IMD Is The Elephant In The Room.....
Too many typical systems cause higher order harmonics production (nasty) and IMD (even nastier).
'Suspect' recordings played on such systems turn into a cloud of shite, driving the listener out of the room (and out of the house).
'Suspect' recordings played on very good systems are revealed as exactly that.....typically such recordings have 'errors' such as lousy noise floor (master tape hiss), distorting mic preamps, bad mic placements etc.
However, on a well behaved system, these errors are not exaggerated, and the real worth in the recording is reproduced unscathed.
When a cloud of dross is not being created in the playback system, the presence, depth, life, groove etc in the original recording situation can be reproduced, and stunningly so.
So, it doesn't take magic to make a silken purse, just properly behaving playback gear.
Dan.
When a system is 'sitting right', it gets out of the way, and the resultant audio in the room becomes 'matter of fact', without embellishment or subtraction.
Too many typical systems cause higher order harmonics production (nasty) and IMD (even nastier).
'Suspect' recordings played on such systems turn into a cloud of shite, driving the listener out of the room (and out of the house).
'Suspect' recordings played on very good systems are revealed as exactly that.....typically such recordings have 'errors' such as lousy noise floor (master tape hiss), distorting mic preamps, bad mic placements etc.
However, on a well behaved system, these errors are not exaggerated, and the real worth in the recording is reproduced unscathed.
When a cloud of dross is not being created in the playback system, the presence, depth, life, groove etc in the original recording situation can be reproduced, and stunningly so.
So, it doesn't take magic to make a silken purse, just properly behaving playback gear.
Dan.
No, it's not. While the "dynamic range" of human hearing goes from the threshold of hearing to the threshold of pain (about 130dB), it can't do all that AT THE SAME TIME. Exposure to higher level sounds makes you less sensitive to lower level sounds. That's why in order to get down to the threshold of hearing, you have to be put in an anechoic chamber and then stay there for about 10 minutes while your ears acclimate. In other words, just being exposed to the "quiet" ambient noise outside the chamber prevents you from hearing down to the threshold.
If you were to test your hearing thresholds while sitting in a relatively quiet room, and then test them again immediately after listening to music at realistic levels, there would be a huge difference between the two.
se
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Sorry but NO. A good playback system should reveal warts and all and not "improve" a bad recording. Throwing crap into a "well behaved" system isn't going to result in a good listening experience. You can try and apply band aids all day to a bad recording but in the end it's still crap.
Still awaiting Frank's reply since my post was aimed at him.
Frank implied that some special component further down the system chain is capable of making a bad recording sound just dandy.
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Most people think it's a strange thing on/ in my setup, but I mostly use solid core, smallish gauge hookup wire everywhere I can.
I treat the bare ends to Caig deoxit and make most connections with screw down barrier strips.
So far so good.
why bother with gigahertz cables?
there is something wrong with this, for example class d amps have 20k lowpass filters on outputs
even SACD amp will not aim at MHz
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snake oil: if person is ok to spend thousands on suspicious (audio) items, without blink of a eye, then he deserves to be ripped off
Sy just does not know how to shop . AC-12 on Ebay at $ 150 inc shipping from the back door of the factory in China . Less snake oil same cord just have to do diligence in your research.Now that's a real man's cable!
Really? I'd venture to suggest that you would be able to identify an instrument IF you were focussing on it, OR if it was discordant. I do not believe that you hear each contributing instrument and then form a whole out of it. By you, I mean humanity, not you personally.
Pretty much, as I understand it, thats what the research says too. The cocktail party effect would lead you to think that when listening to the orchestra you are hearing the entire sound and moving your individual focus from instrument to instrument. In the background you hear the rest but you are largely unaware of the detail of what is going on in there. Its the one instrument (or group of instruments) that you hear in a conscious manner.
Brain drain
Don't know what the product Mr. Curl recommends is, but when a diy "auto mech" buddy coated his battery terminals with Vaseline , he thought his car was broken the next day. He call BCAA to fix it , and after 4.5 seconds, the real mechanic found the problem, and said" I think someone's having fun with you- your battery terminals are coated in Vaseline !
My friend also thought the easy fix on his leaking camaro trunk was NOT to replace the seal, but to drill a hole in the low spot of the puddle.
Worked very well until it rained- then it drained into his gas tank!!!
Andreas thought the Vaseline was a good idea - I'm just saying...
Don't know what the product Mr. Curl recommends is, but when a diy "auto mech" buddy coated his battery terminals with Vaseline , he thought his car was broken the next day. He call BCAA to fix it , and after 4.5 seconds, the real mechanic found the problem, and said" I think someone's having fun with you- your battery terminals are coated in Vaseline !
My friend also thought the easy fix on his leaking camaro trunk was NOT to replace the seal, but to drill a hole in the low spot of the puddle.
Worked very well until it rained- then it drained into his gas tank!!!
Andreas thought the Vaseline was a good idea - I'm just saying...
It's not Vaseline. Polyglycol oil. Pretty standard product for this application. I don't think it's microcrystalline.
What Frank and I are saying is that 'suspect' recordings can sound good, and stunningly so, when the final replay system does not add it's own layer of shite.
The 'errors' in such recordings are still there, but these 'errors' are not exaggerated, and therefore don't draw such attention.
IOW, when the replay system is very good, 'suspect' recordings become enjoyable, and the original live content can be heard easily, and the 'errors' don't matter nearly so much.
Indeed, subtle and pleasing detail becomes audible because of lack of masking (system THD/IMD), not due to any 'improvements'.
'Suspect' recordings contain THD and IMD caused by the original recording/mastering process.
When this THD/IMD hits a typical system with it's own THD/IMD the resultant is a whole new layer of THD/IMD, that then makes 'suspect' recordings unlistenable/ear bleeding.
Any system can sound decent with 'perfect' recordings...the hallmark of a very well behaving system is that just about any recording sounds good.
Again,the key is absence/low levels of higher order harmonics, and very low IMD.
Dan.
It was night, night time for me ... the days of fooling around at 2am are long gone ...
Dan did a beautiful job of expounding on what goes on - with a different slant in his explanations, but I agree with everything he mentioned ...
I have never implied that some "some special component further down the system chain is capable of making a bad recording sound just dandy" unless what it is doing is to correct or protect the system, directly in some fashion. As I have stated many times, good sound is the result of resolving, fixing issues - a subtractive process - rather than adding bits of "specialness" - an additive process. I start with the goal - achieving high quality sound - and work backwards from that ... if the sound is not good enough then I try and locate one problem or issue causing that, and continue with that exercise until enough improvements have occurred to give me acceptable sound.
What I realised a long time ago was that the mind does a beautiful job of bypassing the "warts" if you give it a decent chance - the warts are still there, but you don't notice them, they subjectively disappear, because the message of the music making is too strong. Normal, expensive systems exaggerate these recordings defects, they bury your head deep in the awfulness of what is not 'perfect' - and you can't listen to it ...
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Thanks, I did try.
YES.
YES.
YES.
And reviewers describe these systems as 'detailed'.....false detail is what they are hearing.
Dan.
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