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Reviewer : Michael Fremer

He's amusing and good fun, writes well, but also the embodiment of everything that's been wrong with audiophilia for the past, oh, 35 years.
 

Here’s Herb Reichert’s video to make the set. Stereophile are making great use of YouTube IMO, lots of interesting stuff there beyond these introductions to the reviewers.
 
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Does anyone know what the John Atkinson-engineered recording mentioned & playing at/from around 10.26 is, please (Fremer vid, post 1)?
 
Ref. Windhoek

His stand is a Minus K modification to the original Continuum Castelon stand. I very much doubt whether it's available to buy?
 

Steve Guttenberg’s vid. He makes a very good case for wearing the audiophile badge with pride.
 
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This one is hilarious.

He's clearly a very good comedian, when he said 'slut' vinyl as opposed to 'virgin' I almost fell out of my chair!

 
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Too many in the industry I've spoken to have said the same thing about Fremer - he's so far up his own ass he can't tell day from night.
 
Certainly doesn’t come across that way. Seems very decent to me, and when he has lost it a bit it was with justification IMO (e.g. the James Randi cable bullshit where Randi just kept on trying to change the playing field). All the Stereophile reviewers come over as folk I’d get on with great to be honest. There will be some looking to put silly ‘People’s Front Of Judea / Judaean People’s Front’ type differences and barriers up, but that baffles me. We are all batting for the same team IMO and I don’t see a great deal of difference between any of them and myself.
 
I was actually being serious, not facetious, I genuinly find him funny in a nice way.

Me too. The “these are the British pressings, these are the the American pressings, <pause> the rest of the collection is organised by race...” comment in the first linked Stereophile video just cracked me up.
 
I just hear that he has a god complex.

I've never met the guy so I have no idea. Art Dudley is more my kind of bloke - as of course was Markus.
 
Do you mean the $30,000 speaker cable he's using or something else?

Well that is hilarious , but I mean that with the possible exception of his 'speakers, his entire system is a grotesque heap of over-built bling, with performance matched by products <10th the cost.

What's worse is that he swallows the rationale for the supposed superiority of these affronts to good engineering.

I'm not against expensive hi-fi but the engineering and build need to have some correlation to performance.
 
Certainly doesn’t come across that way. Seems very decent to me, and when he has lost it a bit it was with justification IMO (e.g. the James Rhandi cable bullshit where Rhandi just kept on trying to change the playing field). All the Stereophile reviewers come over as folk I’d get on with great to be honest. There will be some looking to put silly ‘People’s Front Of Judea / Judaean People’s Front’ type differences and barriers up, but that baffles me. We are all batting for the same team IMO and I don’t see a great deal of difference between any of them and myself.

Still don't get why you insist on misspelling James Randi's name.
 
Certainly doesn’t come across that way. Seems very decent to me, and when he has lost it a bit it was with justification IMO (e.g. the James Rhandi cable bullshit where Rhandi just kept on trying to change the playing field).
He doesn't come across as either very decent or provoked in the link I posted earlier.

The Randi thing was interesting because despite being a non-scientist he doesn't seem to have checked with someone that understood home audio before setting the conditions for the initial cable challenge. If Fremer had made contact with someone that understood home audio he would have been $1 million better off plus lots of audiophile cred. I am pretty sure Randi's back pedalling was because someone told him how to pass his challenge.
 

Steve Guttenberg’s vid. He makes a very good case for wearing the audiophile badge with pride.

Sure, but the term is now irreversibly tainted by the actions of crooks and loons over several decades. The term Audiophile should mean you care about quality of reproduction, about accuracy.

It was hijacked long ago.

I would regard myself as an audiophile but would no longer describe myself as such to anyone else, or wear the badge. I'd choose a less tainted description for fear of being classified along with Mr Fremer & co!
 
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