Newness
On Sunday, April 7, 2013 5:37:09 AM UTC-7, Barkingspyder wrote:
On Thursday, April 4, 2013 4:47:33 AM UTC-7, Gary Eickmeier wrote:
Do you ever sit down to listen and find yourself getting bored with
it, unless it is one of your all time favorite recordings? Have you
ever auditioned a few other people's systems, or gone around at an
audio show, and been amazed at first but unamazed later? I have been
saying that the reproduction problem is less about accuracy and more
about acoustics, and I think these observations are a subset of that
principle. You know that there is no system that can be made to
sound exactly like the real thing, because if it is an acoustic
problem then you just cannot get away from the problem of the
smaller space. It is not long before your ears "glom on" to your
acoustic situation between your speakers and room, and the
suspension of disbelief gets messed with because you realize that
you are not in Symphony Hall or the Concertgebeauw. So you make a
few adjustments, tweek something, change something, if only to put
on a new recording. But soon.... well, you see what I mean.
But this is the source of this whole industry called The High End.
They convince you to try all these silly tweeks, real or imaginary,
and you go along with it happily just to change something. Not me
any more, thanks to double blind testing and learning what matters
and what doesn't, but still it is good to get away from audio for a
couple of weeks and then when you turn it on again it sounds so...
so fresh, new and amazing! The best deal for me is when I go
travelling, maybe listen to a few other people's rigs, then come
back home to "the real thing" and enjoy mine all the more for the
comparison - and the seeming newness!
We thrive on variety and change, and I wonder if one could become
bored even listening in the same concert hall every time? Any
thoughts on that? Do you always sit in the same seat, or do you like
to move around a little? Maybe if a hall is good enough, you could
never get bored with it and the suspension of disbelief problem of
course does not exist in the live situation, so the principle
doesn't apply live. I mean, sitting there you never even question
fidelity or imaging or balance or volume or anything that most of us
consider hi fi problems. Your brain just knows that it is real and
live, so you stop worrying about capacitors and channel balance and
enjoy the music!
I think I am getting old and sounding like Bert White.
Gary Eickmeier
Snip
If you look around at what is
available you will find that all of the most thrilling speakers have
drivers from just a very few companies. B&W, Scan-Speak, SEAS, and
Dynaudio seem to dominate the market and for very good reason. They do
the job better than anyone else. I can't think of a speaker system
that I find to be exciting to listen to that don't have drivers
sourced from those companies. Hmmm, I guess I should include Revel
into the mix as well. YMMV. And I know it does.
You forgot Magnepan (no drivers from those sources), and you can't say
that Maggies don't sound amazing. Might not be your cup of tea
(especially if you are a rocker - Maggies can't produce that
gut-punching 80 Hz bass that rockers seem to love), but you can't deny
that they are among the best speakers available at their list or any
other price. You also forgot Martin-Logan, the company that made
electrostatics reliable (nothing in my experience is more life-like
and neutral above about 400 Hz than the curved-screen ES unit in a
Martin-Logan design. Yeah, the bottom end uses conventional drivers in
most M-L designs, but I don't know who makes 'em.
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