Dogma

It's an interesting term. It means 'a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true'. Religions have a lot of them. So too does high end audio. I had written several days ago that a point source loudspeaker is the theoretically perfect transducer: infinitely small, infinitely loud. It is also currently beyond anyone's ability to build such a loudspeaker. One of my readers asked me an interesting question: "are you just repeating a dogmatic claim? Do you actually know that to be the ultimate sound source?" Truth is, yes I am just repeating a long-held truth and no, I don't have any reason to think it's true, anymore than I have any reason to think it false. I suppose one could suggest that because you cannot actually build such a device, you can neither prove nor disprove the claim. We know that the opposite, an infinitely large sound source. can begin to approach our ideal. That's somewhat the idea behind the Infinity Reference Standards in Music Room One: a floor to ceiling line source. But, of course, it's not 'infinitely' big so it too fails. An actual perfect transducer is the original source of the sound: perhaps my voice, a violin, a guitar, a trumpet. Perfect because we're using that as our reference, our model. It is neither infinitely small or large. It is just perfect, nothing more, nothing less. I should tread lightly when it comes to dogma and will try and do so in the future. Thanks for the coaching.