Rerurn to Romy the Cat's Site
In the Forum: Playback Listening
In the Thread: Accuracy vs. Musicality (and YMMV)
Post Subject: Being diabolical...Posted by Romy the Cat on: 1/22/2026
Robin, you made two interesting posts that I did not respond to; I wish I had more time. Very briefly—and not because it is important, but because I find it conspicuous and somewhat alarming—I am not sure I share your alarmed sentiments about national socialism. I certainly do not celebrate it, but I also do not attach a purely negative value to it in itself.
You see, in my mind national socialism is an unavoidable and completely natural final stage of our current societal trajectory, and it is a direction toward which all countries will eventually move. So when I say it is “normal,” I do not mean that it is good; I mean that it is typical, common, and highly predictable from an algorithmic point of view. I do not criticize national socialism as such. I criticize the humane social model that unavoidably leads to it—and that model is what we currently have almost everywhere in the world. Since I recognize that there are other possible paths, I do not particularly care about national socialism, communism, capitalism, or any other completely artificial construct.
You also in your last response, the first part, where you spoke about accuracy in audio. I absolutely disagree with you, and to explain why I would need a lot of cigars and at least an hour—not writing, but talking. Let me be a bit cryptic and tell you a story instead.
A lot has happened for me since that story. It was in 1999, and at that time I was very close to the Lamm family. Vladimir and I were discussing some amplifier, which turned into a broader debate. At some point, both of us used the word “accuracy,” and then the conversation stopped. Vladimir asked me what I understood accuracy to mean. I answered him more or less along the same lines you outlined in your response, and along the lines generally accepted in this thread and elsewhere.
Vladimir told me that my understanding was absolutely incorrect—almost idiotic—and that there was a completely different meaning of accuracy. What was remarkable is that he did not offer any detailed explanation of his version. He simply told me that I was entirely wrong, even at the level of what I thought the word “accuracy” meant in audio. It was almost diabolical—and Vladimir was quite capable of that—but it was also pedagogically brilliant. Had he explained it to me at that time, I would not have been able to understand it.
It took me several months of thinking before I finally understood what Vladimir Lamm was pointing to. The key was not discovering the concept itself, but realizing that in order to understand it, many other interrelated things first had to be discovered and understood. After that moment, I spent another two years in close contact with Vladimir, and we never discussed the subject explicitly again. However, we had many conversations in which audio, accuracy, and transparency were implicitly involved. After I “got it,” I never again had the feeling that Vladimir disagreed with my application of these ideas. So I would not say that Vladimir taught me about transparency or accuracy directly—but without his challenge at that moment, I do not think I would ever have arrived at that understanding.Rerurn to Romy the Cat's Site