I'm not game to try Adele 21, not yet anyway,. This has an extremely intense sound in many tracks, it reaches out and grabs you by the short and curlies, and in best Dirty Harry style, growls ,"Do you think you can handle listening to me, punk, do you ... ??!!"
I don't know why an Adele 21 should be difficult. I think rock music is harder.
I have been listening for Adele for hours (now it's 4 o'clock in the morning!). The best song imo is "Love Song", which is a popular song. But the musical arrangement in this old song is new and very good.
May be you have heard a critic regarding "a girl with a guitar". Now I think I understand why this kind of test is important. I didn't realize because I didn't use guitar sound for a test, but a piano (somebody else might use violin). But we can see similarity between acoustic piano and acoustic guitar, can't we? It's the acoustic chamber that has that unique "timbre/harmonics".
Any system, no matter how expensive it is, no matter how good the measurement graphs are, if it cannot produce the midrange (which is most of the music) well, then how can it be enjoyable?
I was impressed with the piano in Adele's first success "Someone like you". Even now with her other songs I wish she doesn't start singing the song so I can enjoy the piano.
Any speakers, if it cannot display the beauty of a piano (even cheap and small speaker can, if done right) is simply a big design mistake. This is my philosophy in speaker building
Jay, you've obviously come at things at a different angle from most, have been very "entrepeneurial" in making your system parts as good as they can be from go, so have had experiences that at variance from others. Adele 21 is pretty well universally condemned as being very hard to digest on normal audiophile systems, and I can understand why: the production severely emphasises elements that push all the wrong buttons on many setups, people give up in disgust after just a couple of tracks. I would be very interested to hear what your "house sound", so to speak, is ...
Rock music requires the amplifier to be able to do dynamics cleanly; this is absolutely essential, otherwise the sound will always be dirty, and lack guts. The recorded sound is very rich and detailed, has tremendous air and complexity, but you wouldn't know it listening to most systems.
Piano is excellent for picking the ability to reproduce intense transients, even extremely "mediocre" recordings have captured the essence of the piano tone, but the playback is often woefully out of balance; at the hifi show I went to earlier this year all piano sound was hopelessly limp wristed ...
Violin is a harder test, the aim is to reproduce the sweet, intense sheen of the instrument; failure here means one just gets that typical lacklustre, dull droning that rapidly becomes boring ...
Rock music requires the amplifier to be able to do dynamics cleanly; this is absolutely essential, otherwise the sound will always be dirty, and lack guts. The recorded sound is very rich and detailed, has tremendous air and complexity, but you wouldn't know it listening to most systems.
Piano is excellent for picking the ability to reproduce intense transients, even extremely "mediocre" recordings have captured the essence of the piano tone, but the playback is often woefully out of balance; at the hifi show I went to earlier this year all piano sound was hopelessly limp wristed ...
Violin is a harder test, the aim is to reproduce the sweet, intense sheen of the instrument; failure here means one just gets that typical lacklustre, dull droning that rapidly becomes boring ...
Well, I'm overwhelmed by all the feedback from others trying this out ...
But, I can understand! Each day I need to go through a pattern of setting up all the tweaks, and this morning I put on Mendelssohn Violin Concerto with Mintz, on DGG, straightaway, no warming up, no tweaks in place. And what a miserable, tiny, tinny, totally unpromising sound emerged!! Hearing that, anyone would certainly think I had rocks in my head ... but 5 minutes later we were certainly starting to get decent, worthwhile sound.
So, unless one does this execise in a totally uncompromising way then it will be a dismal failure -- all the prejudices will fully verified, and the status quo remains ...
But, I can understand! Each day I need to go through a pattern of setting up all the tweaks, and this morning I put on Mendelssohn Violin Concerto with Mintz, on DGG, straightaway, no warming up, no tweaks in place. And what a miserable, tiny, tinny, totally unpromising sound emerged!! Hearing that, anyone would certainly think I had rocks in my head ... but 5 minutes later we were certainly starting to get decent, worthwhile sound.
So, unless one does this execise in a totally uncompromising way then it will be a dismal failure -- all the prejudices will fully verified, and the status quo remains ...
A question: by how much is the sound from speakers considered to be affected by temperature and humidity? In the UK we've just had a decent spell of weather, and compared to when I last used my system the temperature and humidity have changed. Yesterday I felt the necessity to tweak my baffle step compensation curves by a dB to gain a bit more upper-mid and treble 'bite'. Any possibility there was a real, physical reason for this?
Looking at a graph from a JBL manual, the humidity effect is not negligible, and does make you think that from day to day a system could sound different because of it.
Another reason for 'the need to tweak'?
(My woofer and mid cones are polypropylene, plus silk dome tweeter)
http://www.jblpro.com/pub/manuals/pssdm_1.pdf
Looking at a graph from a JBL manual, the humidity effect is not negligible, and does make you think that from day to day a system could sound different because of it.
Another reason for 'the need to tweak'?
(My woofer and mid cones are polypropylene, plus silk dome tweeter)
http://www.jblpro.com/pub/manuals/pssdm_1.pdf
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I would say, yes, but not primarily because of change of speaker driver characteristics -- they may be a strong factor in some people's situations, of course, every situation is different.
Personally, I find static behaviours to be very relevant, and higher humidity automatically reduces them. Static interference generally increases treble distortion, and this often translates to the sound having 'bite', but it's not "correct" bite. Reduce the distortion with increased humidity, and the FR can then be adjusted to give more treble - IMO, the system is now working more "correctly"
Personally, I find static behaviours to be very relevant, and higher humidity automatically reduces them. Static interference generally increases treble distortion, and this often translates to the sound having 'bite', but it's not "correct" bite. Reduce the distortion with increased humidity, and the FR can then be adjusted to give more treble - IMO, the system is now working more "correctly"
Talking of baffle step compensation (or the equivalent obtained through judicious in-room measurement and inversion), it does seems to me to be a magic bullet that I wouldn't want to be without. I may not claim to be able to hear the differences between mains cables, but I think I can certainly hear off-balance EQ these days.
I notice that some commercial active crossover units don't have provision for BSC per se, and with passive crossovers you're stuck with whatever you're given, unless you resort to an additional EQ unit. So for passive, minimalist systems you are juggling the placement of the speaker for correct baffle step EQ (distance from wall etc.) with the placement you want for 'soundstage' or merely convenience wrt furniture and room layout. It's always going to be a severe compromise isn't it?
I notice that some commercial active crossover units don't have provision for BSC per se, and with passive crossovers you're stuck with whatever you're given, unless you resort to an additional EQ unit. So for passive, minimalist systems you are juggling the placement of the speaker for correct baffle step EQ (distance from wall etc.) with the placement you want for 'soundstage' or merely convenience wrt furniture and room layout. It's always going to be a severe compromise isn't it?
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