Seems like a good definition. I am not sure if your doing sex, drug, etc. right if you don't enjoy them as well 😀
Qualities Of An End-game System
Qualities of an end game system:
- Speakers disappear
- The room disappears
- The listener disappears, his mind is shut down/gone.
- There is nothing left but the perception of falling into an abyss filled with music.
- The listener doesn't know where any of the music came from, but, it is all inside of him. Sex, drugs, etc can't come even remotely close to such an experience of pure audio nirvana.
If your system can't do that (whatever it may be), you have no end game.
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The OP list is right... But subjective.... I experiments with acoustics objective concepts and parameters to reach this felt experience ... My modified low cost system can do that to me ...( especially the headphone because of the acoustics limitation of my modified but small speakers in my second room after selling my house) But i must add something or correct the OP description or perhaps precise it here :
The music in my past first acoustic room , which was better than my actual one because of bigger speakers and more complex acoustic devices used , or the music in my headphone dont come from inside me but reflect the acoustics recording trade-off parameters chosen by the sound engineer which vary greatly album to album ... Listening Bach Marie Claire Alain in my system i hear the church acoustic . In no way i had the sensation of music inside me , i felt on the opposite to be transported in a church and i forget completely my small room and i feel the obligation to keep my eyes open to see the playing organ through my disapearing walls room ... I am in a church... The goal of a good system is the translation of acoustic parameters chosen by a recording engineer into the acoustic parameters implied by the optimized relation between your ears/system/room ... This TRANSLATION is never an exact and merely reproduction and cannot be for evident acoustics reason ... This acoustical translation is where audiophile experience fail or stall or succeed... ( Edgar Choueiri explained very well why and how crosstalk among other factors for example impede acoustic translation from the set of any recorded acoustic information to the Ears/stereo system/room recovering translation in a new acoustic environment . ) |
if you dont have unlimited budget forget "end game system", concentrate on acoustics optimization in a specific room for specific ears... I myself enjoy the minimal acoustical satisfaction threshold...Trust me it is really good... Is it enough ? Yes or no what is your budget ? It is enough to feel being in the church if the Organ album is playing ... I dont need anything else... 😊
We are in the same boat...
I dont need improvement at all cost...Anyway i forgot improvement listening music and feeling the recording albums acoustic choices of the recording engineer ... It is enough ... i bought music not upgrades... How about 100 albums of Chet baker ? Or 100 albums of Bill Evans ? The money is better invested here once you had reach minimal acoustical satisfaction threshold ... ( it is not a stopgap, many audiophiles nevermind their gear price are not even there because they never learned how to create a balance of acoustics factors in a room with specific gear design )
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I get tired of being told that I need a treated room or magic directional fuses or 300B tubes or anything else to make my listening experience somehow legitimate. I know exactly how to make any of the various versions of the systems I've enjoyed over half a century of gear collecting sing to my standards, and likely so have many around here. There is no "end game" required in anything connected to music enjoyment or any art form except in your head. |
Qualities of turning off the lights in the listening room: -Speakers disappear. -Room disappears. -Listener disappears, his mind is shut down/gone. -The listener doesn't know where any of the music came from, but it is all inside of him. Sex, drugs, etc. can't come even remotely close to such an experience of pure audio nirvana.
If your light switch can't do that, you have no end game. |
This sound amazing on my 1000 bucks well embedded system ...😊 Not too much details in some fatiguing other high end system i listened to but dynamics and spatial information seems very good ... If my low cost system is able to give me a balanced experience at a lower level for sure, my low cost system is my end game ... The difference between a low cost system and this high end one is sinmple : No one will mess as i did with the speakers design mof mine and with the rest of the system to improve it and reach some balance between all acoustics factors implied ...😊 ...
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The need to reproduce the musical venue is one function of a system. I like to call it the "Disney World" function, because it produces the kind of illusions which trick and delight children of all ages. Other musical pieces are masterpieces of collage -- multi-tracked. Think of Dark Side of the Moon. It is immersive but it is not "realistic" in that simplistic Disney way. Others are electronic. They, too, lack "realism," but a good system will produce tonalities which are arguably more important than spatial simulations. I know people for whom the gear is the endgame. I do not just them as being wrong. Let 1000 flowers bloom. |
I’m there with a modest system. Don’t have the bass extension, but what’s there sounds very real. Excellent room helps. Believe it or not, my stereo rack (2 inch oak shelves, each layer isolated, stillpoints under critical gear) with associated vibration control made a critical difference in the sense of realism, especially spatially. |
And end game system is a system/room/ears which is balanced when we take into account all acoustics concepts and factors and parameters into account with none of them being too much or lacking... All acoustics factors contribute anyway to any audiophile experience aspects... What we call simply "imaging" in audiophile vocabulary is a way more complex set of factors added together than the simple word "imaging" can convey or could suggest... These factors are mechanical factors , electrical factors and acoustical factors even psychoacoustical factors... This is why "end game " system is not about the gear pieces separately and their price tags but it is related to the way we are able to put them together in an optimal way using basic knowledge or refined acoustics knowledge if we go for the best possible experience with a relatively low cost system as it is the case for most of us... "High end" or audiophile experience as said very wisely mike lavigne is a way of thinking ...
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The reason why my small speakers are so good in spite of their physical limitations which is their small size is the way i modified them is inspired by the concept of transmission line speakers and the Helmholtz resonators principle... I redesigned the rear porthole with a bundle of different straws of different size and length (max 3 feet ) inserted behind the speakers in the porthole. my speakers are now 50 hertz instead of 80 hertz and clear bass and no negative trade-off... I also redesigned the wave guide to make it better at near listening by putting a cylinder of optimal length near 6 inches... now these speakers which were well reviewed when i bought them but which i disliked sound like a 1000 bucks small speakers not like a 100 bucks one... I love them so much i will not need to upgrade if they fail ... I will buy another one and modify them the same way ... High end : basic acoustics knowledge ...
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Some of us like to tinker and hear differences. It is not only about the music. The notion that upgrading or changing is only due to OCD is false, or this wouldn't be a legitimate hobby, it would be a psychological support group. I'm not saying you said this, but too many people equate changing things or upgrading things with a disease. This is a puritanical kind of remark and I reject it. |
"End Game" seems like a variable term defined by expectations. reaching expectations is the end. so my 'end game' would be different than yours. OTOH an 'ultimate system' might have certain commonalities, which i would agree include hearing the music and not gear or the room. that the music has flow and is lively, extended in the highs and lows, and has sufficient headroom to render large music naturally. and that it connects with the listener emotionally and is immersive and exciting. |
This is right and also my own experience... I just bought a headphone pair by curiosity and sell them the same week ... 😊 But we must distinguish those who are in a not so useful upgrades race as a solution instead of basic knowledge experiments... It is more about ignorance than OCD ...
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There is a catch there...Expectations may be dependent on what a listener may have had prior exposure to, what he even knew is possible (or exposure to something that gave him a feel for what is possible). If he didn’t have any concept of what is possible, he wouldn’t know any better. The perception of disappearing speakers is fairly easy for someone who’s been around (knows some stuff). Making the room disappear takes more work, investigations into room acoustics, planning and investment, as you may know. Making the listener himself disappear/shutting his mind’s nonsense down.....making the actor recede so only the act remains requires something serious. Throwing cash at anything/spending cash in the wrong places doesn’t get one there. |
End game is theoretically mythical-nothing is perfect-but practically when you reach the point where your system is satisfying and enjoyable and you have spent the all the resources you are willing to spend to make further improvements. I'm reasonably close-still a couple of improvements I intend to make to my system- but I know it doesn't mean my system is approaching the ideal. It just means that in a hobby where you generally get what you pay for and more better usually means more money I have just about reached a balance of satisfactory performance and what I'm willing to spend. Not a bad place. |
@ally'all *L* When the $s' are gone (....and the .5B$ is so hard to comply with...) *tsk* ....most often, the relatives don't know unless you leave notes... ;) Personal EG is always in flux...happy 'til I'm not. *S* Diy'ng sshriekerss and playing about with the space between them is amusing enough for the while, awhile...;) 😎
Absolutely....one is never done. Remember to dust.... Re ur EGS: ....my 'ish' is the EGsubroutine SPACE....has never been, or is in randum flux for my entire existent. But it's good to deal with one place at a time, teaches how to 'do the improbable with minimal' ; i.e. nothingx0, keeping your latent infernal inferior interior designer under 😏 @mahgister ....hi, and if you're able to walkabout within your own portable nirvana....no one has the absolute authority to wish it otherwise.... If music in some quark-ish fashion is entwined into the fabrics of our lives.... Play On....until you can't. ;) +10wkend, y'all... |
You are so right! 😊 It is why i will never trusted reviewers whose favorite music is mainly limited in one genre... The way our brain process sounds is learned all life and must be educated... Then the mental state of a brain facing music of any kind is the best source for the evaluation possible of the balance between acoustics factors... Each culture on earth is rich with his own harmonics sets, melodic sets and rythm sets, linked to distinctive often unknown musical instruments and hearing all of them make our brain a great timbre analyser which makes us then able to evaluate any system/room better than limited listeners sensible to PraT more than anything else because they dont need to evaluate reverberation role for example in Rudra Veena decay or Bach organ bass note in a church acoustics... Each instrument aimed us at one of our body parts also and not only suggest to our brain a specific acoustic signature as recent scientific article demonstrated in an acoustics science revolution : https://phys.org/news/2024-02-pythagoras-wrong-universal-musical-harmonies.html https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2308859121 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337721064_Sound_Sources_The_Origin_of_Auditory_Sensations https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-45812-z
I dont judge a system in his way first and last to reproduce multi tracks electronica... Because if a system is able to do right non amplified instruments timbre or a Bruckner symphony it will do the rest right. The reverse is not necessarily true.. human brain are not attuned by electronica but by natural and commonly heard instruments timbre and speech and singing ... Limited musical tastes are not Acoustics understandings nor expertise in system/room evaluation nor musical evaluation ... ... The way our ears/brain recreated sound spatial timbre hues and localisations was the results not of Hollywood but of our species evolution for survival socially (speech intonation subtle information ) or hunting and localization of threats and preys... Then listener envelopment concept and experience in a room abbreviated by LV in acoustics articles and in relation with the sound source width abbreviated ASW for example is not an "hollywood illusions" but a rigorously definable set of acoustics parameters we must learn to control to experience a satisfying musical performance with a system/room ... In the same way all spatial attributes of sounds are not "Hollywood Illusions" but objective acousticvs concepts we can retrieve from any stereo system modulo HTRF measures , inner ears measures, Room acoustics, and a set of filters Dr. Edgar Choueiri designed for this task because of the defect linked to the dual sound source with any stereo system which imply a loss of spatial informations from the original recordings album. Calling that "illusions", gained or lost, is, if not acoustics ignorance, not the right word to describe real acoustics factors...😊 Then yes we must accept that others people had their own tastes which had the right to "bloom" for sure , i dont criticize people musical choices here ; but acoustics, music evaluations and judgment are not innate tastes or limited tastes, they must be learned all our life especially when exposed to all cultures , all musical languages, all instruments of the world expressiveness and timbre ...I will not trust acoustics opinions about a system someone who use only one genre as his main reference at all ...
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I felt that way and then I heard a much better and more musical system and room than mine. It showed me that there was more to hear, more work to do. New experiences changed my feelings. They alerted me to richer experiences I could strive for. I suppose the statement is still true, but I made the mistake of thinking I felt something capable of ending my search and I was wrong. |
