High Performance Audio - The End?

@Motown

hang in there, we all will be joining you soon. 😀

funny (and maybe) a little sad when folks on the forum tell others what and how to enjoy - we shouldn’t be so heavy handed, best to maintain some modesty - the beauty and journey of this pursuit is to learn and acquire what sounds good for each of us!

a system can certainly be high resolution and also enjoyable to listen to... all things equal, higher res is better than lower res, but often higher res comes at the expense of some other tonal tradeoff, especially in more budget oriented systems

the difficulty is that different recordings are mixed and mastered hot/cool, with/without spatial cues, overdubbed to death vs simple honest mic-ing

kinda makes the case for old school tone controls, loudness button for low level listening etc etc

you can enjoy it all, played all the same on the same system... just a function of what an individual learns to enjoy (or call ’enjoyable’)

his other points aside, i feel guttenberg certainly calls it right that high res systems that have super revealing treble can often become grating when playing modern (or even 90’s) super hot mixed pop albums... i guess those are still enjoyable if you turn down the volume enough LOL

Then you're not doing it right. Don't blame the recordings. My system is so revealing no two recordings sound the same. The differences between them all is clear and easy to hear. They are all enjoyable.

Sure, lower your standards enough and everything sounds just peachy. 

Perchance the point of it all is lost on many.  

This is a hobby centered around an art form.  A form of personal entertainment and inspiration, not just the musical product of the hobby, but the mechanics and theories too.  It engages the mind on many levels - the intellectual, the emotional, sensual, spiritual and physical planes.  It is a soulful experience intended to produce FUN, not vanquish, not competition, not judgement.  Takes anything too seriously and it becomes an odious obsession distorting both mind and soul.

After all, the reproduction of music is the inducement an intentional hallucination, an illusion for there is no band inside the box in front of you, only some parts the wiggle appropriately.

Please remember that the word music (mousike (Greek); "art of the Muses") come from the nine daughters of Zeus and Memory, the sources of human inspiration.  Music is an art form that uses physics as a tool to spread its healing and rejuvenating powers.

Good luck fellow travelers, don't let the bed bugs bite as they say.

@mapman,

"The example of pop music on Magnepans is a classic example of wrong speaker for a particular kind of recording."


I've had no luck with electrostatics after unsuccessfully first owning a restored pair of Quad ESL57s and then getting to hear the Quad 989s playing back a Morrissey CD and making a right hash of it.

'You are the Quarry' just sounded plain wrong. I cannot believe Jerry Finn (producer) or Morrissey himself intended it to sound the way it did on the Quads.

Yet I know the Quads are good loudspeakers, virtually everyone says so, but could it be they're just too revealing for most pop?

As you say, maybe they're also a 'classic example of wrong speaker for a particular kind of recording.'