By Paul McGowan From PS Audio

Few news sources report the mundane, the uneventful, the day-to-day ho hum that makes up 90% of our lives. Instead, news is made when that which does not fall into the category of ordinary occurs. Same is true with reviews, same is true with these daily posts.

Turn on the morning radio and if you didn’t know better, you’d think the world is falling apart at the seams. Read one of my excited posts about a new discovery or revelation and you’d think everything I touch turns to gold—when the truth is very much different. I don’t write of the many failures or the years of hard work that resulted in single newsworthy success, just like a newspaper doesn’t report on someone’s average day.

Day upon day, life is filled with the routine that most of us tend to ignore. It is our occasional failures and successes we take note of to shape our lives. We each believe the 10% of noticeable ups and downs are what define us, not the 90% we spend between events.

I would suggest the opposite is true.

I forget the hours and hours of uneventful pleasure I get from listening to music, chatting with customers, helping people have a better experience, figuring out problems, untangling daily knots, working out at the gym, making my grandkids laugh, listening to their struggles.

It is not the newsworthy that shapes who we are.

SOURCE: http://www.psaudio.com/pauls-posts/the-problem-with-news/

IMAGE: www.pinterest.com

Comment From Soundmind

Dog bites man, not news. Man bites dog news.

New tweeter that’s marginally better than its predecessor not news. Digital recordings replace analog news. But you’d hardly know the difference from the endless hyperbole, the noise that is 99.9999% of of what this industry puts out because all they have is mostly minor tweaks the hardly matter beans. This is not just true for the audiophile industry but for the recording industry as well. So how do you sell an endless parade of products that are all essentially the same? Advertise the hell out of them. Put minor differences under a magnifying glass. Make a mountain out of a mole hill. And most important of all, keep your market ignorant. The best way to do that is to find a doctrine that works and stick with it. Today’s stereo systems are conceptually identical to those you could have bought in 1958. A signal source, an amplifier, and a pair of speakers. The form may be different but the system concept is exactly the same. The results are essentially the same too. Never has so much made out of so little by so many. An ant crawled up its little hill and you’d think it had reached the summit of Mount Everest. That’s why anything really different is so startling even if it doesn’t work well. It’s what audiophiles keep hoping for but never get. Why else would they keep swapping and shopping.

As for the recording industry its latest whizbang idea is high resolution audio. They want to convince you that what you can’t hear matters and most of the recordings purported to be high resolution have nothing but a lot of extra zeroes over their more mundane versions because there was little or no signal above 20 khz on the original recording. As for expanded dynamic range, most of the recordings produced, pop, rock etc. only have a range of about 10 db. It’s tough for a PHD in recording engineering to reconcile what he knows to be true is in direct conflict with what he sells. Here’s a link to someone who actually does make recordings that have an extended range. Only problem is, no one can hear the difference, not even him. His words, not mine. Here are excerpts of what he said and a link to the lecture he gave where he said it. BTW, he hated DSD. He considers it inferior.