What we don't know does hurt us

It's easy to know when something's missing, but only if you had it in the first place. Imagine living in a remote village on the banks of a small stream. Neither you nor anyone in the community gave much thought to the stream; it was never enough to matter much. One day the stream level rose until it became a torrent of water and you ventured upstream to see why. To your surprise you note the old dam had crumbled, and no longer restricted its flow. What's interesting about this allegory for a power amplifier is about what I had been missing and did not know. The concept of restriction never occurred to me as I have always modeled the chain of reproduction equipment as surely altered, but never missing. Like the effects of wearing colored sunglasses, it seemed to me everything passed through my power amplifier, though some of it may be colored, but never blocked. I gave no thought to the notion that a power amp more accurately resembles a dam or a gate holding back the music, rather than a lens coloring all that passed through it. We live with our systems oblivious to what we do not have until the blinders have been removed. Like someone who has been shuttered indoors for years, we gasp at what's been missing when we walk outside for the first time. I guess the old adage you don't know what you're missing until you lose it rings true, though the corollary seems more to the point: you can't know what you're missing until you hear it.