George Reisch

Suppose you've put aside some cash for a new preamp. You survey the field and zero in on the Musical Ecstasy 1000 and the Sonic Nirvana Special. Both got good reviews in all the magazines, they look great, and each will set you back about the same number of mortgage payments. So you visit your dealer and camp out for a weekend or two. You listen, you think, you walk around the store, you listen some more, you recalculate your tax return. You listen some more. Finally, you have a winner. "I want that one," you tell your dealer; "the Sonic Nirvana."

Pollock, Rothko, Amperex, and Sylvania? Last spring I went to a contemporary art show out on Chicago's Navy Pier. I wanted to get away from things with wires and knobs—you know, rub elbows with Chicago's better-dressed, sip some wine, maybe practice talking about artistic creations that I usually don't understand ("It's so brutally honest...yet, somehow, still deceptive"). But there's no rest for the weary, confused audiophile. Along with artists, paintings, and sculptures from all over the world, thousands of vacuum tubes had descended on the Pier.

Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night; God said, Let Newton be! And all was light. &mdash;<B>Alexander Pope</B>

In debates about audio, philosophy, literature, fine art, or whatever, people often adhere to either <I>absolutism</I> or <I>relativism</I>. Absolutism supposes, for example, that <I>either</I> analog or digital is superior and that whichever is better holds for <I>all</I> parties concerned. Michael Fremer, for instance, is not just advertising his opinion about the superiority of analog; he believes that <I>everyone</I> would acknowledge it if they paid attention to the evidence. Relativism, on the other hand, teaches that no such absolute and univocal consensus can be reached. In the end, we all have our own subjective preferences, and that, quite simply, is that. If we disagree about whether tube amps are better than solid-state, or single-ended is better than push-pull, <I>c'est la vie</I>.