There’s no doubt that Mr Rainbow’s system is impressive - certainly able to reproduce music with a large dynamic range. However assuming the electronics are pretty much the best possible then we’re talking only 19 to 20 bits of dynamic range, not the 24 bits Mr Rainbow is talking about. And then we have the transducers and they’re going to knock the dynamic range back quite a bit.
And, in addition to that we've got the noise floor of the listening environment! Even with treatment, the chances are that his room has a noise floor of 30dB or more. 120dB dynamic range (CD with noise-shaping) above that would give us a peak output of about 150dB, no speakers at any price can produce 150dB peak levels AND 120dB dynamic range and even if such speakers did exist, you couldn't listen to them at those levels without serious hearing damage.
I've seen plenty of expensive systems in bad rooms and/or poorly configured and EQed which are outperformed by systems costing a fraction of the price.
Me too. Worst I saw was nearly $200k of kit which could have been outperformed with a budget of about $5k. So often I see audiophiles doing the equivalent of spending a fortune trying to fix a paint flaw on the trunk of their car, which can only be seen with a magnifying glass, while ignoring the fact that the front of their car has been flattened by a tank!
For speaker listening I've always bought pro audio monitors for nearfield listening in the hope that my proximity to the speakers counters the room acoustics to some degree - so far I'm happy.
Ideally, you don't want to counter the room acoustics, you still definitely want room acoustics but neutral room acoustics. Pro audio nearfields are therefore not a great solution and although all top class commercial studios have nearfields, they also always have a very high quality mid/far field monitoring system. Consumers are relatively limited though, with both a limited budget and the fact that their listening room typically has to be either a multi-purpose room or a dedicated but very small room, either of which limits the amount/effectiveness of any acoustic treatment. For the serious listener, pro audio nearfields can often represent
the best that can be achieved within the given limitations. Most likely you've made a wise choice, which is more of a compliment than it sounds because the "serious listener" marketplace effectively does all it can to steer consumers towards unwise choices! Having said this, I've often seen consumers using nearfield monitors completely incorrectly, for example placed very near walls and/or with the LP at double or triple the distance of what constitutes "nearfield".
Apparently though, assuming
@ALRAINBOW is being truthful, he is far less limited, both in terms of budget and the room. Why on earth he'd custom build a room with such poor dimensions is a mystery though, the ceiling height relative to the length and width of the room is an acoustic problem that can't be overcome. Double that height would have been appropriate or if that was outside the budget, then a much smaller room would have been preferable, at least half the length for example. While we don't know all the details, it appears obvious that he has NOT done "the best that can be achieved within the [his] given limitations"!
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