You are putting the universe at risk by causing the acceleration of proton decay!! Don't you know that without protons matter evaporates into radiation and life as we know it will cease to exist!
And who is going to clear up that vast soup of subatomic particles that are building up at the speaker end of your hi-fi?
Why, that's the province of the divine HOBBY, of course, praise be to His/Her/Its/Their name! HOBBY is the supreme divinity of audiophoolia and is entirely responsible for the apparent deviation of things audiophool from physical reality. The thread has long disappeared from HFC, but here's the original by way of explanation:
Recent exchanges on the cable front have persuaded me that hi-fi is in fact a form of religion, in that belief in something that is not subject to proof is paramount. It certainly meets the definition of faith:
ââ'¬Å"Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not seeââ'¬Â (Heb.11:1 (NIV)).
All of these have led, inevitably, to a need for the recognition of the existence of a Divinity, who is perceptible only to those who have Faith, and who is silent to those who are sceptics and unbelievers. The Divinity has many sacred names, but the one that has come down to normal mortals is HOBBY.
It has led inevitably to the creation of THE CHURCH OF THE REPRODUCTION, and all who can ascribe to the Ten Commandments, as laid down by HOBBY on Mount Vinyl, are automatically members. Here they are, as spoken by HOBBY and later engraved on tablets of purest 180g PVC/PVA copolymer (with apologies to Moses and Ex.20 (KJV)):
I am thy HOBBY that has brought thee out of the land of Idiots, into the house of bondage:
1. Thou shalt have no other hobbies before me.
2. Thou shalt not make unto me any craven remarks on cables, or on green pens or power cords or supports or amber or CD-enhancing liquids or the fact that amplifiers all sound the same or any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the waters under the earth that could possibly (or impossibly) have an influence on sound quality, or Russ Andrews. Thou shalt bow down thyself to them and serve them, for I the HOBBY am a jealous hobby, visiting the iniquity of the fathers unto the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that raise logical and scientific objections against me. And showing no mercy to thousands of them that love me and keep me in profit.
3.Thou shalt not take the Naim of thy Brand in vain, for the Brand will not hold him guiltless that taketh its Naim in vain
4. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it wholly for demoing new gear. Six days shalt thou labour and do all thy journal reading and surfing, but the seventh is the Sabbath of thy HOBBY; in it thou shalt not do any work, neither thou nor thy son nor thy daughter nor the stranger that is within thy gates. For in six days the HOBBY made the earth, the active, the neutral and the alternating current and all that in them is and demoed it all on the seventh day, Therefore the HOBBY listened on the demo-day and hallowed it.
5. Honour thy cables and thy interconnects, that thy days may be long upon the kit that thy HOBBY giveth thee (at least until the next upgrade, at which point thou wilt need new ones).
6. Thou shalt not kill the goose that lays the golden eggs (see commandment 2).
7. Thou shalt not commit adultery with sceptics and unbelievers.
8. Thou shalt not steel, unless it be called Mana.
9. Thou shalt not bear false witness against tweakery.
10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbour's, with the exception of his hi-fi, so that the upgrades continue unbroken.
In the past, the HOBBY has spoken through his servants the Profits, such as St. Ivor of Caledonia and St. Julian of Salisbury, and the outpourings of sacred literature such as ââ'¬Å"Hi-Fi Choiceââ'¬Â, all devoted to the worship and extolling of the HOBBY, but now he calls on all hi-fi owners everywhere to repent, to discard their unbelief and to embrace the sacred lore of communication with the HOBBY through better power cords, interconnects, cables, stands and tweaks of all manner. Forgiveness is possible, even at this late stage and even for those stricken with the unspeakable heresy of digitalis, for the time is short and soon the End Times will come. The Righteous will pass to Paradise where reproduction will be perfect and the sweet spot will cease to exist, because everywhere will be a sweet spot. However, for those who persist in unbelief, their ultimate (and dare we say it, well-deserved) fate will be terrible ââ'¬â€œ they will be thrown alive into the lake of molten PVC, moulded into records and played at a stylus pressure of 2 tons, recast again in the lake of molten PVC and played again ad infinitum.
Repent, ye sinners, before it is too late!
Members of the Church shall be required to take unto themselves the name ââ'¬Å"Bagehotââ'¬Â*, the way Sikhs are all required to take unto themselves the name Singh (lion). The Church does not require offerings, but HOBBY must be placated by constant upgrades. Audio Nirvana will only be reached at the Eternity of Perfect Reproduction. The greater the upgrades, the better shall the position of the believer be in the Eternity.
The position of Supreme Pontiff of The Church of the Reproduction is currently vacant. It resembles that of another large religious organisation, and because of that and because the True Believers achieve great spiritual highs when communing with the HOBBY, s/he bears the title of Dope. All members of the Church are entitled to stand for election as Dope, but in reality only those with equipment whose purchase price resembles the Gross National Product of Belgium and/or Mana levels exceeding Phase 11 have any real chance in the Sacred Conclave of Carbuncles of the Church. Election is announced by the white smoke of the Sacred Dielectric from the chimney of the ââ'¬Å"Bricklayer's Armsââ'¬Â, Hounslow, Mddx. The coronation of the Dope takes place shortly thereafter (s/he pays).
* Walter Bagehot (1826-1877) was the most famous editor of ââ'¬Å"The Economistââ'¬Â. His famous comment on British Royalty is also appropriate to hi-fi - letting the light of reality in on it would destroy the magic.
The Scriptures also tell us how it originally came about. Again, I bore you with the original HFC thread:
The True Believer will have no truck with new-fangled alleged scientific theories of origins. Well, we all know what these so-called scientific types are like on the subject of hi-fi, don't we? Eternally rambling on as to how it's all in our heads! I look forward to their eternal rambles when they have eternity to do it ââ'¬â€œ in the Lake of Molten Vinyl. Let's hear how
that record plays! The True Believer should instead adhere to the simple, unvarnished truth, as laid down in the divinely-inspired account in the Scriptures at Generous 1:
Generous 1
1In the beginning HOBBY created the heaven and the earth.
2And the earth was without sound, and void; and silence was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of HOBBY moved upon the face of the waters.
3And HOBBY said, Let there be lightning: and there was lightning.
4And HOBBY saw the lightning, that it was good:
5And HOBBY made Day and Night, because he knew that this would represent the magnitude of the differences that would be heard. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
6And HOBBY said, Let the lightning be capable of voltage reduction and conduction, such that it can be used, and let there be conductors.
7And HOBBY made the conductors, and divided the elements of the earth into conductors and non-conductors.
8And HOBBY called the conductors Metal and he called the non-conductors Di-Electric. And the evening and the morning were the second day.
9And HOBBY said, Let dry land appear, and let it be enclosed: and it was so.
10And HOBBY called the dry land Listening Room; and HOBBY saw that it was good.
11And HOBBY said, Let the Listening Room bring forth loudspeakers of every kind: and it was so.
12And the Listening Room brought forth infinite baffles and ported enclosures and electrostatic membranes and subwoofers and satellites of every kind: and HOBBY saw that it was good.
13And the evening and the morning were the third day.
14And HOBBY said, Let there be amplification of every kind in the Listening Room, and let them glow in the darkness: and it was so.
15And HOBBY brought forth the resistor and the capacitor, the integrated circuit and the LED of divers colours, the valve and the transistor, and did cause the LEDs and the valves and the names on those whose Naim was above every name to glow.
16And HOBBY set them in place in circuitry, so that they ruled over the loudspeakers, to divide the quiet from the noisy: and HOBBY saw that it was good.
17And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.
18And HOBBY said, Let the Listening Room bring forth abundantly source components of every kind.
19And HOBBY created great turntables, and every source component that playeth, which the Listening Room brought forth abundantly: and HOBBY saw that it was good.
20And HOBBY blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiplay, and fill the Listening Room with sound, and let music multiply in the earth.
21And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.
22And HOBBY said, Let the earth bring forth creeping things, and let the creeping things exude the oil that is within them, and let the oil blend with the conductors and Di-Electric and be transformed into cables and interconnects, and with the wood and metals of the earth to form stands and green pens and cleaning fluids and demagnetisers and all manner of wondrous devices that improve sound, in complete defiance of all the principles of natural law that I shall eventually get around to establishing for everyone else: and it was so.
23And HOBBY made every thing that creepeth upon the earth and the oil within them, and fashioned from the oil cables and interconnects and caused them to unite with the source components and amplifiers and loudspeakers in the Listening Room, creating The Gear: and HOBBY saw that it was good.
24And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.
25And HOBBY said, Let us make music-carrying means that can be used on the source components, and let us make The Audiophool made in our image, after our likeness: and let him have dominion over the hi-fi equipment, and over the music and over all the accessories that have come from the oil from every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and let him have golden ears, such that he can perceive better than any other man, yea, even things that are not actually there, and let him even occasionally listen to music thereon, to provide a fig leaf of justification therefor.
26So HOBBY created vinyl and tape and CD, and he created The Audiophool in his own image, in the image of HOBBY created he him; female he also created, with common sense and WAF instead of audiophoolery.
27And HOBBY blessed them, and HOBBY said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the earth with high fidelity equipment, and subdue it: and have dominion over the dealerships of the earth, and upgrade constantly.
28And HOBBY said, Behold, I have given you every means of upgrading, the bank balance, the credit card, the cheque book, the dole money that really should be used to pay the rent, and have placed within you the spirit to make you desire to do so, to never be satisfied with what you have, and I have given you the Hi-Fi Magazine and the Internet Forum to increase the desire to do so; and it was so.
29And HOBBY saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.
30Thus the heavens and the earth, the Listening Room and all The Gear in it were finished, and all the host of them.
31And on the seventh day HOBBY ended his work which he had made; and on the seventh day he retired to the Listening Room and switched on The Gear, and switched off from all his work which he had made.
32And HOBBY blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which he created and made.
33 And on the ninth day, HOBBY finally got to listen, because The Gear took that long to warm up.
Here is everything the believer needs to know ââ'¬â€œ note how, in the inspired account, The Gear was created before the principles of natural law were, thus answering clearly once and for all for all except those who will not see the question as to why hi-fi does not adhere to natural law, and why only the true Believer can ascertain the differences. Do not be deceived by so-called scientific logic ââ'¬â€œ these scoffers are themselves deceived and are fated in the End Time for the most part to end up in the Lake of Molten Vinyl, which is the Second Death.
