G'day Rob mate,
Well considering what's going on in my hometown back in Colombo, the economic crisis which has lead to a humanitarian crisis, especially after we had a 35 year long bloody civil war... Aus is paradise!!!
In all due fairness, it actually really hurts us, whenever we watch those terrible news clips, my wifey just cries. She can't cope... yet again, we're always very very thankful that we left our hometown in 2005. Back then, the war was still going on but then abruptly ended in May of 2009! Obviously war crimes... how can a civil war spamming 3 decades suddenly end in a few months!...? Anyway, the wifey still visits her folks once in awhile but I haven't visited there since 2012. I don't think I could survive there for more than a week, after getting used to the Aussie lifestyle!
The quality of life here is great! There's much more sense of equality in distribution of income, the gap between the haves & the have-nots is not as wide compared to SL & most countries... and there's a system of diplomacy, education and health that works! However, the one thing that really annoys me is that some people over here whinge for no good reason, and they go absolutely nuts about toilet paper... compared to Colombo SL, where people don't even get a decent meal, don't have access to basic elements food and essentials, can't feed their kids... these Aussies should be whipped! Shame on them for whinging all the time... but now they can clearly see what's going on in the rest of the world, so they're a bit more aware, but they still whinge!
Yes, the high end audio gear here is very expensive. You have to be making some real big bucks to afford this gear. However, through reliable contacts, good networking and by careful component selection, you can put together a system of very high quality but it will take years. Every component you see in my photo has a story... of hard work, fingers burnt and nearly went homeless at one point with those stupid Wilson's. Man I'll say, never buy Wilson's, what a waste! That sort of gear are for people with big egos... they have no clue about real music. So in their mindset, first comes ego (therefore must get biggest speakers & most expensive) then comes the gear, and lastly the music. I've met a few of these characters and really don't associate with them anymore.
Just take any speaker system out there, dynamic driver types, with very expensive materials and not to mention the exhorbitant price on cabinet design, and compare them to any ML stats. There's just no comparison at all! There's no cabinet resonance, there's no distortion, there's no reverb, there's no artificial enhancements in the bass or LF for that matter... just pure music!
ML stats capture the very essence of the recordings. If it's on the recording, ML's will reproduce it. If it's not on the recording then it simply won't be there! So there's no real point on trying to create artificial enhancements by adding various gizmos, and so on to augment bass, unless you listen to music that has very low octaves, such as organ or deep synthesised music. I don't! So I would never use subs. That's artificial.
Anyway, I can go on about this but I'll post later in other tabs, relating more on the gear. It's certainly very sad that ML didn't pursue with the CLX's, perhaps they had their reasons...
One thing for sure is that the CLX's were the best stats that ML ever made by far. Ok, perhaps the Statements are but they're long gone...
Cheers mate, and enjoy those fine tunes!
RJ
