As We See It - Not-So-Giant Steps

I’m a thirty-year-old puppy doing what I’m told And I’m told there’s no more coal for the older engines,” 

—ANDY PARTRIDGE,

- Art Dudley

 

“Train Running Low on Sould Coal”

“[We] know the truth of this: We would likely live happily ever after with a system from nearly 60 years ago. An idler-drive turntable, some Marantz electronics, and Quad ESL-57s can be very satisfying. The main improvements to be made are not necessarily in the area of musical enjoyment, but rather boring old reliability.”

Charley Hansen of Ayre Acoustics, who made these observations in an e-conversation two years ago, gives himself too little credit: He and many of his colleagues have not only made playback gear that’s more durable than average, they’ve also succeeded in making playback gear that’s safer to use and more portable, and that excels in performance areas where the gear of 60 years ago was often weak: noiselessness, timbral neutrality, the re-creation of 3D space, and realistically wide bandwidth.

Yet much of today’s gear suffers by comparison in reparability—what else can we conclude from junkyards filled with portable music players, midpriced electronics stuffed with now-obsolete solid-state devices, and saddest of all, five-figure CD players. Today’s gear has also taken similarly backward steps in some performance areas where the gear of 60 years ago continues to excel: impact, color, body, drive.