I am a vinyl and tube man, that stated, I find that SS has improved tremendously over the last two decades, so that basically the old dichotomy no longer holds true. I suggest you listen to a well set up Spectral system through very revealing speakers and you will be very surprised. Or take a listen at the value for money excellent Marsh amps, the Gryphons from Denmark, or for much more money, the offerings of Edge and Halcro, of FM Accoustics.
As far as the bottom end of the musical spectrum is concerned, I am not for tubes, for the simple reason that you can get the same results for far less money through SS. Tubes can handle this as well, since about ten years or so, but those amps cost a packet!
Actually the endless debate about what is better is rather outdated and has become purely ideological. Generally amps of both denominations have edged a bit closer to the real thing and besides, one should not really judge them by themselves, I find, but by the chain they are in and what exactly they are being used for, like high end, low end, midrange etc. Cheers, |
Bob, if it were distortion, why do we think that it is sometimes so close to live music? It would seem then, would it not, that either live music is, or our ears are distorted and then if indeed it is distorted, as the measurement crowd loves to point out, then it is mostty even order harmonics and that is indeed closer to live music in comparison to ss clipping. |
Bob, I spoke of tubes distorting, not necessarily of a vinyl-tube playback event, but then, come to think of it, I DO think and experience almost daily, that with the right TT, arm and cartridge, and with an LP properly treated, you will more often than not have neither tics, pops or limited dynamics and will thus come closer to live music, than anything else including SACD. Of course many LPs do have, what you mention, but with a well set up vinyl frontend, the noise is somehow transported to another plain, beyond the music. It has to be experienced to be believed. Besides, I find the "black silence" of CDs completely unnatural and dislike it immensely. We all have our preferences. Cheers, |
Zaikesman, you pose a very good question, which I have often pondered for myself, however am quite unable to answer in any satisfactory fashion. I go to live music events quite often. Zurich is musically lively city. Perhaps it is the ambient noise of a life event , which I miss in classical CDs. Instead of blackness, I expect to hear those subtle cues, which tell me of the size of the hall, those reverbs from the side-, or backwalls, which simply are not there. This is, what makes me so uncomfortable with and dislike most of the classical offerings through this medium. Cheers, |
Aaaaahhh, ASA, it also felt good to read your fine analysis. I love my Spectral system, especially when I am after the intricacies of a given composition, letting my mind follow the musical weavings the composer wrought, analysing and marvelling at a structure, which show mastery of the craft. With the Jadis heated up, I fall into the music, let myself be carried away, forget all until there is nothing but the music....and sometimes even beyond that. It is exactly as you say and there to be experienced and difficult to argue it away. |
Jetter, you can also pilosophise with beer, sometimes even better and deeper. There is no contradiction there. 6chac, congratulations on your system. Which CD's do you refer to, which can really do this? Very curious... Cheers, |
Pity I cannot meet you all in person. We'd have great discussions over much beer until we were so out of our brains, that in listening to 6chac's beautyfull ML -20 from Mark the Man, we suddenly would find, that ASA has been right all along! Cheers to all! |
Unsound, this child wasn't foolish,only naiv, like a music lover amongst audiophiles and ASA, Buddha on the road to Damascus????--he must have been walking in his sleep---
6chac, how are you going to have the trolls? Broiled or steamed? Cheers, |
The fool in the last card of the Tarot, 6chac,is another image for this. Got nothing to do with God or mysticism, Zaike, it is just one who does not let science devour nature empireously always and all the time, to paraphrase Unsound...hence he's a fool of course, like tubelovers..and ASA speaking in the wilderness.... |
6chac, thanks, don't think I deserve your kind words, there are far better descriptions around here for what we experience, when listening to music.
Unsound, yes of course the child wasn't foolish, all I was trying to do, was to poke some fun at all of us here, me included, about the musiclover falling prey to audiophiles, like David fallen into the lion's den.
Oddly, or rather not oddly enough, no one took this up. Probably too busy bickering away. Possibly Muralman loves his Apogees more than music, Asa perhaps more, what his astute and nimble mind shapes and forms, by reflecting the experience, which music gives him as a catalyst. I love his shaping and forming, I learn from them, more often than not I agree with them, but in a sense they would remain flatus vocis for me until I would have grasped the nucleus of his experience, beyond his thinking and his arguing. Only then, I would be able to say, yes Asa loves or Muralman loves music, beyond all gear, thoughts, beliefs and other narcissisms, which so easily attach themselves to a hobby passionately pursued.
As I tried to state very early in this thread, the entire argument seems a bit outdated. Both formats have advanced and have moved closer to each other. The benchmark here I feel, should be musicality. Musicality is an elusive term, because (ASA is right here, to my mind) musicality is a quality of psyche. (I do not like the term "mind" here, because of its proximity to thinking or consciousness. )Like the sense for rhythm it seems engrained in our essence, in our dna if you will, it is archetypal. The experience of it jumps at us, be it from an interpretation or a composition, which we then call musical. In actual fact, what we hear is not musical per se, but acts as a catalyst on our psyche and moves it, before our thinking about it sets in. Hence, to follow this line of reasoning, a music lover has to be an arch-narcissist, an addict, longing for his next shot of music, tickling his endorphines? Not necessarily, because musicality always hits us by surprise. It is no category of our thinking- conscious mind. It hits us in the same way as would the sudden sight of a strikingly beautiful women striding on the other side of the road, or the unfolding of a rolling countryside, as we approach the summit of a pass-road.
Some amps can surprise us in that way, fairly consistently, with the right kind of music. Many simply cannot, ever. Amongst those, which I have experienced, are tubes as well as SS. I know SS amps which do this to me and I know tube amps which do not. For me the entire argument has become pretty much moot, especially since I have learnt to take and mingle the best of both worlds, in order to have the music get at me at that psychic level where it belongs and does me best. Cheers |
