Great thread! I'm the guy to whom Marco was referring . That particular listening session in his studio took place shortly after I had just switched to a solid state amp in my system (McCormack DNA .5) and was feeling sensitive to what I felt was an increased hardness or brittleness to upper midrange and high
frequency reproduction. While some of that may in fact be the amp ( and would probably be improved by Steve McCormack's mods) some of it I also believe was increased resolution and transparency of the new amp revealing deficiencies in my digital playback system-a quite aged Pioneer PD-65 with no outboard DAC. Hence, when I heard a similar effect in Marco's much more sophisticated system it prompted a discussion. I found the post regarding the natural hardness/distortion of the human voice interesting, although I can't say that I've ever heard a live, unamplified soprano hitting the upper registers and sounding brittle and a-musical, harder perhaps. And then there is the issue of hall overload and distortion. Avery Fischer hall for example with the orchestra and brass going full tilt gets unlistenable in my opinion-might as well doze the joint! While the old Carnegie was perhaps a bit overdamped, it was always wonderful. Benaroya hall here in Seattle is terrific, although all seats of course do not sound the same regardless of the propoganda.
frequency reproduction. While some of that may in fact be the amp ( and would probably be improved by Steve McCormack's mods) some of it I also believe was increased resolution and transparency of the new amp revealing deficiencies in my digital playback system-a quite aged Pioneer PD-65 with no outboard DAC. Hence, when I heard a similar effect in Marco's much more sophisticated system it prompted a discussion. I found the post regarding the natural hardness/distortion of the human voice interesting, although I can't say that I've ever heard a live, unamplified soprano hitting the upper registers and sounding brittle and a-musical, harder perhaps. And then there is the issue of hall overload and distortion. Avery Fischer hall for example with the orchestra and brass going full tilt gets unlistenable in my opinion-might as well doze the joint! While the old Carnegie was perhaps a bit overdamped, it was always wonderful. Benaroya hall here in Seattle is terrific, although all seats of course do not sound the same regardless of the propoganda.