Component contribution to sound

[herb]

Having been though the HiFi experience a la Mr Walker and the flat earth , much loved, experience my present system is

Source Naim CDX2.2 40%

Amp ATC 150wpc integrated 25%

Interconnect Belden, stands 15%

Speakers Harbeth C7s 20%

Room not really as I use small volumes and counteract the wooden floor with paving slabs

Ported speakers are reproducing acoustic bass so electronic bass is not important

The system is finely tuned and deviations are very obvious

 

[foxwelljsly]

USB cables, ethernet switches and potentiometers.

Seriously, software and the room/speaker interaction are far harder to get right than making an accurate analogue line level signal out of records or digital audio files.

 

[Joe P]

Man, things have changed. A decade or so ago we’d be arguing what percentage to assign to Mana nut tightness.

For the record, 12.845% to 32.733%, depending on the number of phases.

Joe

 

[jimification]

Interesting to read the listings here but I don't really hear it in this "breakup of percentages" way. The way I hear it is almost any decent hifi setup (say, separates with fairly well placed speakers) gets to 90% but the tiny increments of the last 10% is where the real magic happens. Most stereos I have heard sound to me like they are playing recorded music quite well and that's fine... At that performance level I don't care much if it's better or worse, if the bass or soundstage is good or whatever, I don't mind. The big jump for me is when it suddenly starts to sound *real*, rather than like a well played recording.

 

[Leeken]

I thought the rug contributed 99% and the system 1%?

 

[Cupuacu]

Music 100% - if you don't like what you are playing, no amount of money thrown at hifi/lo-fi will make it sound any better, maybe just worse

 

[mr sneff]

I think mr sneff did.

Or could it be a wind-up?

 

[Alex S]

Amp/speaker match - 52%

 

[foxwelljsly]

Interesting to read the listings here but I don't really hear it in this "breakup of percentages" way. The way I hear it is almost any decent hifi setup (say, separates with fairly well placed speakers) gets to 90% but the tiny increments of the last 10% is where the real magic happens. Most stereos I have heard sound to me like they are playing recorded music quite well and that's fine... At that performance level I don't care much if it's better or worse, if the bass or soundstage is good or whatever, I don't mind. The big jump for me is when it suddenly starts to sound *real*, rather than like a well played recording.

You want it to sound real? Then you better get used to listening damn loud. Or pretending you're a long way away.

 

[marshanp]

You want it to sound real? Then you better get used to listening damn loud. Or pretending you're a long way away.

The equivalence between live (large-scale, orchestral) music and its image as reproduced in a domestic setting is tenuous at best.

However... the musical experience in a living room can be very rewarding, once the hi-fi is near-enough able to replicate the essentials of the sound as heard live.

Then you can have a window at the far end of your living room which opens onto the sound you expect to hear in a familiar venue.

The best test that I know of is to sit in a good seat at a live concert which is also broadcast by Radio 3, and then to re-live the experience at home within 24 hours.

 

[herb]

The best test that I know of is to sit in a good seat at a live concert which is also broadcast by Radio 3, and then to re-live the experience at home within 24 hours.

I have done this a few times with concerts in the Queens Hall, Edinburgh. The BBC recording always sounds good but with a lot of reverb, especially with the announcements. Dynamics sound great.

 

[John Phillips]

... The best test that I know of is to sit in a good seat at a live concert which is also broadcast by Radio 3, and then to re-live the experience at home within 24 hours.

I have done this at times. Indeed, fairly recently with Monday lunchtime concerts at Wigmore Hall in London to which I have listened again in the evening at home.

There are differences of course. The BBC engineers are creating their own version of the concert from the various microphones. However, my system presents nothing that contradicts what I heard in real life from real performers and real instruments. For me this is an indication of success from the last set of system updates.

The experiment also gives a great perspective on what matters to me from an audio system. I don't expect everyone else to share my PoV but I think some do. It also gives a great perspective on the very different ways some other people pursue the hobby that don't work for me. But we are all different in the way we pursue the hobby. That's OK.

 

[James]

However... the musical experience in a living room can be very rewarding, once the hi-fi is near-enough able to replicate the essentials of the sound as heard live.

I tried this once after an AC/DC concert. My hi-fi did not even come close!

 

[Tony L]

I do like making statistics up on the spot, so I’ll go for system synergy 50%, setup/room 50%. I’ve been around far too long to still think in terms of hierarchy/ideology etc. Some stuff just works, some stuff just doesn’t, and the art is finding the former for the room in question.

PS To quote Homer Simpson: “Oh, people can come up with statistics to prove anything, 14% of people know that…”.

 

[marshanp]

I don't know much about rock music, but would expect that the live sound of a band like AC/DC is designed to be far beyond reproducibility in a domestic setting, depending as it does on massive amplification and huge loudspeaker driver area. If I listened to AC/DC at home I'd do it on headphones.

Even large-scale classical music (big orchestral and choral works, for example) is well beyond the ability of a domestic hi-fi system to reproduce in full. What you can have is a set of cues that enable your brain to reconstruct the live experience satisfactorily.

And if it's a string quartet or a guitar duet that you want to hear... I reckon that you can have the sound of those performers life-sized and within touching distance

Piano is a bit harder

 

[tpetsch]

Garbage in, garbage out as they say. Nothing down the line can improve upon the musical signal coming from the source component. The source component is the most important piece of gear then trying to preserve that signal musically down the line to the pre-amp, amp, and finally the speakers being the least important as the speakers simply play the signals their given and can not change those signals fed to them. Speakers & amps can interoperate to the listener those signals differently but they can't fundamentally change a less musical source component signal to a more musical source signal..

 

[marshanp]

Or you could argue that your ears are the most important transducers in the chain, and that the component closest to them, the loudspeaker, is therefore the most significant in the music reproducing line.

If you are convinced that digital sources are essentially perfect, to go outside this position is very difficult.

...says a happy man who is listening to a Japanese symphony while drinking a very fine Japanese rum

 

[Tiernoise]

Garbage in, garbage out as they say. Nothing down the line can improve upon the musical signal coming from the source component. The source component is the most important piece of gear then trying to preserve that signal musically down the line to the pre-amp, amp, and finally the speakers being the least important as the speakers simply play the signals their given and can not change those signals fed to them. Speakers & amps can interoperate to the listener those signals differently but they can't fundamentally change a less musical source component signal to a more musical source signal..

This ^^ . I have had modest Rega RS7 for years, but they have got better and better each and every time I improved the source (and amplification). As long as the speakers are neutral and transparent enough and get well with the room, there is good chance they are not the limiting factor of your system.

 

[Tony L]

I don't know much about rock music, but would expect that the live sound of a band like AC/DC is designed to be far beyond reproducibility in a domestic setting, depending as it does on massive amplification and huge loudspeaker driver area. If I listened to AC/DC at home I'd do it on headphones.

It depends on what you consider to be ‘live AC/DC’. If you are thinking of everything mic’d up through a horrible clattery PA mushed and time-delayed in a stadium then that is something that exists far from audiophile quality and is awful to my ears/mind. I absolutely detest that sort of thing and have always avoided large rock gigs as they sound so, so bad. If however you mean the sound on the stage, i.e. the actual guitar amps and drums, the sound you’d hear in a rehearsal room or studio, then that can be reproduced at lower domestic volumes very well. I’m no AC/DC fan by any stretch, I never got them at all, but live albums such as Hawkwind Space Ritual, Miles Davis Agharta/Pangea, Deep Purple Made In Japan, Ramones It’s Alive etc all sound great and I’d wager far better than the sound the audience heard through the PA.

PS FWIW I’m biased/have baggage here. I absolutely hated playing through a PA in large venues way back when I was in an indie band as the sound was always such a clattery out-of-time mess I often struggled to keep in time. It seemed a common issue and most musos I know felt similarly, especially those like me who were trying to protect their hearing. Basically you are standing behind a PA that is vastly louder than your backline or monitors and arrives back with you anything up to half a second after you’ve played whatever it is you are playing. I spent many gigs actually playing by sight, i.e. looking at the kick drum for timing cues! I absolutely hate PAs, though a lot has likely changed today with IEMs and silent stages. A pub gig with just backline, no drum mics, and a small vocal PA is fine, no delay there, it feels just like a rehearsal. It’s the big student union, club or festival stuff I hated. As a concert goer I’ve felt the same, so much that is subtle on record becomes a thudding tuneless moronic 4/4 thump once it is clattering around a huge venue. Give me the record every time!

 

[marshanp]

...Give me the record every time!

Fair enough... I have always thought that the essential difference between rock/pop music and "classical" music is that the former is defined by the original recording which, regardless of cover versions, is its essential form; the latter is defined by its score, which any person or group of people with the necessary skills can convert into a performance.