Bumped into this video,

Ummm, reminds me of what the Dutch & Dutch 8C speakers sounded like at the recent audio show ; that very track was played on the latter, a request from someone in the audience ... how can they be so close??!! Well, it's the recording, stewpid! Same track, played on decently accurate setups, will sound the same ... can't be any other way!

Perhaps the 8Cs were a tiny, tiny bit better on the voice - barely anything in it ... .

I was thinking of posting this yesterday, but did the other instead - an 8(!) year old video, showing how a remake of 80 years old speaker technology has no trouble projecting an immersive listening experience, with just two speakers,

Is it because they're horns? No, they just make it easy for the chain to generate high SPLs without too many irritating artifacts; well driven conventional speakers will do the same - this is what "conjuring" sounds like ... .

And, where the latest stuff gets it wrong, a good contrast,

This is, "small sound" ... going through the motions; and if you turned the volume up, it would be mighty unpleasant, on "bad!" recordings, .

For the money on show, this is poor value reproduction ... these days, a good demo can be set up far more easily than it used to be, as evidenced by the last show I went to - how long before a good standard becomes universal ... hmmm ...

An amusing one ... . Excuse the gratuitous swearing, but this points out that the Edifier speakers I currently use are an excellent basis for achieving high quality sound; Airpulse is their premium line, and probably will require less tweaking,

Without fiddling, they do what's required in a satisfying way ... add some extra teasing up, and you get excellent bang for the buck.

Do manufacturers of highly regarded, and expensive kit, know what the goal is? ... I submit Exhibit A,

Nope!! This is awful, but the company must think it's fine ... just think, to spend that sort of money and end up with this level of SQ ...

Couple of recent postings ... yes, vinyl, but the listening should be the same for digital ...

This is how Led Zeppelin should sound - yes, one can pick on little things, but the sense of the recording spaces is well executed,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhoQ0TOKzTA

Isn't YouTube pathetic?!! The first clip, Part I, was not embeddable, but Part 2 was!

Can audio replay get a piano right? Of course it can!

Plenty of other good sound clips on this channel ...

Disappointing ... I happened to chance on the fact that Genesis speakers were at the Pacific Audio Fest 2023 - how did they go? At one stage I had forum chat with Gary ... so let's see...

Another video of this rig, at this event, gave the same story - very off the mark; this one, so much distortion, and the other, dragging its feet terribly - zero PRaT.

How fragile is high end ... no matter how much money is thrown at it, a tiny bit of "not quite right" and the SQ plummets - the same ol' story ...

And one that works ... this clip mirrors what I heard when at my last audio show, of this model; a chain done right. Unfortunately, most of this clip has the silly, show-off tugging on guitar strings, which does nothing for me - best indicator is at 2:45, when a very distant, atmospheric composition wafts through - and gets the acoustic, just right ...

And another,

Played at a ridiculously low volume, I mean the first bit - if the system was of a good order, which it sounds like here, then you could wind the volume up, of that track - and it would sound the same. But now it would be, er, immersive ... . But audiophiles are terrified, and I mean, really, really terrified  of realistic treble levels; and so will do almost anything to shield their 'delicate' ear drums from the tumult - and so they kill the high end, one way or the other, and "pump up the bass" ... and of course now it sounds very unnatural. And they complain ... and around the loop they go, once again ...

Do those 8C speakers, mentioned just above, work well, consistently? This clip indicates such,

Very little to complain about ... just a touch more clarity wouldn't go astray, but that's it ...

Why should these do so well? Just, good ol' engineering, done right ... so, why is it so hard for others?

Overall, these would a first choice for me to play with, if I had the money to do so - so much is already in place. Now, just reduce the price by a factor of 10, and we could really boogie!

I was curious whether the new PS Audio speakers came over well in any videos; driven by their  new DAC, these didn't do any favours to the reproduction when I heard them at the last audio show. So, found this,

Ummm, no.  This is obviously the sound of a hifi rig, and is a good example of why "high end" systems were usually a turn-off for me - I would get so bored listening to this, and quickly move on ...

What's wrong with it? Lack of treble clarity, lack of fine detail, smallness of presentation ... it's just, dull.

Edit: Listening again, I can't find a single positive thing to say about it - a good indicator: the string section in the backing is just dead, dead, dead.

Chanced upon this one ... for those who say all DACs sound the same,

And a good method for enhancing your ability to pick differences; one chain - I'm not going to say DAC, because the guilty party could in fact be be elsewhere; another component may be sensitive to the presence of different circuitry, and misbehaves - is decidedly much higher in distortion than the other; listening via the internal speakers of an old Toshiba laptop, this is trivially obvious to me.

If you can't hear it, then you are probably lucky - if you do, then there is no escape ... you will need a best performing system to be happy, long term, with sound reproduction ... .

Was pointed to this, elsewhere.

The goal I agree with ... getting the room you're to be irrelevant, and having the acoustic of the recording dominate. Of course, he talks of various technical aspects of speaker setup, because that's where the audio world is still so heavily focused; but the end game is the same. Having a minimal distortion chain is by far the best technique, because the ear/brain has far less junk to deal with - the term, "effortless", is as good as any to describe competent replay; another one is, "comfortable" ...

Time for a, "very expensive rig that gets some things right, but it just doesn't work!", video,

Lots of bling, throwing up a good sense of an acoustic ... but fundamentally flawed. That, folks, is distortion! All that money thrown at it, and still sounds very unnatural; a 'difficult' recording would sound a complete mess on this - the fundamental requirement to be true to the recording has not been met ...

For a bit of fun ...

This is very interesting, for a number of reasons,

Obviously, a super keen enthusiast who goes to great lengths in his hobby ... but, does it translate? For me, the Frank Sinatra clips are so telling - key elements are nicely done, such as the vitality and drive of the voice, a sense of bigness of the presentation. But ... there are fundamental problems - the source is CD, and the old gnarly issues of substandard digital are there, totally in one's face; the SQ is just too flawed, and it doesn't work. There should be a Big World effortless in the replay - but that ain't happenin' ...

This is a prime candidate for a 'sorting out' exercise - excellent potential, awaiting the right efforts to be made to 'fix' issues.

Talking about B& W speakers, found this,

First some samples of the 805, then the 801 playback - typical hifi sound, in spite of the cost of everything on show; clogged, sounding congested and ugly as soon as some complexity is in the piece, sort of show off on transients - all the things that are a turn off.

Which is the point. Gear, no matter how expensive, still mostly falls well short, even today - if just merely hooked up like the manufacturers would have you believe is all that's necessary ...

Since I was impressed by the D&D 8C actives, in person, and haven't heard the Kiis, I looked up a few more videos ... it's still a, hmmm ...

The following is probably pretty unfair; but it shows, to me, that going for Big Sound doesn't happen, for these units ... unless a lot more is aligned ...

This is the sort of thing that gives 2 channel a bad name ... if you want, er, immersive, .

By contrast, an example of Big Sound - from tape, starting at 12:30 ... not 100% there, could be cleaner, but the size comes through nicely; the vinyl has too many downsides to really nail it ...

Edit: an interesting bit at 30:00 ... the rig's trying to present grand scale material, and gets some aspects on the right side of the ledger - but, no cigar ... by a long shot. With this sort of material, you have get it right!! Most obvious is a lacking of a sense of effortlessness ... the raw power of the orchestra has to punch, with no excuses ... and this is not up to it ...

On a roll ... what do these iconic speakers sound like,

Well, as for all systems, they sound like what they're fed - and these tell you where work needs to be done ... to be fair, this is a first hookup, a test; so, expectations should be low ...

Note, these allow you to hear "into the sound" - and the being able to focus what's going on more easily shines a light on the lack of quality with the reproduction of the string section, in the piece being played. The sweetness and air is quite missing in action, and would be what I would listen for, when debugging such a setup ...

So ... what's Kenrick up to these days ...? Hmmm, as usual, miles of recent clips ... hello, a Pioneer speaker - there's an audiophile brand fer ya!! Let's listen,

My goodness, music! Very competently - note how what you hear doesn't fall to bits as the camera and mic wander around, and above the speakers ... "they disappear". As they should ...

👍

I came across this yesterday, and dipped into it enough to say it's worthwhile posting,

Okay, number one is the point that when a system gets it right, or close enough to such, that the listening experience is at another level ... but is it because it's a, literally, million dollar system? Of course not!! Playing a $10 recording, you get a $1,000,000 presentation ... so, shouldn't the recording be at the same sort of price level, to make sense? Eh???

So, you get the Big Picture sound, because the rig is doing the job of, yes, "reproducing" what's on the recording ... that, boys and girls, is what it's all about ...

Another good observation is in his reaction to the Steely Dan tracks - he was surprised, almost disturbed that they didn't come across better ... well, IMO that is because the music making on them is too self conscious; the story is that they meticulously controlled every tiny aspect of their mixes - and thus wrung every last ounce of spontaneity out of them. And the better the playback, the easier it is to hear that the sound has been overly "manufactured".

Last point, do you need to spend this sort of money? Well, if the manufacturers can't make gear at sensible prices that are subjectively accurate, then yes, you do. But it doesn't have to be this way ....

This is literally on the front page of whatsbestforum, at the time of posting,

And what it gets right is the sense of the acoustic, and an ease with the presentation. But, the treble is well short of the mark. So obvious with the drums, and the right hand of the piano ... I really wonder at times what people's hearing is like, that they think something like this is anywhere near being accurate ... to anything ...

Only a, just posted, short, but this rather well conveys the nature and sense of the soundscape a competent stereo delivers in a room,

Which, for me, begs the question, why does one a need a deliberately structured, surround sound system ... the recording itself does the job; it only needs to be reproduced correctly ...