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154.27.112.24
A sad tale, at that.
Follow Ups:
Big, complex, expensive.
Reminds me of Dick Burwen's system from the 70's. I wonder if you would have to spend a million to replicate that one.
Putting a rocket into space is complex, expensive and requires a lot of R&D, analysis and understanding to do even the minimum. This is the opposite of audiophiles, who have their own personal philosophies of what is important (right or wrong) and if they think something is important, spend more on it even if the return on that investment is tiny. If you have huge resources you end up like Mr. Fritz but you don't need that in order to enjoy listening to music at home. But you do need huge resources to travel into space.
Edits: 01/16/24
That system could be a lot simpler. (Giant Sound Labs, keep the Krells, and build a room a little less opulent).
NASA was encouraging private contractors to build "faster, simpler, cheaper" for space exploration.
Fritz's system is equlivent to a moon launch compared to the typical audiophile setup.
A few years ago there were lots of good documentaries about the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing. One of the contractors working on the space suits was Playtex! S'pose due to their experience with flexible garments but, IIRC, their relationship with the other company contracted to make the suits did not go well.
An outmoded technology that was invented almost 150 years ago.
although if he had wanted to go with analog tape , well... that's another story entirely.
;)
all the best,
mrh
Yeah, near-100 yo technology. Much more better.
First they came for the dumb-asses
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a dumb-ass
We in the US have Der Bingle to thank for bringing it to our attention; thanks, Bing!
all the best,
mrh
Edits: 01/16/24 01/16/24
The Nazis used tape recorders to try to fool Allied intelligence personnel as to where Hitler actually was, on any given day.
As in, if Hitler was supposed to be addressing a rally in Meisenberg, but he was actually in a meeting in Heidelberg, the Allied spooks would listen carefully to the Meisenberg broadcast of his speech, for the the tell-tale sounds of a 16-inch acetate radio transcription disk.
But when the Nazis started faking Hitler's live events with magnetic tape, the Allied spooks were fooled.
My favorite Hitler story.
In the final days of WWII in Berlin, in the Fuhrer Bunker, Hitler asked a young officer to find out the identity of the Russian unit that was closest to killing him.
The young officer later passed on the information. Hitler looked up at him and said words to the effect that, when Hitler was invading Russia, he could have slowed down the invasion and taken the time to kill them all, as they were not themselves engaging the Nazis. But, at the time, getting to Moscow was more important.
Hitler sadly shook his head and said, "Young man: At the very end, it is the unthinking kindnesses one regrets most."
That story is from Paul Johnson's "Modern Times."
john
Bing was an original investor of sorts, or so the story goes?
I worked there for a few months in 1970.
First they came for the dumb-asses
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a dumb-ass
enn tee
all the best,
mrh
JBL acoustic lenses? JBL 'bullet' tweeters? Side-by-side tweeter and midrange line arrays? 35,000 watts? Etc.
This is what happens when audiophiles have more money than knowledge.
In the end, though, all that matters is that he had fun pursuing his goals, and he liked the way it sounds.
*********
We are inclusive and diverse, but dissent will not be tolerated.
nt
nt
I have provided care for individuals, plural, who suffered from ALS, MND and tons of other things you wouldn't wish upon your worst enemy.If there was any 'bad karma' coming to that guy, he got both barrels with that fate.
I have no judgement of the guy because he paid a price I hope never to be called for.
Edits: 01/13/24
He sacrificed his family on the altar of audio. It doesn't get much more pathetic than that.
I appreciate Fritz with his hands on approach. Hopefully his family didn't need the money and decided it wasn't worth their time trying to maximizing the return on his "investment".
Edits: 01/13/24
One man's treasure is another man's junk, or does that go the other way around? Anyway, nice rugs.
with tales to tell.
There's a shot of the house, and there's an ILLUMINATED sign on a pole in front of the house: "The Fritz's"
The proper usage would be the plural, to represent the family as a whole.
Such a plural, in English, is made by adding "es."
As on, one person named Marks, but two Markses.
But instead of "The Fritzes" the sign says "The Fritz's."
As in, "There is only one Fritz who matters, and this house is his."
What a Narcissistic, Solipsistic, Excretory Human Body Part.
With all those drivers in a home-made array (five cabinets across the front???), it must sound like a loud, bassy, Dog's Breakfast.
sigh,
john
I haven't seen the WP piece but I saw the YT video of his system when it came out and I just re-watched it. The worst thing I could say about Mr. Fritz from that video is that he very much an audiophile! He has his ideas and, whether they are the best ideas or not, goes over-the-top to fulfill them. In this case he had the resources to really go OTT. I suspect the hobby would be well populated with similar characters if they had the same resources.
As for narcissism, I think anyone who posts on an audio forum has that, whether to boast about their gear, their opinions or knowledge. Let alone bloggers and reviewers. Or to criticize someone using big words. And I've done that too so I'm not casting a stone.
You must realize that his use of the apostrophe is a contraction....just like his sometimes brutal and driven personality.
Certainly not the way I'd do things John but I'd never discus the sound of a system I've never heard. I always am disturbed by reviewers who knock the sound of a system at a show where you never know what problems there are. And besides he may have hurt the business of a system that sounds good other wise.
And you over did the literacy question. Correcting him was sort of OK but one sentence would have been enough especially since this is an audiophile site with a bunch of us crazies, not an English class.
Hi.
I'll stick with my assessment for the above reason.
I have been in two of the most legendary mastering studios on this planet, and both of them, in fact, had loudspeakers from Duntech (one later switched to Egglestonworks).
One studio was a stereo set-up; the other one had three identical speakers across the front for remastering 3-channel tapes, plus two smaller same-brand speakers at the rear for surround.
I can only imagine what the famous Kavi Alexander Water Lily Arturo Delmoni solo-violin LP of works of Bach, Kreisler, and Ysaye would sound like on Mr. Fritz's Frankensystem.
I am prepared to assume that a multi-mic'ed orchestral recording would sound impressive and immersive. But... you see my point. If the Fritz Way was the way to Sonic Truth, we would see it in mastering studios.
Anyway.
I was just emailing a music colleague, and I wrote:
START:
Yes, I have known about the guy for quite some time.
I think it's a sad story.
If you ever want an engrossing deeply personal look at the 78rpm record-collecting hobby, this is the best book--by a "Rock Chick" "Do Not Sell at Any Price." [link]
and, precisely because she is a "Rock Chick," she said what everybody else was afraid to say in public:
That record collecting (and obsessing about one's stereo equipment) is not only profoundly testosterone-related; the guys who are into it most deeply, are on the Asperger's or Autism Spectrums.
The guy tortures his family, and organizes his own life around his SOLITARY obsession. My guess is that he would have been very uncomfortable in the lobby before a Symphony performance.
For a lot less money than he spent on his system, in the same time frame, he could have taken his wife to the Czech Philharmonic for a 4-day wknd, and then the next month the Bavarian Opera, and so on and so forth. "Concert Hall of the Month."
That would have been at most a $50,000 a year hobby, back then.
Now, testosterone and high-functioning Asperger's or Autism can also be associated with "good at math and problem solving." But, guys such as he give the hobbies bad names.
END
john
"legendary mastering studios"Gateway? And which other?
*********
We are inclusive and diverse, but dissent will not be tolerated.
Edits: 01/15/24
nt
. . . like to seize our opportunities whenever we can! ;-)
I can't find the words to tell how upset I am.
that explains a bunch
john
Hi, this is where the Hifi hobby gets fun,spending the least for your efforts and comparing them with the Crystal Cable Crowd. I found some Vifa 6.5 coax's made in Denmark for 25 bucks in Parts Express.I don't think they make them there anymore.One sheet of plywood for 30 bucks made with a table saw my buddy threw away.I followed the dimensions of a Weems/Voight pipe in a Weems book and put a little egg crate foam rubber on the bottom.These speakers are so rare,there's only one pair,that there worth a million dollars to me.I had more fun making than buying.Thats how this hobby should go.It works that way with cars too....Mark Korda
I quote Wikipedia (all bold emphases below are mine BTW):From the 16th century, following French practice, the apostrophe was used when a vowel letter was omitted either because of incidental elision ("I'm" for "I am") or because the letter no longer represented a sound ("lov'd" for "loved"). English spelling retained many inflections that were not pronounced as syllables, notably verb endings ("-est", "-eth", "-es", "-ed") and the noun ending "-es", which marked either plurals or possessives , also known as genitives. . . An apostrophe followed by "s" was often used to mark a plural ; specifically, the Oxford Companion to the English Language notes thatMaybe this audiophile guy was also into Washington Irving? Hence, "The Fritz's"! ;-)
There was formerly a respectable tradition (17th to 19th centuries) of using the apostrophe for noun plurals , especially in loanwords ending in a vowel (as in ... Comma's are used , Philip Luckcombe, 1771) and in the consonants s, z, ch, sh, (as in waltz's and cotillions , Washington Irving, 1804)... [also BTW for letter plurals - A's, B's, etc. - and number plurals - 1's, 2's. etc.]
In any case (and contrary to what The Oxford Companion to the English Language indicates!), this type of usage did not completely die out in the 19th century, and even survives in the names of some of our 21st-century sports teams, where the apostrophe is clearly being used to form the plural, not the possessive:
As for your own surname, I can understand why "Markses" might be preferable to "Marks's" to indicate the plural, although maybe you ought to try the latter sometime - you might actually grow to like it! ;-)
But his description of him seems to have a LOT
more to do with him beyond just a ', and seems apt.
"Once this was all Black Plasma and Imagination" -Michael McClure
Occasionally, the late, great (and acerbic) Florence King was critical of NR's punctuation. NR insists on "Charles's birthday," for example, and not "Charles' birthday." (That is the first rule in Strunk & White, too.) She torched one of NR's overbearing editors for being "an apostrophe-ess-hole." ~:)
nt
"There is only one Fritz who matters, and this house is his."
Yes, his family was made painfully aware of that.
View YouTube Video
There was a lot of bore and boor then as now as in future.
"Once this was all Black Plasma and Imagination" -Michael McClure
I wasn't aware of the in family strife involved. Is that is a recent revelation?
Ultimately, sad story. So very different from the solace my wife and I get from music...
Wasn't aware of that either, but do remember the level of
obsessiveness in that video displayed by him made me
really uncomfortable, so that back story all makes sense.
Sadly.
Lot of unhappy people were living under that roof.
"Once this was all Black Plasma and Imagination" -Michael McClure
Lots of thing emerge after one's passing.
I'd guess he spent WELL over the $1 Million claimed in the piece.
And then the medical costs as he slowly died of ALS (no fun there) didn't leave as much as expected for the wife and kids?
A least all my tubes are worth more than I paid for them.
Not much else though.
Sorry.
First they came for the dumb-asses
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a dumb-ass
and about a month ago a read that it's being auctioned off after Ken's passing. I've been thinking about simplifying my system in case I end up on the wrong side of the sod. I don't want to leave my wife and daughters with the task of selling it all. I wonder how his family feels about the not so simple task of auctioning a system like his.
Edits: 01/13/24
I have a simple system, a pricey integrated amp, reasonably expensive SACD player/Dac, and small "tower" speakers. It's good, but I REALLY want new fuller range speakers. I've always wanted the monoblock, separate pre kind of system, and I've put it off for years because of circumstances. Now that I could swing it I wonder if I should since I don't want to leave it to my wife and daughters to deal with. I also have some old pieces including a pricey TT that I don't use anymore that I really should get rid of before I'm under the sod as you say. I've been thinking about trading the old stuff in on the new speakers, but dealers willing are hard to come by.
There's someone on this forum who is many years older than I who has gone through something like 5 pairs of really expensive speakers over the past year. I wish I had that kind of confidence in my longevity! Maybe his family is more interested in it than mine ever would be.
Here's hoping that we're all around for many years to come.
Not because of the system, but the way he treated his family.
I think there's a guy in the story I know. Ray Breakall, professional piano tuner.
I knew a guy named Ray Breakall back in the day and he was a hard core audiophile. I gotta check with a friend of mine, find out if the dude we knew tunes pianos.
My wife read it, too. Her comment to me: "Don't get any ideas."
Well.
I started watching a bit of the documentary on YouTube. Fritz's eyes have a glittery Hannibal Lecter quality to them.
If it between my kid and an old Rek O Kut, hell he wouldn't even need to ask.
The '55 Chevy might be another story. Heh.
washington post with their "free" subscription if you provide your email
Two bucks a month. Can't beat that. I do miss hard copy home delivery, but that was approaching $1000 a year. But I'm getting used to having the tablet with me at the breakfast bar.
Courtesy of Vacuous. Works like a charm almost every time.
You should have an email address that you use just for this type of request. I have one just for this and the spam that arrives is astonishing. I clean it up every few months and delete about a thousand emails.
I'll think about it before pulling the trigger
you wanna read the item for free? Without supplying an email address?
Copy and paste the URL in the link below....
Especially when the man is Jeff Sleazos! ;-)
Like the NYT, for example. For those who hate the NYT but can't stop reading it, well. Here's your chance to stick to whichever multinational corporation owns the Times.
The blissful counterstroke-a considerable new message.
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