Warm vs Revealing—the struggle for balance


For me my upgrade path has been finding balance between warmth and dynamics/detail.

It’s looks something like this: find satisfaction (Raven Nighthawk + Tekton), get upgrade bug seeking more dynamics, get more revealing gear (Ma 352), feel fatigued, buy new tubes (Telefunken) and speakers (SF Olympica); want more dynamics (Mc 601 + c50), I immediately get tube pre because of fatigue (c2300), still too sharp (new tubes and DAC); excellent balance, but of course sell speakers, new speakers too revealing, buy Cardas cables to replace Wireworld (ahh just right for now, but may be a little more revealing might be nice).

And oh yeah, working on fixing the damn room problems!

Chasing the unicorn. 

Anyone else doing this back and forth?

w123ale

@mapman 

Fair enough. I misunderstood your post!  Reading for comprehension escapes me sometimes.

I can say.....I feel I have the perfect system with a perfect balance. I truly believe I am out of the race. It's been about 30 years.

 

TD

@waytoomuchstuff + 1 “IMHO, we've got push the resolution envelop past the point of "comfort" to learn which exit to get off on.  It's all part of the hit-and-miss experimental process.  Hopefully, time and money will also cooperative with this objective.”

This captures it well for me. How does one know where the line is if you don’t find it and of course that line is ever changing 

Whenever you have increased detail that is also fatiguing (bright and harsh), the fatigue is often the result of distortion.

You know you’re making progress when the presentation is detailed and relaxed at the same time.

words of wisdom from ralph, well worth remembering as we tinker to improve our rigs

@mulveling and @mbmi yup. This is part of the fun of this. I have three systems that I’m always tweaking, because I’m a tweaker. That part of the fun for me and expense too of course.

BTW system is feeling just about right tonight with the Cardas cables in (Clear Cygnus). At first I was missing the snap of the Wireworld but the Cardas is having synergy with my McIntosh tube pre and monoblocks and the SF Amati (much more detailed than the Olympicas that it replaced). The system is much more welcoming now than it was.

Great responses in this thread—nice to know I’m not alone in my journey.