What Are Your Reference Discs? or Specific Reference Tracks


Looking for new gems!  My reference discs are: Graceland, Paul Simon  Avalon, Roxy Music  Brothers in Arms, Dire Straits  So, Peter Gabriel  Ten Summoner's Tales, Sting 

What are yours?

wweiss

Showing 8 responses by millercarbon

A rare response to a guy who deserves none- you are wrong. As usual. You took that quote out of context. 

The quote is actually making my point, perfectly consistently. The context is explaining how my system, by pursuing exactly what I said- doing nothing but providing a crystal clear window into the recording- has allowed all these different recordings to shine. That’s why it mentions Ronstadt, etc. You latched onto one word- standard- which you try to make it seem like it means reference, when really all it means is common. I play it a lot. Go find the whole thing, post it, and apologize. Or not. I don’t care. There’s a reason I never respond to you, and it still stands. Bye now!
"New music" to me is what Tom Port got in this week. He sends me an email a couple times a week, which is why pretty much all my streaming is done over a toilet bowl.  ;)
Qobuz? 180g remasters?  I thought the idea was to play stuff that sounds good??  (Hint hint.)

Wow first hilde45 wants to pretend he doesn't understand the difference between liking a song and thinking it is a demo track, then Rick wants to pretend he doesn't know ;) is a wink and means, "kidding"! 

It’s merely good scientific method to reject the pretense that a test can pretend to be more than what it is. But that doesn’t mean such tests don’t have any value -- only that their value needs to be specified in a proportionate way relative to the overall experimental question.

It may have been heavily encoded 

I'll say! Can you run that one through your decoder ring, please? ;) 

millercarbon9,537 posts06-12-2021 2:52amYou are able to evaluate using only certain tracks? Fascinating!

Let's put it this way. What albums do you go to when demonstrating your system?

Whatever my listener would like to hear. Whatever floats their boat. 

Seriously. I learned a long time ago that normal people just don't listen like audiophiles do. Heck, truth be told audiophiles don't even listen the way they think they do. They screw themselves over all the time turning what should be one of the most enjoyable and satisfying experiences a person can have- enjoying music - into drudgery. They do this all kinds of ways, the "demo disc" mentality being but one. Another is the audiophile checklist- extension? check! bass? check! dynamics? check! on and on? check! Did you even hear the music? What? Music? Oh yeah, you must mean "track 3"- check!   

What I do instead, ask what kind of music they like the most. Music they would like to sit and do nothing but listen to it. A lot of people hardly ever really even listen to music. In any case, I always ask them. Play what they are really into and they will listen, often times rapt. They will hear things in the music they find interesting they never would notice any other way. I had a guy one time notice the difference between a mixdown and live to 2-track. Could you even do that? He did. Simply by being so deeply drawn into it. 

Anyway that was why I started doing it many years ago, simply discovered most really only listen closely to music when they love the music. Then listening closely they will realize just how great the sound quality is, because then it has meaning. Without meaning, what a waste.  

That is why I started doing it. Now though there is another equally good reason for not doing the "demo disc". If the goal of the system is to reproduce whatever is on the recording, not to make it sound "good", not to make it sound anything, just to be an absolutely clean and clear window into the recording, well then if you do this properly what is there to demo? 

I can't honestly demo my system because in order to do that I would have to have a system that is doing something. But the whole point of my system, everything I have been working on my whole life, is to have a system that does not do anything. So how can I demo my system? I can demo recordings, sure. Cable elevators, interconnects, etc, no problemo. But the system? The question itself to me does not even make sense.