Have you noticed as your system improves?


I have been working on making improvements to my system since 2021. (I got away from it for 10 years so the rig sat silent all that time and aged out) I have replaced my speakers twice in 2021 and 2024, my DAC, DDC, All the cables, speaker wire and PC’s. I added a streamer and ALSO the preamp/dsp processor is new. Just got a new amp in May. I have made upgrades to my wired internet access with switches, LPS and better cabling and Enos filter. I have an Audience Front Row Reserve USB cable on the way to complete that signal chain. The only thing not new is my CEC CD transport, it still works and sounds great. I have put a great deal of time and effort into my room acoustic treatments too.

 

So here’s the thing, and it’s been consistent once it all got settled and broken in. I don’t listen as loud as I did before all this or along the way. Not because it sounds worse but because it’s not necessary to hear deep into the recordings anymore. The resolution, PRAT, detail, soundstage is all there, and its really good. It’s a collective level of enhancements to achieve this. I want to preserve what hearing I have left, yet I am enjoying the music much more now, it simply just sounds better with out all the volume required before to hear what was going on. I used to have to turn it up to get it to sound good. Not anymore. Has this happed to you too?

fthompson251

Showing 1 response by kevn

I’ve found that the constant adjustment of volume is absolutely essential to my listening sessions, because every song and it’s delivery as a recorded track is different - some begin very softly to explode into incredibly loud and dynamic highs, others maintain a steady output all the way through; some songs are intended to be played loud and brash, while others are so nuanced, they are sung like a whisper, as in Inger Marie Gundersen’s ‘Sebastians waltz’. The range of adjustment I make between those two may be as much as ten decibels. Tracks have differently recorded volume levels - I cannot listen to ‘bohemian rhapsody’ at the same level I listen to Tori Amos’ ‘icicle’; and I generally listen to almost all classical music at a higher level than most other genres. For the full impact of its performance, I listen to tchaikovsky’s violin in D by Perlman and Ormandy at about the same level as I do with ‘bohemian rhapsody’. Occasionally, I even adjust the volume between tracks on the same album, sometimes up or down by just a decibel. The starting track of ‘Friday night in San Francisco’ has to be heard at a higher volume level, but it starts much more gently, so that balance has to found at the very beginning of the track. I guess what I am trying to say is that the realistic experience of each and every track I play is so very determined by volume control. 
 

In friendship - kevin.