Striking a balance between musicality and resolution

@jrareform I like to know who you been working with. Look into some of the white papers and presentations by Pete Millett for instance. Pete is able to tune the levels of even and odd harmonics in his amplifier designs to get solid state like bass and tube like midrange and high frequency contours. Hopefully this is not the first time you hear the name Nelson Pass and are familiar with what he has done with Single Ended solid state amplifiers and his latest SIT designs and how they attempt to replicate Single Ended Triode (SET) amplification. The team at Valvet in Germany also has similar designs.

BUT, amplifier designs was not what I was addressing. What I was referring to is that I own and have specialized professional high-end mastering equipment here at home that will allow me to use as tools, both in the analog and digital domain, to tune and dial in the resultant sound to sound like I want it to. Sound, and that is any and all sound, has three elements: frequency, amplitude, and temporal phase. Any signal going through any electronic device or set of electronic devices can be characterized by the device’s or system of device’  transfer function and those transfer functions can be adjusted by dynamic convolution either at their inputs or at the outputs. 

By the way, if you get a chance listen to a First Watt F2J solid-state amplifier and hear how it compares with a Directly Heated Triode (DHT) Single Ended Amplifier (SET) for instance.

There are professional audio processing systems and devices that digitally replicate the sound of analog audio equipment and by analog I mean either tube, solid-state, and hybrid technologies. The emulation takes into account non-linearities associated with the changes in the sound when the amplifiers are driven harder, this is something traditional linear convolution technologies cannot accurately replicate. Just look at the guitar amplifier world where this is now common practice.

You would not believe what is possible today and with AI and Quantum Computing fast coming to the forefront there will be nothing that cannot be achieved.

BUT, amplifier designs was not what I was addressing. What I was referring to is that I own and have specialized professional high-end mastering equipment here at home that will allow me to use as tools,

@carlos269 You probably should have stated this in your opening post.  Many of us are component oriented to build sonic audio chains to our subjective preferences.  I’m pursuing top notch solid state amplification performance- lower noise floor, increased sonic performance (leading and trailing edge of notes…), engagement (emotionally drawn into the music).  It was confusing because SS can be detailed and warm.

@kennyc The only one of my systems that I have shared audio recordings of that utilizes some of my specialized mastering equipment is my WAAR reference systems. My OKTAN6, Pinnacle, and Test Bed systems only use standard consumer audio components, typical to high-end and DIY Audio type systems.

After implementing the real-time transfer function adjustment system on my WAAR reference systems, I set out to develop, design, and implement other methods to adjusts resultant sound on these three other systems.

This matches what I’ve perceived at my main listening position in my room regarding spatial cues and timbre. At the 1-minute mark, I turn the iPhone vertically, and you can immediately hear the soundstage width shrink—very similar to what you recorded in your space. That happens because the two microphones are no longer spaced horizontally, which clearly demonstrates how microphone placement plays a crucial role in recording quality.

The way it goes (use headphone) 

The second recording also aligns with what I’ve perceived at my MLP in terms of timbre and soundstage width and height. However, the depth was significantly reduced. To capture that level of depth, you would need a figure-8 bidirectional microphone such as the Schoeps MK 8 (around $1k) used by Alpha Audio.

Zulu Voodoo (use headphone)

The third recording is for you to compare my setup with the second track (at the 3:00 mark) in Alpha Audio sample tests, where they place microphones very close to speakers to ahieve the highest possible fidelity to the original recording.

Tennis Court (again, use headphone)

@lanx0003  thanks for sharing the audio recordings and analysis. I completely agree the microphone placement will change the captured sound. Spaced microphones are subject to comb effect. My recommendation for the best and easiest way to capture the sound of a system is always the X-Y or M-S microphone arrangements. There are very inexpensive external microphones that can be used to the iPhones.from a “tool” perspective the key thing is to be consistent with the way one captures our own system’s audio recordings.

What I found most interesting about your post was “This matches what I’ve perceived at my main listening position in my room regarding spatial cues and timbre.” that’s quite an achievement. Again, thank you for sharing your audio recordings and analysis as this will give those participating or reading this thread something new to think about.

Why do you request headphones for playback? Since the audio recordings were made from the listening chair position, our own unique and individual Head Related Transfer Function (HRTF) is very important for our assessment and it will not factor in if headphones are used.