Extreme audio

A tale of obsession and loss:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/interactive/2024/ken-fritz-greatest-stereo-auction-cost/

 

I figure a lot of us have heard about this over the years, but seeing some of it laid out like that is... yeah.

The nice thing about headphones is, I don't think there's any way to possibly get carried away to that degree. Not even close.

 

Where's the non paywall version?

 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/h...eo-the-real-cost-was-unfathomable/ar-AA1mUqsx if you're looking to slip that.

 

Should be able to use a incognito/private window in your browser to load full article.

 

No, I'm sure someone will find a way. I remember reading a head-fi classifieds ad about a guy who spent his way into insolvency.

 

This gift link may be un-paywalled https://wapo.st/47ErwZI

 

Didn't work with Firefox

 

I've seen that before. It is a noble vision. As far as the line arrays are concerned and what I have heard so far - not sold on it being the end of it. Line arrays sacrifice imaging and soundstage precision for dynamics.
The signal routing and algorithms are a pain and you can only have something resembling sweetspot at one very specific point in room.
DSP-ing the drivers to be acoustically coherent is really hard work due to directivity.

In the end people like different things, for some this is endgame.

 

Definition of a very sad (tragic even) ORFAS dude, IME.

Over family, very sad.

 

Yeah as I said in a profile post comment, maybe what this system fetched at auction can pay for this guy’s kids’ therapy bills.

I agree it’s a cautionary tale. He clearly wasn’t wanting for income with the size of the home and the assets he disinherited his son from, so I also don’t look at it as a story of someone spending their way into financial ruin in the pursuit of perfect sound - he just strikes me as a ORFAS dude, if perhaps a frugalish one with a DIY bent. Still, sure, many of us can relate to the idea of obsessing over sound reproduction, and yes, he pursued that single-mindedly, but at what cost?

 

Article presses the buttons as intended. I wonder how Ken would tell it.

 

read the article this morning. shook my head for about half the time i was reading it. not solely for the money spent or even the family strain that it caused - sad but people lose money or relationships over dumber stuff all the time - but rather because he seemed to have his head so far up his own hole it seems like he saw about 0.1% of the big picture... until it was (decades) too late.

granted, if he had discovered something new in the midst of this, i suspect most of our tones would probably be different along "what a genius!!!!!!" - similar to how history ignores most of the negative quirks of people we choose to look up to.

 

One thing that kinda stood out to me was how in describing some of the Richmond Audio Society meets where members weren't sure the system was set with the appropriate DSP for 2-channel: as someone who has near daily interactions with an elder family member with mild cognitive impairment and short term memory loss, just switching inputs on a TV can be a massive headache. I can't imagine what properly knob-twiddling a system like that would entail for someone with health issues.

 

ALS is a terrible unforgiving beast of a disease. My sympathies are with him and his family - he was perhaps flawed but who among us is not in some way.