What is your listening bias

Clueless, do you sit on the case of Becks beer while listening and is the foundation of the music better, when the bottles in it are full or vice versa? Do you take the Vodka from the ice, or use shredded Bose speakers to get the right temp?

In another vein: You are so right in what you tell us about the reproduced dynamics in string quartets and also sadly enough, in the lack of bloom compared to what you can hear in concert, the same goes of course for solo violin, or solo cello. All the same, I'm content, when I get drawn into the music when listening at home. As for spacing, I find practically every recording handles space in a different fashion and I only know of one recording, which seems to get it more or less right in the fashion, one is used to from concerts and that is the Juillard rendering of the Debussy/Ravel Quartets on RCA SD. But then Emi does not do too bad a job generally with the Alban Berg people, where even most CD renderings are listenable. Last night however a Hyperion CD of Shostakovitch's 5. and 6th Stringquartet seemed unnaturally bloated with an edgy first violin and if you shaped that away, the sparkle in the cello went as well.

Basically, sadly and sad for the fact, not because I could not put it as well as you did, I have to agree with ALL you said in your excellent post. I find every thought exactly to the point, only I would exchange Becks for Radeberger or Pilsner Urquell. Sorry about my sometimes clumsy use of the lingo. I'm neither Yank nor Brits and out of colloquial practice. Cheers,

Garfish, my apologies and thanks for your great response! I thought "mnestic" could be used in English, obviously not. What I had in mind, was sort of the imprint of the sum of our experiecnces of live musical events in our "aural" memory. I for myself, seem to work very much that way, trying to shape and voice my stereo, according to what I feel is how instruments or voices should sound. Besides that, I know very well what PRAT is, everytime it is not there. If it is present however, I have no inclincation to think of it, nor of the daily frustration of ye olde system, 'cause I'm drawn into the music and just plain happy! Come to think of it, why are so many so called audiophile recordings so damned boring and have no PRAT ? I suppose, it is not only the sum of the system and the software used, it is also the performance itself, which either captivates you or it doesn't!Cheers,

Hi Marakanetz, I think I know exactly what you mean. I have a similar example taken from classical music: Claudio Abado just recently did a musically seminal recording of all of the Beethoven symphonies with the excellent Berlin Philharmonics on Deutsche Grammophon who did an attrocious and outrageous multimiked hatchet job on it, which first got me livid with rage until I became more and more fascinated by Abado's rendering of the 5th, which made the audiophile shut up and the music lover (thank you Sean) come forth. These, I suppose are those moments of truth, were you can find out for yourself, in which camp you are basically at home!

And yes, Clueless, I also wish we could talk more, on music and all the rest. Besides, I like your selfirony and your fine and sometimes wonderfully caustic wit! Cheers,