Quote:
Originally Posted by greggf /img/forum/go_quote.gif
catscratch,
you say,
"When the system doesn't have any overt flaws, it tends to disappear and leave the music behind."
My response would be,
"If it disappears and leaves the music behind, then you have a naked bad recording (as the vast majority of recordings tend to be) - one that is not enjoyable."
I'm not trying to be difficult or confrontational here. I'm trying to square my experience with yours. It may not be possible in the end, but that's okay.
I had Quad loudspeakers. To exaggerate, they were GREAT with the few well-mastered, well-recorded CDs that I owned. They made 99% of my CDs sound worse than "cheaper" speakers did.
My experience is that we - or at least I - want to find "good enough" equipment, gear that IS high-end, but not so high-end that it fails at its ultimate purpose, which is providing the most entertainment and musical enjoyment per dollar or effort.
Resorting to extraordinary tech - and by that I mean tubes, electrostatics, balanced headphones - or by spending more $$ seems to get more detail or resolution, but less satisfaction.
Isn't there a better balance?
In some headphone or headphone amp review, Wes Phillips mentioned that he didn't care for a balanced Senn set-up because it was too clinical-sounding. He said the same about a Stax. That was my experience with some Stax gear.
I think we do noobs a disservice if we make them think that your vision of the hobby is the ultimate or only one. It's also one that I think can bankrupt, both financially and, perhaps psychologically and morally, others who are perhaps too lost at sea to have accurate reality testing.
I know and respect your idea of the hobby. It was, and still is to a great extent, mine as well.
It's just that what I'm experiencing, right now, via a purposive pulling-back from perfection, is too good not to share. It might even make you happier, if you tried it - the same way that you think that I or others might be happier if we went balanced!
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I should define what I mean by "disappear and leave the music behind."
It is simply a mental state in which you no longer notice the individual aspects of the system, but are totally focused on the music.
There are multiple ways a system can do this (greatly generalized, of course):
1) It can be so technically flawless that it doesn't have any immediately apparent technical problems that jar you out of the sonic illusion. Yes, this approach does tend to lend itself to well-mastered recordings rather than poorly mastered ones, but in the genres that I listen to, most recordings do tend to be well mastered and produced.
2) The system can be so incredibly dynamic, driving, and impactful that it gets you emotionally involved in the music despite whatever flaws it might have.
3) The system can have an extremely pleasing euphonic character that to some extent overrides the character inherent in the music, but which is nevertheless a coloration that you would want to hear. This type of system would not do well with reference recordings but would do wonders with less than stellar quality recordings.
It seems to me that what you're describing is closer to system #3. I admit that if most of my recordings were such that a reference system would only highlight their recording imperfections, I would gravitate towards that side as well, and it is not expensive to build such a system. But they aren't. They're not all perfect, audiophile-quality minimally mic'd jazz and classical studio sessions (in fact, none of them are), but they're good enough that they allow me to have a fairly accurate system and still maintain the sonic illusion.
Besides, this approach to listening to music is not the only approach there is. A considerable number of people listens to music as a far more cerebral exercise, and they
want to hear every imperfection in the recording. A system revealing enough to show up the flaws in nearly every recording they have is precisely the goal they have in mind (also greatly generalized).
As regards to electrostatics and other obscure tech - it's only obscure in the light of the current market. Historically electrostatics were
the audiophile tech decades ago. They have plateaued in their technological advancement, to an extent anyway, while dynamics have caught up and have become the norm (and are now themselves being overshadowed by balanced armatures).
To me, a transducer is a transducer. It doesn't matter what shape it takes and it doesn't matter how obscure it is. What matters is the sound it puts out, and only when it fails to perform or entails too many practical compromises do I dismiss it as an obscure or irrelevant technology.
Also, I don't pursue better and more obscure technology out of frustration with lesser, more common technology. I enjoy every step along the upgrade path. Every substantial sonic improvement brings out new nuances in my recordings, and in so doing, it makes me rediscover my music collection, over and over again. I don't want to scale back my ambitions and settle for a lesser system since that will deny me the pleasure of further sonic discovery. When I finally plumb the depths of what is possible with today's technology, my mindset may change, and I may pick a point in the price/performance ratio that makes me comfortable sonically and financially - but I'm not there yet.
Lastly, the very best systems I've ever heard have never been clinical sounding, no matter what Wes Phillips says. They have always been free of flaws, yet were remarkably vivid and engaging, and subtly colored in a way that enhanced the music yet did not interfere with the music. They revealed the flaws in a less-than-perfect recording but they did not allow those flaws to get in the way of the emotion contained in the recording. They were, in a sense, the perfect amalgamation of my three hypothetical systems. That really is that I'm trying to build in my rig, and I am very nearly there.
A clinical sound is a coloration, and is usually the result of insufficient dynamic range combined with a high frequency emphasis. An accurate system would not sound clinical, unless of course you throw at it a clinical-sounding recording. But, this is why I want a system that is very nearly accurate, but is still very subtly and slightly euphonic.
