Does Every Track Sound Great on Your System?

Bass balance can be a real problem when you have a subwoofer. The best solution is to get a Schiit preamp with continuosly variable volume, not incremental or push buttons. The Jotunheim has a nice big volume knob that makes this easier. If you don’t want to spend $400, their $200 preamp will work just as well minus the larger knob. both preamps have RCA to XLR capability. Run a cable from the sub out to your listening spot and run a cable back to the input to your sub amp. Set your sub amp so the 12 oclock setting on your preamp would be like your regular subwoofer setting. Every tune needs its own setting, one setting is never right for everything. With most things, from here you can get nice bass balance with small tweaks. This is my secret weapon. It takes listening and practice, but you won’t be stuck with settings that don’t work most of the time.

12many

05-02-2024 6:23am

By way of example with a focus on bass, for some songs I like the amount of bass, then another song I feel like it needs more bass to hit harder, and then another song I feel like there is too much bass and it is boomy. Does that ever happen to you? I feel like I am getting the treble sorted out, but going back and forth on the bass.

@12many might be a stab in the dark not knowing what your setup is, but I’ll venture bass can be a most unstable variable among different albums, or even among different tracks on the same album.

One reason being, how variable mastering setups and masterer’s impressions can be. It’s a mess. I adjust my stereo subs manually among albums / masters because of this. For someone surfing across albums while streaming, it would not be a reasonable strategy. I prefer it to running the sub plate amps near max and using DSP to equilibrate the low end among albums. For anyone who doesn’t mind really working out their sub’s amps and/or who has a more sophisticated digital path for bass management, there can be less strenuous options, but intervention will be needed nonetheless. The only real way around (i.e. no DSP nor frequent level adjustments) is if you’re willing to oscillate between hearing weak bass and really weak bass, depending on the album / master. Reading the linked paper should help.

@ghdprentice Well stated. I also am drawn into the emotion of the performance, not the system.  Just as you articulated, with previous systems I did the opposite and became fatigued quickly.  The attributes of a musical system to me are timbre, tonal balance, PRAT, micro/macro dynamics, and the ability to reproduce harmonic decay.  I prefer an organic presentation with dense images. 

@12many No system will correct poor recording engineering.  I have found overly analytical systems will highlight poor engineering.  You indicate you are evaluating a new amplifier that is augmenting bass on recordings engineered with powerful bass to a degree you find unpleasant.  The increased bass performance of your new amp may be overloading your room rather than a specific fault of amp or a system mismatching issue. My recommendation, if you have not done this already, is first attempt to tweak speaker or room treatment positioning.  That may balance bass response. If it does not work you have a decision to make. When evaluating bass performance, I recommend you focus more on timbre and tone, micro/macro dynamic performance, ability to drive PRAT, and ability to reproduce secondary harmonics and decay, not on power per se.  If balancing works, determine bass performance using my recommendations to determine if your new amp is better.  Make the final decision based on which amp lets the music touch your soul so you stop listening to your system. 

Does every Track sound great on my system? The answer to that is no. Some recordings benefit from high-quality production and engineering while others suffer from a lack thereof. That’s a variable that is inherent  and my system won’t make a poorly engineered recording sound “great“ and I don’t think any system could possibly be different. It doesn’t mean that I can’t enjoy the music if the engineering is not masterful, but it won’t sound truly great at least to my ears. for example, I enjoy pretty much all of the music from Al Stewart. His music that was produced by Alan Parsons is, however, qualitatively different because Alan Parsons had a genius for production and engineering.
If that genius is not present, there’s not going to be any high end equipment, room, treatments, acoustics, or whatever that will cover for its absence. That doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy the music but great is a relative term and it won’t be great Compared to music that has been masterfully produced and engineered

Recording quality is a huge variable that probably isn’t discussed enough and that’s probably because there’s not much we can do about it

My system with 2 REL subs rarely need adjustment, but I can easily turn the bass level up or down on the RELs (easily accessible using the infamous "chicken head" knobs) or use my Schiit Loki Max to EQ an out of balance recording (seriously, everybody should have one if these). Another option is to shut it all down, put my face in my hands, and start sobbing.