Were there the typical, OTT very high end gear rigs making a mess of the music at Axpona? Of course there were! ... And here we go,

Out of control ... the bits are there, but the combination is a glaring cacophony - accuracy is so far down, in many critical areas ... a waste of money, for the result.

I have a cheapo CD of these type of tracks, from the man - it can be, so muuuuch better ...

People have said these sounded good, so tried a clip of them,

Hmmm ... small sound, and as usual for rigs to this day the upper band of frequencies is not right, an "in the box" presentation. Hopefully will be hearing a pair of these for real in a week or so - will be interesting to see how they shape up ...

Already showed a clip from this room, but this is via a different visitor, and hence capture device,

Yes, this is how it's done -and a severe contrast to the previous Dutch, etc. Space, depth, tonal and acoustics qualities - this in current configuration could handle almost any recording, I suspect ...

And back to the dark side ... ,

Takes me back ... ambitious, high end rig blaring away, PA style - is it, umm, music? Nope, .

Could be so much better ... pity, that ...

A good way to compare rigs ... a specific recording device, capturing a series of setups, in one clip,

Most sound like hifi rigs, with exaggerated punch and/or a sense of boxiness - the sort of thing that gets tiresome very quickly, the slightly off treble would wear you down.  The one I would have put my money on, PS Audio, is here pulling its punches, too polite - if you listen to the original song, on YouTube, the transients in this rendition are too dulled, even though other aspects of tonality are good.

So, no winners - which is the usual story. The closer you get, the harder it gets. There is no easy road to getting optimum SQ, even though the raw ingredients at higher prices have so much more going for them ...

Just stumbled across another clip of a system demonstrating one of the classic flaws on many rigs - that they slowly degrade in SQ as the music progresses - usually, they are of higher intrinsic quality, which unless something is done to address the issue, ends up making them more irritating to listen to; you are aware of this going on, and distracts from listening to the music.

By simply skipping from the start to the end, and back again, it's easy to pick - the sound gets more and more edgy, 'dirtier', less pleasant to the ear ... no matter the style of the track, this behaviour will repeat itself, every time.

Some mentioning of Grimm - does using a well respected brand deliver SQ, automatically ... umm, no,

Typical misdemeanours of a below par setup - PA sound, small, boxy, shouty; only gets away with it because it's "just a pop track!" ... when people who deal with a 'good' brand don't know how to assemble it to produce capable sound it always demonstrates the generally low level of understanding that is so common in the industry.

Very high priced rigs can get so much right - in particular, 'scale', which simply means that the intensity of the music is well conveyed,

One I bumped into,

What is useful here is that this is typical of what I heard at the audio show a week ago - so many things are well done, it becomes harder to pick nits - with this one, SQ hardens up a bit when the bigger orchestral thing happens; so, you need to test with more demanding material, to pick the weaknesses.

Curious, I checked some other clips with the MSB Discrete - and there seemed to be a signature there, a scratchiness when things got complex, with a wide variety of other equipment in the chain. Was this all about the MSB?

This one was the worst,

Definitely not in good shape here ... is it all about, the DAC ... ??

Now this one's rather nifty - you know the bloke, very active in the scene; and his last updates, etc, to his rig have pushed it, seemingly, over a major hurdle,

Very evident in this clip are many of the characteristics of competent SQ - and his reaction is very similar to what I felt, when my first good setup turned the corner ... sense of space, clarity, an opening into the world of the music which in some ways feels miraculous. What's good is that the YouTube recording captures most of the quality of that quite substantial uplift in the presentation ...

This is an example of how a very ambitious rig most certainly can get into the right zone - the next trick, replicate the reproduction standard at much lower cost, .

This set of gear was mentioned as doing well this year at Munich, and just came across the demo from 2022,

Very good illustration of how competent playback takes you to the event, rather than having the musicians being in the room with you - this sort of grand scale capture obviously can't fit in any normal room, , so how it comes across is just like this.

Many audiophiles won't like this ... it's too, er, "overpowering!". A comment by one visitor was "I did not like this at all. The high frequency were ear-drilling. Just big wall of sound had to get out quick" ... umm, welcome to the world of live sound, ; real world instruments are not "warm and cuddly"; intensity is the game of the game.

If you want "cosy sound!", then just put on recordings where that sort of presentation is the objective of the musicians - you are in control, and if you want "intimate" listening experiences then the right albums need to be picked ...

The point here is, that capable playback will make what you hear as 'tiny' as it was recorded - a "Ben Hur" event will be huge, 'cause that is what it was! The rig you listen on should be a chameleon, changing its 'personality' to that of the recording - otherwise, how on earth can you call it, "accurate"?

So, how did they do in 2023?

Hmmm ... not quite right, eh? In particular, the voices are not 'natural' - there is too much, "hifi" about it ...

This is for those who say loudspeakers are so terribly important - ummm, it's the chain, always; getting something slightly off kilter knocks the SQ well off the plateau it should be on - the greater the potential, the more obvious it is that something is not quite right - and that is something that, well, "has to be fixed" .

Over my years, one of the biggest obstacles I've seen to achieving convincing SQ is the refusal of many audio people to accept that improving the integrity of the chain is key - part of this is being able to acknowledge that what they're hearing is faulty, which is tied up with pride of ownership; once you get a better handle on this, then it is far more likely that good progress can be made.

Elsewhere, Artist Cloner gear mentioned, as being either very good, or "too warm"? Let's see ...

Yes, sorry about dragging out a tired old audiophile cliche ... but that doesn't stop it being useful ...

The source,

and the replay,

Now, this is when I feel I can start to use the term, accurate - to me, this is getting a lot closer to what's on the track - which, after all, I would have thought the point of the exercise is ... .

I'll put this one here, rather than in the Munich thread, because it illustrates a point,

This is, a no ...

Why? Classic problem of ambitious rigs ... can't get the 'sweetness' of massed strings right, . Yes, many things are in place - but that key, vital last ingredient is missing - the sort of thing that I work on sorting out, and have done so, for over 35 years, .

Why has this system got this issue? Haven't got a clue - would require access to the running system, and then start doing some testing, to work out where the bottleneck(s) is/are ...

This is the 'Art', of achieving the potential of very expensive bits and pieces - finding where the weaknesses are, and resolving them.

Here, a good example of what a rig that "needs sorting" is like,

This reminds me of what one of my systems have sounded like when something has "gone off the boil", badly - the basic sound is in place, but there is a sense of an army blanket having being thrown over the speakers - what's happened??!

Won't mention that we're lookin' at a ridiculous amount of money, right here ...

A fun one here, starting at 10:50 - probably the closest I've heard Led Zep come across as it should, on another rig - manages to get the space and scale pretty well right,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_R7O5wb8kj8

Won't embed, for some reason...

Stumbled across this one,

Nice! Good space, layering, vocals - would need to have a better capture, to say more ...

Threw me, listening to this one - I can't believe how awful this is, for the amount of money in the picture ... takes me back to the days of old hifi shows, etc, when just plain dodgy SQ abounded, .

Posted only 2 years ago ... gosh, I wouldn't know where to start, trying to get this back on an even keel ... .

Elsewhere, this combo of brands was mentioned, as ticking every box - just dropped, not the same models, but ...

I put this in the category of, "I can't hear anything wrong with it" - not the right sort of recording to really pick it, volume not high enough, the drums could perhaps have a bit more definition ... this is where YouTube isn't up to it, to tell you "how good it is!", .

Well, a very active thread on WhatsBestForum is discussing the usefulness of YT clips for assessing rig performance; named "Videos of Acoustically-Coupled Audio Recordings". I of course believe strongly in their usefulness, in particular because anomalies which cause them them to be quite unconvincing come across strongly - a good example from a recent post on that thread,

Very high end - but it's not working: the quality of the string section especially makes it obvious - it's just, wrong ...

This one's almost hilarious ... tell me, again, why do we need high end ... ?

This rig, was named as best of the Munich 2023 show by one audio identity, but he mentions that it didn't impress on first listening; a later exposure did the trick. And I agree that other clips I've come across of it running did show below par qualities. But this one,

does it nicely. In particular, the layering and spatial aspects are rendered without any flaws I can hear - the standard you need to make this sort of music have the impact it should ...

Rather nifty one I just came across, making it obvious where vinyl can easily topple over digital,

Which is "correct"? In this case, the vinyl is much closer to the content - could the digital do it as well, or better? Most certainly ... here, the very typical lack-lustre quality that digital always used to have is still present - which of course requires attention to resolve ... .

Do you need big speakers for "big sound" ... no ...

This is the sort of thing that my cheapo active speakers do - you get the big picture, without the big cost ... .