[BC] High end audio

[richwood@pobox.com]

------ At 11:10 PM 7/2/2006, Dana  Puopolo wrote: -------

>Let me tell you about one of those highbrows (true story).
>A friend of mine used to work for a high end audio store in Harvard Square,

I worked at a less highbrow audio store in Harvard Square, Minute Man 
Radio. I spent most of my free time at the original Tweeter store 
just down the street. It was a place where the audio greats would 
gather to talk about audio. Mere mortals could listen in. Henry 
Kloss, Roy Allison, Edgar Villchur and many of the Cambridge-based 
audio greats would sit and BS about the nature of audio.

I recall selling a pair of Magnaplanars, a Marantz 10B Tuner (when FM 
would do it justice) and equally superb preamps, power amps 
(separate, of course) to the then head of the Harvard physics 
department. He wanted the best there was, I believe, just to say he 
had the best there was. After all, Cambridge was one of the nation's 
hotbeds of high end audio. Those were the days before hocus pocus 
took over and people got suckered into high voltage distribution 
cables to make their speakers sound better. $400 per foot.

The stuff really sounded great - especially once the second speaker 
was connected. Even Advent could make their own custom recorded 
cassettes sound incredible on their cassette machine.

Go to the New York High End Audio show (formerly the Stereophile 
show) and see the really great stuff and the high end scams. I recall 
not a single display including an FM tuner. Strangely, there was an 
XM kiosk (they're everywhere, you know, like the IBUZ kiosks). People 
were curious because it was so new. I wonder if the HD Dominion will 
have an IBUZ kisok at the next one as part of their massive 
promotional campaign. They put the headsets on, quickly took them off 
and frowned. Clearly out of place at a high end audio show. Sources 
were CDs, DAT and uncompressed hard drives.

Rich