What is Tight Bass?

Here is the short answer, worth every minute of the hour and a half.

@artemus_5 @bubba12

Yes, I was shocked and perplexed when I first moved from a good ss (Pass x350) to a tubed Audio Research Reference 160s. Two things immediately struck me… what a big reduction of slam… and how much better and more articulate the bass was… and well, the Pass is never going back into my system.

I was very perplexed. The Pass was so much thinner across the audio spectrum (particularly near the bass) but very very fast at delivering bass. My conclusion was that the slam was very artificial, like turning up the contrast too much on a photograph.. The contrast between the thin midrange and huge bump in bass. The Audio Research was slower (like natural… not sluggish) and amazingly detailed… differentiating all the nuances of the bass… not just a single thump.

@realworldaudio

Thank you for that great explanation of what I have observed. Makes sense… particularly with double bass and other similar sounds… those are so startlingly differentiated and wonderful to hear once I added my tube amp.

It is very gratifying to continue to delve deeper into subjects after fifty years of continuous learning.