The Pied Piper

Not surprisingly, audio is life and life is audio... so, everything is possible;-)

Some days ago a dear friend of mine told me about something quite embarassing he experienced; this made me to remind which something like this also happened to yours truly, some years ago.

The cold, recent facts: a quite renowned audio expert, a consultant and a guru visited my friend's place bringing with him some gears - unimportant which gears - and a listening session was in the premises.

My friend's system, a VERY nicely assembled and tuned system, with a-plenty of top class gears vs. the lent gears.

The results weren't THAT special, as my friend system performed quite nicely, while the hosted system didn't.

The so-so, mixed result was explained with the VERY urgent need to change everything in my friend's system: cables, turntable, arm, cartridge(s), amps, speakers to accomodate the hosted gears.

It could have be the case, also if I find really unpolite and rude a host not only commenting, also negatively, sound or whatever and not only suggesting, but ordering to change this and that.

In other hobbies, cars, motobikes, whatever, the trial would be ended with a "Thanks, it's not my cup of tea" or the like... not in audio, apparently;-)

The guy was bringing his gears back and forth for, say, a 200 km trip... politely my friend asked for an expense refund as a gentleman uses to do.

The guru declined...

... but...

Surprisingly, my friend got a phone call from the guru the day after... at first, he guessed it was concerning some cost covering of the trial visit... but, very soon, the conversation, one way - guru-to-my pal - became vaguely weird and weirder while going ahead: the audio consultant began to talk about aura lacking and necessity of meditating and reaching a new self-consciousness and washing the soul to fully understand the verb (his own), and so on and on, without leaving any possibility to my friend to reply in any way.

Now, audio is a totalizing passion, both of us will agree... BUT, having to take Peyote;-) after being naked on a hill top for two days to absorb the cosmic Orgones energy to better appreciate a shitty piece of gear, well... I found this quite laughable and, definitely, unappropriate.

My friend ended the (embarassing) phone-call repeating the offer to cover the gears hauling and trip costs, with such an heavy bitterness, he told me, difficult to forget.

A moral: beware of gurus, false Pied Pipers... people who listen to the sound of 20 cm cables in a complex audio system and after 2 minutes flat begin to spit on this or that... people who call audiophiles from out of the blue offering unasked and unwanted esoteric advice and support in finely tuning any audio systems, who offer to lend this or that gears (most of the times cables woven with virgin pubic-hairs as a dielectric;-))), for free and then...

Them all only want (y)our money, period.

The above really happens and, in my experience, these wannabes androids never, ever spend one single word about music... yes, do you remember? Music... this really is what we're after.

Don't we?