[Hirsch]

Quote:

Originally posted by JohnActon I believe that this is true in the world of headphones, as well. A Sony R10 paired with a portable CD player and Headroom Little will probably sound better than a Grado SR-60 driven by a Melos, EAR, Sugden, etc, amp and a Meridian CD player. This is undoubtedly also true of the Orpheus and Omega II, but it's not entirely fair, as they require and/or come packaged with high-end amps.

Sometimes yes, sometimes no. The R10 is extremely revealing, and will often disclose flaws in the system that other headphones will allow. Using a less than optimal signal chain, the R10 will tell you just how bad it is. You'll still get all the detail, but it will sometimes not be fun to listen to. It isn't fun to hear all the flaws in a system magnified, IMO.

 

[Hirsch]

Quote:

Originally posted by rickcr42 funny how good equipment can sometimes get in the way of enjoying the music.I can listen to damn near anything on my car or work radio and totally enjoy the song for itself.Maybe even sing along (damn scary,cats and dogs run for cover),pure D-Lite,the song is what counts. Then listen to the same performance at home either on lp or cd and pick it apart mentally , finding every flaw in the editing/mastering/arrangement. Toomuch of a good thing is not always a good thing

I could have written this myself. In fact, in replying to a post a couple of days ago, I wrote the following, decided it was inappropriate to the thread I was responding to, and saved it to post at a later time:

I was listening to music in my car recently on the way to work. It's got a Ford sound system, which in terms of fidelity is about as bad as it gets (I won't go into all that great detail on car vs. home audio). And yet, while listening to Dylan's "Love and Theft", I found that in the car I am much more able to hear the words to the songs. Not in terms of fidelity...that goes to speakers and headphones in the home, but in terms of the words. The diminuation of fidelity caused by attention to be drawn from the sound to the lyrics, and I heard the songs AS SONGS in a much clearer way than I hear in my home systems...simply because attention was not being drawn away by the complex arrangements behind the vocals being reproduced with any great fidelity. This gave me a greater insight into what Dylan was saying as a songwriter than systems with much better fidelity across the board. From source to speakers that car system bites the big one, and yet it may have gotten the intent of the artist to me better than any of my hifi rigs.

Wouldn't work for classical music, tho

 

[kelly]

Quote:

Originally posted by Hirsch Sometimes yes, sometimes no. The R10 is extremely revealing, and will often disclose flaws in the system that other headphones will allow. Using a less than optimal signal chain, the R10 will tell you just how bad it is. You'll still get all the detail, but it will sometimes not be fun to listen to. It isn't fun to hear all the flaws in a system magnified, IMO.

This I completely agree with!

The caveat is that I think many people become so accustomed to the signature of their source and/or amplifier components that the flaws get written off as "part of the recording" or "that's just the way it sounds." If you have the vague memory of how an instrument or vocalist sounds in real life (unamplified) then I think you have a better reference point (we disagree on this, I understand). Likewise, if you have the misforune of hearing the same recording on a source much greater than yours, you are able to "disprove" the theory that the flaw belongs to the recording.

Of course, even then the amplifier and speakers have to be able to reveal it to you, so I'm not really fighting a case for "which component upgrade is more revealing," I'm only fighting for "which component upgrade will help my system sound better." That's probably part of the miscommunication in this thread. There are two very different questions to debate.

 

[shorton]

For you guys that gave Hirsch credit for claiming the brain is the most important part - You guys are wrong - although Hirsch is right.

See, some dude from HI suggested the brain first - on the first page I think.

If anyone doubts the brain, reread the post about learning to listen (as opposed to merely hearing).

I also have a fix for you Hirsch, in regards to your FORD system being more enjoyable - a tumbler of single malt scotch will make your more resolving system much more enjoyable - or else it'll make you not care.

 

[shorton]

Yeah, here it is:

squirt
100+ Member

Registered: Jul 2001
Location: Honolulu, Hawaii
Posts: 191


Quote:

I picked my ears or perhaps more exactly my brain...i'm sometimes shocked at how the same songs played on the same system can sound "different" depending on how much i'm concentrating on or the conditions under which i'm listening to music...i definetely prefer listening in a very dark backround silent room casue i get the "most" out of the music...

Not to take anything away from Hirsch - just to give credit where credit is due...

 

[JohnActon]

Damn, just lost my post in mid-typing!

Old Pa, you're right, of course. It was wrong of me to generalize, and I stand sutably chastised. I guess what I meant to say is that everything is as important as everything else, but some things are more important than others.

I have listened to the speakers I mentioned above in my previous post, which is the reason why I mentioned them. I've been shopping for speakers lately, and I started my hunt in the sub-$1000 range. Frankly, I was amazed at the quality of sound that these speakers (B&W, Paradigm, Energy) were dishing out. Speaker design must have really progressed in the last few years, because these low-priced (at least from a I-have-too-much-money/high-end perspective) sounded nearly as good to me as the really high-end stuff I heard even five years ago.

Nevertheless, the improvement I heard in moving up to the Wilson Audio Sophia, Revel Salon and B&W Nautilus 802 was astounding. The improvements I heard were much greater than moving from an all-Rotel setup to a Mark Levinson setup on either the lower-priced or higher-priced speaker setups (the dealers couldn't have been very pleased with my "I wanna compare the differences in electronics vs. speaker" experiment, especially as I could never have afforded any of the high-priced kit).

Here's another example - my Cary CD player totally smokes my previous Rotel player (as well it should). However, the Cary driving my McCormack MID and a pair of my brother's Sony MDR-V6 headphones was blown away by the Rotel driving the MID and my Sennheiser HD 600s. The Sennheisers are just much better headphones, and the differences are more significant than the differences between the two CD players (as great as those differences truly are).

Hirsch, Kelly, I'm sure that the R10 is capable of ruthlessy revealing any upstream aberrations or deficiencies in source and/or amp, but as it probably has less coloration than a Grado SR60, for example, it will probably still sound better with a poor source than will the Grado with a top-notch source. Again, my Stax Omega II sounds better from the Rotel than does the SR-404 from the Cary, because it is a better (less-colored) headphone, despite the fact that it is more revealing of the Rotel's flaws.

I guess what I'm saying (in a drawn-out, convoluted kind of way) is that if money is no object, then balance is key. In a high-resolution system, you can hear any weakness in the chain. In a real-world system, however, I would spend more money on the headphones/speakers, and then as finances permitted, upgrade the rest of my system around them. The headphones/speakers will never sound "bad" driven by lesser electronics (they just won't be giving you everything of which they're capable), assuming there are no obvious timbral colorations in the electronic components. Conversely, no source or amp, no matter how good, will sound good through highly-colored, poor sounding headphones/speakers.

 

[john_jcb]

It was a hard choice but I think it is the music. It all starts there. A poorly recorded piece will never be made good by quality equipment. In fact if you have bad recordings get a boombox and they wont be half bad.

I thought about ears but that seemed a little self centered. After all what I hear does not impact what others listening in my home hear.

 

[shorton]

JohnActon,

As much as I would like to disagree with your choice of speakers/headphones...I guess I can't. I bought my HD-600's with nothing else to pair them with. (in same class as)

I now have a Little and that helps, but the 600's were very enjoyable from the headphone jacks of all 3 sources that I currently have. As a matter of fact, the loin's share of my listening is done at work using a $50 GPX PCDP. Sounds pretty good too.
I'm running an RCA Theater Series LD player (optical out) into a borrowed Bel Canto DAC-1 into my poor, much abused Little at home, and that is much better, but...I'd still buy the 600's 1st.

 

[Old Pa]

JohnActon: No chastisement was intended, I just wanted to make sure we were talking about the same thing. My #1 systems is in my profile, but things have not always been such. I would rather have music through any system than no music.

When I did my last speaker shopping, I found it very important to watch the sources and the set-ups; I hear B&W 802s that sounded great and that sounded pretty muddled because of the rooms they were in and the ways they were set up. Another way of putting it is that unlimited funding should not be allowed to get in the way of "hearing" and good sense. I have yet to have a dealer very happy with me.

 

[CRESCENDOPOWER]

You could have $250,000 worth of electronics, and hook it up to a pair of Bose 301s, and you would be stuck with nothing, but limitations of the 301s.
For a fraction of this money, you could have Arcam FMJ 23, Parasound HCA-3500, and a pair Thiel 3.6s which would destroy the above system.
When you go to a high-end dealer's shop, and you are looking for a system to buy, a smart dealer is not going to swap CD players in, and out, and leave the same speakers sitting there. They are going to try to find the right transducers first, then find the right electronics to maximize, or tweak the transducers to their top potential for you.
Once again. The source is meaningless if your speakers, or headphones suck!

 

[Outdoor Man]

I think none of all.

For me the most important thing of my audio system is my heart.

When you listen to music with your ears and your brains, you wil never be satisfied, even with the best system.
When you listen with your heart, even the most terrible recording can touch your heart.

Peter.

 

[JohnActon]

Old Pa,

Just checked your profile - wow, that's some system you got there. The Nautilus 800's are simply amazing!

How do you like your Bryston gear? I just recently purchased a B60 integrated and like it very much.

Shorton,

I agree with you totally regarding the HD 600s. My first real headphone was the HD 580, and while it sounds better out of an amp, it still sounded very good when I originally drove it straight from the headphone out of my Sony ES player (this was many moons ago). And that's how I got sucked into this crazy (and enjoyable) obsession.

Good point, Outdoor Man - without the emotional connection to the music, all this audio stuff is just gear. It's too easy to get wrapped up in the "sound", to the point where the music gets left behind. Sometimes, I forget.

 

[Outdoor Man]

It showes karakter to say that about yourself.

Peter.