Ken Fritz Built a $1 Million Stereo. The Real Cost Was Unfathomable. (washingtonpost.com) 222
Ken Fritz turned his home into an audiophile's dream -- the world's greatest hi-fi. What would it mean in the end? From a report: Ken Fritz was years into his quest to build the world's greatest stereo when he realized it would take more than just gear. It would take more than the Krell amplifiers and the Ampex reel-to-reel. More than the trio of 10-foot speakers he envisioned crafting by hand. And it would take more than what would come to be the crown jewel of his entire system: the $50,000 custom record player, his "Frankentable," nestled in a 1,500-pound base designed to thwart any needle-jarring vibrations and equipped with three different tone arms, each calibrated to coax a different sound from the same slab of vinyl. "If I play jazz, maybe that cartridge might bloom a little more than the other two," Fritz explained to me. "On classical, maybe this one."
No, building the world's greatest stereo would mean transforming the very space that surrounded it -- and the lives of the people who dwelt there. The faded photos tell the story of how the Fritz family helped him turn the living room of their modest split-level ranch on Hybla Road in Richmond's North Chesterfield neighborhood into something of a concert hall -- an environment precisely engineered for the one-of-a-kind acoustic majesty he craved. In one snapshot, his three daughters hold up new siding for their expanding home. In another, his two boys pose next to the massive speaker shells. There's the man of the house himself, a compact guy with slicked-back hair and a thin goatee, on the floor making adjustments to the system. He later estimated he spent $1 million on his mission, a number that did not begin to reflect the wear and tear on the household, the hidden costs of his children's unpaid labor.
No, building the world's greatest stereo would mean transforming the very space that surrounded it -- and the lives of the people who dwelt there. The faded photos tell the story of how the Fritz family helped him turn the living room of their modest split-level ranch on Hybla Road in Richmond's North Chesterfield neighborhood into something of a concert hall -- an environment precisely engineered for the one-of-a-kind acoustic majesty he craved. In one snapshot, his three daughters hold up new siding for their expanding home. In another, his two boys pose next to the massive speaker shells. There's the man of the house himself, a compact guy with slicked-back hair and a thin goatee, on the floor making adjustments to the system. He later estimated he spent $1 million on his mission, a number that did not begin to reflect the wear and tear on the household, the hidden costs of his children's unpaid labor.
Who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, no human has hearing good enough to even remotely justify this type of effort.
Re: Who cares? (Score:2)
Re: Who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not everything you do in this life has to or is meant to make sense.
We all have a short time on this planet...why not find something you enjoy and spend time doing what pleases you.
If you have the money, spend it on something you love to do.
Re: Who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
Seeing as it made life miserable for his family and destroyed his relationship with one of his sons I'd say it wasn't a good hobby
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Well, at this point, we can't really get HIS side of the story.
It might have been his family sucked and this hobby was his sole respite from the misery they injected into his life?
Could be either one....of the middle.
And even in the middle where most of us are with family...it's not all perfect.
Lots of people have lots of reason they need something as an "escape".
Re: Who cares? (Score:5, Funny)
Cocaine is a cheaper hobby than being an audiophile and less embarrassing
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Except, of course...of being highly illegal with threats of jail time....and horrible for your health.
You're stereo system isn't likely to kill you, unless somehow it all falls on you at once...?
Re: Who cares? (Score:3)
A little prison time makes people seem cool. Plus if you're rich there is often no prison time for a little cocaine possession.
As for health, there are a few adverse side effects but most people survive unscathed. Unlike an audiophile's bank account.
The day I tested my friend's oxygen free cables on a spectrometer at school and compared it to a generic piece of lamp wire of similar gauge and negligible resistance, you would have swore that I stabbed him. His suffering was very real.
P.s. the whole comment th
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Also, you can buy a season pass to a major symphony orchestra for around $400 -- on the *popular* nights. For a million bucks you could by a lifetime of subscriptions to the Paris Opera and fly there for every show.
Clearly it's not about the *music*, and still less the *musicians*. It's about the playback hardware itself.
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
Vinyl records don't have the dynamic range anyway. There is a reason they have nearly died out until hipsters dug them out of their grave.
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Isn't that lack of dynamic range part of why they were dug up though? That through the loudness war that extra dynamic range was simply used to push the levels higher and higher and since vinyl was not capable of such levels it would receive a mix/master that actually ended up with better range than the CD digital format?
I think that phenomena has died down but there was a little bit of actual audio reason for vinyl's comeback moment, not that I would presume a similar mastered CD or FLAC to sounds worse th
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Informative)
Isn't that lack of dynamic range part of why they were dug up though? That through the loudness war that extra dynamic range...
There's a lot of nuance to the loudness wars, but you're conflating extra dynamic range with dynamic range compression (the exact opposite). Digital (including CDs) can go full square wave -1 dB (you'll likely destroy your speakers, but the media can handle it), but if you did that with a vinyl, if you could even cut the lacquer, plate them, and press the vinyl, the listener's needle would pop out all the time.
A perfectly pressed vinyl would theoretically have a maximum of 70 dB dynamic range. A CD, on the other hand, is 16-bit, which is 96.32 dB maximum dynamic range. For reference, a symphonic orchestra typically has a dynamic range of around 90 dB. There are plenty of comparison videos (IIRC, Red Hot Chili Peppers's Stadium Arcadium was highlighted quite a bit at the time) explaining the difference in the dynamic range compression between vinyl and digital versions, but they weren't typically because of the medium.
It was typically the mastering engineer who did the work, and, for a long time (even sometimes after LUFS [Loudness Units relative to Full Scale] standards were established) artists and (even more often) labels hunted down mastering engineers who would master anything that could hit the radio loud. By virtue of modernization, most stations don't have turntables, so if the label wanted it loud, the artist would often have their preferred mastering engineer do the vinyl. But part of it is even more complicated and boils down to the vinyl engineer working the lathe, which is why different pressings of the same album (even to this day) sound different.
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Thank you, i appreciate the old SE gambit of "post a wrong answer and someone will give you the right one" still works!
Very informative.
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It's really hard to master music for vinyl. Most of the mastering is done actively while the lathe is cutting the record, making it sound good without overheating the cutter. As an engineer you can help the vinyl master by sticking to a few basic rules, and they can only work with what you give them, so they can't make shit sound like gold.
My issue with records is the transients/pops. Transients are annoying and records are full of them. Most vinyl people either tune them out mentally or just put up with th
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One thing in their favor...is that you can still play the original mixes on them, rather than the CDs with new "mastering" or "remixes"...that are so compressed you can't listen for more than 3 minutes before your ears start bleeding, you know?
With some of the remixes out there, if you tried to press that into vinyl as is...you'd have the needle jumping out of the track
Re: Who cares? (Score:2)
People want their music to sound like shit. They love vinyl and over produced CDs with all the dynamic range compressed out of them. Basically if you are a teenager playing music in your car, you can't hear the quiet parts of a orchestral album or the string squeaks of a long dead jazz virtuoso, not that the kids typically listen to that.
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Not me...I want it to sound as good as possible.
I know my hearing is shot...one too many LOUD concerts back in the day.
But I want to give myself the BEST chance I can possibly have to hear good audio.
I've been building my audio (now audio/video) system since I was about 12yrs old and went into a high end audio shop and hear my first McIntosh tube amp hooked to come Klipschorns.
I've got the K-horns...but my tube amps I have, while nice, are not the McIntosh one
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Go listen to Band Maid's first album, or even their second. Whomever is doing their mixing is doing a phenomenal job at keeping every instrument and voice clear and distinct.
Not saying you're wrong, just that there are companies out there not compressing everything to shit.
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Don't blame the hipsters, the audiophile world was doing just fine without them. No amount of logic or reasoning can convince the people who have it in their head that "analogue is not limited by bandwidth" or that "digital is a staircase". Long before the vinyl resurgence (which goes beyond hipsters, and I like to think is part of a move of people actually owning things rather than subscribing to Spotify), audiophools were happily paying $100+ for perfectly ordinary vinyl records from the likes of Mobile F
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It is like any other prestige obsession that is subjective. It is mainly about showing off and emotionally driven. Art and wine collecting come to mind. People will spend thousands on art that you have to convince yourself is somehow great. Blind wine tastings have shown that experts will gravitate to wines in the $20-40 range.
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It is like any other prestige obsession that is subjective. It is mainly about showing off and emotionally driven. Art and wine collecting come to mind.
No it's not. It's absolutely not subjective. The aspects of audio quality are easily quantified. The actual arguments made in many cases are not just nonsense, they actively spit in the face of fundamental physics, to say nothing of the engineering.
That some orchestra played a better rendition of Tchaikovsky's 6th symphony is subjective. That its recording sounds better than some remaster by Deutche Gramophone is subjective. The nonsense they use to justify decisions made in their choice of hardware is not
Re: Who cares? (Score:2)
I'm of the mind that the music labels encouraged this resurgence, because a vinyl record is its own copy protection.
Besides, listeners used to love having a tangible thing to pass around, lyrics to read, graphics to see, a ritual of cleaning and playing a disc (I still have my Discwasher, folks, and some VERY old d3 solution).
And where are you gonna card your dope, anyway?
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Vinyl records don't have the dynamic range anyway. There is a reason they have nearly died out until hipsters dug them out of their grave.
It's not the sound quality, it's the gamification of the interface.
Play something on Spotify? Type in the name, click play, and listen. No real challenge or engagement. You can play the greatest album ever recorded as background music while working and you might not even notice it playing.
But you want to play something on Vinyl?
First you need to find the record in your collection (no one minds a simple loot hunt).
Next you remove it from the sleeve (hope it's the right one!) and check out your loot.
Finally,
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I would add that: First, one needs to obtain the vinyl (or CD) and available budget limits the choices, so difficult decisions are needed. Streaming service come with infinite availability. Too much choice, which kills the choice. Choosing my records enables me to build a record library I will die by. A constant stream of new records I won't be able to remember lowers my musical experience. If I can listen to everything or let an algorithm choose for me, I might as well listen to the radio, they choose for
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There used to be a website dedicated to showcasing bizarre audiophile obsessions and their marketing bullshit. There are the $1050/each magic rubber feet for your speakers, $1400 "ambient field conditioners", special wooden knobs that when they replace your god-awful metal knobs make your listening experience blow you away, etc.
https://www.reddit.com/r/audio... [reddit.com]
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Re: Who cares? (Score:2)
Do you need audiophile stuff in a car? No. But back in the day, I used to buy reasonably powered Alpine units and decent speakers, and they sure did sound better than the sun-bleached in-dash 6x4 paper cone, regardless of the road noise.
There's a sane medium to be found.
Today I usually buy the "factory leather" SKU of a used car, and it'll come with a stereo that's "good enough".
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Re: Spend your budget on transducers (Score:2)
The speakers being the most expensive part is a smart move. People would also want to think of buying the best phono cartridge they can reasonably afford.
The devices that change the analog signal from one domain to another: LP to electricity, electricity to air, are where the sound gets true character and tastes are made. Sure the amps can sound different, but these are fine distinctions compared to to the character of different transducers (mics and tape heads and guitar pickups, too...).
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My point exactly. The assumption these people have is that their hearing is absolutely perfect, the original recording equipment was the finest ever made and that the record pressing was a perfect impression of the master and that was a perfect copy of the tapes. At this guy's age I seriously doubt his hearing was anywhere close to where it would need to be to hear tiny differences in quality, most likely it is all imaginary driven by his desire to believe it is dramatically better.
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Seriously, no human has hearing good enough to even remotely justify this type of effort.
Even more so at his age -- probably especially on the high end.
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Most humans (including sound engineers) can't hear the difference between thousand dollar Monster speaker cables and wire coat hangers.
OCD (Score:2)
This is next-level OCD.
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Jeff Bezos Spent $42 Million To Build A Massive Clock That Ticks Just Once A Year For the Next 10,000 Years
https://finance.yahoo.com/news... [yahoo.com]
Re:OCD (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, like many of the ultra-rich, Bezos is probably casting about to come up with ways he'll be remembered historically - other than as just a footnoted name of a very rich person from this era.
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Don't confuse people passionate about something with Jeff Bezos masturbating in your general direction. He doesn't give a shit about timing or clocks, he only cares about his ego.
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> Jeff Bezos masturbating in your general direction.
Massive Clock
Re: OCD (Score:4, Informative)
Not really a Bezos fan, but the "clock of the long now" is a different thing than the usual billionaire vanity project.
The idea is to pilot a project that will last many generations, to master the skills and design a system that will be reliable enough to outlast any regime, any religious knowledge, any culture that humanity has yet known.
It's an exercise in extreme planning, not a mantle clock for Bezos living room.
For comparison, look at the projects trying to indicate through intrinsic meaning, the danger of stored nuclear waste to strangers thousands of years from today.
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Monster Cable (Score:4, Funny)
The guy at Circuit City was paid to say it's the best you can get.
Don't forget your $700 Denon Ethernet cable. It's gold-plated, after all. "But none of this uses Ethernet." you might say. Even better! Just tuck it behind something and let the patented Goober Rays radiate all around the room.
Re:Monster Cable (Score:5, Informative)
"But none of this uses Ethernet." you might say. Even better!
SFPs and fiber/copper converters are actually quite popular with audiophiles for streaming. I can accept the benefit of galvanic isolation in some cases. I'm not convinced that one brand of SFP sounds better than others, but there are threads on audio forums dedicated to this.
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Ethernet cable is pretty good for analog audio. Just don't tell the audiophile people the voice they're listening to went over CAT5 to the breakout box in the studio.
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Don't forget your $700 Denon Ethernet cable.
Are those the ones with directional arrows?
paywall promotor (Score:2)
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True that. I thought maybe "Sign Up" by giving them my email address would be enough to let me read this one article, one time. :thumbs-down-emoji:
Nope. All it does is then present you with a payment menu.
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Accessing the page via TOR, however, worked fine. :thumbs-up-emoji:
Re:paywall promotor (MSN link) (Score:5, Informative)
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news... [msn.com]
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Turn off javascript and reload it
Unlikely to improve the resale value of the house (Score:2)
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He'll probably never recoup that cost from the property itself if he sells unless it is to another deluded "audiophile".
No doubt. I don't think he has any intention of reselling any of this.
I can't read TFA because it's behind a paywall. Does it say what Ken does for a living? If he's addressed all his other needs (kid's college, retirement, home paid off) and still has a million burning a hole in his pocket, well good for him. Not a lot of us have that sort of cash. OTOH, my brother-in-law has bought football season tickets for 30+ years and I think that adds up to around $300k total. Not quite the same but not that far off
Re:Unlikely to improve the resale value of the hou (Score:5, Insightful)
If he's addressed all his other needs (kid's college, retirement, home paid off) and still has a million burning a hole in his pocket, well good for him.
Unfortunately his hobby was to the detriment of his family, which is what makes the article kind of sad. If it was just a rich guy spending big on a hobby it would not be noteworthy.
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He reminds me of the guy who was convinced beanie babies were the road to financial wealth (at the height of the craze) and was exploiting his kids to get them for him. He'd pull them out of school to go around to various McDonald's to get the happy meal ones. Then the market crashed and he was left with very little money and a small warehouse of worthless beanie babies.
Re:Unlikely to improve the resale value of the hou (Score:5, Informative)
He'll probably never recoup that cost from the property itself if he sells unless it is to another deluded "audiophile".
For the rest who could not read the article, Ken died of ALS, and the whole thing parted out for ~$150K
Re:Unlikely to improve the resale value of the hou (Score:5, Insightful)
And at what cost? He alienated his first wife and sons, all for chasing sound. What a wasted life.
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Not only did he alienate them, but he refused to reconcile with his older son even when on his deathbed (his son called him and he refused to take the call).
The guy sounds like a selfish piece of garbage, to be honest.
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I kind of hop-scotched through the long article - guy seemed like a bit of an ass, disinheriting his sons and whatnot. I wonder if he had some sort of disorder - like what used to be referred to as Asperger's Syndrome.
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Not that it is very funny at all, but I did have to laugh at the bit about his wife rolling her eyes when he tried to play "swan lake" (his favorite piece). She called it "pig pond" and then turning up the TV while she sipped away at her drink.
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His oldest son go so sick of his father's bullshit that he yelled out "I hope you die a slow death", so the dad had his lawyer disinherit his own son. Turns out he ended up getting ALS so he did die a very slow death.
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His oldest son go so sick of his father's bullshit that he yelled out "I hope you die a slow death", so the dad had his lawyer disinherit his own son. Turns out he ended up getting ALS so he did die a very slow death.
And they all lived happily ever after. The End.
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You seem to be confusing a hobby and an investment. There's almost no hobbies in the world that actively improve value / resale.
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It says he died (ALS) and his great system was sold off for pennies on the dollar. Customized equipment is always a very hard sell since it was customized to his specific tastes not to mention the size of things like the record player and speakers greatly limit potential buyers.
His obsession also ruined his family, especially one of his sons. They say he used his family as forced labor to help him build his dream room.
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There are certainly plenty of deluded audiophiles in the world.
And then used it to play... (Score:3)
...vinyl
Vinyl sucks
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...vinyl Vinyl sucks
Indeed. Sure, finding your vinyl record, cleaning, starting to play, and looking at the cover art while playing the record from start to finish (and turning it!) is a different experience than just having Spotify on shuffle in the background. However, the sound itself is going to be worse than if you just played the same music from CD, Apple Music, or Tidal. And you can still hold the cover art.
All that aside, the music from the system in the article is probably going to sound absolutely wonderful. Speake
I don't know who "Ken Fritz" is, (Score:3)
but unless he is in his early 20s, it doesn't matter what he's bought - his ears aren't good enough for it. If he's the 66 y.o. football player from the Wikipedia, it is even worse, he can't hear anything over 12-13 kHz, and possibly his hearing is even worse.
Re:I don't know who "Ken Fritz" is, (Score:5, Informative)
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news... [msn.com]
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He's an 80-year-old father-of-five who can barely speak coherently.
He has ALS, something that he developed *after* he finished his system. I'm all for picking on an audiophool, but try not to shit on people who developed a fatal disease after achieving their lifelong dream.
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He's dead now
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his ears aren't good enough for it.
Nope. The human ear degradation falls off in frequency response and largely frequency response alone. Frequency response of human hearing can be achieved with your computer sound card and a set of $20 headphones. There is a world more to sound reproduction, especially the controlling of reflection, standing waves, interference, beaming etc which (despite his investment in pointless audiophoolery) he did take into account in his design, and there's no indication that a 100 year old guy has any less ability t
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The article has a visitor sitting and trying to politely smile and agree that the sound was dramatically better after this and that tweak.
Sure you can one up everyone else (Score:3, Insightful)
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It might just be about having a hobby you love.
I know people that collect pinball machines....and never show them off to people.
I for one, collect and enjoy using cameras, digital, film (35mm and MF and LF)....and the plethora of lenses that I bought to go with them to get looks I like.
I spent a LOT of money on some of that gear.
I don't show it off....hell, these days, I keep them covert and unmarked so as NOT to draw attention to the fact that I have some n
If he has that much money to spend ... (Score:2)
would he not do better going to live concerts and paying for the best seats in the house ?
How about just... (Score:2)
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hiring your very own private musicians to perform in your home. For $1 million, you could easily host your very own chamber orchestra for 20 years.
Yeah if you listen to one concert a week you may be right. But then you still have a music source in a shitty sub par room. Don't forget that not insignificant expense went into making a suitable listening space.
Chamber orchestras would sound like absolute shit in your living room.
Signpost up ahead... (Score:2)
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He died of ALS. Part of the article talked about things he did to cope with, for example, the disease's progression rendering him unable to put records on the turntable.
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And, you RTFA? Can I tell people that I know you?
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And, you RTFA? Can I tell people that I know you?
It was a moment of weakness! And I only skimmed it! It'll never happen again, I swear!!
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I think in the Twilight Zone we'd find out at the end that he was deaf all along.
"Real" Audiophiles say... (Score:2)
If it's still a "living room" (Score:2)
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It'd seem to be a waste of money, with the weakest link being a room that wasn't acoustically optimized for all the high end crap in it.
The room was specifically built for optimal sound. Unfortunately he made his kids do all the work.
I used to have golden ears (Score:2)
In my early 20's, I would consult with high-end audio dealers when they were considering which brands to sell. I didn't get paid for this, but it was still win-win: I got to listen to whatever I wanted, privately, through lots of gear I couldn't hope to afford. In return, they got explanations of what I liked or didn't like and why (and not in that mushy language of "chocolatey bass", "insistent upper-mids", "soundstage of ambiguous dimensionalty), etc.). My goal was to get their brand lineup to the point w
It wasn't a hobby (Score:4, Interesting)
This was an obsession that had a significant negative effect on his life... so it's probably better classified as a symptom of undiagnosed mental illness.
From a science perspective, no matter how elegant his setup, it was not producing better sound than a setup with a fraction of the price tag. It's just not possible.
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"Hidden costs of his children's unpaid labour" (Score:2)
Unless he was keeping them out of school and chained to their tools, fuck off. Every parent who farms off the job of shoveling the driveway is incurring a "hidden cost of unpaid child labour."
1,500-pound base (Score:2)
"1,500-pound base designed to thwart any needle-jarring vibrations"
What the hell does he live next to that requires this to prevent audible vibrations? The Kennedy Space Center launch pad? The volcanoes of Iceland?
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Is He Happy? (Score:2)
I can't tell. Paywall. But if he's happy, leave him be. Money well spent.
Nothing wrong with a good old-fashioned obsession. If he's not destitute, no harm done. Good for the economy.
Was (Score:2)
He was happy, he died a few months ago.
This article feels icky. What *is* news is that a man spent most of his life building, what he considers to be, the best stereo system possible. What isn't news is, sometimes, parents can be crappy, and people can be mean to each other.
How much as he spent... (Score:2)
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Don't get me wrong, I am all about you doing what pleases
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Got a call about 36 hours later, he had taken
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One thing that's not cool is squandering his children's inheritance.
Excuse me? What kind of an entitled arsehole are you to think that a relative's money belongs to you? He didn't squander anyone's inheritance. He spent *HIS* money the way *HE* wanted.
You sound like my uncle who tried to talk his mother out of buying a new TV since she was already 95. In the meantime my parents and I took grandma shopping, because she fucking deserves the right to buy with *her* money whatever the fuck she wants.
I hope you get written out of your parent's will.
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Oh please. Children should not expect an inheritance. They aren't entitled to it simply because they were born. I told my parents pretty early in life that if they live the way I hope they will, they'll have little to nothing to leave to me.
Give them a stable home, a leg up, even (as you mentioned) an education *mostly* paid for. That's enough. That's plenty.
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I see your point. And education is the best gift to give your children. But that's not an inheritance. Inheritance is what's left when you depart.
I'm very much in favor of spreading the wealth during one's lifetime. I paid the tuition of a nephew this past August.
What I disapprove of is the expectation and the sense of entitlement that makes somebody feel ownership over the wealth of a relative.
I will personally not leave an inheritance, unless I did without warning, and early. I'll have gifted the large ma