Mansfield Fox

Law student. Yankees fan. Massive fraggle. Just living the American dream.

Monday, November 29, 2004

Unknown Unknowns, in Stereo

I spent an hour this afternoon helping a professor move a pair of enormous (6'6") speakers he was selling. I say this not to boast about how generous I am with my time and energy (well, not only to boast...) but as a set-up for a statement about my utter ignorance:

I had no idea how much crazy crap there is to know about speakers, and stereos, and turn-tables, and amps, and pre-amps, and so-on, and so-on.

No idea.

Not just: I don't know about those things, about music equipment, either specifically or in general. That I've always known, and will freely admit. I've only owned a stereo for a little under a year now, and it's a real basic model. I like music, but have never been especially concerned with sound quality - being able to hear it clearly is good enough for me.

No, what surprised me - genuinely surprised me - was how much there was I didn't know I didn't know, that I didn't know there was to know. Whole categories of sound quality I'd never even thought of. Devices I'd never known existed. Whole areas of human experience I'd never even considered thinking about. (Indeed, it's true: I would not have thought a 50-year-old turn-table would sound better than a modern one, but that's because I never thought about that issue at all.) It was a classic Rumsfeldian "unknown unknown" situation.

I still don't understand any of it, or know most of it, but at least I know now that there's a whole complex universe of stuff out there about Hi-Fi sound systems that I don't know, and probably never will.

My ignorance is staggering.