Why We Need Audiophiles
Recommended reading courtesy of Gizmodo for the audiophiles among us (ummmm, that should be all of you, right?)
This is Michael Fremer. He’s listening to “Avalon” by Roxy Music on his $350,000 stereo system. It sounds excellent. He’s a bit crazy, but if you love music, you need him.
Fremer, if you have yet to decipher this, is an audiophile of the highest calibre. Literally millions of dollars of premium audio equipment have passed through his listening room under review for Stereophile magazine, and he’s been obsessing about vinyl since he was four years old, memorizing the labels of his parents’ 78s. A man who, when digital recording and reproduction methods began to surface culminating in the compact disc’s takeover as the predominant music format, became a figurehead for the vinyl superiority movement, staunchly advocating its greater tonal resolution over a CD’s 44.1 kHz max. (See this MTV clip for Fremer in action, circa 1993.)
In short, a species of human I had never known prior to hanging out with him in his New Jersey basement listening room last week, and a species, frankly, I was skeptical of in just about every possible way.
Upon getting picked up by Fremer at the train station near his home, my fears immediately began to feel all too real. It was but a minute or two into our car ride from the station that a rant on Walt Mossberg’s inferior review of the Airport Express, Apple’s music-streaming mini-router that Fremer and I both enjoy in our home systems, begins in earnest:
“If he’s not going to tell people how it sounds, then what’s the fucking point? Don’t step into my world, Walt!” Multiple emails of complaint to poor Walt are alluded to. I am definitely thinking “uh oh” at this point.
Austin Campus
