No, to my ears it cannot. However, before I switched to Sound Labs, I replaced the Quad 57s with the Quad 63s. I wanted just a tad more SPL.
All the same, I still maintain, that the marriage of Gradient and Quad is a match made in heaven!
Happy, joyful listening, Ggavetti! |
Mrtennis,
A seamless blend can be achieved. It depends on the room and on careful placement. |
Generally the saga goes, that if tubes are used with the Quads, the subs would perform best with SS. Actually blending solid state driven subs with tube driven stators is very difficult indeed. It is much easier to use tubes also for the Gradient subs to get an excellent coalesced rendering, using Gradients own active x-over but only for the bottom end and letting the Quad 63s go all the way down. After much fiddling, listening and moving the whole shebang around ( for this purpose the Quad-Gradient combo was put on wheels and the listening position bolstered with cushions to get the ears in the right height) a practically perfect blend was achieved. |
LOL, thanks Trelja. It needed that. |
Ggavetti, this might interest you:
http://www.regonaudio.com/Gradient%20SW-63%20Subwoofer.html |
Good point Newbee, however mo matter if it is written in two or just in one word, I thought it would work nicely both ways when I read it. I only wished there would be a little less noise when in play. But then I must grudgingly admit, without it would get no satisfaction. |
Ggavetti,
of course human ears differ, so the subjectivity trap is difficult to be avoided, the difference however is not as huge as some try to make us believe. This is especially true, if you, together with a group of audiophile friends have established a kind of a benchmark, say from the visits of a well known concert hall or other live music venues, or say of inviting musicians to play in your homes and then compare the recorded takes of their music to what the sound your rig will make of it. All this can and has been done and is the best kind of education for listening competence and sophistication.
It is the lack of benchmarks which leads many audiophiles astray and lets them fall prey to all the hype which surrounds our hobby. Equally it stands in the way of progress to educate beginners or in the development of better gear. This is the reason why I personally find it annoying, when in the midst of interesting discussions certain members of our community chime in mantralike, that since all hearing is subjective we should be content and happy with what we like. To my mind this makes for complacency and intellectual lazyness. If all the great designers did not have the benchmark of the live event, we would neither have Quads nor Gradients nor any decent sounding amps to drive them. |
Hi MrTennis,
We always, in our "aesthetic endevor", end up with more than just "some level of inaccuracy to the real thing" because even our best systems with the best software rarely come even close to this benchmark. So, things being as they are, the "subjective thing" has to come in with the necessary compromises we have to make and it is a this point, but only at this point to my mind, that your mantra (I think you know what I mean) makes sense to me. We need to make those compromises, which out of a number of necessarily unsatisfying choices will perforce lead to what we like best. Not so in evaluating stereo systems, here to my mind a benchmark is needed and the shortcomings need to be seen and if possible addressed to find that compromise which satisfies subjectively in the way you have mentioned.
As regards the wisdom of your phono stage designer:
Any system without PRAT, without rhythmic accuracy and that is something that CAN be done, is not even close to the SOUND of reality.
And again, I disagree with your mantra, stated in your last sentence. This is good for music lovers. They don't need audiophilia nervosa to enjoy what they hear. A table radio or car stereo will do. If however you belong to that rarer breed of not only passionately loving music and being an audiophiliac at the same time, you will be concerned with the accuracy of your rigs rendering "or lack thereof." You're a reviewer. You should be concerned. Otherwise you will lead people astray and not educate beginners. My benchmark for this kind of reviewing was the early Harry Pearson in the first 3-5 years of TAS. His benchmark were the venues where classical music was performed in NYC and Chicago and his preference for his favorite software let their prices skyrocket at the time by the way.
On one last word Mr. Tennis: I am sometimes addressed by my name in these pages, but you are the only one who continually gets its spelling wrong. Must be a Freudian thing. I love you too. (;
|
Hello Mr Tennis,
Don't you think that perception can be trained? Especially as far as accuracy of timbre is concerned. Timbre can well be an objective thing and the better your perception of the "real thing" is, the better you will be able to assess it objectively. And yes, you are right, the more my perception is being questioned by my peers vis a vis the comparison of a life event and its facsimile, the more I can train and hone it, in discussion, retrials and verification. In our group nobody really judges. We compare notes, know our subjective preferences, try to learn from each other. We are seasoned audiophiles and have learned to dispose of pecking orders. Within our group the role of Mr. Golden Ears shifts, simply because one friend will be expert in timbre, the other in soundstage, one, because he is a trombone player in the sound of his instrument etc. Nobody pretends to know all, but as a group we would be the horror of dealers, except that a few enlightened specimen of this breed are part of our group. Implementation- and there you absolutely suggest the right thing, if I understand you correctly - can hardly be done by an individual alone, but as a group you come closer and just were you agree to disagree often important qualities of a component vis a vis the shared experience of a live event will easily come to light. To quote early TAS once again, they used to have different reviewers assess the same component and knowing their preferences, that was a real help for the reader. As an individual just by myself I would hardly qualify for Mr. Golden Ears. For once,my ears are too old. But I'm still listened to, when timbre or PRAT is being discussed. Mind you, that's easy, because most gear nowadays is pretty good at this at least as far as timbre is concerned and having been weaned on ESLs and immersed in live music from early on, this is no big feat. |
Hi Ggavetti,
You are quite right I feel, with your three headings, where to my mind taste boils down to value judgements of what we have percieved. Also taste can be educated, but only if you agree upon a common benchmark in your judgment of a rig, but as you so rightly say, many audiophiles build up their systems without regard for what is "real" and why should they. We are free to follow our predilections and also my passion for "reality" is nothing but that.
Mrtennis,
Spectral analysis in the way you suggest would indeed be interesting. We once dabbled a bit in it, but gave it up, because we had endless discussions, whether disparities in the results were mainly because of the room, the placement of the performers or faults in the recording process etc.
Those experiments would have needed more scientific rigour, more intelligent planning and much better equipment than we were willing to invest in. We obviously must have thought that using our brains discussing lively with each other was more fun with our particular bent of minds.
By the way, there exists at least one well known manufacturer I know of in the high end, who prides himself that his entire chain of fiendishly expensive gear has been developed without any human hearing involved. I don't want to mention names, but his stuff sounds singularly sterile to my ears. To my mind it needs both, measurement and ears. However not only ears, but also "science" needs to be met with a healthy dose of scepticism, because often enough we only BELIEVE that what is measured has its sights on the parameters we try to assess and what has been highly praised as relevant to sound has later been proved to be a misconception. |
Hi Newbee,
Again you touch upon most important points I find. If you have your perception of live music as a benchmark, then of course - as you rightly suggest - that goal is out of your reach. But then you want to get a close as possible and it is as with expensive cars. Every extra HP above the say 350 will cost you unproportunately more than the first 200. If you are able to hit 100kmh in 5.2 seconds in say an M5 Beemer, to get down to 4.8 will easily cost you another 50 grand more and if you are not satisfied with that, well you can get the Bughatti from Volkswagen which clocks the hundred easily under 3.5 but that will cost you more than a million Euros. The high end ain't much different. It depends on what you strive for, on your pocketbook and last not least on your wife.
When I was a novice, I had only one specifity. I wanted it to sound "real". I ran to all sorts of live events and wanted the same at home. I first fell to the hype of all sorts of salespeople, but contrary to your experience Newbee, I became a tad wiser through TAS. Knowing the real thing intimately and probably having an ear for it, I understood at once what HP meant with terms like transparency, imaging etc. I learned that correct phase made for better soundstage, that ELS, at least say in regard of string quartets came closer to reality than any cone speakers I heard at that time. So I slowly got not "there", but closer, because my ears were full of the sound of real music. I had a benchmark which I found I could trust, my own ears, trained on all sorts of live music. That is why I would tell a novice to first get a grasp on what real music sounds like before he starts spending money and I would probably lend him my earlier copies of TAS, where HP developed a language to grasp in general terms what we were hearing or not.
Besides, Newbee, having had a look at your system, permit me to doubt your statement of being an agnostic. You are not in my terms. You ARE an audiophile, because to my ears, your gear is knowlegeably and wisely chosen, wisely because you
are as fast as it goes and do not have to hit the 100 under 5!
Cheers and happy listening,
Detlof |
Hello Newbee,
Your lines, which follow below have warmed my heart, because they are so close to what I have learned in my early years:
"I gained most of my appreciation of live music in the first five rows of Orchestra Hall near center because I perferred the balance of sound there BUT mainly because I could hear instruments with great specificity, minimal halls sounds other than bass reinforcement."
And:
"What has impressed me was what is natural vs what is artificial. Natural is tight/crisp sound with correct timbre, little affected by room acoustics. That it is not artificially bright, something that so often occurs in audiophile speakers, electronics, or associated stuff, when the manufacturers are trying to replicate the natural clarity of the live performance by 'inhancing the apparent detail' in a recording and/or audio equipment."
I've suffered through practically similar problems as you did until through TAS I tried the Jadis electronics with my ELS and was happy for a very long time, let my Abo for TAS run out, but wanted more dynamics than my beloved Quads were able to afford. I then went wild, experimenting with a whole array of stators, got better dynamics, but screwed up all staging of course. Then my fortunes changed and I sold it all. It was a relief and I kept on going to concerts. When fortunes changed again I finally knew what I wanted and how to get it. I chose carefully and no longer convulsively and I solicited the ears of what Mr.T called my committee, friends, musicians, afficionadoes and like you, I am happy now. So looking back, that hiatus which was so suddenly forced upon me was a stroke of luck. Perhaps, to paraphrase your words, it cured me of audiophilia and brought me back to where I belong in the first place, to music.
Thanks Newbee for your great post. In letting your lines sink in, I feel I must retract my previous statement: You are a music lover , whose dose of audiophilia is but a means to this end. I hope the same will be true for me until my ears turn deaf for good. |
Mrtennis
LOL, you are so right and there are many more flies in the ointment: Changes in humidity, temperature,the grid, your own well being just to mention a few fat ones.
Strangely enough though, and I wonder if Newbee would not agree with this, after your rig has reached that level of satisfaction, we spoke of above and after listening to a lot of various software (LP,CD,r2r,music server, whatever), the quality of a recording does not matter that much anymore. Having finally reached contentment with your set up you listen to music, not to the rig and if the rig suddenly draws your attention away from the music, generally something is wrong, either with you or with the rig which has to be addressed. I have never really consciously "tuned" my system to specific recordings, but tried to tune it to what my ears told me was more or less right with a lot of different software with all kinds of music and of course have found ways in time to compensate, with the choice of specific gear, just as Newbee seems to have done, for recording flaws, which I found irksome and which distracted from the performance. |
GG
I have no trouble with what Marty has pointed out to you. Actually I agree with him almost completely. I have owned Quads plus subs for practically more than 20 years, have in search of more power duplicated, triplicated even quadrupolated them, because I could not get their almost perfect timbre with cone speakers, absolutely hated the sound of a big MBL system, probably badly set up, as completely unnatural and settled on the big Sound Labs as a compromise. If you are used to the almost perfect musical timbre which ESLs are able to produce for almost all voices and instruments, you are spoilt for life. So be careful, you might stop there...(:
Newbee:
Oh yea, old von K, no audiophile I would say, music-lover yes but that had third place. First his love for power, second his vanity. Excellent business sense and very dangerous if crossed.
I also live happily in the stone age. Never really left it in actual fact.
Cheers, |
Marty,
It is Sound Labs, however www.soundlab-speakers.com. (: and yea, they do squash the room sort of and we better not speak of the WAF problems they might stir up. However they are absolutely perfect for infield listening, throw a great soundstage where they disappear in...and they are STATORS. ((: |
