In the end, I think that at a certain age and after having heard, bought, sold, borrowed, discarded and dreamed of a lot of audio gear, one has a sort of duty about a system - it must correspond to one’s nature, culture, income, taste and aesthetics. Mere sound becomes just one parameter.
After all, we who have pursued the right sound for decades are still here questioning, asking for help, changing and swapping continuously. I know of just one person who has the same system since 1999. He’s not a standard but an eerie, admirable exception.
In this summer morning I have just browsed an old Stereophile review of bookshelf speakers. I wanted a panorama of types and options.
The number of designs made me realize the obvious - each and every model was thought of for a single type of customer. Lines, curves, the absence of curves, sloped front panels, intentional retro looks, plain utilitarian boxes that make you wonder if the cost of a little more visual condescendence would have been unbearable; idiosyncratic choices, useless features that are only there to rise the cost and make the speaker a thing to show off to friends; everything has a target. We are targets.
Most of what I saw was totally uninteresting and uninspiring, something was plainly annoying. In the end, I was at the starting point. Not a single, modest soul-stirring revelation.
And this made me also realize that the only maker of loudspeakers that seems to me to have designed models with a selfless mind, to only give the customer something that responds to cultural, aural, visual, engineering and domestic demands is Naim. At least, up to the Ovator line. With that, they tried to address a more universal audience. It wasn’t a success I believe. Back then, Naim users wanted Naim, not another brick in the wall.
So I’m here in this sunny, lazy summer morning finally discovering that, to me, Naim has been the best manufacturer of loudspeakers I know. I may have stated this before, but never before I had found myself at a sort of final turning point - the right system or no system.
The thought is an anxiolytic. In this moment of no certitudes, when everything is on my shoulders and I can rely only on my seventy years old battered soul, this is comforting. I have no interest in any other maker. Naim has already thought of what I think is important and beautiful in a loudspeaker design. I’ve had a similar feeling with the Klipsch Heresy - a 67 years old design, still selling, still working.
So much for fashions, so much for le dernier cri.
M.