REVIEWS Dr. Gizmo Article: "Burn Mike VansEvers At The Stake" At 10:30 AM on August 5 my cony PF (Positive Feedback) arrived At 11:301 madc an appointment for my masseuse to he at my home at 8:30 PM. That afternoon I prepared my custom blend of Texas (not North Carolina) cedar oil and Jamaican (not Barbados) coconut message oil. At 8 o'clock I removed from my humidor a real Otiban Cohiba cigar given to me by Fritz, who has a large inventory of these works of art because he is a personal friend of Fidel Castro. My Japanese silk kimonoo was in place. I always treat the arrival of a new edition of Posttive Feedback with the proper respect... as you all do, and perform The Triode Guild reading the sacred text ritual. (Read more about this ritual in my book) After my message, and sauna, embraced by my silk robe, I put fire to a sliver of cedar wood and lit my sacred tobacco totem, poured myself a sniffer of fine Napoleon's cognac, filled my candelabra with my French bee's wax candles and started to read. As I was reading I noticed smoke was pouring out of the magazine and initially thought that a cigar ash had fallen, setting the pages on fire...but no...the smoke was fuming from page 76. (NOTE: One of the great existential gaps between men and women, one that limits profound communication, is that women don't smoke cigars, drink brandy and read audio magazines, which explains the high divorce rate in America, which is why couples that smokes cigars, listen to music, and read PF together, stay together) In the summer edition of PF Mike Van Evers changes the course of hi-IQ audio with his article "The Art and Science of Audio System Tuning" which is so revolutionary in its implications that he now joins the ranks of world's great terminators of orthodoxies...Copernicus, Darwin, Freud and Einstein...for which many wili justifiably shout..."Burn Mike at the Stake". This is one of the most significant articles published in any high end audio journal in the last decade. The smoke I was seeing (with my paranormal psychic abilities) was fuming from the metaphoric heretical fires of truth. Mike has delivered, to our very select community of hi-IQ earthlings (you the readers of PF), who are brainy and passionate about the audio arts, a brave new metacontext; one to guide us through the next decades of artistic expansion. Mike has drawn a line in the intellectual audio sand which now permanently separates the moldy cheese from the brave new world. But let me remind you of the nature of earthling reality... the purpose of a revolutionary idea; one that more fully describes reality is to solidify the positions of reactionary forces. The human dialectic is eternal. If you have any doubts about this just check out the raging 150 year old debate in America on whether biological evolution is a fact, and why so many still want Darwin burned at the stake. As we crossover into the next millennia we note that in almost every field of activity there is a revolution in full jazz, and that includes cosmology, politics, communications, biology, mathematics and etc. To put it bluntly our notions of reality are being shaken, and most are not comfortable. but Evolution has never had any compassion for the obsolete. The enormity of Mikes intellectual achievement must be put into perspective. It should not surprise us that that Mike's intuitive genus gives spine to his intellect. Mike has been able to alchemize years of empirical work and forge it into a coherent view of the larger reality of audio systems: an audio system is a musical instrument that must be tuned to achieve sublime performance. while we have know this for years, Mike has given structure, form and coherence to this notion, and that is a great achievement. The high end era of "Buy/Plug In/Play" is now dead. Can any of you imagine buying a guitar or piano and playing it without tuning it? Can any musician imagine that they way they tunes their instrument wilt remain static as their artistic expression evolves? We note all along the edge of the audio arts a new consensus, a new heightened concern about music fundamentals, and it is called TONE, which stands rightly at the center of a Copernican model of the audio arts. What Mike is telling us is that building an Indy 500 Car or a high performance audio system is more than buying the best high performance components.. it is about how we "tune" all of these components so they interact with each other properly... .and by properly Mike means expresses authentic/natural musical tonality... which is all about harmonics. In effect Mike is telling us that an audio system is just like living interactive eco-system. Mike has performed the coupe da grace on "static audio testing" and thereby both complicates and liberates high end audio reviewing. When you combine Mike's thoughts with Scott Frankland's musing, it is impossible to escape the reality that each and every audio system is a totally unique gaggle of audio gizmos that includes your "tonality" and your room's personality. The bad news is that recommending an individual audio component is as artistically valid as recommending to a friend that he should marry some attractive stranger. But the good news is much bigger than the bad news, if and only if you are NOT an audio weeny. (An audio weeny is a music lover who is afraid he will get a lethal shock from unplugging his audio cables). What Mike is telling us is that we can control our tonal destiny because we can tune our audio systems until they reflect our unique vision of musical beauty. How we tune our race car, motorcycle, or Fender guitar, or audio system is, and should be, a process of refinement and coherence. Let us explore the fundamental 1 bad faith of main stream audio engineering with this "accurate" example: We have just built an Indy 500 car and we attach all of our test devices and we measure its horsepower and torque, etc, while it is in the garage. It looks flawless and has superior performance on the oscilloscope. But none of these tests tells us how it will drive on the track and how well the driver will interact with the car on the track, and we auto designers (but not most audio designers) know the limiitations of these static tests which is why static testing can not give us a due about how successful this car will be doing its intended work.. and most importantly there is no testing possible on how it will interact with an earthling racer. Mike is telling us just that the challenge of creating a "winning" high performance audio system, just like our rndy 500 example, is all about tuning. And if you think this analogy between race cars and high end audio is feeble let me remind you that the largest car companies, who are serious about racing (because it helps sells cars), hire and use small independent "masters of tuning to develop their race cars, and that includes General Motors, Honda, and Mercedes Benz. Let me remind you that in the audio arts SIZE MATTERS only when it comes to creativity. Do I have to remind you of how many different tuning tools we have available to us... including those created by Mike VansEvers, which I will speculate on shortly? Let me share with you a vision I have just seen in my crystal ball: In the near future "tunability" will be a feature of all high end audio devices and that includes speakers, cables, DACs, amps, preamps, and most importantly your head! Let me remind you that. This is my suggestion: harass Mike VansEvers now. Suck his brain dry (advice from Fritz). Call him up and get all of his literature. After you carefully read and re-read his article in the summer issue of PF, try and convince him to send you a draft of his next article. When Dave Robinson rightly claims that PF is leading the audio revolution he is asking us to gather up new courage and admit that we are still in our infancy as an art form, know very little about how audio systems work, and have primitive understanding of how earthlings experience music. Real progress in the audio arts is dependent on getting our priorities straight.. .and by that I insist that we must first expand our intellectual capacity to wrestle with the paradoxes of this and the next centuries most vital new art form. From that expanded consciousness new audio art shall emerge, but not before that. This mind expansion is what Mike is stimulating. Mike is kicking every audio artist's butt, and there is no going back now that PF has published Mike VansEvers' thoughts. Fritz also loved Mike's article and, with great animation, asserted that the difference between faux and serious high end audio gear will be its tuneability, and that includes DACs, amps, preamps and speakers. Fritz's also reminded me that the intrinsic nature of all vinyl systems was their tuneability, and asserted that soon the purveyors of digits will learn about the importance of tone. If you don't subscribe to PF give up one bottle of French champagne and join tile audio revolution before your ears turn into moldy cheese balls. The VansEvers Co. Inc.: 813 239-0700 Fax 813 239-0805 Dr. Gizmo

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