No: In reality, there is no hope at all of getting the "real" feel of live music through your - or my - or even HP's - stereo system. But much as you may not want to hear it, I think you already know that you could come *a lot* closer with gear other than what you have listed - otherwise, you would not be hanging around A-Gon with the rest of us audiophools! But if that's simply not an option, then drop out and attend as many concerts as you can, and then laugh at us behind our backs! |
Sorry to condradict you Pe3046, but long ago, in a stereo system far, far away, I used to own a pair of KG4's. They were the most hopelessly colored speakers I have ever had to depend upon for my daily listening. Just all kinds of spurious artifacts, response anomolies, and general masking of musical information. Did it matter that they were fairly efficient? Sure, they rocked out more than the pair of little EPIs I left home with, but who would want to listen to this degree of error at a high volume anyway? About the only good thing I can say for them is that they looked pretty cool for the cheap price. I replaced them as soon as I could with pair Allison CD-8s, which sounded virtually like 801s after the KG-4s, which I'm sure are somewhere, still ringing from an impulse they received in about 1988! (Please don't extrapolate this criticism to the K-Horns, or other classic full-size Klipsch models.) In fairness to you, though, my current speakers are Thiel CS 2.2s - not the most dynamic in the world - so have at 'em! |
Not that I'm here to just slam Klipsch or shill B&W, Bob B., but I have to disagree about your assessment of the 801's dymanic capabilities. First, let me say that I am a big promoter of the idea of higher speaker sensitivity, and would not personally buy a speaker with less than at least "average" sensitivity (86-87dB range), and would like my next pair of speakers to go even higher if possible. I also think that increased system efficiency is more responsible socially from an energy consumption point of view. I myself don't want to own monster power amps, to deal with their size, heat, and cost, or to feel that I need to play my speakers at concert levels just to make them wake up and come alive.
But potential system dynamics have to do with more than just speaker sensitivity. If you have the power to feed your dynamic monitors, and they can handle it, then more than satisfactory results are possible. I have heard systems based around 801's, or Wilson Watt/Puppy's, for instance, that can virtually punch the listener in the ear (and the gut), because sufficient power was available to drive them. One could make the augument, however, that the use of such high power - or the design of the drivers to be able to make the necessary excursions - might possibly compromise some other, more subtle aspects of the sound in a trade-off to get those astounding dynamics.
I was glad to see that Thiel brought out their newest speaker, the smallish 2-way floorstanding CS 1.6 (which sound fabulous, BTW), with a much higher, for them, sensitivity of around 90dB. Maybe this will point the way of the future when Thiel finally introduces the long-awaited replacement for the standard-setting CS 3.6 (I hope they banish the utra-low impedances, too).
Whether they employ horns or not, I believe speaker makers should make a serious effort to provide products that pay attention not just to response characteristics, but also to higher sensitivity, moderate-phase and -value impedances, and just as importantly, flatter overall impedance curves, so that audiophiles can more successfully utilize a wider range of amplifiers with most speakers. Amp designs, tube or SS, that do away with using negative feedback to achieve conventionally acceptable damping and output impedance figures can, in my experience, "un-box" the sound to a similar degree as high-efficiency speakers can - but at the potential cost of more colored response, when used with typical impedance-characteristic speakers (horns included).
For me personally though, it's more the dispersion properties of horns that keeps me away from them (I like mine wide), than any preconceptions about "colored" sound. I guess I weight this preference more heavily in my choice than superior dynamics, but that's obviously not going to be right for everybody - and I would of course love to have it all (but can't afford it!). Happy listening :-) |
Bear is of course talking about dynamic range in his first paragraph, and how if you were to use an expander on a lot of the compressed and limited material available, you would wind up with quieter "quiets" for a majority of the playing time. But his comments also happen to point up the fact of what a grotesque parody of "natural" sound most electronically reinforced "live" concerts present today, something John Atkinson commented on in a recent column.
But if you're familiar with (and listen to recordings of) naturally produced acoustic music, perceivability of the really quiet events is definitely a good thing if one is trying to achieve "live"-sounding results. For this you also need low noise (high S/N ratio). This applies not only to the system, but to the listening environment as well. Low-level detail can be easily masked by ambient noise.
Bear's point about system headroom and room size also bring up another aspect, which can be called "absolute volume fidelity". Too often in our systems, it is just easier to ignore this, but for naturally recorded music, you really must be able to reproduce it at the same volume at which it was originally played. The illusion of "live" cannot genuinely be approached otherwise, and this only makes sense. But for something like a piano or a horn, this requires a lot more power than most folks realize not to compress or distort the instantaneous peaks, and your room must be of a certain size, and preferably acoustically treated as well, if it is also not to overload on these and give away the game.
Finally, I would like to point out that while seemingly not high on the priority list of most audiophiles, and not yet attainable for most program material anyway, recreating a believable, immersive soundfield through some sort of multi-channel record/playback scheme will do as much or more to address the "live-like" question as any of the preceding can. Sorry to repeatedly wander so far off-topic on the thread-head's question about how to accomplish "live" given a modest system in a small room without scrapping it all, but I don't know how to do that, so I ramble instead. }:-( |
Ha! Bruce, I bought that disk and tried my best to love it for years, but finally gave up and traded it in - I just no longer wanted to listen to the machine-like playing, the intrusive breath noises, or the not-so-natural recorded sound of Galbraith's admittedly unusual instrument. Yes, the guy is an amazing virtuoso, and has put in a hell of a lot of work all the way around, but...I dunno, maybe I'd enjoy him more live, but I ultimately had to conclude that this recording was just never going to do it for me the way I wanted it to as a Bach-loving guitar player. Oh well :-) |
Actually Detlof, I had to get halfway through your congratulatory post about Sasha's commentary before I realized it wasn't going to end up being sarcastic! :-) (And yes, I'll grant that anybody can screw up a $50K system as easily as a $3K system - maybe more.)
Anyway, no secrets here: I thought many of the other posts above were more perceptive - *and* more directly addressing of the question - than Sasha's. There was no need to come in with that deus-ex-machina attitude, and then contribute nothing beyond some worn-out warhorses and a passel of unsupportable claims. For the put-down, at least give us something more perceptive than "WIRES"!
Even so, there was one thing he said which I will fully get behind - "Stay away from direct advice, and use your common sense" (to which I'll add, 'And your ears'). He could have been addressing this to Rosypup or a few others, and I couldn't agree more. In one form or another, this is basically what I've been saying around here for two years.
[And just for the record - once more - I've never equated audiophilism with being a truer music-lover. Some are, a heck of a lot aren't. Sasha may be a better audiophile than me, but who's to say when it comes to caring about music...for any of us?] |
Well, I was mostly referring to experience... |
Got an email from Bruce today:
============================================================
TO: Zaikesman
Try to find some kind of therapy in the real world, the internet is a terrible substitute.
FROM: Brucegel (a member)
============================================================
Posting it here will serve as my only comment. Carry on... |
Thanks for comin' on back, Sasha, and for not taking my comments on what you said (or others' reactions to them) personally. Since it would seem you have a lot of expertise to share, and since, as you say, writing out your thoughts can help you to shape your own conceptions of them, why do you choose not to actively participate around here more frequently? It's true I didn't find your initial post revelatory enough to warrant dissing all the posts prior to it, but that doesn't mean that I don't find many of your points valid (and I already mentioned the ones I question ;^) We can always use more members with experience and opinions around here, so I'm glad you didn't let the bruhaha following your first post disuade you from returning, and hope you will continue to contribute. |
Thanks for comin' on back, Sasha, and for not taking my comments on what you said (or others' reactions to them) personally. Since it would seem you have a lot of expertise to share, and since, as you say, writing out your thoughts can help you to shape your own conceptions of them (a process I've benefitted from myself), why do you choose not to actively participate around here more frequently? It's true I didn't find your initial post revelatory enough to warrant dissing all the posts prior to it, but that doesn't mean that I don't find many of your points valid (and I already mentioned the ones I question ;^) We can always use more members with experience and opinions around here, so I'm glad you didn't let the bruhaha following your first post disuade you from returning, and hope you will continue to contribute. |
Brucegel, do you agree with Sasha's contention that "the rest has been solved" except for realistic dynamic range? I would contend that realistic soundfield (including reverberent soundfield) recreation is at least as big a stumbling block to getting the real feel of live music as is lifelike dynamic range - and an even bigger challenge technically, from the recording, reproduction configuration, and listening room acoustics standpoints. (I'm really not trying to lynch Sasha here - I probably wouldn't have commented at all on his post absent the hosanna's - I just honestly can't see what makes you guys feel that it's so incredibly insightful, helpful, or even well-put...you reading, Sash?) |
Beatle seems to have moved on...maybe the latter part of this thread didn't give him a "real" feel! |
Brucegel and Detlof, sorry, but I can't share your swell opinion of Sasha's post. Where is the iconoclasm in noting that the high end hasn't taken any quantum leaps closer to reality recently, or that everything - plus synergy - matters in a system, or that dynamic fidelity is a big issue? That's stock stuff, true as it may be.
What I notice more are his hard-to-defend comment implying that only seven or so brands of wire (which, interestly, bear little relation to one another in their product designs) can truly be called "good", and the claim that his customers "worship" him (what's so "beautiful" about that sentiment?).
More to the point though, Sasha's cliched exhortations about "magic", his declaration that "all high end [equipment] is great", and his claim that he can make a $3K system sound very nearly the equal of a $50K system (apparently through a mixture of mass-market electronics and speakers with high-$$ wires bought used, to judge from the rest of his post), make me wonder what exactly he means when he leads in by offering that the thread-head is "getting the run-around from these audio amatuers , and I'd like to help".
Gee, how gracious of him...Sasha, sorry to have so thoughtlessly provoked a selfless professional such as yourself to need to emerge from the woodwork in order to set us straight. Doubtlessly, the original poster will now know exactly what they need to do after reading your uniquely valuable contribution: Call you. |
