rfg@hound.UUCP (R.GRANTGES) (06/05/85)
[] First, sorry for my borderline pugnacious attitude in previous missive. Re: decision to wait 5 years. I have observed before and see it happening again, that when any <real> advance comes along that greatly changes the state of the art and tends to outmode large quantities of goods that are sitting around looking for buyers, then a strange thing happens: it becomes almost impossible to find any business enterprise that will demonstrate the new advance without fudging the demo so as to hide reality. This was true in the 1950's when Ed Vilchur brought out the AR loudspeaker. Somehow you couldn't understand what everyone was so excited about. When you heard them in stores they sounded mediocre or sometimes just awful. They were widely known to have a "distant" sound. On the other hand, when you heard them on your friends homes they sounded as revolutionary for their time, as CD's do today. Startling! THe distant sound? well, how many people check the setting of the tweeter level controls on speaker demos? It became well known that some emporiums demo'd AR speakers with burned out tweeters. Things were so bad, in fact, that AR introduced "listening rooms" in three or four major cities where you could listen to their speakers in a home-type environment, but you could not buy them there. One was in a specially built room in Grand Central station, NYC. So, my message to you is, Don't believe only what you hear in salons. These guys are in business to make money and to do that they have to sell. Borrow one and listen at home. Listen in your friends homes - people you can trust. If you still feel you need to wait 5 years, well...fine, that's the answer for you. Also, by the way, try Stax phones before you automatically relegate them to the category "headphones, I hate headphones!" They are about as unlike regular hi-fi phones as you can get. And in the opposite direction from the little cobalt-samarium wonders you see all around. Try it, you may like it. -- "It's the thought, if any, that counts!" Dick Grantges hound!rfg