REPRODUCED FROM THEOCCASIONAL
m icrogroove LPs helped concealthe realinferiority ofthe pentode.The resultwasthe pentode being the victim when the transistoram plifierwasintroduced.Thishappened alm ost sim ultaneously with the introduction ofstereo,a tim e when software,and recording quality was atits absolute peak,so the reduction in sonic quality thatthe transistorintroduced was m ore than counterbalanced by the im provem ents in softw are quality. As we approach m odern tim es, the increasingly wel developed “objectivist”technologicaldogm a,com bined with thegrowing post-warbeliefintheideathatprogres isindeed a straightline,which,com bined with beter,and m ore clever m arketing techniques originaly used to “raly the troops” during the nationalem ergencies of the 1930s,and 1940s helped create a shift in the m arket aim ed at higher proliferation,and profitabilty to the detrim ent ofabsolute sound quality.To m e,itis perfectly clearthatthe resources being invested in im proving absolute quality had largely evaporated by1965,asm arketing m en,and ac ountantstook over the m ain budget in m ost com m ercialy-suc es ful com panies,afactthatseem sto have gone unnoticed byboth the audio pres ,and buying public.
branch of the system has invariably been counteracted by a severe decline in another branch – or should I say “have alowed a reduction ofquality to takeplaceunnoticed inanotherbranch” – thereby leaving a kind of“balance” which hasm eantthatsound quality has notchanged m uch overthe past30-40 years. In orderto try to understand why real development towards “High-Fidelity” has notprogres ed furtherthan ithas, the above historicaldiagram helps to visualise how Isee the deterioration and improvement in quality that have happened since the introduction of recorded sound. Our measurement technology has certainly contributed considerably to the slide in absolute quality,“the sam e for les ” is the m oto that has been applied tim e,and againwhenengineers have discused measurements as a direct proof of sound quality. This approach invaded the industry in the 1940s, via David Theodore Nelson Wiliamson’s high-feedback amplifier design, and m easurem ents used as a proof of beter sound has become increasinglydom inantto thisday. Every new technology that has been introduced has generaly started its life just as another branch on the audio system “tree” hasreached itspeak,but there has always been another trough som ewhere else to put the blam e on when new technology did notprovide the neces ary (claim ed)im provem ents in overalperform ance.O urbeliefin the idea of progres has m ost certainly supported thisdevelopm ent. It is almost certain that when the transition from triode to pentode was m ade,software quality can be atleast partly blam ed for the dem ise of the triode, the move from 78s to
The oft-m aligned CD. Rem em ber the excuses for the Com pact Disc in the early days?“Itistoo ac urate forthe restofthe audio chain,and is therefore showing it up… ” or som e such nonsense. How aboutthe curentspeaker/room interface debate? The room isthe “lastfrontier.”Speakerswould sound perfectifonlythe room s they were used in were beter. The fact that m ost loudspeakers (whetherclaim ed to be ofhigh-end quality or not) are designed under near-field anechoic conditions
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