Grados must Go! Too resolving/Dont fit my needs. Looking for advice :o)

[MacDEF]

Quote:

How do we know that those horrid and distracting distortions we perceive with some components, that are often called “revealing”, aren’t generated by those “revealing” components?

There are plenty of audiohile-quality recordings out there that are well-known to have very high fidelity with little distortion or other baddies. Starting with those is a good beginning

Also, if your theory were true, ALL recordings, no matter how good or bad, would show these problems (i.e., if the components were generating the distortions, they would generate them for *every* recording).

On my system, which I consider to be pretty revealing, I can hear things that I never heard on lesser systems. Sometimes this is bad (poor recordings, etc.), but sometimes it's incredibly good (details I never heard before). That's what is meant by revealing. As I mentioned above, there are pros and cons of "less revealing" components -- they sometimes make bad recordings more enjoyable, but they also can't fully resolve the good stuff.

 

[freethetree]

grumble grumble, stupid discussion, grumble grumble, everyone ignorin my questions, grumble grumble.

The best equipment is that which lets you enjoy your music to the fullest extent. Period. Weather it be cold and analytical or warm and euphonic, it matters not. If you like it the best, it is the best. Best is highly subjective.

On another note my Alessandro Grado MSIIs are for still for sale! Turns out the buyer had insufficent funds

. I know what thats like.

 

[gaineso]

Find a system or group of components that produces the sound YOU like, frell everyone else's opinion.

Not everyone likes the same type of music, the same type of sound, the same volume, the same after shave or the same flavor ice cream.

Use reviews and comments as what they are, one persons opinion, sometimes based on a long history of listening to various components, sometimes based on listening to 2 or 3 components.

Use these as a guide and get what YOU like. It doesn't matter if it's what I like or what anyone else likes. Get something that you can do what this entire hobby/sport/obsession/compulsion is supposed to be all about:

LISTENING TO MUSIC!!!!!!!!!

Don't worry about whether it's analytical or fuzzy, bright or dull, clear or muddy. If you enjoy it, that's the name of the game.

You will probably never be completely satisfied. I hope not anyway. If you don't grow, you become stagnant. Stagnant water breeds mosquitoes. Poor metaphor, but maybe you get my meaning.

Don't be obsessed with equipment. Be obsessed with the enjoyment of MUSIC.

BTW -- How about a spell check on this system?

 

[cajunchrist]

I'm glad I dug back a bit in the boards to find this thread. I had a listening experience today that directly relates to the conversations going on here.

I purchased the Merzbox a few weeks ago. For those of you who don't know his work, Masami Akita is a Japanese noise musician who records with the moniker Merzbow. The Merzbox is a collection of work spanning his entire career, including a large selection of very early work where Akita-san was using "very cheap, normal position tape" that he admits he found lying around, and did not actually purchase new tape for a first generation recording. His intention was to make music in a non-musical way by using found sounds and distortion to make sound collages. He intended the music to be listened to on cheap quality tape walkman's. The original releases were on cassette, for the box set they were remastered on CD.

When listening to this music on my Sony CD/clock radio, the sound is satisfying, and when I recorded a few selections on cheap cassette tape to listen on my Walkman, the sound was perfect, with the presentation exactly as it was originally intended.

When I listened on my Panasonic 570, however, the experience was extremely frustrating. I was now listening on a device that could reveal subltle and not so subtle shortcomings in the recording. These tapes were never intended for hi-fi presentation, and listening to the re-mastered CD's on revealing sources is an annoying experience. His later noise washes that were intended for CD release sound much better.

Choosing source components for poorly recorded music is easy, just get an average sounding boom box and a pair of reasonably full-range headphones, and you will likely hear the music as it was originally inteded to be heard.

Not all music is intended to be heard on audiophile grade equipment, or even close to it. I say, buy good stuff for what you need it for, and keep that one-speaker transistor radio/cassette player for the stuff that would sound best on it.

Remember: no one audio set up will satisfy anyone, no matter how carefully chosen. That's why most audiophiles have stacks of equipment. It appears to be redundant to the non-audiophile to have 5 sets of headphones, but each one does a different job with different sources.

In conclusion, buy whatever you need to make the music you listen to sound the way it was originally intended to be heard, regardless of recommendations.

cajunchrist