How much money do you want to waste?

time for my two cents worth. i am a brick mason. nothing more nothing less. i change the innerconnects, and i can tell the difference. this is a blue collar point of view, and hearing of course. good thread craig. i love it when we all come together.. can't wait to go camping with everyone.. just joking. have a great 2002, and keep the questions coming.. i keep learnin everyday..

Wow, really interesting we can try to pull Kant into the picture of audiophilia. This sort of begs the question of whether the enjoyment of music via hi-fi is a physical or metaphysical one: i think most true audiophiles such as yourself will agree it's the latter. Just to make things clear, though, Kant never delved into subjectivity. Rather, he reinforced the validity of Hume's objectivity by combining it with a lens of a priori, which is super-real, not subjectivity.

It is also quite interesting how we audiophiles have a sense of space and time (would this be considered prat?). However, is this sense of space and time, in audio terms, a priori or synthetic? I would argue it is synthetic because it is an conglomeration of many things we've experienced before audiophelia such as the pace and rhythm of live performances, different degrees of spaciousness such as sight-seeing at the Grand Canyon (yes, space and time is deemed a priori by Kant, but, I think reproduction of space and time is semantically and realistically synthetic).

Regarding subjective vs. objective in terms of building a hi-fi system. I must maintain my position that it is an objective means to a subjective end. I have to say building a system of physics, engineering and trial and error. Let me make a strawman example, if subjectionist is in charge of producing stereo equipment, we might have a stereo company composed of surrealists that are trying to sell us breadmakers and claiming they are Krell amps (which reminds me of the king's new clothing).

Regarding audio neurosis, these people who are competing with the Jones can have both good and detrimental effects, based on their intelligence and taste. Their money is obviously going to the pockets of audio researchers and designers who will improve on the status quo. Lets hope these money go to the right people who have integrity and dilegence to reproducing true audio sound for the enjoyment of the end users. These people with neurosis have good ears too, I hope.

This being said, I am some what neurotic too. I enjoy audio, yet I am never happy truly with it. Maybe I should pick up an instrument and learn to play for myself. Nah, I rather like immersing myself in my own system; sort of like Zen and Motorcycle Mechanic...(or whatever that book is called).

The intermediary step between objectivism and subjectivism is rationalism, why things sound the way they do (or at least more rational answers as to why they sound the way they do, not just because I changed a cable, but what about this cable and its particular design is changing the sound, and express this in even more precise manner, mathematize it, scientifically audible terms). From there we could lay the truth as our source and say some things are more accurate than others (now whether or not they sound better is another story since the source itself may be bad), more faithful to the source, and then we'd have objectivism. What's amusing is their very methods, and/or the things they espouse, could never have even come to exist under their philosophy in the first place, nothing would have ever progressed to this state under subjectivism: lets bash current mirrors on the input stage of an amplifier and praise some simpler asymetrical resistive loading? That said the subjectivist ideology and its place in the current audio world certainly lacks, consistency, if nothing else.

OK Smiley.

What kind of cables did Kant use?