popular thinking in the 70's was "the more gear you can feed the signal though, the better". Guys used to drool over the rack mounted components. Some of that equipment still commands a fair dollar. I see the Pioneer SX1250 with an asking price of $4000.00 Just nuts. I had two of them. I paid in the $600.00 range and sold for the same amount. My first step forward to better audio was when I removed the jumper plug between the preamp and amp section of the Pioneer and inserted an Onkyo preamp. Much, much better sound. The rest is history.
Still the demons of GAS pursue me
Who among you has felt regret when a long-wanted item from yesteryear pops up?
About forty-five years ago, a certain popular HiFi manufacturer’s new parametric equalizer was, to me, the bee’s knees. I dreamed that I might have it one day and use it to get deep bass and tingling highs out of any speaker. A few years later, a friend who had been in the service picked one up, and it still seemed to be all that. Any frequency band could be emphasized to the point of loud or suppressed into silence.
This week, one appeared on that bay place, in “very good condition”, for next to nothing. I thought to hit Buy It Now as fast as possible; before it gets away. But then reality set in. It’s clear enough that where my system is today, adding that processor would radically degrade and certainly not enhance the sound of my system.
So now I find myself browsing that listing daily or worse. I’d appreciate reading similar accounts that others may have.
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@jnovak As part of that was the idea of a flat frequency response to rule them all. I'm very much a fan of EQ, either from subtle adjustments in tone controls that are transparent, or DSP in the subwoofer path, but otherwise I think we still expect too much from them. |
As has been discussed often (maybe too often), I found it amusing that in the 1980s and 1990s, EQs (and even tone controls that could be defeated) fell out of favor and all the strident "audiophiles" wanted to hear everything "plain" as if THAT was what the recording engineer heard. Well, nope, not by a long shot. Here we are today and even DACs at any price point don’t all "sound the same", so what is so-called "truth"? There is none, unless you can visit the studio and hear exactly what the engineer is hearing. Even then, you might not PREFER it! And at some point with extremely revealing DACs you might be hearing things the engineer or even the artist never did. Does that somehow get you closer to the "truth"? It’s like looking at a pretty girl, then having x-ray vision and you can see beneath the skin. Might not be as pretty in that case. |
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