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life in a PRAT-less world ?

Steven Toy said:
Darryl, why are you trying to score points? Please explain given that you are obviously the expert. I suspect you are dealing in shifting semantics though.
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well steven - as you are always so negative and you 'suspect' that i am trying to 'score points' i will leave the conversation with you as i can't see i am gonna get anything out of it.

for the record imagine the recorded basses played through headphones now and describe what you 'think' you would hear!!!
 
dave said:
Wouldn't that require a magical circuit to be installed which can analyse, distinguish and accurately project the exact proportions and distances between instruments in various recording environments? If it were merely a set of colourations caused by distortion, the same sense of proportions and spacing would be imposed on every recording by the preamp which clearly isn't the case. Musician placement within the various halls they're recorded in sounds quite different from one recording to another on the ARC gear as expected.
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that's not magical that's how psychoacoustics works and the same rules apply to hi fi and recording gear.

it's super easy to fool the ears.....
 
darrylfunk said:
that's not magical that's how psychoacoustics works and the same rules apply to hi fi and recording gear.

it's super easy to fool the ears.....
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Maybe it's me but I find it difficult to believe distortion in an amplifier is intelligent can recreate different hall dimensions and postion musicians differently within those environments. How does this distortion know and decide the current hall on the record is Carnegie and not Lincoln Center and generates the appropriate amount of reverberation and sense of proportions?

EDIT: if it's psychoacoustics, how does psychoacoustics decide which preamp does it and which preamp doesn't?
 
it's not intelligent.
it is added onto the recording that's why a more transparent piece of circuit will allow you to hear more accurately what is on the original recording.
you seem to think the gear is generating the effect it is not it is the original stereo info being 'decoded' for that is what speaker stereo contains, this will in turn sound different on headphones as the 2 ears cannot interact to 'create' the full field.
you will still hear depth and acoustic space and any panning movement but the cetral image will be different to the presentation of the speaker systems.
it's all rudimentary in pro circles to have gear that adds/subtracts to all these effects....
 
Darryl -What I'm saying is the gear (an ARC preamp in this case) is revealing this portion of the signal that determines dimensionality whereas the Naim preamp doesn't. (The signal can't decide which preamp gets it nor can gear generate it) My question then is what is responsible for revealing or blocking this bit of information?

Btw, I think we may still be talking about two different things. I think what I'm on about may be much lower in level detail-wise.
 
dave said:
Darryl -What I'm saying is the gear (an ARC preamp in this case) is revealing this portion of the signal that determines dimensionality whereas the Naim preamp doesn't. (The signal doesn't or can't decide which preamp gets it nor can gear generate it) My question then is what is responsible for revealing or blocking this bit of information?
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i see what you are getting at a lot will be in the totally different design of the circuit and the type of circuitry(valve).

for instance i can emulate the 'old naim' sound by adjusting my desk e.q. my bass roll off and a little treble lift followed by fast upper treble roll off.
and also reducing the reverb on the mix and generally 'drying out' the sound.
the arc probably has a whole different valve 'distortion' harmonic thickening going on and perhaps a bit of echoey microphonics being superimposed on the signal.speculation on my part though as i never had an arc pre amp....did have a tempremental couple of counterpoint pre amps though....but i think you get the gist.
 
cool.

if your interested have a look at some of the american mastering toys like summit gear, manley etc they have a lot of info on their websites about how the units 'sculpt' for want of a better word, the sound.

best wishes
darryl.
 
Guy,


It was a tough thing giving up twenty years plus of collecting records -it really was like I let part of me go. I simply couldn't afford to keep up both formats and associated hardware and digital won sonically for me nine out of ten times with my favorite music.

I'm fully aware this isn't the norm in hifi forums at least but it's the way my cookie crumbled ;-)

best,

dave
 
Steven Toy said:
He essentially describes rather accurately Olive Naim which I was never really into. It's a bit of a one-trick pony that sounds great with FLC but rather comical with Alison Krauss. It is a very contrived PR&T.
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Really? You and Zenner should get together Steve - you're not just on the same page, you're practically on the same sentence ;).
 
dave said:
Any Audio Research preamp for example allows you to almost "walk" between the performers whereas a typical Naim preamp is somewhat mechanical sounding in this respect with little or none of this three-dimensional effect. Can this one attribute be measured in isolation? If so, what is it?

regards,

dave
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IMO it has never been possible to measure even "sound quality" once you are beyond a certain level of basic competence, let alone stuff like "dimensionality, sound-stage, etc.). This is why subjective reviewing took off in the 1970s and will always be with us (it was always accepted for transducers but it was quite a battle to get it accepted for electronics).
 
Mark, Zener and I are on different chapters where cables are concerned though. Iirc, he's a wet string merchant or anything to stop the boxes running away from each other will do ;)
 
If it's good enough for the places that record it...
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Well, we don't want things getting even worse now do we? The purpose of a cable is to lose as little information as possible. Given that enough has been lost in the studio (as you seem to suggest) we could do with hanging onto what's left. Cables are passive components and none are perfect so I'll suggest using the least imperfect ones I can afford.

The same could be said of graphic equalisers....
 
steven,
at the studio the music signal doesn't actually go 'through' the speaker cable as such so there is no loss to the recording so it is not like a filter strictly speaking.
 
Yeah point taken. I wouldn't mind betting however that a well set up domestic hi-fi rig could possibly reveal more info than many studio monitors. Note I said 'many' as some studios do have awesome setups.

The point I was making was that whatever finds its way onto a disc should be captured in its entirety by a domestic hi-fi system. Experience tells me that interconnects and speaker cables can lose a lot of and/or bugger up the signal. OK, a lot may have already been lost in the studio but why lose even more during playback?
 
i have never ever heard a domestic rig have the transparency of a studio monitor system unless it is a studio system being used in the home.
 
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