Posted 4:30 PM by Gene

The Web is a wondrous dispenser of BS. Take stereo equipment. I just bought a new turntable and cartridge because I'm hoping to get back into record collecting in a small way, but after you're through with the instant experts you've taken a nuclear-physics course with Dr. Alfred E. Neuman. Part of the problem is that hi-fi has been invaded by wine critics with all their adjectives and effete snobbery. The ultimate phony Corey Greenberg made his fortune hearing things; before he got high on speculative investing and porn so did the ultra-fool blurbist David Denby. But what's odd about the super-high-end equipment they'd drool over is its disadvantages. First off, you're paying more for fewer features. Yes you're reducing the complication factor but you're also reducing the convenience factor, and we stereo buffs like to play with our buttons. Second, the president of Pioneer once admitted to Forbes that virtually all hi-fi equipment shares common components regardless of cost and snob factor. Third, the snobs like to boast about their boxes being HAND-CRAFTED, but I suspect this is not such an advantage with equipment inherently machine-made. And what if your super-duper amp goes on the fritz? Do you send it back to the hands for repair? Or do you pay another $50,000 so you can hear things?

I don't have the money for such foolishness (although if a $100,000 stereo fell into my lap however uncomfortably I might not refuse it). And I did want something to play records. Start with turntables. It isn't difficult to find one on the Web, but you must be careful. Do you want a golden oldie? I always wanted a high-end Dual, but with what many eBayers call PRE-OWNED EQUIPMENT you can't be sure about parts or repairs -- or whether it will come out of the box working. (Avoid anything that saw the inside of a school or the cheap Chinese- and Malaysian-made imitations thereof; they're sure to gouge the grooves.) After too much wringing of my brain I bought a -- DJ turntable, a top-of-the-line Gemini. Really there's little choice among new; the low-end models with the built-in preamps are plastic, and I'm not paying $500 because something has a REPUTATION. The Gemini looks chintzy like most DJ equipment, but it has some neat features -- 78-rpm speed, reverse play (for deciphering hidden messages in rock albums), a digital interface that allows you to hook up the machine to a computer (and play tricks with the speed if you like), an LED display, no grounding cord (one less cable to tangle), a three-year warranty I hope I won't need, and (if such things are to be believed) good specs -- surely there's nothing wrong with a turntable playing a disc flat and straight, though the Corey Greenbergs and David Denbys might sniff because a DJ TURNTABLE doesn't impart WARMTH. Like HELL. I'm keeping my money warm next to me.

Then there are the cartridges. You can get one for $10 or $10,000. The state of the fine craft of parting a fool from his moolah may be discerned in the model I got, the Shure M97xE. This is the company's top-of-the-line model now that it's discontinued the LEGENDARY V15VxMR. Shure says it did this because it was having trouble locating the RARE INGREDIENTS needed to craft the stylus shank; but a not too close examination reveals the M97xE looks EXACTLY like the V15VxMR save for a decorative symbol and the color of the stylus guard. (They do have differing styli and slightly differing tracking weights -- plus you connect them to the headshell wiring differently, presumably to fool the skeptics.) The M97xE can be had for as little as $55 before shipping; the V15VxMR (still widely available, somehow) goes for between $200 and $300. Is it worth paying a 400% premium for an infinitesimal premium in performance -- even IF Sony uses it for archiving? (Why can't it make a cartridge of its own?)

Of course if you want to go HIGH-END you CAN pay the $10,000. And here the desire to hear things imparts still more disadvantages. The stylus shanks of the most expensive cartridges are so thin and so naked as to almost beg to be damaged in the slightest accident or for a kid to rip them off -- and in a stroke of MARKETING GENIUS the manufacturers force people who hear things to return the cartridges for a replacement! $5,000 MORE dollars for the SNOB FACTOR. This is rather like those hyper-expensive turntables powered by exposed millimeter-thick rubber bands. (Audiophiles call them BELTS.) One kid playing Robin Hood and "NO!!!!! YOU'VE RUINED MY WOW AND FLUTTER!!!!!" $500 for another rubber band -- but at least we get to HEAR THINGS.

And to top it off, apparently there's a BIG DEBATE amongst the thing hearers about stylus pressure. For years better cartridges tracked at between 1.0 and 1.5 grams to reduce wear. Now the thing hearers insist such light tracking RUINS THE GROOVE because the poor stylus is clattering between the groove walls, ripping out chunks of vinyl, so many of the thing hearers' current favorites track at 2.0 to 3.0 grams -- an irony as that's the low end of tracking force for DJ CARTRIDGES, whose sole purpose is to make records go vwhoooooooop! Well, so long as we HEAR THINGS.

Plus most audiophiles forget that even with $50,000 turntables and $10,000 cartridges the only way to listen to records is in a CLEAN ROOM, lest millions of dust particles ruin their precious virgin vinyl. One suspects they're tempted to wear bunny suits as special filters suck the dust away, but we'd guess they'd be better off listening in a padded cell.

If P. T. Barnum didn't invent audiophily he could have.

(And indeed there's an ANALOG of hearing things in the ACOUSTIC-RECORD world. If you've read enough eBay sales pitches you know the sellers of those beautiful horn phonos insist they play the old discs better. I'd like to see the owners of those super-rare hard-to-hear OPERA recordings do it. One play and you can sell them at half-price. Anything to HEAR THINGS.)