What a wonderful thread! I too am graced with a Steinway B (1940) to allow my daughter and me wonderful music-making, but find it striking how different it sounds depending upon lid-angle, corner-loading, etc. Repeated voicings for the pianist (instead of for the listeners perpendicular to the lid) has taught me a lot about how malleable a great instrument can be. My tuner/tech, a jazz pianist, prefers a much brighter treble than I do. (I remember how I used to use piano recordings to tweak crossovers in speaker system design BEFORE I got the Steinway. I have to laugh about it when I realize that it takes only a few pinpricks in a key's hammer-felt to change the piano's brightness WAY more than the differences in many excellent recordings of Steinways. I told piano techs that I use piano recordings to evaluate/tweak speaker systems, and they chuckle, knowing full well that "standardizing" a grand piano is like freeze-framing a chameleon: the truths have many colors. Nonetheless it seems that recording engineers more and more have a "reference Steinway" sound they converge upon.... I'm assembling my reference 2 channel system, and have been worried that my new ParsifalEncore/AlephP+2s/RedDawn were too bright, or harsh, or uptilted, y'know...just so much more revealing up top that I now need a new digital source. Time for calibration! Last night I caught Cleveland Symph Orch w/ Dohnanyi in town (Boston's Symphony Hall), where I had back-balcony seats for Tchaikovsky's Fourth. The sound was tremendously dynamic, clear, LEAN, startling in its immediacy (especially considering the distance...although that IS what Symphony Hall is famous for), and with a complex, visually-noncorellated soundstage! Was the performance magnificent? You bet! Was the sound pretty? Nope! Does it get any "better"? CSO/Dohnanyi...what do YOU think? Hmmm...surely I've heard "warmer" orchestras (and prefer the more-intimate Jordan Hall for its warmer acoustic). The leanness was due to some combination of balances involving the instruments, their combined loudnesses as conducted, my listening position, Symphony Hall, the habits learned by the orchestra from playing their normal venue, Severance Hall, etc. The performance garnered 7 curtain calls. A trusted Boston Globe critic referred to the enormous cohesive energy, while still allowing soloists and groups to display their prowess distinctively, albeit the whole sometimes sounding "narrow-bore". I had to laugh when having my morning coffee over those last words. Here I am, like so many audiophiles, chasing the holy grail of "personal" neutrality, honesty of reproduction, "timbral truth", etc., and often forgetting the variances of real music-making. I'm starting to understand the need for high resolution as a prerequisite for (linear frequency response) extension, clarity, ambience, and all the fruits thereof. Warmth and weight are relatively easy compared to a clean, extended top end. Cleveland's "white-hot" exuberance pinned me back: up til now I had been happy with a soft-topped, highly resolved stage that put Diana Krall or Bill Evans AT MY PIANO...and this is wonderful. But can I find an affordable CDP/DAC that will allow CSO's lighning bolts to come through, without tearing my head off, or prohibiting me from enjoying those 80% less-pristinely recorded CDs we all have?.... I've started to use good violin recordings, especially those with lots of partials (check out Didier Lockwood's Tribute to Stephane Grapelli on SONY/FRANCE, or Martin Hayes Live in Seattle) to evaluate resolution and system balance instead of piano, and will invite violinist friends over to help out. (I'm currently trying to decide whether my old Rotel 855 drives my demo Bel Canto better than that Pioneer DV333. Damned if I can tell which is more realistic! All I've figured out so far is that the unscientific substitution of the RedDawn in one leg of the test resulted in a loss of resolution great enough to swamp the differences between the transports. OY! Is the Nordost therefore "hyperactive" or "zippy"? Sure...and certainly way too revealing of upstream artifact for most systems...maybe just as lesser orchestras couldn't have gotten away with CSO's high-energy up top, either! I'm finding the challenge of securing a sufficiently resolving front end for this amazingly transparent system itsself a fatiguing chore. (I have the BelCanto DAC for one more day, and here I am chatting instead of listening!) I suppose I might have to end up choosing a "warm" set of cables or lower rez DAC to reduce fatigue until higher-res software matures in a few years, but I hope not. Thanks for the opportunity to share. Ernie
What is your reference?
What is the reference by which you judge the sound of a component or a system? I see a lot of confused posts here, and listen to a lot of equipment at all price levels that sound phony, which leads me to believe that a lot of manufacturers and consumers don't really know what music sounds like. I am starting to wonder if many buyers of expensive equipment might actually prefer an artificial, hi-fi sound as opposed to something that approaches real music. I know that we are seeking a mere reproduction of the real event, so don't give me that babble about "nothing can duplicate..." That's a cop-out by those who can't hear or have given up trying. What is the aural image you have in mind when auditioning audio equipment? And what recording best represents that image?