In my experience, pure harmonic, mathematically correct tuned music sounds better with the equipment with low distortion, because distortion is more audible with this kind of music. And usually. Blues are far from pure harmonic, very off tuned mathematically, but many of them sound good with high H2 equipments.
So I can find the correlation between tuning and the preference of the amount of the harmonies, but it seems like my experience contradicts with your theory.
It’s rare to have a chance to hear good sounding symphonic music with electrical equipments, but I have heard impressive ones several times in my life, some with modern high end equipments with extremely low distortion, the others with Western Electric clone and Tannoy with rather very high distortion.
There is probably a certain correlation between preference of distortion level and complexity of the composition/instrumentation, but I think recording and cultural context are the only thing clearly correlated with personal preference. Well, symphonic music sounds best when we read the score without listening to it anyway.
How do you mean? Mathematically tuned in what way? Regards Blues, it depends very much on what instruments are being played, some things can sound disharmonious to our ears because we are not used to them, the equal temperament scale we are used to but isn't tuned harmoniously
I see, tunings based on the harmonic series. I would have thought harmonic distortion would have been less objectionable in this case, I note that you saying more audible, but would you agree it is not objectionable? Regards the Blues, blue notes are an attempt, some more successful than others, to hit notes closer to pure harmonic scales. Blue note - Wikipedia
Blue notes and other microtones | The Ethan Hein Blog
https://www.learnjazzstandards.com/...harts/Blues_Notes_and_the_Harmonic_Series.pdf
Blue notes and other microtones | The Ethan Hein Blog
https://www.learnjazzstandards.com/...harts/Blues_Notes_and_the_Harmonic_Series.pdf
to give you advice** about speakers
though - there is already thread for that - speakers for FW amps , or something like that
**my experience , so absolute truth
Thx - I'd be happy to hear your suggestions!
My speaker arsenal is always in flux, currently there is a three-way tower, two two way standmounts, a set of active studio monitors and a little FAST-setup (or WAW to please scottjoplin).
The latter is a Markaudio 6P II Needle running as satellites crossed over at 90hz from an Adam Sub8 and driven by a Crimson 620D. This is my favourite system but 4Ω and low eff.
Nonetheless it really does quite well in my 18sqm room even with hard and fast music
A 96db 8Ω fullrange horn is in the making.
I'll get there eventually but please feel welcome to point to possible setups.
The amplifier should be stable (no oscillations) into speaker load, have low noise, reasonably flat frequency response into speaker load. Distortion is not that important, if it remains in 0.1% order, mostly H2 or H3, and higher order harmonics should be nicely decaying. The distortion should not be much rising with frequency. But there is no reason for the "THD race". If the above is fulfilled, then the distortion would be almost for sure inaudible. The amp should have quite good power supply ripple rejection and be not sensitive to cable topology and EMI interference.
Well, all kinds of "folk" music from around the world tend to be based on simple harmonic progressions. I may be wrong, but I think it was Pete Seeger did a talk about it, and he used the example of Frère Jacques, whilst versions of the song exist all over Europe, he supplied examples of variations of the tune from just about every continent.
Thx - I'd be happy to hear your suggestions!
My speaker arsenal is always in flux, currently there is a three-way tower, two two way standmounts, a set of active studio monitors and a little FAST-setup (or WAW to please scottjoplin).
The latter is a Markaudio 6P II Needle running as satellites crossed over at 90hz from an Adam Sub8 and driven by a Crimson 620D. This is my favourite system but 4Ω and low eff.
Nonetheless it really does quite well in my 18sqm room even with hard and fast music
A 96db 8Ω fullrange horn is in the making.
I'll get there eventually but please feel welcome to point to possible setups.
read my posts here : Speakers Worthy of Pass Amps?
Nice speakers ZM! But why don’t yo go and write something in the thread where it is REALY important ;-)
trick question , or not?
here, or you mean somewhere else ?
Help me with my stupid guitar amp!!!!
please 
your question should have started with speakers then choose the amp for the job. like you said reproduction of complex symphonic music IS a challenge.
for example when experimenting with Visaton B200 driver I noticed what Hoerst was saying about them sounding special on classical music reproduction (not necessarily "complex" though).
Horn-Sat
He has them in horns while I only used them on OB. But I did try them playing through some "horn-like" setups mocked up in cardboard and that is when I noticed the same quality. So a few those in a clever horn combined with a bass support might do the trick. I myself have moved into multiamped OBs which basically have each driver greatly underutilized and keeping the distortion low that way. I generally do not test them on pieces loaded with with a large orchestra though.
for example when experimenting with Visaton B200 driver I noticed what Hoerst was saying about them sounding special on classical music reproduction (not necessarily "complex" though).
Horn-Sat
He has them in horns while I only used them on OB. But I did try them playing through some "horn-like" setups mocked up in cardboard and that is when I noticed the same quality. So a few those in a clever horn combined with a bass support might do the trick. I myself have moved into multiamped OBs which basically have each driver greatly underutilized and keeping the distortion low that way. I generally do not test them on pieces loaded with with a large orchestra though.
Its interesting that when Martin Colloms ('High Performance Loudspeakers') considers multi-amping speakers he lists the reduction in IM distortion in the various power amps as the FIRST benefit. When you do the math (or 'maths' as I'm Australian) its quite enlightening.
E.g. if we consider a purely theoretical example of 40c/s to 16Khz the ratio of frequencies for a single PA is 400:1. If we had a tri-amped system with cross-overs at 400 and 3,000 the biggest ratio we would ask an power amp to tackle is reduced to 10:1 and the lowest ratio a bit over 5:1. I've thought for some time that there must be advantages in expecting PA's to do less work.
And when I retire and get some time for make something its even crossed my mind that if this approach does produce a noticeable sonic improvement then the earlier in the amplifying chain that the frequency division was introduced the better. I.e. why not have the cross-over immediately after the RIAA pre-amp? It would necessitate a couple of extra line amps but that would not be a big proportion of the total cost....
Just a thought.
Cheers Jonathan
E.g. if we consider a purely theoretical example of 40c/s to 16Khz the ratio of frequencies for a single PA is 400:1. If we had a tri-amped system with cross-overs at 400 and 3,000 the biggest ratio we would ask an power amp to tackle is reduced to 10:1 and the lowest ratio a bit over 5:1. I've thought for some time that there must be advantages in expecting PA's to do less work.
And when I retire and get some time for make something its even crossed my mind that if this approach does produce a noticeable sonic improvement then the earlier in the amplifying chain that the frequency division was introduced the better. I.e. why not have the cross-over immediately after the RIAA pre-amp? It would necessitate a couple of extra line amps but that would not be a big proportion of the total cost....
Just a thought.
Cheers Jonathan
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