|
All right, here's my view of where we are and where I'd like to go:
Any idiot can sit on a mountaintop and try to answer questions for those who drop by. The problem is that you end up answering the same questions over and over. Sure, you can do it, but it gets boring, and frankly the whole hermit-guru lifestyle never appealed to me. If nothing else, caves in mountain tops rarely have electricity, which makes running a decent stereo a bit difficult.
I'd like to try to put into place a framework where people can learn things pertaining to audio. Think of it as a very large-scale FAQ; the University of Audio, if you will. With luck we can have a few visiting professors now and then. Nelson Pass drops by sometimes. Perhaps a few others could be persuaded to do so. It certainly would be nice to have one of the better speaker manufacturers visit, wouldn't it? But part of that will depend on you. If Stephen Hawking came to town, you wouldn't bog the poor man down with questions about simple arithmetic, would you? I hope not. It would be more appropriate to use your time with him asking about black holes and dark matter. If, by chance, someone who makes a living at this does show up, please be polite so they'll come back. Don't ask silly, trivial questions. Think before you speak.
It's not as though we're swimming in good, reliable information and can afford the luxury of offending (...or boring...) folks who might have something to offer.
The books out there are few and generally pathetic. There are resources scattered here and there on the web, but they're of uneven quality. I can count on my fingers the sites that I could recommend without saying "...but..." followed by a disclaimer or two.
This is ridiculous.
I'm not sure what format would work best for this, but I'd like to get some things written down that would take care of the fundamentals, so that the time in the 'research labs' scattered here and there across the planet could be more productive. We wouldn't have to stop to answer the phone every five minutes--we could keep right on trying to figure out some of the more subtle points of audio. We've got some people here who actually give a damn about audio and have the ability to do interesting things. Let's let 'em work.
Ideally, the whole thing would run itself. Someone could surf in, take the the amplifier class, and sail off into the sunset with some knowledge about the whichness of the whyfors of how an amplifier is designed. Or a speaker. Or a preamp.
Or how to listen...something overlooked by every single book and web site I've seen. Learning to hear is without question the single most fundamental skill required in listening to music. Yet no one addresses the issue. A rather glaring oversight, wouldn't you say? Sadly, I think it says something about the priorities of those who wrote the books and the websites. Given time, perhaps we can get to that, too.
The 1000 post thing?
That just happened because I talk too much...
Grey
|
Congratulations GRollins 1000 posts
)
