Do you trust your system?
I was constantly upgrading gear, demoing songs, reading reviews, trying to find out why I had the feeling that the song I was playing shouldn’t sound the way it does. Something off or lacking, I luckily found a set of equipment and a room setup that if a song is off, it’s likely recorded that way. I trust my system to do a decent job. I wonder do others get to a point where they are more critical of mastering techniques than something wrong with their equipment? Admittedly, it’s easier to say how a piece of gear or cable made some significant difference, but in what exactly since the music sources are so wildly manipulated by engineers?
"I think that worrying about the performance of your system after you have dedicated the necessary effort to dial it in (which may take time) is a symptom of audio nervosa" whart pretty much summed things up. Get your setup optimized including the room. After that, play the best recordings possible and enjoy. No cable, fuse or audiophoolery necessary. Not that there's anything wrong with that... |
That's true, strictly speaking. So what? There's no sense in allowing unattainable perfection to be the enemy of the good.
No, some sound better. Some sound much, much better. Some sound worse.
You most certainly can if you make your own recordings. That was actually rather common in the early days of audio. |
@whart i like that sentiment. I was always a music first person. All my budget went to discovering something new, finding a hidden gem. As streaming became a reality, I invested that Music budget in better equipment. It’s certainly a luxury to have practically all of recorded music at your touch. It’s now easy to just run through a dozen recordings of a classical piece, seeing how each differ and which recording and performance connect with you. But the audio gear stuff is often a curse focusing on the artistic choices of the producer/ masterer to see if it syncs with your choice of gear. It seems the main topic here and in other audio blogs and magazines, so curious if it’s just me that finds it challenging. |
