the dumber skeptics in the audio trenches: While audio perfectionists tend not to care what's bought and used by people on the other side of the fence, advocates of blind testing are obviously driven apoplectic by the very notion that someone else is enjoying domestic playback in a manner that differs from their own. Which is sad, really. On behalf of all fans of perfectionist equipment, I say, in the spirit of brotherly love: Guys, knock yourselves out. If laboratory-grade "proof" is something you require before parting with your money, then please, by all means, keep your money tight in your hands. We wish you well, and we look forward to seeing you in the afterlife, where all talk will be of music, not of sound.
Though it appears that the most contentious skeptics are unlikely to take heed, I urge them: Please disregard any product, or any genre of product, if its manufacturer is unable to produce a reason for buying with which you are satisfied. Buy what you want. Don't buy what you don't want. Enjoy recorded music in whatever manner suits you best. Believe what you believe—but for God's sake, keep an open mind. And if you can't manage that, then at least stop worrying so damn much about the way the hobby is approached by people who aren't you. Your need for mathematical validation, like your name-calling, your hysteria, and your propensity for using pictures of robots as your chatsite avatars, makes you look like a bunch of angry, jealous, socially inept losers. No offense.
New from Schick
It was in our March 2010 issue that I first wrote about the enduringly recommendable Thomas Schick tonearm: at $1675, the highest-value 12" tonearm I have ever tried (footnote 6). I bought and kept my review sample, which has since seen use with a wide range of EMT and Ortofon pickup heads: integrated combinations of cartridge and headshell in which the former element is generally a low-compliance type and the latter is suitably high in mass.
It hasn't always been easy for Schick owners to get good results with standard-mount cartridges: The arm doesn't come with a headshell, forcing users to choose from the limited selection of same available on the new and used markets. Among the most popular of the current-production headshells—and my choice for the past four years—is the Yamamoto HS-1A, which is made of ebony, and which one sees advertised at prices ranging from $82 to $98. But the Yamamoto weighs only 8.5gm (sans finger lift), which on the face of it would seem too light to be compatible with a low-compliance cartridge.
Finally, in July 2014, Thomas Schick began filling orders for the proprietary headshell he unveiled in May at the High End Show, in Munich. The Schick headshell (249) is no less adjustable than the Yamamoto, yet its 15.2gm mass is far more suited to the sorts of phono cartridges for which, I dare suggest, one buys an extra-long (and thus extra-massive) tonearm in the first place.
The Schick headshell is made from "technical" graphite, soaked with a resin that damps the material's inherent brightness and allows the headshell to be handled without smudging the user's fingers. The design, in which an integral ridge is used for torsional rigidity, is attractively simple. Signal leads are solid copper, apparently with a clear coating for insulation. A setscrew for azimuth adjustment is located on the headshell's inboard side—"for a cleaner look," Schick says.
Because my own Schick headshell arrived only a couple of weeks before this issue's deadline, I've so far had only limited experience of it. But that experience—with my Miyabi 47 (9.27gm) and Miyajima Premium BE Mono (13.6gm) cartridges—has been thoroughly positive. The most obvious differences between the Yamamoto and the Schick are the latter's far tighter, cleaner bass and, remarkably, the manner in which cartridges mounted in the Schick suffer less breakup during heavily modulated passages. Both qualities, of course, are among the things one might expect from a phonograph whose combination of tonearm and cartridge exhibits a more optimal resonant frequency.
249 is surely more than I'm used to spending on a headshell—my sample isn't a freebie or a loaner—and the price may be a bridge too far for some hobbyists. But, as Thomas Schick writes from his new workshop in Liebenwalde, about 24 miles north of Berlin, graphite is extremely difficult to machine; consequently, graphite parts are very expensive. Incidentally, the company that machines the graphite for Schick also makes graphite parts for a German manufacturer of vacuum tubes—something that Schick didn't realize when he first approached the company with his idea for a headshell. "When I was trying to explain to the owner what a headshell actually is, he simply said, 'Yeah, sure—like for tube audio?' I was startled, but I knew I was at the right place."
Footnote 4: Referring, presumably, to "Audibility of a CD-Standard A/D/A Loop Inserted into High-Resolution Audio Playback." E. Brad Meyer and David R. Moran. JAES Vol.55 No.9, September 2007.—Ed. Footnote 5: This term was coined by one of their own: Marcello Truzzi, a founder of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, who quit that organization out of disgust with his colleagues' habit of "moving the goalposts" whenever it appeared they might be losing a battle with someone who wished to validate a seemingly anomalous finding. Footnote 6: Thomas Schick, Dorfallee 47, 16559 Liebenwalde, Germany. Tel: (49) (33054) 69-36-38. Web: www.schick-liebenthal.de.
Our disappointment in the quality of new luxury goods vs old luxury goods is hardly the stuff of moral outrage. It's not a big deal. We make do. We can still find the old stuff if we really want it, assuming we can afford it. (That's why they're called luxuries, I suppose.) The objectivist engineers whom we hold responsible are simply doing their jobs in the manner in which they were trained, and many are music-lovers in their own right. And the skeptics who cheer them on . . . well, some of them are nice people, too. (Indeed, the best dentist I ever had, who sadly moved away from our area a few years ago, was a dedicated skeptic—and a thoroughly wonderful, intelligent, delightful, kindhearted human being.) The trouble is, many of the loudest people in the skeptic community, by their own admission, appear to be less interested in investigating seemingly anomalous events with fairness and an open mind than in shooting down everything that strikes them as "woo-woo," foisted on innocent consumers by "flimflam artists" and "fruitcakes." (As you may have noticed, skeptic slang appears to be frozen in an era when Paul Lynde and Arte Johnson ruled the airwaves.) Many of those who would protect us from "pseudoscience" have themselves become "pseudoskeptics" (footnote 5): defenders of a strict point of view rather than unbiased seekers of truth. And it is telling that they care more about you and I being duped by cable manufacturers—and astrologers, and bigfoot researchers, and mentalists—than they do about being themselves duped by the "professional" skeptics whose livelihoods depend on a endless supply of outrage.
It was in our March 2010 issue that I first wrote about the enduringly recommendable Thomas Schick tonearm: at $1675, the highest-value 12" tonearm I have ever tried (footnote 6). I bought and kept my review sample, which has since seen use with a wide range of EMT and Ortofon pickup heads: integrated combinations of cartridge and headshell in which the former element is generally a low-compliance type and the latter is suitably high in mass.
It hasn't always been easy for Schick owners to get good results with standard-mount cartridges: The arm doesn't come with a headshell, forcing users to choose from the limited selection of same available on the new and used markets. Among the most popular of the current-production headshells—and my choice for the past four years—is the Yamamoto HS-1A, which is made of ebony, and which one sees advertised at prices ranging from $82 to $98. But the Yamamoto weighs only 8.5gm (sans finger lift), which on the face of it would seem too light to be compatible with a low-compliance cartridge.
Finally, in July 2014, Thomas Schick began filling orders for the proprietary headshell he unveiled in May at the High End Show, in Munich. The Schick headshell (249) is no less adjustable than the Yamamoto, yet its 15.2gm mass is far more suited to the sorts of phono cartridges for which, I dare suggest, one buys an extra-long (and thus extra-massive) tonearm in the first place.
Because my own Schick headshell arrived only a couple of weeks before this issue's deadline, I've so far had only limited experience of it. But that experience—with my Miyabi 47 (9.27gm) and Miyajima Premium BE Mono (13.6gm) cartridges—has been thoroughly positive. The most obvious differences between the Yamamoto and the Schick are the latter's far tighter, cleaner bass and, remarkably, the manner in which cartridges mounted in the Schick suffer less breakup during heavily modulated passages. Both qualities, of course, are among the things one might expect from a phonograph whose combination of tonearm and cartridge exhibits a more optimal resonant frequency.
249 is surely more than I'm used to spending on a headshell—my sample isn't a freebie or a loaner—and the price may be a bridge too far for some hobbyists. But, as Thomas Schick writes from his new workshop in Liebenwalde, about 24 miles north of Berlin, graphite is extremely difficult to machine; consequently, graphite parts are very expensive. Incidentally, the company that machines the graphite for Schick also makes graphite parts for a German manufacturer of vacuum tubes—something that Schick didn't realize when he first approached the company with his idea for a headshell. "When I was trying to explain to the owner what a headshell actually is, he simply said, 'Yeah, sure—like for tube audio?' I was startled, but I knew I was at the right place."
Footnote 4: Referring, presumably, to "Audibility of a CD-Standard A/D/A Loop Inserted into High-Resolution Audio Playback." E. Brad Meyer and David R. Moran. JAES Vol.55 No.9, September 2007.—Ed. Footnote 5: This term was coined by one of their own: Marcello Truzzi, a founder of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, who quit that organization out of disgust with his colleagues' habit of "moving the goalposts" whenever it appeared they might be losing a battle with someone who wished to validate a seemingly anomalous finding. Footnote 6: Thomas Schick, Dorfallee 47, 16559 Liebenwalde, Germany. Tel: (49) (33054) 69-36-38. Web: www.schick-liebenthal.de.
