I think that the most important aspect of achieving good audio performance is to take a holistic approch to the entire system.
The individual specialist is unlikely to acheive this by improving one of the system building blocks above all others.
There are people who will advocate improving the audio source, the amplification and the speakers individually. They may manage to create a soundsystem that has aspects that are special when compared with the norm. But I feel this is not the way to achieve an audio system that is able to convery the emotional aspects of ANY musical performance.
My system has:-
A modded CD player and a reasonably respectable vinyl front end.
DIY stepped attenuator.
Modded lateral mosfet amplifier.
Tweeked but mostly standard speakers.
But it also conciders:-
Vibrational isolation and support of the source, and all electronics.
Support and positioning of the speakers.
Custom DIY cabling.
RF reduction throughout the system inc extra grounding.
Cable routing.
Mains cabling.
All of these are important, and as the transparency of the system improves the individual changes are more easily heard.
The beauty of DIY is to acheive these things without unnecessary expense!
It is necessary to think beyond the box!
The individual specialist is unlikely to acheive this by improving one of the system building blocks above all others.
There are people who will advocate improving the audio source, the amplification and the speakers individually. They may manage to create a soundsystem that has aspects that are special when compared with the norm. But I feel this is not the way to achieve an audio system that is able to convery the emotional aspects of ANY musical performance.
My system has:-
A modded CD player and a reasonably respectable vinyl front end.
DIY stepped attenuator.
Modded lateral mosfet amplifier.
Tweeked but mostly standard speakers.
But it also conciders:-
Vibrational isolation and support of the source, and all electronics.
Support and positioning of the speakers.
Custom DIY cabling.
RF reduction throughout the system inc extra grounding.
Cable routing.
Mains cabling.
All of these are important, and as the transparency of the system improves the individual changes are more easily heard.
The beauty of DIY is to acheive these things without unnecessary expense!
It is necessary to think beyond the box!
Regarding the electronics issue, I think the reason some consider them important is because many of the distortions they produce are unnatural. We humans are primarily visual creatures, and our ears are secondary "distant early warning systems". If you take a walk in the woods, you'll find it's what you see that maintains your attention, until you hear something out of the ordinary. Then you'll freeze, tilt your head, and try to decide if what caught your attention is something you should run from before it comes into view. Certainly, room reflections are important to accurate reproduction, but they don't set off the mental alarms screaming "Something's NOT right!!" that cross-over notch distortion does.
Anyway.... for me, the one parameter required before all others for audio reproduction not to require a "suspension of disbelief" is loudness. The most powerful experience of feeling I was "really there" I ever had was listening to Joni's "Miles of Aisles" on a pair of EV Sentry IVs. Runners up include Klipschorns and Paragons.
No, I'm not surprised this hasn't been mentioned, not surprised at all. But trust me, if you want to experience Woodstock as it happened, rent a big PA system and set it up outside. Drop the needle on the vinyl, crank it up, and go sit on the grass. Brown acid is optional. 😉
Anyway.... for me, the one parameter required before all others for audio reproduction not to require a "suspension of disbelief" is loudness. The most powerful experience of feeling I was "really there" I ever had was listening to Joni's "Miles of Aisles" on a pair of EV Sentry IVs. Runners up include Klipschorns and Paragons.
No, I'm not surprised this hasn't been mentioned, not surprised at all. But trust me, if you want to experience Woodstock as it happened, rent a big PA system and set it up outside. Drop the needle on the vinyl, crank it up, and go sit on the grass. Brown acid is optional. 😉
Sounds like fun. If I had a really big block I'd probably set up an outdoors permament cinema/music system with some kick.
Visited Jurassic park lately?!
Visited Jurassic park lately?!
Interesting Topic, I have been thinking about this for awhile. As mentioned earlier the recordings are a given. I want to hear what I want to hear for the performance. The recording good or bad is what it is. Also there is the issue of the storage mechanism, digital or records.
Most important is the room/speaker as a system. How to treat a room has been studied and room treatments can help a room optimize the performance of a speaker, give a set of room dimensions and volume. People like D Heyser P D'Antonio and other have done great work here. I am always surprised that people spend tons on money on cables when room treatments like RPG systems would have FAR more impact.
The other part of this equation is the speaker itself. Controlled Directivity, Lack of Compression, Dynamic headroom, Lack of Diffraction components, multiple low frequency sources (some people at Harman wrote the AES papers on this. Earl Geddes has defined a lot of what is important in room acoustics and speaker performance. His speakers reflect this the papers at his site is well worth a read, especially the stuff on what distortion is most important and what the ear/brain can mask. Some planars can exhibit these characteristics, within their dynamic range if place in a room properly (ie avoid early reflections) and combined with subwoofers.
So we have properly designed speakers in a properly treated room, now what? Well I want to relate an experience for 20+ years ago. I went to a Stereophile show in NY. I was surprised how bad most of the Equipment sounded (especially the Infinity IRS system touted by the magazines as SOTA and the Duntech speakers, much worse than Soundlabs powered by NYAL Futterman amps I was familiar with. I went to the Cello room Levinson was demoing his speakers (based on the AR LST IIRC), he was playing the Goldberg Varations being performed by Glen Gould). The album sounded harsh and shrill. Then he eq'd it using the Cello Audio Palette. The album was transformed and made listenable . It had 9,000 components in it, normally with that many devices you would expect the sound to suffer, perhaps with a great recording that would be the case, but most of the performances I enjoy aren't perfect recordings. R Burwin came up with the approach used by the Palette, it was IIRC based on an eq used in his own system. He has now implemented this in software on a PC (along with some processing of the Digital audio signal), He is ripping his CD's and other recordings in lossless format and then eq'ing the recordings for his speaker/room system.
I haven't heard this if it works as well or better than the Palette it would be very important for music lovers in my opinion ranking only behind the speaker/room system.
Here is a link to this app:
www.berwinbobcat.com
This brings us to sources and electronics. I think people don't look at the AC power coming into the house. There are some power conditioners, but if the power coming into the house us is properly grounded, use shielded isolation transformers and wiring this will allow well designed electronics to sound their best.
The electronics should have good power supply design and the distortion components should be primarily 2nd and third harmonic, with minimal to no crossover distortion. Lynn Olsen's writing at nutshellhifi.com about what is important in amp design is great stuff. We also see that designers lik N Pass either build Class A amps or bias his high power amps to run class A up to 50W or more. I am also interested in E Geddes observation about the distortion performance of the chip amps in his Pioneer receiver. There is a thread here on this. His measurements show that the distortion again was 2nd and third without the higher order harmonics you would expect to see and also that these distortion components decrease in a linear fashion with the decreased power levels.
Most important is the room/speaker as a system. How to treat a room has been studied and room treatments can help a room optimize the performance of a speaker, give a set of room dimensions and volume. People like D Heyser P D'Antonio and other have done great work here. I am always surprised that people spend tons on money on cables when room treatments like RPG systems would have FAR more impact.
The other part of this equation is the speaker itself. Controlled Directivity, Lack of Compression, Dynamic headroom, Lack of Diffraction components, multiple low frequency sources (some people at Harman wrote the AES papers on this. Earl Geddes has defined a lot of what is important in room acoustics and speaker performance. His speakers reflect this the papers at his site is well worth a read, especially the stuff on what distortion is most important and what the ear/brain can mask. Some planars can exhibit these characteristics, within their dynamic range if place in a room properly (ie avoid early reflections) and combined with subwoofers.
So we have properly designed speakers in a properly treated room, now what? Well I want to relate an experience for 20+ years ago. I went to a Stereophile show in NY. I was surprised how bad most of the Equipment sounded (especially the Infinity IRS system touted by the magazines as SOTA and the Duntech speakers, much worse than Soundlabs powered by NYAL Futterman amps I was familiar with. I went to the Cello room Levinson was demoing his speakers (based on the AR LST IIRC), he was playing the Goldberg Varations being performed by Glen Gould). The album sounded harsh and shrill. Then he eq'd it using the Cello Audio Palette. The album was transformed and made listenable . It had 9,000 components in it, normally with that many devices you would expect the sound to suffer, perhaps with a great recording that would be the case, but most of the performances I enjoy aren't perfect recordings. R Burwin came up with the approach used by the Palette, it was IIRC based on an eq used in his own system. He has now implemented this in software on a PC (along with some processing of the Digital audio signal), He is ripping his CD's and other recordings in lossless format and then eq'ing the recordings for his speaker/room system.
I haven't heard this if it works as well or better than the Palette it would be very important for music lovers in my opinion ranking only behind the speaker/room system.
Here is a link to this app:
www.berwinbobcat.com
This brings us to sources and electronics. I think people don't look at the AC power coming into the house. There are some power conditioners, but if the power coming into the house us is properly grounded, use shielded isolation transformers and wiring this will allow well designed electronics to sound their best.
The electronics should have good power supply design and the distortion components should be primarily 2nd and third harmonic, with minimal to no crossover distortion. Lynn Olsen's writing at nutshellhifi.com about what is important in amp design is great stuff. We also see that designers lik N Pass either build Class A amps or bias his high power amps to run class A up to 50W or more. I am also interested in E Geddes observation about the distortion performance of the chip amps in his Pioneer receiver. There is a thread here on this. His measurements show that the distortion again was 2nd and third without the higher order harmonics you would expect to see and also that these distortion components decrease in a linear fashion with the decreased power levels.
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