I agree with bdp24 that live music is not only heard but felt by our bodies. To me, it was more of a physical experience than listening to my system at home.
Music I listen to live consists mainly of small acoustic or minimally amplified ensembles playing rock, blues, jazz and various fusions. I listen to similar music on my home system and recreating that visceral live experience in my home system has been a goal.of mine for awhile.
I've always enjoyed the euphonic, tonally rich, 3D and life-like sound qualities I perceived in my music through tubes (mainly tube VTL preamp with NOS Mullards) but found I perceive the same qualities in my music now using a pair of good class D amps without the tubes.
I don't know for certain but I suspect many tube amps would have difficulty recreating the impressive dynamic range of many high resolution music sources due to their technical limitations in dynamic range capacity and power output.
I agree with others on this thread that fast transients, 'presence' which I correlate to detail levels and wide dynamic ranges are important ingredients in live music. Class D amplification and high-resolution music files recorded direct to digital have been a very good combination in this regard for reproduction in my system since both have very low distortion, are highly detailed with very high dynamic range capabilities.
I believe that accurate,detailed and solid bass response with powerful dynamic capacities is another critical ingredient of live music that needs to be present in any home system trying to recreate the perception of live music. I'm referring to bass sounds such as a solid kick drum strike that you hear and also feel in the center of your chest.
However, I've discovered it's more difficult and expensive to attain a reasonably good facsimile of live music bass response than midrange/treble response. I now use a 4 sub distributed bass array system for bass response in my system that approaches live music quality in tonal accuracy, detail, impact and dynamic range.
I'm not claiming my system sounds exactly like live music, just a reasonably good facsimile that I consider enjoyable.
Tim
Music I listen to live consists mainly of small acoustic or minimally amplified ensembles playing rock, blues, jazz and various fusions. I listen to similar music on my home system and recreating that visceral live experience in my home system has been a goal.of mine for awhile.
I've always enjoyed the euphonic, tonally rich, 3D and life-like sound qualities I perceived in my music through tubes (mainly tube VTL preamp with NOS Mullards) but found I perceive the same qualities in my music now using a pair of good class D amps without the tubes.
I don't know for certain but I suspect many tube amps would have difficulty recreating the impressive dynamic range of many high resolution music sources due to their technical limitations in dynamic range capacity and power output.
I agree with others on this thread that fast transients, 'presence' which I correlate to detail levels and wide dynamic ranges are important ingredients in live music. Class D amplification and high-resolution music files recorded direct to digital have been a very good combination in this regard for reproduction in my system since both have very low distortion, are highly detailed with very high dynamic range capabilities.
I believe that accurate,detailed and solid bass response with powerful dynamic capacities is another critical ingredient of live music that needs to be present in any home system trying to recreate the perception of live music. I'm referring to bass sounds such as a solid kick drum strike that you hear and also feel in the center of your chest.
However, I've discovered it's more difficult and expensive to attain a reasonably good facsimile of live music bass response than midrange/treble response. I now use a 4 sub distributed bass array system for bass response in my system that approaches live music quality in tonal accuracy, detail, impact and dynamic range.
I'm not claiming my system sounds exactly like live music, just a reasonably good facsimile that I consider enjoyable.
Tim