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Audiophile Article I Found


busht4169

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Hey all!  I found this on the Wall Street Journal. The Japanese culture takes 'audiophile' to a whole new level.  Let me know what you think.  Don't want to get in trouble, so I cited the author and source at the top.

 

Power trip: Japanese audiophiles go to extremes for pure energy

By Juro Osawa - MarketWatch - Sunday, August 14, 2016

Article published on The Wall Street Journal     www.WSJ.com

 

TOKYO — Takeo Morita wanted absolutely the best fidelity possible from his audio system, so he bought a utility pole.
The 82-year-old lawyer already had a $60,000 American-made amplifier, 1960s German loudspeakers that once belonged to a theater, Japanese audio cables threaded with gold and silver, and other pricey equipment.
Normal electricity just wouldn’t do anymore. To tap into what Morita calls “pure” power, he paid $10,000 to plant a 40-foot-tall concrete pole in his front yard. On it perches his own personal transformer — that thing shaped like a cylindrical metal garbage can — which feeds power more directly from the grid.
“Electricity is like blood. If it is tainted, the whole body will get sick,” says Morita. “No matter how expensive the audio equipment is, it will be no good if the blood is bad.”
Demonstrating his power’s purity, he mounts a turntable with a vinyl record of Queen’s “I’m in Love With My Car,” settles into his sofa and beams. Pre-pole, he says, the vocals didn’t sound as lively as this.
“Now, it feels like Queen is in this room, just for me.”
Audiophiles everywhere are an obsessive breed, but few exhibit such perfectionism as Japanese stereo fanatics. They not only spend fortunes on amps and speakers but also insist an exclusive power supply is a crucial upgrade.
A private line, they say, eliminates electrical interference that comes from sharing a public pole with neighbors whose gadgets can create “noise” that make subtle notes inaudible and the overall sound flatter.
Once one has a personal tower of power, “the music melts into the air of the room,” says Sumio Shimamoto, president of Izumi Denki Corp., which installed Morita’s pole and has erected about 40 more across Japan over the past decade.
“Japanese audiophiles pursue it with a great deal of diligence,” says Joe Cohen, president of Lotus Group, a California-based distributor of high-end audio equipment. “They adopt the cause and sacrifice everything for it.”
There’s a debate among audio enthusiasts about whether personal poles make any meaningful difference. Audiophiles, though, “live in a kind of no-compromises world,” says Mark Bocko, director of the audio and music engineering program at the University of Rochester.
“Electromagnetic interference from appliances being used by neighbors could propagate through a shared transformer and have an audible effect. That’s not an unreasonable thing.”

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I am not an audiophile. Know that up front.

 

I do however, run human clinical trials on medical devices and for a short while, pharmaceutical drugs. The power of one's mind (I.e. The placebo effect) is real. You got the Yen you fix what is wrong with your system and it suddenly music sounds like angels singing.

 

Good for him. No sarcasm intended.

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Queen?  Not exactly what I'd pull off the shelf as an audiophilia exemplar. 

 

I wonder if he relives Fukushima, i.e., PTSD?

 

Chris

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13 hours ago, busht4169 said:

“Electricity is like blood. If it is tainted, the whole body will get sick,” says Morita. “No matter how expensive the audio equipment is, it will be no good if the blood is bad.”

 

Perfect!  The conflation of pre-scientific vitalism with audiophilia.  It's a wonder these folks can even tie their shoes with so much bad ju ju floating around everywhere.

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2 hours ago, Chris A said:

Queen?  Not exactly what I'd pull off the shelf as an audiophilia exemplar. 

 

I wonder if he relives Fukushima, i.e., PTSD?

 

Chris

Supposedly when "Hammer to Fall" comes on, the guys lets a single tear fall down his face...

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I bought a pair of B&W Signature 800s form a Japanese audiophile. 

 

I had to remove a bunch of voodoo.  There were little bids under the tweeters (in case they went out for crab legs?) and little magnets with metal plates between stuck on the speakers.  Luckily all of it came off and the finish was fine underneath. 

 

 

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  • 4 weeks later...

Personally when I ran electricity directly from my switchbox to my stereo a year ago, it was a huge upgrade. Sound was deeper, clearer and made listening to the stereo more enjoyable. Change was on the par or better than upgrading one or more components!

 

I did it because the speakers I had ordered and was waiting for (Quad 2912 - full range electrostatic!) have electronic components that put out a lot of electronic noise, so I wanted to be able to isolate that noise source.

 

So my hats is off to Takeo Morita and now I want my own power pole :-) Of course I am an audiophile, evidently.

 

Cheers,

 

Quad 2912, Ps audio DirectStream DAC, Audio Research VT100

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