How do you know when a stereo sounds good?


When do you know your system is pleasing to listen to? How do you conclusively prove to yourself that your system sounds good to you? How do you determine that you enjoy listening to music through your stereo? Do you have a suite of measurements that removes all shadow of a doubt that you are getting good sound, sound that you enjoy? Please share.

128x128ted_denney

Subjectivist who think that it is their ears who decide and objectivist opposing foes who dictate that it is measurement tools , the 2 groups insist on the importance of the GEAR...Their common difference is about the way the GEAR must be evaluated at some point... By TOOLS or by EARS...

Are all dacs equivalent which measure the same for example? Or are cables important matter or not in spite of the "fact" that they measured the same?

 

These 2 groups under-estimated completely not only the 2 embeddings controls impact on FINAL S.Q. the mechanical and the electrical CONTROLS, calling them SECONDARY TWEAKS, but more importantly TOSS aside the fundamental role of not only ACOUSTIC treatment but active mechanical control, by Helmholtz method for example, of the ROOM in S.Q. improvement...

 

If you want to understand the futility of their oppositions this is my argument...

 

 

Subjectivist at least trust their ears, but ALAS! they think that the sound come ESSENTIALLY "from" the GEAR...

Ignoring that what they listen to is the image of the inital recorded room + the image of their room/speakers... And the 2 images, the recorded room and the play back room interfere...This is why our room must be controlled for our specific speakers first, and, second, to make possible a better reveletion of the initial chosen choices of the recording acoustical engineer in our own room acoustic settings..

There is no reproduction most of the times of the original recorded event only his TRANSLATION/ RECREATION by our room/speakers relation controlled or uncontrolled...

A live mutiple recorded instruments timbre orchetra is recorded ONLY at the trade-off cost chosen by the recording engineer and these choices make ANY recording UNIQUE by the powerful impact of these choices and trade-off...

In the same way all speakers/room relation are unique...

No albums could sound the same ever save in the same room with the same speakers, and cannot REPRODUCE but ONLY TRANSLATE the experience in the language of your own room....or in the language of a complete different room....Ad infinitum...

In one word: the sound quality is good ONLY when my ears can detect all recording acoustic choices for EACH albums...And this in my own room...Then my system is good...Before that, nevermind his price it is not good...

 

By the way feel free to correect me, i spoke ONLY by my personal experience and what i discover ONLY by myself....( i never upgraded for the years of my acoustic  experiments  nor bought any tweaks and created mine at no cost for my listening experiments) My evaluation of the importance of the UNDERESTIMATED power of acoustic is MINE....And also the knowledge of any acoustician...

 

Acoustic is the sleeping princess, all the pieces of gear are ONLY the 7 working dwarves....

 

When Adele becomes listenable. (It hasn't happened yet but that's my ultimate goal)

Keeping it simple when the sound has a strong phantom center image and my speakers seem to mostly disappear.

When my brain gets tricked by where the sound is coming form.

Sorry but this phantom image between speakers is not even the beginning of acoustic control...The stereo sound must be out of the speakers and filling the room or around you and even coming from back of your head in some recording....All recording albums are different, but if the sound is ONLY between speakers, your stereo system is not optimized by acoustic at all....

Your room is probably under controlled...

 

Keeping it simple when the sound has a strong phantom center image and my speakers seem to mostly disappear.

When my brain gets tricked by where the sound is coming form.

When you find yourself thinking back to how great Led Zeppelin and other former favorites used to sound so good and instead you are listening to Steely Dan who you never gave much thought to previously.

Bottom line; when you find yourself much preferring artists that you never know existed before you spent 20k or similar putting a nice system together.