Hello Bryon,
I love your read. Since I was impressed with your thoughts on system attributes, I took the liberty to check out your system. There I noticed you have every base covered with laudable name brand audio gear. Positive feedback can be found on each component in your system.
I believe you have spent a lot of time and money building your system. Given that each addition is only as strong as the whole, how do you know the real worth of each element old or new? |
As long as your are pointing a finger at transgressors to good sound, I have my own findings, and the difficulty in changing them was relatively easy.
On my system, I have found the following:
Concealment:- Solid state amplifiers - easy
Corruption -cables - easy
elimination - oversampling DACs - easy. |
Trying to recapture live concert that I assumed was amplified through whatever equipment and speakers.... just how is anyone going to replicate that?
My son plays guitar, my wife piano, and daughter viola. Live music, and voices are the source for learning timbre and naturalness. I just attended a Christmas mens chorus held in a church with excellent acoustics. They were accompanied by a piano, and a Cello on one number. Occasionally the church organ would be used. Now, that is a a classroom for re-checking your understanding what real music sounds like. |
Kijanki, let me give you an example. I have a DAC that is tuned to warmth. This is accomplished by the use of signal constricting diodes for the most part. Replacing that diode with a wide open gate diode. I get to hear those twinkly highs, and high pitched piercing sounds. |
I need to add something. It has been my experience less is more. My wires can't be more simple. The DAC lacks a filter chip. The preamp is spartan. Every little change proclaims itself loudly, training me to go simple. The end result spotlights the depth of material gathered onto the lowly CD.
Thus my question. How, with all the layers of components can one know if one component addition or change makes a difference on it's own or is it a lost in complex relationships with the other components. |
Bryioncunningham Paying for new equipment may be hard. Where I call such a change an easy decision is when the change moves the sound forward along those qualifiers you so adroitly wrote down here. Sometimes, the push forward comes in surprisingly inexpensive ways.
Shadorne was right about a lot of things, the most salient for me being waterfall plots of a lot of new speakers not approaching the ancient Quad 57. I would like to add to a short list that would include the venerable original Apogee Scintilla. |
I think you hit a homer there, Kijanki. Hearing is an issue. I know a reviewer who has a high frequency deficiency. Music that is loud and dynamic is a good thing. Accuracy is not. Amazingly, my hearing is very good. I want sound at it's proper levels still. |
You did not read what I wrote. I said I changed that colored DAC to a DAC with equal access to all frequencies. That is what I want. |
Mr. Tennis, You aren't telling us your short memory prevents you from recognizing a live piano sound from one occasion to another. What would keep you from recognizing a music system that comes darn close, and know how far it varies? |
kijanki, The point I am making is, if you know what a grand sounds like and if you know your system can convincingly reproduce the sound of a grand piano you would know it. You don't have to know if the recording you are listening to sounds just the same as what was recorded. You have to make a judgement call on whether your system can recreate the sound of a piano to your satisfaction.
Like yours, all my recorded piano solos sound different. I have a few that were exceptionally recorded. I use those at full throttle to judge my playback. |
Neutral is the letting the music on the disc to be fully realized.
Better is the listener's subjective notion of how he likes the music colored.
You see this all the time, like when someone starts a thread asking for the, "Smoothest CD player." A lively rock and a lot of jazz discs will not comply - unless smoothed - read dulled. |
Complete neutrality, that is the live performance, cannot be fully attained by the engineers or the playback system. My goal is to bring out the best of what I have on the CD. That is my striving for neutrality.
Color is a fine for others. I know of one major critic of mine that says the more warmth generated into the music the better. He uses the cello as a favorite example. To him, the more voluminous the sound the better. Just load it up with euphonic tubes.
Sterile is another coloration. Real music is never sterile, well, almost never. |
Bryoncunningham - I do know what you mean. I am rather embarrassed to admit my DAC has tubes. The reason for that is tubes are notorious for going off neutrality. I have done a lot of tube rolling through the years to know they all leave their signature. I have also found there are tubes that err less than others, and those are the ones that attract me. For miniature tubes, I loved the 5751 Sylvania Black Plate. It worked miracles with the Llano amp, and a Jolida 100 I was using way back then.
My DAC has tubes. That is a fact I have to live with for now. I am hoping for a non sampling DAC that has no tubes that I like. The 47 Labs Progression has no tubes, but it has a rather soft delivery.
So, the quest will continue for complete neutrality. |
Byroncunningham, I was reacting to comments made by posters above concerning digital vs. analog. Sorry about
Neutrality to me defines a system that provides a sound bereft of self noise, or the large part of it. Frankly, I think that is very tall order.
I have discovered a way to approach that ideal. Every circuit detracts from the very notion of neutrality. That is why I profess ridding the circuit of the worst offenders, and keeping cables simple. |
Bryoncunningham- You name two instances where I deem no conflict. Although I rather like the punctuality of the timing in my system, I could see testing that against what you advocate. As far as I know, clocking is a separate entity, and will not flub up the signal.
I also believe that using room correction actually does congeal the bass nicely. I have heard that here. The problem with my dibole/bipole, the poor device saw two different points of origin, and really muffed up the midrange and highs. |
I kept believing that digital didn't have it because folks like above said so, and their accumulative wisdom should be right. Then, I seriously started mining the information stored in the 16 bit CD. The deeper I dug, the more digital gave forth. Encouraged, I kept at it. Now, in just the last few days, I took my system into it's most revelatory status yet. I know my system is surely better than any vinyl system I have heard.
It is my opinion CDs are not the problem. It is the CD player that is at fault, with cabling stirring more sediment up. The digital player industry has been pushing one digital devil fix on us on another. Oversampling, upsampling, jitter, dithering, and filtering have battered the music signal beyond recognition as is attested to by previous posters compalints.
My source sets the picture for the system's playback. My speaker is able to express the whole of the picture. So, the source is where it is at. I use a transport that measures it's circuit in millimeters. It certainly does nothing to, "Improve," the signal on it's way out. The receiving DAC is just as hands off, though not quite as simple.
I will challenge anyone to detect any defect in this playback, one that has only been clocked, read, and played. The depth of material inserted into the 16 bit CD is simply phenomenal. |
