5 Things AppleTV needs to be a MUST BUY by Apple Gazette

[Mark Smith]

on 10.04.2007 at 00:54 Ashley Aitken wrote

>Personally, I cannot hear that much detail in music

I suppose (w/o any hard data) that herein lies one of the 
misconceptions about what you *can* get with quality gear. Sure, 
there are manufacturers, distributors and acolytes who are 
detail freaks and spend time talking about timbre and running 
lab tests and trying to tell precisely what kind of 
$traditional_instrument$ is being played (and from which 
traditional stool) on one of those traditional instrument 
recordings of something by Henry Purcell, or Johann Pacelbel.

However, that's not what's its about for the majority of the 
brand of music lovers who might be branded audiophiles. Its 
about involvement, rhythm, stimulation and pure enjoyment. On 
one set-up you might hear a track you like by XTC, or Jackie 
Leven, or The Fall, or The Doors, or Ali Farke Touri, or Miles, 
or Beefheart, or Joni, or... well you get the idea, and you like 
it, it sounds good, no better than good, it sounds great, and 
you are really liking it.

Then you change one component and suddenly, you're not just 
liking it, the hairs on the back of your neck are standing up 
and/or you are slammed up against the wall and/or there's a lump 
in your throat, and/or you just have to... ...move. Its not 
because you can suddenly hear someone coughing in the 
auditorium, or that you realise what kind of strings the 
guitarist is using. Its because the whole thing is quite simply 
dramatically *different* and indescribably better and *right* 
for you.

Admittedly, this doesn't happen with just any gear, but there 
are manufacturer's whose gear just "works" like this (now 
desperately trying to bring this vaguely back on-topic). Oddly 
enough, its often described as being "musical" (Linn, Naim, 
Tivoli to name but three). They understand music *and* sound, 
maybe in some vaguely similar manner to that in which Apple 
understands hardware *and* software *and* user-experience. 
(There, made it. But man was that Cheesy.)