Jan and Joshua !
Yes, i trust my ears but i can not go out and say : "I have golden ears and thus my equipment is much better then the competition". As John has pointed out here many times is, that success on the marketplace on the other hand is not guarantied when the euipment measures great on the bench. Rather the subjective impression of decission makers may have being spoiled by poor choice of some passive key components like caps and relays.
To Jan : Yes. our impressions are shaped by the factors your mentioned and others. Some time ago i found an article about reactions people had when they listened to Caruso on a mechanical grammophone. I went like this ( the words i use here are not absolutely they same, but i hope you get the idea ) : "Carusos voice is so lifelike, that i can not distinguish it from a life performance". Hardly whould anybody today claim that this is true.
Yes, i trust my ears but i can not go out and say : "I have golden ears and thus my equipment is much better then the competition". As John has pointed out here many times is, that success on the marketplace on the other hand is not guarantied when the euipment measures great on the bench. Rather the subjective impression of decission makers may have being spoiled by poor choice of some passive key components like caps and relays.
To Jan : Yes. our impressions are shaped by the factors your mentioned and others. Some time ago i found an article about reactions people had when they listened to Caruso on a mechanical grammophone. I went like this ( the words i use here are not absolutely they same, but i hope you get the idea ) : "Carusos voice is so lifelike, that i can not distinguish it from a life performance". Hardly whould anybody today claim that this is true.
I agree. What I was meaning was that any piece of gear can provide great satisfaction to different people. There is no clear parameter that can tell you whether one piece will sound better than another. Since many different types of equipment, with a very great variety of audible attributes are bought by different customers, there is also NO clear audible/listening test that will indicate whether the equipment will be preferred or not.
In the end, it is all personal preference, which varies between people.
jan didden
The most disturbing experience i had was many years ago when i presented my Virgo speakers at a dealer in Hamburg ( one more anecdote ). After listening with a customer for hours to classical muisc he was really chalanging me and pointed out bit by bit flaws in my setup. I then asked him what marvelous equipment he has, that does not have that flaws. He told me that he listens to 30 years old speakers that he just plunked on the floor 1m apart.""I have no trouble to listen "trough" this, but on this equipment i can´t".
That seem to stem from the wonder of the new phenomena that a mechanical device can reproduce human voice.
Also, it seems like our appreciation of audio reproduction gear is influenced by our previous experiences of listening to reproduced music.
Indeed.
However, few of audiophile friends of mine and me share a very similar taste.
So, maybe a target clients group would better be defined. Also, it seems that often people listening to popular electronic processed music have different taste for audio gear than people who listen much to acoustic music, like classical music and opera, especially people who often attend live concerts.
So, what does it prove, or indicate?
Was the flaws he pointed out real ones, such that others could also note?
I found the system sounded great that day. ANY system has flaws but i was more then happy with what i heard back then. The guy was claiming that he hears the "partiture" and that is a hard one when you do not know the piece that is playing in detail from the conductor point of few. I retrospec i just think that guy was an a..h... and waisted my time. But things like that happen to me on and off.
I find that I can often 'forgive' the flaws in my own equipment, for the most part, but then easily hear big problems at the hi fi store, when they have equipment that I have not learned to forgive. I don't know who that guy was from Hamburg, unless he is that crazy American banker who has given me so much grief, over the years.
Still, IF I had the funds and energy to improve my own audio system, this is what I would do: For the phono, I would buy a better Lyra cartridge, in fact, the very one recommended to me by Allen Perkins, a few years ago, instead of the cheaper one that I have now. Then, I would fix the Marantz 10 tuner, and place the SONY that I am in process of cleaning up, in the kitchen system. Last, I would make a custom power amp of maybe a few hundred watts, into 4 ohms that is the best that I can do, rather than the nearly stock older Parasound that I am using. This is within the realm of the possible. The 'impossible' would replace much of what I lost in the firestorm 19 years ago.
These are NOT general wishes, but based on my actual experience with the better components in my own listening room in the past.
Still, IF I had the funds and energy to improve my own audio system, this is what I would do: For the phono, I would buy a better Lyra cartridge, in fact, the very one recommended to me by Allen Perkins, a few years ago, instead of the cheaper one that I have now. Then, I would fix the Marantz 10 tuner, and place the SONY that I am in process of cleaning up, in the kitchen system. Last, I would make a custom power amp of maybe a few hundred watts, into 4 ohms that is the best that I can do, rather than the nearly stock older Parasound that I am using. This is within the realm of the possible. The 'impossible' would replace much of what I lost in the firestorm 19 years ago.
These are NOT general wishes, but based on my actual experience with the better components in my own listening room in the past.
This is very true. You see a similar effect with clothing. In certain groups, a certain style of clothing is adapted, often by the 'leaders' and then the effect is reinforced. There have been many studies on group dynamics that are very applicable here.
[Need to sign off. Meeting EUVL/Patrick tonight, leaving for European Triode Festival tomorrow to meet, among others, Joachim. Life is good!]
jan didden
Hi Joachim, I'm think maybe he was just familiar with a different type of sound. Often when we're familiar with a particular type of sound from a music system, even a bad one that we've enjoyed, it's hard to adjust to something different.
When my dad first bought his IMF monitor MKII loudspeakers he was really disappointed with the bass. He was used to boomy sounding bass from cheap speakers. And the IMF transmission lines had excellent bass, and he eventually grew to love the tight detailed bass of the IMFs.
Experience really matters.
This is normal group behaviour and in my network we agree on many things but we also have different priorites. Allen for example prefers much softer volume then ido but he is superb to extrract good sound from old and worn records. I remember a night in Emmerywille ( i do not know if i have spelled that right ) with Allen and Peter Evans when we had Peters MFA preamp. Allen played Santana Abraxas for us and i could have sweared that he was with us in the room. Barbers Adagio and Miles Davis Kind of Blue blew me out of the window then and we listened very soft for my taste.
P.S. i know this banker too, he was in my house and i will even meet him on ETF when it is the guy on the list. Yes, he can bring you stress, but that was not the guy i was talking about.
P.S. i know this banker too, he was in my house and i will even meet him on ETF when it is the guy on the list. Yes, he can bring you stress, but that was not the guy i was talking about.
maybe, maybe not, maybe..... (Sorry had to go for the cheap joke.)
Let me see If I understand this. We take music which is basically an emotional expression transmitted through the air by a series of three dimensional pressure modulations (now actually 4D!), emanting from sometimes multiple three dimensional sources, change it into an electrical signal of two dimensions, perhaps with multiple sample locations and then argue as to where it gets distorted the most?
Digital or player piano anyone?
I am about to give one of my talks to a college class. I start off with an articulation test, students don't even question how I can do that, they just go into test mode so fast it is almost scary,
I then talk about practical applications and the large construction process including how important communication really is.
Then I give another test that asks very easy to answer questions if you can think sideways, otherwise they are extremely difficult.
At least one student will argue they got an answer right from their point of view. Why they bother on a test that doesn't count academically is another issue. I then explain that if these were instructions important to life safety, they would be dead. They got one meaning out of the text when another was meant.
That is a single figure of merit issue, musical reproduction is not.
Indeed, only the audiophile friends I spoke about, we aren't any group. We are individuals who meet occasionally, mostly only two of us at a time. Each one of us has a completely different background, history and experience in high quality audio gear. Of course, no two of us agree completely on all details and aspects, only, we share a very similar basic test regarding audio systems.
This is true, but only part of the story.
Some emotional expressions aren't being expressed in the sound waves. Sometimes in a concert there is a unique atmosphere, beyond what is being carried by the sound waves.
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