Slightly Off Topic – A Thought After a Long Listening Session

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Mods — please feel free to move if inappropriate.

I was sitting listening over the weekend and found myself reflecting on how much this hobby has taught me over the years — not just about music, but about judgement.

Like many here, I’ve spent far too long adjusting positioning, trying different combinations, and slowly realising that the magic is rarely in any single component. It’s in how everything works together (why does the Mana work so well? why does the Linn Klimax DS sound good with Cardas Golden Cross vs not as good with a HiLine, etc, etc)

You can have excellent pieces of kit individually, and yet the system doesn’t quite relax. Something feels slightly forced or overblown. And then a small change — sometimes not even an expensive one — brings balance and coherence.

What strikes me is how similar that is to my day job. I work in large business transformation programmes (finance and ERP systems — not nearly as interesting as cartridges and power supplies…), and the same principle applies.

It’s very easy in business to assume the answer is:

  • Buy the biggest platform
  • Hire the biggest consultancy
  • Add more people

But, just like in audio, the “best” doesn’t fix imbalance.

Clarity of design, sensible structure, and careful matching tend to matter more than scale. When things don’t work, it’s usually because the system hasn’t been thought through as a whole.

This hobby has probably made me more patient professionally — and more conscious that performance lives in interaction, not in individual brilliance.

Anyway, just a passing thought from a quiet Sunday session.

Be interested to hear if anyone else sees parallels between this slightly obsessive pastime and what they do for a living.

— best wishes, Dev

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I’m retired, so I pretty much please myself.

Close match, I’d say.

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“Be interested to hear if anyone else sees parallels between this slightly obsessive pastime and what they do for a living.”

Absolutely yes.
I spent the first 12 years of my working life in the record and live music industry, so was always very obsessive in my work ethic from day 1. Since then I had a few dead end jobs for a couple of years before settling into what I have done ever since, designing selling and fitting kitchens. A big jump I know, but one that has kept me alive and one I don’t regret at all.
I am very obsessive about what I now do, but more importantly about the way I go about it. Actually going about the mechanics of fitting a kitchen more often than not is a series of problem solving. Not just problem solving, but working out the order that you solve those problems so that a previous problem doesn’t create another problem. I call it forward planning, apart from the actual technical and physical aspects of fitting a kitchen it’s the most important thing.
To give you an example, the last kitchen I fitted was very long but also very narrow. There was nowhere to store the new units for the kitchen, other than the kitchen itself. It also rained for the entire two weeks of the fit, so machining outside was not an option. To add to that, none of the walls were upright and none were flat either. Did I get around all these issues ? of course I did (with forward planning) and some very long workdays.
When it comes to Hifi, I approach it in the same way because it works.

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I am a software engineer with over 40 years of experience. I am pretty obsessive about quality and attention for detail. One parallel is to avoid rabbit holes of any kind. It is so easy to get lost in details and forget about the bigger picture.

When it comes to my work, the bigger picture is: functional correctness, added business value and (very important) end-user acceptance.

When it comes to audio, the bigger picture is: musical enjoyment and emotion.

Software engineers often focus on technical details and technical excellence. Some are brilliant when it comes to engineering technical solutions. But many have no clue about the business domain, the functionality, end-users etc. I have always been a software engineer that put functionality first. The technical details are only instrumental.

The situation is similar in the world of audio and audiophiles. Lots of attention to technical details and technical excellence. It is easy to get lost and forget about the primary goal and that is musical enjoyment.

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I too can relate as a change agent. Creating organizational agility is more dependent on the people connection in the corporate system rather than the chosen method or framework. If anything, the way an organization is operating and communicating internally basically defines the method or framework that i would propose to implement. It is all about the entirety of the system, so my rule no.1 is to use Systems Thinking.

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