steve hoffman forums, C or D?

Lol, that was actually my first guess, just based on the description of the argument style, without any knowledge of the video game.

had no idea that user was banned here and can't even recall what he did that might have been an issue. but I will say that the Magic Whip was better than I thought it would be when I finally listened to it

I think they just got FPd and never came back, don't think it was a permaban?

shhhhhh

Nah, I think he was permabanned, he'd moved through being merely annoying to being downright obnoxious and eventually on to some unpleasant personal attacks. Plus I have some memory of him branching out from ILM towards the end of his tenure and holding some pretty dodgy opinions on various subjects.

He was banned because he became unhinged at the end.

Or what Tom said

ah fair enough - that all sounds right, I just thought it was a 51 and he realised he wasn't welcome here

sorry I hate when people do this so https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turrican

― Colonel Poo

awww that takes all the fun out of it

https://segaretro.org/Universal_Soldier

ahh, good ol turricunt. i fp`d him every time he posted, whether or not it was objectionable... mostly because he was posting the shit that tom alluded to and because he was just kind of a rude person without any self-awareness. i was actively campaigning to be unreasonably rude because what comes around goes around, bitchass. good riddance.

i haven't read this but it's about a guy who spends $1M on his stereo and pissed his family off. wasn't sure where to drop it but here seems like a good fit!

https://i.imgur.com/9PpfeuQ.png

here is a free/gift link:
https://wapo.st/47ErwZI

damn, what a sad story :(

i posted it this morning on the continuing with CDs thread with the youtube doc. the doc gives even more insight.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4b2IOOhJmxw

someone actually bought those gigantic custom speakers!

The 10-foot-tall speakers? After 18 bids, an Indiana man named Carlton Bale snagged all three for $10,100. Less than you’d pay for a pair of Yamaha NS-5000 bookshelf speakers.

A fan of Fritz’s YouTube documentary, Bale had set out a couple of years ago to build what he imagined would be “the second-best loudspeaker in the world” — until he heard about the Fritz auction.

“I thought, ‘Do I really have the time to build the speakers I want that probably aren’t going to sound as good as the ones Ken built?’” Bale recently recalled, after driving to Virginia with a U-Haul to fetch them last month. The price, he conceded, was “a steal. The bargain of a lifetime.”

That story is some genuinely tragic shit, just a man truly brought down by an obsession. Every so often I'll read one of these types of stories and while they vary in the extremes, usually at the end I wind up thinking, wouldn't I rather just have a well curated CD collection that would cost a fraction of that and maybe bring me equivalent joy, or perhaps more joy albeit considerably less cool points? Just the sheer expense and unpredictability of vinyl is wearying. Probably part of it is how so many record stores don't do anything for me at all, it's rare that I walk into one and it's an amazing experience. I know that's probably just me and my own particular tastes and preferences though.

Has relates to the thread subject, once I read a thread titled something like, "does your spouse share your music taste?" and one answer was something like, "she never wants to listen to the same music as I do. Sometimes I wish I just lived all alone." :/

ouch.

perfect sound forever, though!

Thx for the gift link. A good reminder of “the important things in life,” I guess…

usually at the end I wind up thinking, wouldn't I rather just have a well curated CD collection that would cost a fraction of that and maybe bring me equivalent joy, or perhaps more joy albeit considerably less cool points?

This is me, basically. To look at how many records and CDs I own, a person might assume I'd have a top-of-the-line system to play it on, but nope. I always went for "decent," and when I couldn't afford decent, I just acquired hand-me-downs and bought Goodwill stuff, and I've never felt any particular urge to upgrade my system. It isn't that I don't think I'd enjoy having a nice setup, but, to your point, there are about a hundred things I would rather spend my limited disposable income on than audiophile equipment - like CDs and records, for example.

It’s almost as if you like music rather than equipment. Crazy!

My entire audio setup has been cobbled together from various sources. My wife's Teac amp, my Project Debut III, a pair of Bowers and Wilkins matrix speakers I won in a weird work raffle a dozen years ago, plus my Onkyo single CD player. I definitely have a few friends who have gone for really really pricey equipment, like thousands of dollars, and I just can't do it. I mean it would be a financial stretch and psychologically I'd feel like I was getting conned somehow. I think the audiophile snake oil thread has me paranoid!

I mean I do love vinyl records obv. right now I'm listening to the led Zeppelin self-titled, the triple vinyl reissue from a few years back, and it sounds pretty great. Just don't tell me that actually there's this 1985 pressing exclusive to Japan that's really the best one haha.

But there's something about the simple pleasure of driving around with my kid listening to the first cracker CD, which I found for two bucks and bought because he's really into them and CVB now. That also sounds great!

. My wife's Teac amp, my Project Debut III, a pair of Bowers and Wilkins matrix speakers I won in a weird work raffle a dozen years ago, plus my Onkyo single CD player. I definitely have a few friends who have gone


^this is all really good stuff I bet it sounds great

I also have a pretty mid-fi setup. I live in a studio apartment on a road with plentiful traffic, and with the clanking trucks and car subwoofers rattling my windows, the best way to improve my setup would be to move. But I have cheap rent and am within walking distance of my job and most necessities, so it's hard to give those things up in pursuit of optimal listening conditions.

a pair of Bowers and Wilkins matrix speakers I won in a weird work raffle a dozen years ago

I got a pair of B&W headphones for Christmas, they're outstanding.

Haha I don't work there anymore but basically the guy who ran the company was emptying out his house of all this gear he had, it was a whole mess of laser disc players and DirecTV boxes, plus those speakers. We each got a ticket and then the numbers were called, I was called third. I took the speakers not having looked at them closely but needing better ones than the thrift store fodder ones I owned. They're the matrix 804. Couldn't believe it when I saw what they were and when I looked them up.

Holy moley

“I need you to die slow, m-----f-----,” he told his father. “Die slow.”

If you ever wade through the Hoffman forum, the pathological toxicity on display in that article becomes no surprise. I mean, I care about good sound, but I care about it as much as I care about good-tasting food and act accordingly. Imagine if you treated your meals the way a hot-stamp, one-step lunatic treats their music listening.

As he got older, Fritz sometimes wondered if he could have made space within his own vast ambitions to consider other people’s goals and wishes.

Huh, yeah.

man if I was Kurt I'd have peaced on Fritz so many more years earlier, idk how he lasted that long.

I think that people predisposed to this kind of obsessiveness will find and object of obsession not sure it's much to do with stero equipment at the end of the day

oh yeah, I mean you could pretty much substitute "restoring a classic car" and it would it fine

*fit

Find any collectible, and you'll find the extreme end of obsessiveness. I probably have the low end version of that genetic predisposition, I used to collect baseball cards when I was a teenager, and definitely enjoy having a large library of books. But I'm also someone who hates to have overflowing shelves so I'm kind of self-limiting there. When things start to overflow, I start to sell or trade in.

I wonder how many people who post on that forum are dudes.

I knew a guy once who used to frequent the local record store. Fussy collector dude, we all know the type. Anyway, one day he announced to us that his wife was pregnant, but he made her promise to keep the news from her family until after Christmas because he didn't want all the Christmas gifts they received to be for the baby. I've never forgotten that.

The guy in this article reminds me of that guy

I seem to have an innate feeling of unease whenever the amount of time/energy I devote to anything, an activity, a hobby, collecting something, etc, start to creep up. it just kind of instinctively makes me take a pause. that's not necessarily a 'good' thing in that it usually happens even when I'm healthily enjoying something, but it's why for instance I sold my Xbox One. just one weekend of spending like ten hours in front of it and I was unnerved by how much time I'd easily wasted.

xp jfc

see also Walter Benjamin's writing on the obsession behind collecting: https://www.nypl.org/blog/2020/10/26/walter-benjamin-history-collections-and-archives

My dad's most treasured collection was his record collection. He had about 4000.

He gave them all up without hesitation when mom pointed out they didn't have the space and they needed the money they could get unloading it

Never complained about it once afterwards.

Things are just objects

Even more damning is this line from that article:

Was it truly “wow?” Or merely loud?

The goal was never worth it to begin with, but he ended up torching everyone close to him for literally nothing.

and following on from that, "maybe he had it on the wrong setting" because there are so many variables he can't even keep track any more

The part that really got me was how his kid, who had for decades helped him work on it probably at the expense of his own sanity and life, just wanted to stay up and listen to some music on it and he wouldn't let him do it. He made that kid toil away for something and wouldn't even let him experience it.

Yeah. It was a layup and he still fucked it up

Fritz is a dud

I wonder how many people who post on that forum are dudes.

I've seen maybe three women total post on there, so, basically all of them. and when a woman starts posting the amount of obsessive attention she gets is cringeworthy, particularly if she posts in a Rush thread or something.

Whenever I lurk there I feel like "the kid" (I'm in my late forties)

https://stereocentral.freeforums.net

Imagine if you treated your meals the way a hot-stamp, one-step lunatic treats their music listening.

I feel seen.

My dad's most treasured collection was his record collection. He had about 4000.

He gave them all up without hesitation when mom pointed out they didn't have the space and they needed the money they could get unloading it

Never complained about it once afterwards.

Things are just objects

― Disco Biollante (Neanderthal)

This - and post above - both contain heaps of cautionary wisdom for me, a male human who has had bad collector brain since childhood (was it Star Wars toys? Doctor Who books? Bubblegum cards? It was some fucking thing that did it).

I actually feel really fortunate to have lived in the time of eBay, cos 20 years ago when it was still new and nifty to sell things globally I tried it out - and found both financial and karmic reward from selling stuff - and that opened up a life-saving little neural pathway

Still a terrible accumulator though - recently have been looking at my record collection and thinking that if liquidated it is probably a decent overseas holiday for my family - if not more - and once you put it in those terms (and consider that there’s only a finite amount of above-ground time…)