[Jaggers]

Hey there..

First off, another thank you to the membership of this board for all the great posts that have led me down the way of the broke-but-happy.

I've been enjoying the cosmic>ER-4P/S...no, enjoying is too soft a word, more like needing to wear loose pants to accomodate the higher frequency of erections from the new sounds in my head.

Anyway, as is typical with new equipment I bombed my CD collection to relisten to my old favorites. What I noticed right away was the various degrees of quality in recordings/mastering, more specifically how some music has outstanding soundstaging: instrument separation, clarity, depth, etc., while other music that I once thought was incredible seems..hmm..almost mono-ish...blended together and somewhat muted. As an example, I found most jazz recordings to be outstanding (Scofield-Uberjam), but many rock recordings weak, to the point of not enjoying the music as much (Rush-Signals). This is using my home source: Onkyo DX-C300->Cosmic->ER-4P/S.

The question: Is there anything we can do on our end to help the soundstage of these weaker recordings? Or is this just the price we pay when we purchase revealing equipment? Are most rock recordings, especially the older ones, just unfriendly to head-fiers like us? Do we have to wait for good remasterings (the Zepp quad pack) for audio bliss?

Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

 

[eric343]

Well, you could upgrade your source, cables, power cords, power jacks, power lines, and power conditioners, buy sorbothane feet, Shakti stones, and cable elevators, Pro-Gold everything in sight, use CD-Stoplight and vibration damping mats, upgrade the Cosmic to a Blockhead...

But it probably wouldn't do much, because IMHO positioning and soundstage are two things determined primarily by the recording, beyond a certain class of equipment. (just like everything else)

 

[dhwilkin]

There's only so much you can do to help soundstage on poor recordings... you'll never get them to have imaging, air, width, and depth comparable to great recordings. But, for those poor recordings, balanced power is about as close to a miracle cure as you're going to find, IMHO.