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What funny speakers you have!

r-tee said:
guys if my system cost around £50K as Jeremy’s does, i'd want it to sound as real as the real thing. i look for this aspect in all my systems. I know it’s a very difficult thing to achieve regardless of budget but when you can throw a considerable amount of dosh at it, it does help and it will sound more realistic as its of a higher quality, size, build and technology.
Jeremy’s system and the experience he mentions prove this point well.
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I must point out it's not my system - unfortunately - I heard it at Ultimate Home Entertainment Solutions in Painswick, Gloucestershire (I guess it's closer to £70K, incidentally).

One of the things that I found so satisfying - even though I only heard three LP recordings - was the sense that the complete orchestral sound was being reproduced - if it was on the recording. Listening to the first movement of Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde from a 40 year old LP (Klemperer) - a performance I have known all that time, of a work I know reasonably well - I was amazed at the amount of orchestra detail I was hearing for the first time. I'd put that down to the ability of the LP12SE to extract the information in the first instance, of course.

In a very real sense, this is what I understand as a system being able to reproduce the instruments of the orchestra 'naturally'.

As it happens, the otherwise excellent recording of Belshazzar's feast I was listening to seems to lose two whole offstage brass bands and a full organ. I've never really been aware of these instruments on this recording in any system - the Alpha one included!
 
sq225917 said:
I'm never surprised by the bad choices people make in putting the wrong speaker at all price ranges into the wrong room.

But your assertion that just because people get used to mismatch doesn't make it right, doesn't hold water. If they are satisfied with it, it's right, measurements don't matter.

Enjoying music reproduction in your house isn't about achieving high-fidelity to the source, hifi is just a term dreamt up years ago that has come to be generally misused to mean any music playback system of perceived quality.

If we all truly wanted high-fidelity we'd be measuring everything. People want enjoyment.
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So if I mention that I and a good friend who is a professor of music, both preferred (because we thought it was both more accurate, and as a result more enjoyable) a digital Sony HT sub/sat system to a Bryston/Tannoy Glenair setup costing many, many thousands of dollars more, that we wouldn't need an audiophile 'education' or 'be taught how to listen' etc... :)

Wonders will never cease..lol.. Soon, someone will smell the coffee and fess up that for enjoyment/HiFi for pleasure, where we completely dismiss measurements or science, or notions of 'accuracy' that something as prosaic as Bose might just out perform some of the more lauded names in analogue audiophool land. It's a thought!

Best

Jon...;)
 
Rob Sinden said:
I think the main reason that people dont measure systems is because the established names in audio have no way of correcting a problem they would be highlighting if people were so audacious as to expert their very expensive hifis to be accurate.

The hifi establishment are so invested in analogue hifi equipment - a format that makes applying room correction very difficult without adding noise etc - that this isnt likely to change anytime soon.
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I agree with your standpoint, Rob, but I think your argument is a non argument. If I were able to afford a grand piano, where I put it in the house would affect how it sounded. Where I put it in the room would affect how it sounded.
I once heard the CBSO under Simon Rattle perform the same concert in Birmingham and then a few days later in the Festival Hall. Of course, it sounded substantially different, even though I bought the best tickets available in each venue. Listening to the same concert from different seats in the same venue would give radically different sounds and balances. Listening to he concert in the same seat, but with differing numbers of people in the audience would make a big difference. And so on, and so on. There just isn't an absolute sound in classical music which you can correct a room to reproduce.
 
No but you can make music sound the way it was recorded. What you don’t want is added noise or exaggerated frequencies which I find a lot of hifi does. Surely getting a true sound should be the first point of any hi-end systems agenda.
 
r-tee said:
No but you can make music sound the way it was recorded. What you don’t want is added noise or exaggerated frequencies which I find a lot of hifi does. Surely getting a true sound should be the first point of any hi-end systems agenda.
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But how do you know the way it was recorded?
 
The whole notion of recorded and reproduced music is a false construct, it's an apparition, a trick of the light, a glimpse of something not meant to be bottled.

I've never heard any set-up make music sound real. i heard great detail, huge scale, power, filigree detail, dynamic range, accurate timbre and perfect timing but I've never for one second been fooled into thinking it was anything other than artifice.

It's the dream at the end of the rainbow.
 
sq225917 said:
The whole notion of recorded and reproduced music is a false construct, it's an apparition, a trick of the light, a glimpse of something not meant to be bottled.

I've never heard any set-up make music sound real. i heard great detail, huge scale, power, filigree detail, dynamic range, accurate timbre and perfect timing but I've never for one second been fooled into thinking it was anything other than artifice.

It's the dream at the end of the rainbow.
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This is probably the fifth time I've agreed with you this week. I'm getting a bit concerned;-)
 
Do you really think that it will never be possible to reproduce sound so perfectly that it will sound just like the live event?
 
Rob Sinden said:
Do you really think that it will never be possible to reproduce sound so perfectly that it will sound just like the live event?
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This is why im amazed you could get close to reproducing music recorded in St Martin in the Field, i honestly thing you could not, not in your own home, you just cannot capture it, the whole soul of the music disappears in the recording process, if youve ever listened to music there youll undersatnd its a very profound experience. Id like to be proven wrong though!

I can understand how the Steinway system played back to back against a real piano could be indistinguishable from the real thing though, especially played back in the same space the music was being played in.

Listening through the TDA 2200 really gives you a real insight into where the event was recorded, you get very close to the event, but its still a little something missing! This is why id like to hear it playing into Lyngdorf DP1 in 2+2, and what the Millennium is capable of into open baffle speakers too.
 
The problem with recorded music or films in the home is the pause button,you cant do that in the concert hall and cinema or in real life,and the knowledge that you can use it,is enough to take the edge off the experience.
 
sq225917 said:
The whole notion of recorded and reproduced music is a false construct, it's an apparition, a trick of the light, a glimpse of something not meant to be bottled.

I've never heard any set-up make music sound real. i heard great detail, huge scale, power, filigree detail, dynamic range, accurate timbre and perfect timing but I've never for one second been fooled into thinking it was anything other than artifice.

It's the dream at the end of the rainbow.
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I'll be the devils advocate. Maybe you've just been listening to the 'wrong' systems/wrong system philosophy/approach?

I've heard two systems that do cut it, as in shut the eyes, and yes, it could be live, as in real.

And both involved digital amplification. One was a surround sound setup, and the other involved proprietary technologies as regards speaker/sound dispersion/room equalisation.

I'd agree it is rare to find a system that can suspend disbelief. But it is possible - but not IME from 'legacy' Hifi be that valves and horns, or solid state/conventional passive 2-channel speaker set-ups.

Best Regards

Jon...
 
I think you also do have to want to believe. You know; 'the glass is half full attitude' may help. I’ve observed the more serious the listener, the less they enjoy and become overly dismissive of absolutely everything. So what’s the point at all ;)

You have to want to listen to the music not the HiFi. It’s a bit like when you’re watching the last 30 mins of an epic film. You know your not there but you not thinking of anything else, your backsides well and truly on the edge of seat, your eyes are fixed on people moving and the whole package is getting your brain to believe that it’s real. This is what get the emotions going and this is where the magic is. It can be like this with recorded music; but you have to want an attachment otherwise it’s just another box office flop.
 
Jonboi, perhaps I have been listening to the wrong set-up, or maybe I'm just more discerning ;-). Most likely is that we all truly listen in different ways for different things, you and me included.

To be honest i've never heard any hifi that's able to reproduce one single instrument with 'body-tone', ie not something like a simple drum or percussion, flute etc, in a natural acoustic space and be utterly convincing. Maybe I am missing out.
 
i have and at home; quite a few times. that was an ATC/PMC setup. my daughter was playing the piano in the hallway one morning. she had stopped but i wasn't aware, it was the system.
 
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