IMO, if you work a lot with speakers, you will be able to associate system sound with speaker performance. With amplifiers, I can associate "drive" and THD (which is probably impossible for most), but for most other attributes I have no idea. With speakers, there are just so many that you can hear, mostly because of imperfections in this area!
Here is a simple test, for those who didn't use ears:
Disconnect the woofer from your two-way system and listen ONLY for the tweeter at around 15 Watts output! Then get back here and tell me your experience. Most speakers will make you run away with bleeding ears. But let me tell you that I always make my tweeters "float", natural and enjoyable. But this is not the end of it. Some tweeters just too SOFT that it doesn't hurt ears but at the same time doesn't sound realistic!
Yes, it is true that most speakers are "built" such that they have those "false" characters that can impress listeners. Too much of something.
But there is also a trap, thinking that neutral speaker would normally sound "flat".
Why make it so difficult and "mysterious"
Listen to the sound, recognize each instrument. All sounds should be well defined and musical. Even in high-end systems, it is normal that people hear "sound" that they have never "heard" before (with different speaker). It's because there are so many information in the sound that is not music and mask the other information.
*They* use the machines that sound OK for them ;-)
They usually record in 24/96. At this point, the hisses of the analog preamps and the ambiance noise in the studios are high enough for you don't have to care about adding some random noise, don't you think ?
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This reminds me of the time I spent about 10 years ago, visiting as many home systems of the main city hifi club as I could, to see where they were coming from,
. There was nothing that blew me away, but the couple of systems that were very natural in their presentation seemed to bore most in attendance, they wandered off to talk outside - I was scratching my head, . Quite a number screamed at me - the systems, that is - I remember one with biggish B&W floorstanders that was shrieking, Detail, you want detail?!! Man, you ain't heard nuthin' yet!! Listening to this system was a dentist's chair episode - but the owner was obviously very proud of it ...
Better these days, but not so a decade or so ago - most systems back then crumpled badly when asked to deliver more realistic levels - it was like a bad, infectious disease running through everything.
Sprouting formula twaddle might give one or two a hard-on, but it's not my cup of tea - when I need to get technical to sort out something I'll pull up whatever's needed to get the job done, and get a real answer ... anything else is just a wank ...
Wouldn't the maximum detail be delivered by a totally neutral system! one that doesn't add or subtract anything from the playback.... anything else is a false representation of the sound because it is colouring the result in some way, such as distortion. So if a neutral system is boring and not what people want then its just a game of playing with noise and added artefacts to get a tailored sound, but not HI-FI in its true definition.....
... I've been doing that for 30 years, but I don't disconnect the woofer - I just get up close and personal to the treble unit. With correct, "realistic" sound you don't "hear" the tweeter at all - it always remains "invisible" ... amazing when you experience it properly for the first time, but then it becomes part of your toolbag, .
Appears so ... a genuinely neutral system can be turned up to realistic levels, and be very comfortable, soothing to listen to - it doesn't attack you with sound, it creates a large ambience of another, musical world, which you can turn your attention towards, or away from, depending upon what you're doing - just like, say, listening to a member of your family competently playing the lounge room piano,
.
Boring ? Of course it is. The real life is trivial. That's why human invented music, movies, litterature ;-)
I said so often here that this stupid (and passionate) hifi quest is a a fantasy race that you will believe i just turn round and round.
As a sound engineer, i never tried to reproduce reality. Just trying to create fictional emotions with a plausible scenario.
Believe-me or not, and i don't care about dither, 16 bits, or quantum purifiers, but, unless your system is very poor, the records you love just sound one hundred time better than a perfectly transparent recording made at once with no mixing or production work.
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Actually, they WILL sound very flat in the sense that their power bandwidth will be rather flat. This will make the sound look more like an amplified replica of the incoming signal, if all is well.
It will change the tonal balance in comparison with lesser spakers On first listening, anybody whose speaker are not like that will most likely objcet, but the real test is having them listen to such speaker for say two weeks, day in and day out. Then give him back his coloured speakers and I think most will not be happy. It is only then that they realise what their speakers really sound like.
Truly linear speakers will of course change the tonality, but this does not automatically mean that they will reduce music from being passionate to being ruler flat and dead sounding. It will simply mean that the tonal balance has been brought into proper relationship, so violins do not screech at your ears, but have not lost their bite.
Marce, you are talking about the immediate first impresson on first listnening. That's a normal reaction, I react like that when demonstrated a speaker which is coloured. But as I said, let them listen to such speakers for a week or two and in many cases, you will see a change towards more linear.
A friend asked me to lend him my speakers. I d0n't normally loan my speakers, but he's a good man, so I agreed. Two weeks later he was stalling me for more time. He fairly quickly tried to buy speakers like mine, but unfortunately, due to a traffic accidednt which left one of its manufacturers paralyzed for life all over except for the little finger on his left hand, they were no longer available. Just 7 pairs ever made. One is in Italy, two are in Belgium, one is in Holland, and the rest I don't know. Anyway, 4 years later, Harman International shut down Son Audax, who made the drivers.
This reminds me of the time I spent about 10 years ago, visiting as many home systems of the main city hifi club as I could, to see where they were coming from,
I am anything but surprised, Frank. That's blind and unsustantiated belief in one's own choice, frequently made on basis of trade names, price tags and such like. Nobody wanty to admit they were wrong. Audiophiles excell at that, which often creates funny events, mostly by quoting the ads.
This production work has a consequence. It is done, referring to what the sound engineers, producers etc. hear during the sessions. That means that the most transparent reproduction system will not be a perfectly flat one, but the one the closest as possible to the monitoring system used during the mixing sessions.
Like in photography, with the color space of the screen used when you tune the white balance.
Because of fashion trends, it is likely that a majority of your favorite records had been recorded and mixed on a given set of studios monitors.
(The periods of JBLs, Tannoy, UREI etc.)
Depending of your own tastes about music, each will found more neutral a set of enclosures in his home the closest as possible to one of those references.
Because our tools are not all-powerful, it is happy that some truths can survive through all these systems ;-)
And that, improving my own system at home, i can even discover, sometimes, in my own mixes and years after, details i had never noticed before ;-)
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True any self proclaimed expert will quote adds . I once question a pilot in from of other staff what he owned . He then gave a quoted Bose sales speech . He then ask me my thoughts on such a fine system . I told him it was fine for the kitchen . At that point he ask me what I had . I ask was he interested in the digital, analog or just the pre-amp amp and speakers ? Silence . So one of the oldest flight attendants said well tell us. "Well their my toys and a long bit about them would bore most not audiophiles". At this point the pilot got up and went to the flight deck.
his layover did not go as planned I suspect. So I got them talking about the music they liked and really never told them much about my system . Interesting how people like more to talk about themselves than learn about other experiences. Go with follow and learn from other is what I did.
his layover did not go as planned I suspect. So I got them talking about the music they liked and really never told them much about my system . Interesting how people like more to talk about themselves than learn about other experiences. Go with follow and learn from other is what I did.
So only the great Oz has the real answer. Engineering is just a wank? Well if you really like randomly fiddling until you expectation bias is sated guess that works for you. I like to know what the root cause is as often its quite easy to discover, especially with the test tools you can build the cost of a couple of quantum purifiers.
You were talking about Klipsch. This make-me remember those coaxial Tannoy studio monitors. Pretty nice to listen too. And, oh Lord, with those emphasis in the low medium, they produced such a big sound !
The natural reaction was to add some High medium to your mixes, to put instruments like acoustic guitars a little closer in front of you, in order to recover some details and brightness.
The result: the records you made with them tend to sound thin and aggressive on a more neutral system.
My attempts in those few last messages ? Not to talk about me, but to put the things in perspective.
The natural reaction was to add some High medium to your mixes, to put instruments like acoustic guitars a little closer in front of you, in order to recover some details and brightness.
The result: the records you made with them tend to sound thin and aggressive on a more neutral system.
My attempts in those few last messages ? Not to talk about me, but to put the things in perspective.
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I was specifically referring to the replay chain, it does seem the more I read stuff on here, the less people are interested in true hi-fi and more in creating a coloured system that sounds good to them....
Me I just listen to the music these days, trying to listen for this digitisis that so many find irritating with digital storage based music
maybe I need to start using some PC speakers to get better resolution and volume...That one I would argue with you! I am trying to wrap up my article on them and realize it will have to be parceled out.
I plan to begin with transformers. Even with that limited scope there are two viewpoints. Small preamp type designs and power amplifier monsters are very different.
Then there is the unwanted stuff that goes from the power line into the power rails and less understood what even a linear power supply does to the mains lines. This is even before any rectification.
Just cos it takes 50 pages to explain doesn't mean the science is not well understood.
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