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Uh oh…imminent sighted listening fantasy warning, red light alert…To which Jim Austin (JA2) responds:
I just want to make it clear that the opinion expressed by JA1 here, though very well-supported, is not universally shared.
“Certain features”? Is the term “low damping factor” going to cause Stereophile reader brains to explode? And notice how keen he is to call it a feature? As if he would choke on calling a limitation a limitation, a bug a bug.It's true--no one connected with reality can deny it--that certain features in old-school tube amps cause departures from neutrality, especially with loudspeakers with impedance curves that drop below, let us say, 4 ohms, which is most modern loudspeakers.
Some comments in this thread want to argue that Austin is referring to pleasant sounding distortion here, and not magic. I disagree. Distortion is perfectly tangible. Nobody calls it intangible.No one can deny it because they are measurable at clearly audible levels. But there's another school of thought--embraced by certain other Stereophile writers--that believes that something less tangible is retained in some such amplifiers that is lost in demonstrably more accurate ones.
It’s clear to me that Austin is referring to things that are not included in routine measurements. Good old magic sauce.
I HEREBY DISMISS THEM OUT OF HAND…on behalf of all rational humans who understand that Austin’s views are driven by his renowned denial of the Sighted Listening Effect and his ‘out of hand’ dismissal of the need for controlled subjective listening conditions.Such opinions are based on subjective experience--self-perceived connection with the music. This makes them literally irrefutable-- they cannot be tested objectively, so they cannot be contradicted, which is annoying--yet (and this is my opinion, as the magazine's editor), in a magazine committed to subjective experience--to listening--above all else, such opinions must not be dismissed out of hand.
It is Austin, in fact, who is “dismissing out of hand” something that is “literally irrefutable”, namely, the fake sonic impressions that are born of sighted listening.
The irony of what he is writing is galling. The blatant hypocrisy. The very anti-science of it.
Just because a bazillion flies eat sh**, doesn’t mean I have to take sh** seriously as a dinner suggestion.Edit: I thought I should add that the opinions/beliefs I'm referring to are held by many of the most experienced, devoted, passionate audiophiles. I do not take that lightly.
Jim Austin, Editor
Stereophile
Let me reveal Austin’s immaculate hypocrisy with a simple question: why does he not append every sighted listening review on his madazine with his warning, “ I just want to make it clear that the opinion expressed by (reviewer) here, though very well-supported, is not universally shared”?