[jopi]

Boys and girls I need your help:
The whole mess started about a year ago when my cousin asked me why I don't get into listening to music more seriously. (I play several musical instruments and love to go to concerts and live music has been with me all my life)
Having small kids and absolutely no square inch in the house to call my own I decided to go with headphones, AKG 501s to be more exact.
First I've used them directly out of my cheapy Sony 200 disc carousel and was so proud of the sound. Then the upgrade bug hit me. I've got an Headroom Little amp and found out that Sony carousel is a piece of junk!

I then used my Panasonic DVD A110 player to listen to CDs and again I was so proud of the sound! Then the upgrade bug hit me and I began to show interest for SACD. Last week I visited a HIFI retailer and listened to the Sony XA777ES without my headphones but pretty good speakers (I guess, I don't know anything about all that). Holy smokes! I was pretty close to buying this thing and even dish out more cash for a better head amp when I decided to hook up my old stereo back from college just for kicks.

The marantz turntable and amplifier is almost twenty years old and has costed me about $200 at that time. I've replaced the stylus once and that was ten years ago. My records have been thrown around during various moves and have sit in the garage for many years.

I'm not sure how to describe my feelings when I put down the stylus to Liszt. Sure, there are hisses, pops, and some humming and stuff, but the music just touched me. For the first time I wasn't occupied trying to listen to the sound, but I was just enjoying the music! Instruments really sounded like instruments (especially high strings and horns sound like techno junk on my low end digital system). I also realized that I don't have to cringe anymore during a cosi fan tutte, because the CD just couldn't handle the bandwidth.

Anybody else had this experience? I haven't listened to SACD with headphones, but I get the feeling that you have to dish out a lot of money for getting good music out of that digitial stuff and perhaps with a new stylus and some record cleaning I can improve on the crackles, pops, and hisses.

To sum it up: it seems to me that with digital you get good sound and with analog you get good music. I don't know about you guys, but I'm here for the music.

Anybody any comments? Should I get a tube head amp next? Any suggestions for getting a better turntable? Is it unfair to compare low/mid-end digitial with low/mid-end analog?

 

[cyclingasronomer]

i agree. my friend and i both have very good stereo systems. but he likes the accuracy and bass of digital sources. i prefer a turntable. it is more involving, more emotional to me. likewise, he prefers transistor equipment, while i prefer the sweet lushness of tubes. neither is better, both are imrperfect views of reality, whatever that is. you have to listen to something before you know what you like. that is the weakness of buying equipment because of reviews in magazines, unless you know and have experienced common equipment, so you can interpolate his views.

 

[Hirsch]

I had a recent experience where I hooked up a relatively low end table and cartridge, and a very low end phono preamp into my headphone amp, and it sounded better than my rather good digital setup, that's cost many times the amount.

 

[Wes]

I think that another difference in...what?...taste, shall we say?...is that some of us can tolerate certain kinds of imperfections more easily than others can.

It appears that the analog/tube/vinyl alliance has a bigger problem with the glare and hyper-detailing of the digital/solid state faction. While the digital/solid state-favoring types have a tougher time with noise and veiling.

It's rather like a preference for red or white wine. Would you rather have the big flavors of red that go wildly and aggressively out of balance, or do you tend to like the narrower, softer spectrum of the whites?

All of our recording and playback media could be better and, at times, discouragingly fail to match our expectations. Maybe it is wise to concentrate on what kinds of shortcomings don't drive us absolutely up the wall. For that, of course, you have to have sampled and even lived with both. I had my fill of vinyl and tubes and quickly embraced the noiselessness of digital reproduction.

 

[BenG]

Actually, a high-end digital sysytem, maybe one better than SACD or current DVD-A, will take care of the limitations of CD and leave vinyl in the dust imo. That is, if you want to hear something that's truer to the live mic feed.

As far as tube vs. solid, a well designed solid-state system is always going to make a recording sound more accurate, it's just a fact. Whether that's what you desire is another issue. I have nothing against tube equipment, in fact i've owned tube euipment. it's just not as accurate as well designed solid-state, period.

Tubes, vinyl, and analoge euipment would not be as popular if recordings were done with greater care and if more advanced digital systems were used in recording and playback. You can put your vintage NOS & distorted metal recordings on that one. The main problem with hi-fi today is recording quality, and secondly, the limitations of the CD format.

Untill recent, I used to be someone who thought tubes and vinyl or analouge were generally preferable over digital & solid state, but I've come full circle after hearing high-rez digital & the promise it brings(played back through refined solid-state).

The future is in solid-state, and especially digital(this of course is someone in his 20s who may have to live through many more years of hi-fidom

)

 

[MirandaX]

Quote:

Originally posted by BenG The future is in solid-state, and especially digital

That might not be true everywhere. Tubes are incredibly popular in Asia right now; I wouldn't be surprised if Sony releases a hybrid tube amp as part of their ES line. Once they set the lead...

 

[RickG]

Quote:

Originally posted by BenG Actually, a high-end digital sysytem, maybe one better than SACD or current DVD-A, will take care of the limitations of CD and leave vinyl in the dust imo.

Deja vu.....seems like I've been hearing those words for twenty years or so. Show me the money!!!!

 

[BenG]

Quote:

Originally posted by RickG Show me the money!!!!

Euphonics or Accuracy?

 

[RickG]

Quote:

Originally posted by BenG Euphonics or Accuracy?

naahh,...just music.

 

[Audio-Me]

Analog all the way!

But, SACD is pretty damn good if outputed to a good amp that is driving good speakers. Use SACD source for headphones? Wha?? Why on earth, lol.

 

[gaineso]

Every pair of ears hears differently and evryone has slightly different preferences.

However, "more accurate" is probably the biggest condemnation you can make of full "solid state / digital" systems. The media we buy today is generally so bad that we really don't want accuracy. Besides, mostly we are reproducing studio recordings, not live events, and therefore, we are reproducing some engineers opinion of what the sound should be.

Most classical and live concert recordings, if they're well recorded and well engineered to whatever disc media, yeah we'd all like accurate reproduction. That entails the entire playback chain however, and we run into weakest links, room acoustics, so many colorations that who knows what we're really hearing. We all acknowledge that different high end 'phones all sound different, high end IC's sound different, everything we put in the chain adds it's own unique color.

"Perfect Sound Forever" is NOT here now, even with SACD / DVD-A, and I really don't see it appearing any time soon. There are just too many links in the chain. Realism, go to a concert. What an engineer recorded. Well, Use good or great playback systems and find what really sounds good to you.

It's all a matter of what sounds good to your or my ears. If it sounds good to me, it is good. If it sounds great to me, it is great. If it sounds like s**t to me, it is. And what sounds fantastic to me, you might be polite and say, "That's pretty good" when yoi think the opposite, and I might do the same to you.

Highly unlikely as we wouldn't be here if we didn't care about good sound. However, that last 10% to 15% is going to have a lot of personal preference. Check the number of members with multiple High End 'phones that all have different sounds and the passion with which they are all defended.

The MUSIC is the only thing that matters. We sometimes get hung in equipment. MUSIC!!!!!

 

[kelly]

Quote:

Originally posted by Audio&Me Analog all the way! But, SACD is pretty damn good if outputed to a good amp that is driving good speakers. Use SACD source for headphones? Wha?? Why on earth, lol.

What the hell, A&M? You don't think SACD sounds better than redbook on headphones!?

 

[BenG]

"However, "more accurate" is probably the biggest condemnation you can make of full "solid state / digital" systems. The media we buy today is generally so bad that we really don't want accuracy. Besides, mostly we are reproducing studio recordings, not live events, and therefore, we are reproducing some engineers opinion of what the sound should be."

So we should demand poor recordings and use our euipment as band-aids for the incompetence and bad taste of engineers?

"Most classical and live concert recordings, if they're well recorded and well engineered to whatever disc media, yeah we'd all like accurate reproduction. That entails the entire playback chain however, and we run into weakest links, room acoustics, so many colorations that who knows what we're really hearing. We all acknowledge that different high end 'phones all sound different, high end IC's sound different, everything we put in the chain adds it's own unique color."

So, we should make the colorations worse by demanding poor recordings? Everything we put in the chain does add it's own color. Still doesn't change the fact that analoge, vinyl, and tubes color it more than digital or solid-state.

"Perfect Sound Forever" is NOT here now, even with SACD / DVD-A, and I really don't see it appearing any time soon. There are just too many links in the chain. Realism, go to a concert. What an engineer recorded. Well, Use good or great playback systems and find what really sounds good to you."

If you're talking about the live mic feed, not the live event its self, then a high-end digital system like SACD or DVD-A should technically be able to duplicate that feed with a very high degree of accuracy, without the limitations of 44.1/16 PCM. Not perfect, but close.

 

[Audio-Me]

No, I'm saying headphones don't do SACD justice. It must be played through speakers.

I prefer speakers over cans if you haven't noticed.

 

[cyclingasronomer]

remember, scientific method and measurement are ways of interpreting nature; its findings are a way of making sense of reality; it is not truth itself. hence, measurements of more perfect transistor gear are useful for engineers, but not music lovers