I concur with the OP😊 +2
Audio nirvana stands on its own for me, unmatched. The emotions, minds of all kinds of different artists...the melodies, etc all pour into my room and we just dissolve together in an ecstatic fashion.
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.
Showing 12 responses by mahgister
The fact that there is no end game possible in gear design improvement and no end game either in acoustics and psychoacoustics related improvement a priori, is a common place fact and evidently true... There is an end game possible for a pre-established limited budget choices and there is an end game with a specific system once chosen for his synergy and a specific room once chosen and an end game here means a balanced ratio or an optimal balanced set of parameters of all acoustics factors resulting from gear and room and specific ears canals and HTRF measures... Then there exist for us mortals with a chosen system an end game which makes us happy with no frustration even at a relatively low cost... This does not means that i am an ignorant thinking nothing beat my actual sound experience... Acoustics with an "s" rule audiophile experience not upgrade races nor price tags ... An "end game" is only an expression meaning for me that i am more in the search of new music than for a new piece of gear... Changing now ONLY one piece of gear is even if it is possible no more so attractive because of my acquired minimal satisfying acoustics balance ..The real upgrade i needed if i want; i need 15,000 bucks ( compared to 1000 bucks for my actual system ) and a new room i did not have in my small house...😊 Anyway i am in sound ectasy now and i know why because it is me who created it not the gear i picked , i created it by my own speakers and headphone modifications , homemade tweaks and acoustics knowledge ...My two main components speakers and headphone are modified according to acoustics basics ... Then yes i can upgrade going from 1000 bucks to 15,000 but even if it will be way better i can live happy with what i have which is not a stopgap at all in my room conditions and nearfield listenings... There exist an endgame which is not a frustrated state created by basic knowledge😊 i upgrade my list of musicians with 50 albums of Tete Montoliu which i added to my 100 Bill Evans albums and to my 100 Keith Jarrett ... The best money audiophile investment for me now ....😉 i say all that for beginners ... They must learn by studying and experimenting more than by mere buying ...
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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 . ) |