Omituista, itsellä tuo toimii (Sonera) ja kaverilla myös (Elisa). Kokeilin trabasta niin ensin tulee että file not found ja sitten heti perään tuo sivu. Noh, pistän sen tähän liitteeksi
Sound Crazy?
To Audiophiles, Great Music Is Worth Any Price -- Even $140,000
Hugh Campbell with His High End Stereo "There's no going back":
Aeronautical engineer Hugh Campbell at home with his very, very
expensive stereo, fine-tuned to a fare-thee-well. (Tracy A Woodward -
The Washington Post)
By the time he noticed the "refrigerator problem," Hugh Campbell had
spent four years and a fortune building his stereo system, one
super-sleek gizmo at a time. He bought a pair of handcrafted
loudspeakers, each more than five feet tall. He bought a CD player, a
preamplifier, two amplifiers, a digital-analog processor and a tuner
-- all gorgeous boxes of brushed steel and blinking red diodes.
The system cost $140,000. The cables alone -- just the wires that
connect the various components -- set him back a little more than the
price of a new Volkswagen Jetta. Altogether the thing weighed more
than 1,000 pounds, much of it perched on a stand fitted with a special
air bladder to reduce vibrations and improve fidelity. In his modest
house in McLean, Campbell pointed the speakers to a spot in the middle
of his living room, then carefully positioned his favorite leather
chair so the music of Bach and Mahler caromed off at the precise
height of his ears.
Great, he thought. But not perfect. Every time the refrigerator kicked
on, it swallowed a little gulp of electricity, which, he believed,
degraded the sound of his stereo ever so slightly.
Ignore it? Unplug the fridge? No way. Campbell headed back to the
store and purchased a pair of power regenerators, which smooth out the
electricity coming from the wall socket, and send it in a steady flow
straight to his stereo system. Price: $4,000.
"As soon as I put them in, it was really noticeable," says Campbell,
who is 71 years old, gray-haired and almost always smiling. "I just
thought, this is very much better. There's no going back."
Heed it as a warning: There is no going back. The journey of the
high-end audiophile starts with music, winds through gadget-filled
showrooms, and ends with a lot of hand-wringing about kitchen
appliances.
It's a fetish worth about $300 million a year to a handful of hi-fi
companies with names you've never heard, like Conrad-Johnson and Sera.
This planet has its own magazines, its own gurus, its own language,
partisans and proselytizers, heretics and cranks. They listen and
spend, then listen and argue, then listen some more and argue some
more. They are experts on electricity. They think your cell phone is
ruining their sound. They're certain your $950 Toshiba with the six-CD
changer is junk.
All of them are chasing a goal set tantalizingly out of reach: to
reproduce the texture and majesty of live music, right in a living
room. The catch: It can't be done. A machine can almost capture the
fullness and feel of a violin, but it will always come up short. So
audiophiles re-tweak and re-upgrade, improving the sound in ever
smaller increments that cost ever greater sums.
By design, the process is never-ending. Once you have the equipment,
you need air bladders to eliminate vibrations. Once you've eliminated
vibrations, you need better equipment. Then you need better air
bladders, and so on until you've spent an ungodly amount.
Until you've spent $140,000. For that money, a local company called
the Gene Donati Orchestras will send a string quartet to your home and
play on your patio once a week for more than a year. Which is why
audiophiles spend a lot of time defending their sanity.
"You never hear anyone who buys a Rolex called a nut case, even though
there are cheaper quartz watches that tell time just as well," says
Michael Fremer, a senior contributing editor at Stereophile magazine.
"We've got a bad rep. People call us snobs. But usually that goes away
when you sit someone in front of a really amazing system. They always
respond to it. They might say 'I hear it and I don't care.' But nobody
says, 'My $400 Bose Soundwave system is just as good.' "
Who are these people? Fabio, the hunky romance novel cover boy, is an
audiophile. So is Slash, the former Guns N' Roses guitarist, as well
as King Crimson bass player Tony Levin. So is former Washington Post
reporter Carl Bernstein. Notice a pattern?
All men. Men love stuff with knobs, plugs and lights, and they adore
technical jargon about ohms and impedance. Women spend just as much on
CDs and cassettes, according to industry surveys, but men are
typically more ardent about music, more willing to contend that only
an idiot could think "Imperial Bedroom" is Elvis Costello's finest
album. Men are also born upgraders. Whatever they have is somehow
lacking, even if it's superb.
So audiophiles yearn for three-dimensional sound. It's not enough to
hear the kick drum; audiophiles need to feel it. When a guitar is
"behind" another guitar in a recording, the layers should be clear and
consistent. If Ray Davies turned his head slightly while he was
singing "Lola," they'd like to be able to "see" that in the music.
"The instruments should be positioned and defined," Campbell says.
"Not just left to right, but front to back. They should be consistent
and real. On a mediocre system, a viola and a violin sound the same.
But there's a big difference."
The question is whether hearing that difference is worth $139,000.
Circuit City is now carrying some pretty fine gear for less than
$1,000, no air bladder required. With money you didn't spend on a
Campbell-quality stereo, you could buy about 8,300 compact discs.
Isn't there something a little wacko about all this?
"It's an industry based on abuse, greed and arrogance. It takes
advantage of people who love music. Don't glorify this business."
This is Mark Levinson speaking. He is high-end audio's greatest
innovator and salesman. In 1971 he launched a line of equipment that
still bears his name -- most of Hugh Campbell's gear is Mark Levinson
-- and is considered the Rolls-Royce of the market. A former
double-bass player who shared a stage with jazz greats like John
Coltrane, Levinson began tinkering with components in his parents'
basement in Connecticut in the late '60s. He built the mixer used at
the Woodstock festival. Eventually, he and some 25 employees were
selling a few million dollars' worth of high-end gear each year.
But in 1980, after a tussle with his partners, he lost control of both
the company and his name, an experience that has left him sounding
embittered. Today he lives in New York City with his wife, the actress
Kim Cattrall, a star of HBO's "Sex and the City." Two years ago, he
started a new audio company, Red Rose, which has a showroom next to
the Whitney Museum on Manhattan's Upper East Side.
Reached by phone, Levinson sounds a little ornery, but sane for this
crowd. "Imagine if a travel agent sold you a ticket to San Francisco
and you got on the plane and suddenly noticed that you were landing in
Detroit. You call your travel agent and say, 'Why am I in Detroit?'
And he says, 'You just need to buy this little supplement and then I
can get you a ticket to San Francisco.' That's high-end audio today.
It's just this side of crooked."
The business is moving toward complexity, he says, when simple will do
just fine. "How many people need a nine-foot grand piano to be happy
with a piano? We have a system that when it's fully loaded costs
$15,000, which is inexpensive in this market. It's very compact and
very reliable."
All very reasonable. Then he mentions that Red Rose sells a system for
$90,000. And in the middle of the interview, he suddenly announces
that CDs are harmful to people.
Harmful? As in physical harm?
"Yes, they adversely affect humans," he says.
How so?
"I can't really go into it," he says. "We'll have a press conference
about it soon."
For the most part, high-end audio's executives believe in their
products. That includes Sidney Harman, CEO of Harman International, a
Washington-based conglomerate with $3.2 billion in annual sales,
making it the largest hi-fi-only company in the world. He is married
to Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), and works in a stylishly decorated
headquarters downtown, with an office overlooking Pennsylvania Avenue.
Harman thinks that Mark Levinson is overdoing it. "He's talking about
a psychological condition that is in no way unique to high-end audio,"
he says. "I know lots of people who have the same passion for
automobiles. They have an endless schedule of devices to enhance
speed, like turbochargers. Golfers are the same way about their
equipment. The impulse to upgrade is universal."
Of course, people can take it too far and for the wrong reasons. "The
fact that there is this exploitation isn't new to the human race," he
adds. "If you are determined to be the one guy in the building that
has the best audio system, there will be dealers happy to cater to
that desire."
That, it turns out, is entirely true.
Doctor Soundgood
It takes some hunting to find high-end audio. Circuit City doesn't
stock it. When you can buy a system with a DVD-compatible CD player, a
tuner, five tweeters and "50-watt powered subwoofer" all for $699,
it's going to be hard to move a tuner that retails for $17,000.
So you seek out places like Deja Vu Audio, which sits unobtrusively in
a tiny strip mall in McLean. The place feels more like a bachelor pad
than a showroom. The sofas nearly outnumber the stereo systems, and
there are brightly colored paintings on the windowless walls.
Stationed in the rear is a pair of enormous baby blue horn-shaped
speakers, like air-raid sirens in a Tex Avery cartoon. Nearby is a
French turntable that weighs 175 pounds, built on opposing magnets,
which allows the platter to sit on a bed of air, so LPs float
undisturbed by vibrations. It's a $10,000 rig, and it doesn't include
the needle and the tonearm. That's another $5,000.
"It's pretty wild," says Vu Hoang, the store's owner and high-energy
salesman. "I sold two of these this morning."
Hoang, 35, is as cheerful as a motivational speaker. He's selling the
old-school approach to high fidelity -- LPs and vacuum tubes, which,
he'll passionately explain, offer warmer sound than CDs and
transistors. Some of the albums he plays hiss a bit, but he doesn't
seem to notice. He's a missionary, pushing the good news about the
beauty of vacuum tubes.
"I was going to be a doctor," Hoang says. "I was 25 years old and a
researcher at the National Institutes for Health. I bought a $60,000
stereo and it sucked. I had read all the magazines and I was so
impressed that I bought it. Put about $45,000 of it on my Gold Card."
Then he heard the system of his girlfriend's father, who owned an old
vacuum tube amplifier. Hoang was so amazed by the sound, and so
depressed by the life of a doctor, that he quit his job.
"I sold my stuff, including my stereo, and lived on it for two years.
I tried a few other jobs, but mostly I just wanted to listen to music.
So I started buying and selling equipment with vacuum tubes and
spreading the word about this. I listened to music five or six hours a
day. One of the guys I had sold some things to came to me and said,
'This is terrific. Let's open a store that sells just this stuff.' And
with $30,000 in start-up money, we opened Deja Vu."
In the store today, a middle-aged couple from Boston have arrived to
buy a stereo and there are assorted regulars hanging around, eager to
listen to whatever Hoang has handy. The relation between dealer and
customer in this world often looks strangely like that of dealer and
junkie. People hang around these places, searching for their next fix,
which is usually their next upgrade.
Hoang heads down to the store's basement, where there is a single
chair in the middle of the room. To the left there is a stereo system
studded with vacuum tubes and a tangle of wires and switches. He grabs
an LP -- an old Dave Brubeck recording -- and lowers the cartridge
onto the vinyl. Music bursts from a set of $18,000 handmade Italian
speakers. The tweeters are floating, thanks again to opposing magnets.
"The vibrations of the woofer would transfer to the tweeter, so it's
isolated from the woofer," Hoang shouts over the music. "Can you hear
it? It's amazing, isn't it? It feels relaxed. People can't believe all
that sound is coming from these speakers."
He's right. The music sounds like it's coming from everywhere. It
feels round, vibrant and alive. The experience sort of tickles and is
a little eerie; it seems like there's a pianist and a drummer in the
room and you can't see them. All this tickling and eeriness, by the
way, costs $50,000.
Just Out of Reach
Hugh Campbell can pinpoint the beginning. He was a grade schooler,
visiting Radio City Music Hall with his family and listening to a
pianist play Tchaikovsky. He was transfixed. After that, he learned
piano and nurtured a love for classical music that grew while he
earned a master's in aeronautical engineering from M.I.T. in the '50s.
He then spent 30 years as a Navy pilot, with a few tours of Vietnam,
running more than 100 bombing and ground support missions. Never
married and without children, he lives alone with an exquisite garden,
his other passion, and works for a company that oversees government
contracts with the aeronautics industry.
His stereo now sits in an oak library, surrounded by gardening books
and clay curios. He didn't buy this to show off; few of his neighbors
even know about his contraption. Every Saturday, he sets his leather
chair in the middle of his library, by himself. He doesn't read or
make calls. He just listens.
"You wouldn't bring a book to the symphony, would you?" he says.
His serious purchases started in 1993. Four years later, he'd scrapped
his entire system and began upgrading anew, trading up for better
speakers, then a better preamp. "I'd go down to the Gifted Listener,"
the Centreville store where he bought everything, "thinking I'd buy
one thing, and I'd come back with something else."
To the ungifted listener, the system sounds amazing, but it doesn't
deliver the sort of out-of-body experience that it obviously provides
Campbell, who seems transported while he plays some Mahler for a
visitor. The effect is bright and genuine. The "soundstage," as
audiophiles describe the illusion of physical space that the system
seems to re-create, is broad and roomy. Then again, for $140,000 you
can buy a house that feels broad and roomy.
So is this it? Is Campbell done with his buying? Hardly. Having solved
the refrigerator problem, having purchased the finest Mark Levinson
out there, the war against vibrations is just getting started.
"The next thing to do is put the sandboxes under the two power
supplies back there," he says earnestly. "I've been told by people
who've done it that it's really quite a nice improvement."
Mulla kans toimi ihan hyvin tuo linkki. Oli kyllä mielenkiintonen artikkeli. Vielä on itellä ainakin päiviteltävää, saa nähä joko sitä sitten vanhana pappana on pannu tuon 140000$ palamaan
Vaikka kyllähän sitä jo nytkin on mennyt kun alkaa laskemaan, öö, monta rahaa, siis tähän kotiteatteriharrastukseen. Ainakin 40kmk menee rikki, eikä siis tykistä ole tietoakaan. Kuka heittää parhaimman arvon, varmaan kuitenkin kaikilla on vielä tuohon Hugh CampBellin budjettiin matkaa..
Olipas taas kerran harvinaisen vähättelevä ja typerä juttu. Tietenkin 140000$ on paljon, liian paljon, mutta ei ole oikein kaivaa esiin näitä vihoviimeisiä ääri-ilmiöitä esiin ja sitten vertailla niitä 1000$ systeemeihin (jotka ovat, päinvastoin kuin jutussa annetaan ymmärtää, ihan roskaa. IMHO) ja sitten puhua asiantuntevasti hinnan suhteesta laatuun.
Eikös ole jokaisen oma asia, miten asiat arvottaa? Jos journo ei kuule äänessä tarpeeksi eroa niin eikö se ole ihan hänen henkilökohtainen ongelmansa?
Ja jos rahaa on riittävästi niin mikä ettei. Onhan tuossa summassa minusta tuollaiset 100000$ liikaa mutta käärinliinoissa ei ole taskuja, sanotaan. Mihin papan sitten pitäisi sijoittaa rahansa, jotta kateellisetkin sen hyväksyisivät?
Täytyy kuitenkin tunnustaa, etten ole lainkaan vakuuttunut siitä, että extreme-äänentoisto tarjoaa parasta mahdollista ääntä. Siinä vaiheessa kun sijoitetun lisärahan vastineeksi saa enää vaivalloista käsityötä ja eksoottisia teknisiä ratkaisuja, ääni on helposti jo matkan varrella hukkunut johonkin.
Minulla on sellainen usko, että on olemassa jonkinlainen rahallinen lakipiste, josta ylöspäin ääni alkaa HUONONEMAAN vaikka rahaa palaakin yhä enemmän ja enemmän.
Mutta silti: väite, että suuria summia äänentoistoon ei kannata sijoittaa koska halpastereotkin ajavat lähes saman asian, on kerta kaikkiaan kestämätön. Nämä hifistien noitavainot tuntuvat olevan nykyajan trendi, vaikka tavallinen kerskakulutus saakin osakseen hiljaista ihailua.
Ehkäpä tarinan "sankarin" olisi pitänyt ostaa tuliterä Ferrari? Silloin kaikki vain ihastelisivat vireän papparaisen kaahailuja eikä kukaan kysyisi, mitä vikaa on 10000 taalan perusautossa joka tekee 95% siitä, minkä Ferrarikin.
MKL
PS. Päinvastoin kuin ao. jutussa annetaan ymmärtää, "jääkaappiongelma" on ihan todellinen ja havaittavissa monissa ihan normaalinkin hintaisissa systeemeissä.
Viestiä muokkasi viimeksi Klemmari; 18.07.2001 kello 12:20.
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