Matt
Are there any women on this board?
- Joined
- Jun 25, 2001
- Posts
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Hello, all.
This is a topic I've been meaning to post since the HeadRoom Goodwill Tour.
At the tour, I took advantage of Tyll's kind offer to allow us to bring our own CDs and listen. To get to the point, I stuck in, for example, George Michael's Songs from the Last Century and while I would ordinarily think of this recording as pleasantly hi-fi enough (for a pop-ish, major label disc), it was clearly inferior in fidelity and accuracy and beauty to the discs provided by HeadRoom. I would even go so far as to say that with this material, the amps/cans were "not worth it" relative to lesser amps.
My verdict, for instance, on the BlockHead/HD600 combo, which I otherwise LURVED with this recording was more on par with my verdict of the lesser HeadRoom amps. The great-sounding material was given a full-out treatment, but the amps didn't perform some sort of perfect, magic process on everything, revealing it's true, deeply hidden inner beauty.
Those observations got worse on some vintage (50's) live jazz recordings I had with me. It just wasn't nearly as good as the top-notch material they had there and the systems (including the Orpheus) didn't perform that well with the inferior material. Since experiencing that show, I've come to really realize that there is really no absolute audio panacea out there (though you can get close, such as with the Orpheus).
The question, then, is that short of changing one's musical tastes to better fit the sort of material that most audiophile labels put out, where does that leave those with pop/rock/jazz tastes, all of which tend somewhat towards relatively lower-fi recording methods (especially the rock and pop)?
Clearly the people with those sort of tastes will be far better served by something that performs the same sort of sins of ommission (or possibly commission) that music producers and engineers assume will be the case with the end listener (like a sweetened, euphonic sound, a midbass hump or whatever the case may call for), albeit with as much grace and finesse as possible.
- Sir Mister Matt
This is a topic I've been meaning to post since the HeadRoom Goodwill Tour.
At the tour, I took advantage of Tyll's kind offer to allow us to bring our own CDs and listen. To get to the point, I stuck in, for example, George Michael's Songs from the Last Century and while I would ordinarily think of this recording as pleasantly hi-fi enough (for a pop-ish, major label disc), it was clearly inferior in fidelity and accuracy and beauty to the discs provided by HeadRoom. I would even go so far as to say that with this material, the amps/cans were "not worth it" relative to lesser amps.
My verdict, for instance, on the BlockHead/HD600 combo, which I otherwise LURVED with this recording was more on par with my verdict of the lesser HeadRoom amps. The great-sounding material was given a full-out treatment, but the amps didn't perform some sort of perfect, magic process on everything, revealing it's true, deeply hidden inner beauty.
Those observations got worse on some vintage (50's) live jazz recordings I had with me. It just wasn't nearly as good as the top-notch material they had there and the systems (including the Orpheus) didn't perform that well with the inferior material. Since experiencing that show, I've come to really realize that there is really no absolute audio panacea out there (though you can get close, such as with the Orpheus).
The question, then, is that short of changing one's musical tastes to better fit the sort of material that most audiophile labels put out, where does that leave those with pop/rock/jazz tastes, all of which tend somewhat towards relatively lower-fi recording methods (especially the rock and pop)?
Clearly the people with those sort of tastes will be far better served by something that performs the same sort of sins of ommission (or possibly commission) that music producers and engineers assume will be the case with the end listener (like a sweetened, euphonic sound, a midbass hump or whatever the case may call for), albeit with as much grace and finesse as possible.
- Sir Mister Matt