The man with the $1m hi-fi: a cautionary tale
NewsFrom today’s Washington Post:
…The faded photos tell the story of how the Fritz family helped him turn the living room of their modest split-level ranch on Hybla Road in Richmond’s North Chesterfield neighborhood into something of a concert hall — an environment precisely engineered for the one-of-a-kind acoustic majesty he craved. In one snapshot, his three daughters hold up new siding for their expanding home. In another, his two boys pose next to the massive speaker shells. There’s the man of the house himself, a compact guy with slicked-back hair and a thin goatee, on the floor making adjustments to the system. He later estimated he spent $1 million on his mission, a number that did not begin to reflect the wear and tear on the household, the hidden costs of his children’s unpaid labor…
“Nobody wanted to come to our house, because he wanted to put them to work,” said his daughter Patty, 58. “I think we went camping twice, never took vacation. It was just work, work, work.”
Read on here.
And watch the video.
This is hilarious
In my opinion, unless a system can demonstrate its virtues through double blind testing, I’m not interested.
I’ve met a few obsessive audiophiles, music is just a way to test their equipment. Still, their money, their choice of course.
As Thomas Heinitz, who ran a respected HiFi shop in Moscow Road, London, used to say: “Listen to the music, not the money”.
Romy The Cat and his Macondo system is even more fascinating read , perfect for Sunday afternoon 🙂 :
http://www.goodsoundclub.com/Playback/MyPlayback.aspx
http://www.goodsoundclub.com
1) He spent a lifetime and a million dollars to create the perfect system to play…vinyl records.
Technology evolves faster than any audiophile can build.
2) When he passed, his estate sold off his million dollar equipment, bit by bit, on ebay, for about $100K, 10%.
Old technology loses its value faster than any audiophile can use it.
3) Moral: spend your million dollars going to live concerts.
“Old technology loses its value faster than any audiophile can use it.”
Don’t entirely agree with that. The first Quad electrostatic speaker is still regarded by many as being unbeatable in the all-important frequency mid-range (where most of the musical information is) to the extent that there’s a strong secondhand market and businesses offering extensive refurbishments and component replacements.
It’s called the ESL 57, from the year it was introduced.
(One caveat: it’s not suitable for fans of organ music or loud rock, although the bass it does reproduce is done well.)
Of course one could have spent much less, had their children love the place they call home more, but it likely is a better sounding room than any of us will ever hear. After you have 20k in system, returns are ever diminishing, and you have to turn to room correction. Modifying a high end home gets expensive quickly. But yields results a deal person could articulate in a double blind test. Would it be abuse to put a deaf person through a double blind listening test? Food for thought, Barry.
My fascination with audio devices drives me to read and participate in audio/audiophile forums. However, I don’t call myself an audiophile. Why? Audiophiles believe (without proof) many things that go against my knowledge and training as an engineer. A DBT however it is just one PART of proving claims. It should be included as one of many possible elements of a scientific controlled test/experiment, which entails much more than just a DBT. Of course, there are not lot, if any, of those regarding audiophile claims. Because of that, I would posit that the threshold is even lower than 20K. Given known measurements, there is no proof that a 2K and a 2OK system would be distinguishable under a controlled scientific test. I think that is more or less the correct way to express it.
I’m sending this to my wife. I hope it will convince her that things could be so much much more worse that she’ll let me move my main speakers another foot away from the rear wall.
Causes of divorce, in descending order of frequency:
1. Unfaithfulness
2. Financial problems
3. Floor standing speakers
Audiophiles ignore #1, 99% single. Those that aren’t, see #2.
Rather sad really. Amazing his family put up with him as long as they did.
A sad story of obsession. Thanks, but I’ll stick with my 30-year-old Klipsch speakers and other store-bought equipment.
If your objective is the sound reproduced by a live orchestra in a concert hall, wouldn’t the money be better spent going to live venues?
I did not understand even half of the dialogue on that video!!
He had a passion a purpose. The moral of the story is to get one yourself not pass judgement on his.
I’m sick and tired of the hipsters and high-end audio enthusiasts with their million dollar systems trying to make vinyl a thing again. I was dragged kicking and screaming into the CD era when in the ‘80s classical record companies started releasing their products only on CD and cassette. So now I’m supposed to go back to vinyl, and at twice the price of CD’s? I’ll pass, thank you very much.
I would never, EVER dare to call vinyl superior to digital. EVER. As per my post to a comment above, as an engineer, would never do that. That said, I like vinyl. NOT BECAUSE IT IS SUPERIOR. IT IS NOT!
I like it because is FUN! 😀 BUT BUT (and this is a big BUT) I don’t do vinyl for Classical Music. It is the one genre for which vinyl just doesn’t work.
I came of age re: Classical Music with the CD and got used to listening to the music against a background of total silence. Other genres of music disguise a reasonable amount of pops, clicks, surface noise. NOT Classical Music. Digital is still the best medium for CM. My comment applies, of course to RECORDED Classical Music. Of course, there is live CM.
If his daughter is 58, he’s likely in his 80s. His chance of hearing anything above about 4000Hz is negligible. All that money spent on high-end gear that produces sound he can’t hear.
This has little to do with the obsessive/compulsive dude in the video, but it’s a story some may enjoy.
Back in the 1980s when I made my living dwelling amongst audio geeks, my exceptional friend and extraordinary colleague, award-winning audio engineer Dennis Drake, was transferring the original Mercury Living Presence classical library to the
digital domain for release on CD alongside original producer Wilma Cozart Fine (1927 – 2009).
Wilma was a force of nature who lugged in the 35mm equipment used to record some of these performances, which had been stowed in her garage.
I had the great privilege of working with Dennis on many projects and can testify that the man is an artist of the highest order and, like me, a perfectionist.
(When working on the final mastering of a violin concerto, we both picked-up on a minuscule squeak during a complete rest in the music. We could have left it in or, with all the latest digital toys, replaced it with „digital black“ or simply snipped it out. We looked at each other and knew the next step: we went through the entire recording to find another rest of equal or greater length, copied a section of studio silence of the exact duration, and pasted it over the noise to preserve the performance and maintain the ambience of the studio.)
But Dennis found himself dumbfounded by Wilma: she claimed that she could discern between an original master and the digital transfers which she and Dennis created.
Impossible?
Wilma proposed a blind test in which Dennis would, at random, select 10 recordings from the catalogue and play both the original analogue tapes and the transfers; Wilma would identify the playbacks as either „source“ or „digital“.
Wilma scored 10-out-of-10.
fascinating!
Proof, as if any was needed, that audiophiles are b$@%$#t crazy.
I have a casual interest in audio equipment, but I was always more interested in equipment that offered the best sound possible at reasonable cost. What was reasonable for me was probably high by some standards, but certainly not outrageous. Beyond a certain point, the law of diminishing returns is real when it comes to Hi-Fi gear, and every incremental and subjective improvement costs a fortune.
I used to read Stereophile magazine. One of the writers (I think it was Michael Fremer, who was quoted in this story) used to interview famous musicians about their home audio systems. I remember that he would profess astonishment when (as was usually the case) those systems usually turned out to be modest component systems. I guess I can respect the audiophiles’ choice of hobby, but I’m not sure I understand it.
This is something akin to the story in Satyajit Ray’s, The Music Room. A wealthy Indian businessman becomes obsessed with Indian classical music and dance, spending his fortune on it, ignoring his land and neglecting his family. In the end, all is gone.
This guy died a couple of years after this film was made. His eldest son (not the one seen in the film) said “I hope you f—ing die slow,” and they never saw or spoke to each other again. That’s the sort of toll his obsession took on his family. His first wife, before they divorced, would turn up the TV while he tried to listen to his beloved Swan Lake…and referred to it as “pig pond.”
It’s interesting that almost the entire film consists of him spewing techno-babble about his equipment, but hardly shows him listening to it. He would repeatedly talk about finally listening to some music, but he never actually does. That may just be due to the editing, but I suspect he never really loved the music as much as he loved building the system and acquiring records.
I’m guilty of spending more money than I probably should on audio gear and CDs, but I like to think I knew when to stop, and start enjoying the music. This poor guy didn’t live long enough to…even if he wanted to.
As someone lucky enough to have caught the end of a thriving and inexpensive 2nd-hand classical LP market in my home town, a small part of me can relate to this guy’s obsession. I mostly listen to downloads now (Qobuz) but every now and then I do a comparison of a good analogue-era LP (Decca WBs, often) with a 96 or 192kHz download, and I have to say, the LPs still win for the most part: not for absolute clarity, but for a certain exciting ‘it-factor’. That is, IF it was a good pressing in the first place, IF you can find a great copy, IF you can clean them well, and IF you have a good turntable well isolated, etc etc. That whole process is kind of fun, but it does restrict your listening to certain recordings from long ago. It’s a hobby not entirely about the music, but a valid hobby nevertheless — but asking your kids to help build your bespoke listening palace, yeah that’s maybe going too far. The modern era of great-quality downloads does allow us to easily keep track of the world of performance, and that is a wonderful thing which LPs will never compete with.
In my experience, which might or might not be typical, HiFi enthusiasts claim to be concerned about all the factors which contribute to faithful reproduction but, in reality, lots and lots of bass is all that many of them genuinely care about. The rest is just a smokescreen.
Speak to them long enough and the truth will emerge.
Harmless enough ….. unless you live in an apartment.
Has the foundation been inspected?
Good luck to you sir, and long may you continue to enjoy your music.Your listening room looks beautifully done, liveable, cosy, welcoming, and somewhere where you want to listen to and enjoy your collection.