If you're auditioning, the main thing is a dealer who can handle what you bring him. And by that I mean that LP/CD whatever you've been listening to for years and know every brush stroke on the drum or quiver on the guitar note. If they don't have equipment for that, or want to seduce you with a streamed version of something you've never heard, you are, my friend, in the wrong place. You've been in the game a long while and this is not the time for some kid to show you how it's supposed to be. You already know how it's supposed to be. If you're not living next door to Nelson Pass, get on a plane and find your own version of such. That's what you owe yourself. It's not a kid's game any more.
What source do you use to demo equipment?
Hello. After decades of enjoying my home audio system, I find myself beginning to look for my final end-all dedicated music system. So I am beginning to look at speakers, amps and source components.
The question is: with all of the new streaming services and hardware, when you go into an audio salon, what do you listen to as your baseline music and via what format? I used to take a few CDs along, which were familiar to test the musicality of equipment. With all of the streaming and source hardware variables, what do you use? I had an experience recently where I had a salon queue up a familiar song via their streamer and it sounded horrible. It lacked any dynamics compared to what I was familiar with. I went home and listened to it on my streamer and the same thing. It sounded terrible compared to the CD version.
So how do you get the consistency of sound for listening tests? What sources do you listen to when testing?
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It is astounding that the very dealers who decried the quality of digital sound now routinely stream (in digital) when demonstrating downstream components, even when these rival luxury cars in price. The benefits for the dealer are obvious - they can likely find whatever the prospect wants to hear in a minute or so. Ask if they can play SACDs and you get blank looks - "oh, I think we've got a player somewhere". Even then, it will likely just be two-channel and a royal pain to set up. My audition pieces include Benjamin Britten's own performance of A Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra originally recorded in analogue by Decca around 1963. This contains almost every instrument of the orchestra except the piano, and covers individual instruments playing soft and loud, building to a crescendo with the full orchestra playing to multiple cross rhythms. All in 18 minutes. I do not have the analogue record, but similar sounds are on Sir Adrian Boult's recording of Elgar's orchestration of Bach, as noted by AI.
I also have Hyperion's recording of Shostakovich's Piano Concertos on both SACD (no longer available) and record. The second movement of the second concerto brings out the air around quiet piano notes, especially on SACD. Of course, streaming does not generally support multi-channel DSD, as far as I know |
@richardbrand “…It is astounding that the very dealers who decried the quality of digital sound now routinely stream (in digital) when demonstrating downstream components, even when these rival luxury cars in price.” True. But in all fairness the advances in streaming in the last ten years has been at break neck speeds in comparison to typical evolution or revolutions in high end audio. |
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