The most frequently-quoted “law” in the domain of high end audio (and home theatre as well) is the Law of Diminishing Returns. As you spend more and more, each dollar buys you smaller and smaller improvements, and so beyond a certain point you should just let it go. Corollary to the law: only people with ultra-sensitive trained ears can hear the tiny improvements that really expensive gear can bring. Let me leave aside, for the purpose of this column, the question of whether certain expensive products bring any improvement at all. Lots of them don’t, and we know that, but let’s consider products that do, however slight the improvements may be. We know that physical laws are commonly proved mathematically, and so the proponents of the Law of Diminishing Returns use numbers to illustrate their thesis. Example: beyond a certain amount of money (on which everyone does not agree, by the by), spending 30% more will bring you only a 10% or even a 5% improvement. You’ve heard that, right? Where do those figures come from? Do you figure they get political polling organizations to determine those numbers? Are their results accurate to within plus or minus 2.3%, 19 times out of 20… The problem is this. It’s easy to do math on product prices, and therefore to calculate that one product costs 15% more than another product, at least if we ignore street price. So far so good, but how do you attach figures to the sound? What does it mean to say that one product sounds “15% better” than another? How do you put number on what is — or should be — an emotional experience? Can you determine that your spouse loves you 12.7% more than your previous paramour? Better not go there. You can’t use math on sound quality, or music, or love, because such things are qualitative, not quantitative. <strong>And</strong> once you understand that difference, you 82 ULTRA HIGH FIDELITY Magazine State of the Art by Gerard Rejskind will understand what is wrong with not only the “Law of Diminishing Returns,” but also the mindset of those who call themselves objective reviewers. We actually have different grammar to differentiate between the qualitative and the quantitative. If you haven’t repressed everything your teachers told you, you’ll recall that you got rapped on the knuckles, if only figuratively, for such phrases as, “There’s less people downtown this weekend.” You don’t use “less” for anything that can be counted, such as people or chocolates. The next time you’re listening to music and feeling mellow, think about the many qualitative values that don’t lend themselves to mathematical evaluation. There’s the music you’re actually listening to, obviously, but what else? I’ve already mentioned love, or even affection. Do you like friend A more than friend B? Perhaps, but would you feel comfortable saying that you like him/her 32% more? Of course not. Would you say your daughter is 18.3% more courteous than your son? Would you say your best friend is 42.8% more STATE OF THE ART: THE BOOK Get the 258-page book containing the State of the Art columns from the first 60 issues of UHF, with all-new introductions. See page 6. understanding than… But that way lies madness. Let’s return to music reproduction. You may judge that an amplifier you’re thinking of buying sounds better than your current amplifier, and perhaps you’re right. What does it mean to say that it’s better? You might judge that you enjoy your music more when you listen with that amplifier, but how much more? Can you put a figure on it? In fact that’s not what you need to do at all. Listen to your amp, and then the one you’re thinking of buying, and sure enough the second one sounds better. After a while come back to your own amplifier (that’s the sort of thing we do all the time), and see how much of a comedown it is. Is it 19% less good? Is that the same percentage you would have given when switching the other way? When you want to improve the quality (I repeat, the quality) of your music, you evaluate whether the music touches you more than it did before, or gets you more involved in its magic. These are the reasons you might spend money on a good system, and they are not things you can put figures on. Yes, I know, we do try to put figures on everything today. The earthquake in Chile, or in Haiti, is the strongest since… Check Wikipedia, and you’ve got the answer. Or check Craigslist and you’ll see that a potential lover’s appeal is often reduced to measurements of height and maybe chest size. Is it a coincidence that digital audio, the major innovation of our era, is one that transforms music into a series of numbers? Charles Seife, in his book Proofiness: The Dark Arts of Mathematical Deception, writes that “If you want to get people to believe something really, really stupid, just stick a number on it.” That’s what’s wrong with the Law of Diminishing Returns, and with the attempt by some reviewers to give a product a numerical score. We know that, at the threshold of the bedroom, it is time to leave the numbers behind. It’s the same when you open the door of the listening room.
Why do UHF readers start reading their magazines at the back? Countless readers have confirmed it over the years: when they get their hands on the latest issue of UHF, they open it to the last page. The reason all of them mention: Gerard Rejskind’s last-page column, State of the Art. Since the magazine’s founding, the column has grappled with the major questions of high end audio. It has been acclaimed by readers around the world. Now, the columns from the first 60 issues of UHF are brought together into one book. Each is exactly as it was originally published, and each is accompanied by a new introduction. Order your copy today: $18.95 in Canada or the US, C$32 elsewhere in the world, air mail included.
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No. 89 CAN $6.49 / US $7.69 RETURN
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Issue No. 89 Cover story: Two of th
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I HATE DOG EARS! (SORRY FIDO) We’
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I’m looking forward to the Simaud
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started talking to me and I was sta
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I’m using a Cardas Lightning cabl
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Leslie, it’s painful to realize t
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music from a computer via Ethernet
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I remember when Israel Blume of Coi
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Touring the Salon there many turnta
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- Page 39 and 40: THE ANNIVERSARY COLLECTION: Issues
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