Albert, well done! To my mind you set the right accents just where they belong and as you so rightly say, the balance between resolution and bandwidth and forgetting all about sound and being drawn into the music is the more difficult the more revealing your system becomes to be. To my mind, the right balance can only be achieved, if you are intimately familiar with all kinds of live music and only after a lot of hard work. |
Gs5556 you make a good point. Midfi has become much better and to buy by highest price will more often lead you astray than not. On the other hand I would be hard pressed to take all those Stereophile Class A components seriously. As Albert has pointed out in his initial post, it is the right combination of gear, not the gear per se, which makes for the "high end" sound of your rig.
MrTennis,
who would have thought it, we are actually in complete agreement, but Albert's post, as I understand it, lies in the right mix of components, not in components per se. A component by itself, be it as good as can be, will easily be ruined by the weakest link in your chain and we all know by experience that a chain made up of highly touted class A gear can sound like hell. It is as in a good cocktail, a perfume, a wine or a cigar, even a woman, to be gleefully incorrect, it is the blend of different qualities that makes it. |
This has been done, as you suggest Mr. Tennis. As I mentioned in another thread, there is at least one high end manufacturer who actually prides himself that his designs are purely based on measurements. His gear is so "revealing", that it sounds most terribly wrong, sterile and cold. If you do not have a valid basal conception on human hearing and its reaction to music, all your best measurement will lead you astray. Especially the interface between the physiology of our aural makeup and our emotional responses to music is still a complete blanc on the map as far as I know. |
Chasmal,
agreed, although 3-dimensionality per se is not quite enough, the placement of instruments and voices in that sound field must be stable and more or less correct. (Phase-stability).
What to my mind could be added to your list is BLOOM, the aura around instruments which is fiendishly difficult to reproduce and PRAT (pace and rhythm and articulation), that which will make your feet tap or make you want to dance. (has to do with the correct rendition of transients) |
Darkkeys,
No, to my mind you are absolutely on topic. Much of what has been said above only applies to concepts taken from the experience of live music without electronic amplification. Some professional gear, especially for the digital domain must be excellent I hear and can be had at much less cost. Seems we "high-enders" have to pay more for all the hype. And yes, if you only managed to get a lousy seat in concert hall, your ears swamped with unwanted reverberations, your rig at home will be a relief. A rare occasion. Generally it happens the other way around, that coming home from a concert, you foolishly fire up your rig and are brought to wonder why you had spent all that money for such mediocre sound. Better to wait at least a day or so to keep up the illusions....(;
Mrtennis,
Speaking of hype, the term " high end " has been so much misused, has often become synonymous with cost inflation that as a term it has become just as useless as all those infamous "best"-lists in the mags, I feel.
Besides, what has the striving for some sort of aural perfection to do with status?? Not all first class and perhaps also expensive systems are owned by snobs.
Besides, let me point out that status is something given to you by your peers and Darkkeys original question there was not aimed at that. If you build up a system which should sound right to your ears you are after enjoyment, not after status. If your peers enjoy it as well, you may get some status as an aftereffect, which is nice but that is all. Systems just built for status generally sound lousy, simply because its owners are after prestige and not after music. So p l e a s e come off it, think better of what you might be implying and hence stop dragging our efforts into the mud by giving them an unjustly alluded twist under the guise of common sense and reason which in effect alienates all that what others here and I are trying to achieve. |
Mr. Tennis
I completely agree about the psychological underpinnings of our hobby. Tell me a human edevour which hasn't! And yes, actually I like iconoclasts, because in destructing they create and I would sincerely apologise, if I should have read your motives wrong. But please allow one question: As an iconoclast what idols are you up against?
What has gotten my back up, and of course not only in this thread, but in most of the others we happen to share and which by the way more often than not gets a lot of dung thrown into your direction by other members and mostly for the same reason I would think, is that in the midst often of heated and interesting discussions you state the obvious, that no matter what topic is being discussed, it is fine if one likes ones stereo and that is that. In other words, all what others and I talked about before is bull and lets forget about it. If that is your motive, fine, but then you run danger of being ridiculed again more often than not, as happened in the other thread we posted in together. In a sense you seem to me, that you are taking the side of the "weak", the newbees and those who simply cannot afford "better". That would be a noble motive and in fact I would support you in this, but then how can those people learn? You seem to obstruct, not to help educating those, who possibly might be in need. There is more, but I think I'll stop here. If you wish, we can continue that conversation in private, however it would help and probably not only me, because obviously I am not the only one you occasionally irritate, what as an iconoclast you are aiming at. Perhaps then one would be able to understand you better and would galdly afford you the respect you most probably deserve, not only as a seasoned audiophile and reviewer, but also as a Quad-lover (: and fellow hobbyist.
Cheers and happy listening,
Detlof |
Hi Newbee (big grin)
Now I was very careful to NOT use the Caps lock when I typed out that ominous word, but thanks for taking the time to write your view on Mr. you know who. I don't think he is just trolling, that's why I avoided invectives and tried to address and take him seriously. Curious to see what may forthcome......(for an advocatus diaboli and yes we do need them also here, he would indeed need a tad more depth, but let's see)
Regarding the term "high end", I reckon you have hit the nail on the head.It is certainly a subjective term serving some users and it DOES get in the way of meaningful conversation as you so rightly point out. We never use it either, come to think of it but on the other hand it was quite understood what Darkkeys was alluding at of course, namely what makes a system sing, sound musical, what should I look at.....
Cheers,
Detlof
Oops Newbee, I just realised, a greenhorn is spelled "newbie" not "newbee"; you see English is not my mother tongue, so these things happen, but then it gave us a chance to exchange a couple of friendly grins didn't it? (: |
yea, being inept has its advantages .......(((: |
Thanks MrT, you position has become perfectly clear.
Hi Dgarretson,
Thanks, that was interesting, I didn't know MK was still alive. I used to know Lyric in the old days. Mike Kay, as I recall, was an impressive personality, outspoken, tough and shrewed in business but always helpful if he felt that you were sincere...and he was a true music lover.
Hi Newbee,
Your analysis was again right on the dot. You live and learn. |
Cdc,
Not Quads though....(:
Unsound,
Glad you got back to Albert. |
However, Darkkeys not to worry:
Case in point: I listened to an old DECCA recording from 1963 of basso arias with Nicolai Ghiaurov just now, a LP, which got several distinctions and which is in perfect synergy with the analog part of my system. I then listened to the reel to reel tape (Columbia M2Q 516, 1963) of Mahler's 9th with Bruno Walter, a recording which is anything but perfect and also the tape machine is not quite up to the standard of the rest of my rig. Actually I should have listened the other way around. The mediocre first and the "perfect" afterwards. The point is however, Bruno Walter's conducting of the symphony was so outstanding, that after a few bars into the music, you completely forget what was alluded to above:
"if a stereo system is minimally inaccurate, there will be instances in which it does not sound pleasant, as a consequence of the quality of the recording".
If you like the music as is, you get drawn into it, forget about the system and the rest is just talk and that goes for any kind of music, not just for the classics as in my example. Condition for this to happen is of course that you are a music lover, just as much as you are an audiophile. But even if you are just an audiophile, fixated on how your rig sounds, you will find that your ears will adapt to the changes in rendering more often than not, which can make things difficult to judge properly, as we all know. |
"Is there a general agreement that the term "budget high end" gear is a legitimate term for inexpensive gear that crosses over the threshold of hifi sound? "
To my mind and ears absolutely yes.
I very much liked the musician-instrument comparison. Right on the dot. Thanks Darkkeys! |
Newbee,
But here you have the definition. You only need to exchange a few words from what Mrtennis has said in his last post. It is actually an equation with two unknowns, a formula which I've found can be used for many different instances.
To wit:
"there is no guarantee that budget sound will be hifi and there is no guarantee what you have spent will be budget. the hifi and the budget can contribute to a pleasant sound.
if a stereo system is minimally budget, there will be instances in which it does not sound hifi, as a consequence of the quality of the budget."
Get it?
Cheers and thanks Mrtennis |
