Bob Neill of Amherst Audio.
The fantastic Tocaro 42 Loudspeakers in natural finish: $14,000, stands included. Now playing at Amherst Audio!
Bob Neill is many things to the audio world. He's the proprietor of Amherst Audio in Amherst, Mass., where he stocks Audio Note, Blue Circle, Resolution Audio, J.M. Reynaud (of which Bob is also the North American importer!) and, of course, Crimson Electronics Amps, Preamps and Audio Cables as well as Tocaro Loudspeakers.
Bob also writes about audio. He's a frequent poster at Audio Asylum (with over 2000 posts!) and has written scores of reviews (of both gear and of recordings) for both Positive-Feedback and Enjoy the Music.
It's probably not a coincidence that Bob Neill discovered Tocaro and Crimson. And it's actually more likely that Tocaro and Crimson found Bob Neill (hey, that's what happened to us at Austin Hifi, too!)
Bob is one of those people who, long ago, embarked on what we like to call a Quest for Truth in Audio. For him, the quest, which parallels his more open-minded approach as a dealer, is not the pursuit of a personal sound characterized by qualities that particularly please us (tube warmth, PRaT, sound staging/imaging, etc.). "Rather," he says," it is an escape from the self in order to find something that treats us the way real live music does: surprises us, shocks us, excites us, pleases us, charms us, pisses us off, etc. The experience of listening to a ‘true’ system should be like meeting a stranger: as impersonal and unsolicitous as a string quartet that makes us go to it rather than having it come to us, changing itself to please us.”
This is not the usual way to evaluate an audio system, he concedes. “So a 'truthful' system usually starts out by putting us off because we are used to having things our way, especially when we pay decent money for it. We want everything to be familiar. But once you find a system that gives you the impersonal truth, one that cares more about getting the sound of instruments and voices right than about pleasing you, you will likely become as addicted to it as you are to live music itself; and become more sensitive to and intolerant of colorations and pleasing distortions in systems that go the other way. And eventually, it will become entirely natural. It will have weaned you from the confines of yourself!"
If you'd like to read more of Bob's writing about audio, or would like to know more about Amherst Audio, look him up on the web:
...or pay him a visit in Amherst Mass!Now you can hear Tocaro Loudspeakers (with Crimson amps, preamps and cables!) at the following U.S. dealers:
- Austin Hifi, Austin Texas (Tocaro 45 and Tocaro 40 models)
- Amherst Audio, Amherst Massachusetts (Tocaro 42)
- Austin Hifi, Los Angeles (Tocaro 40)
I have been searching a long time for such interesting post. I am very much interested in speakers. All types of loudspeakers used in various places.
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