Was the components in the above which made it happen? Nope ... here's a similar collection of gear, sounding rather ugly,

Money doesn't buy the answers - it's knowledge which is key; being aware of what may need to be done to lift some rig to a decent standard - which has little to do with the purchase price ...

10 hours ago, fas42 said:

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 ...

This is the worst audio system I have ever heard.

The DAC display shows that Robert Plant & Alison Krauss is playing, which is nice, and yet the presentation from the system sounds more like Tears for Fears.

Shockingly bad, considering the cost of the kit.

10 hours ago, fas42 said:

Was the components in the above which made it happen? Nope ... here's a similar collection of gear, sounding rather ugly,

 

 

Money doesn't buy the answers - it's knowledge which is key; being aware of what may need to be done to lift some rig to a decent standard - which has little to do with the purchase price ...

This system is excellent.

The DAC display shows that AL Di Meola / Astor Piazzolla is playing, which quite frankly I would find a little boring to listen to. Yet the presentation in the room sounds exactly like the King Canyon YouTube Clip posted below.

I know this kind of kit is expensive, but this is seriously impressive.

Which shows how people can come from different angles ... .

The 2nd clip is a 'fake', as noted in the comments,

Quote

I had to replace the original sound due to copyright.

Which says where I am coming from; the tonality of the mix is very off-putting to me, and would require a setup working at the best possible level for me to have any interest in the music. I hardly listened to this one, which is why I didn't pick the swap.

Looks like the first clip also falls into that category, on re-listening ... okay, stuffed up on this lot - aiming to be perfect, next life, .

8 hours ago, fas42 said:

Which says where I am coming from; the tonality of the mix is very off-putting to me,

I have heard it said that there is no such thing as a bad recording. Maybe you need to find a way to play YouTube clips through your fully sorted Edifier speakers? (or just plug some headphones into your laptop) FWIW, the King Canyon track sounded OK tonality on my headphone rig, and I am the king of being irritated by tonality issues. That said, on first listen it was immediately obvious it was am actual recording, not a recording of a system in a room.

8 hours ago, fas42 said:

aiming to be perfect, next life, .

I doubt that!

43 minutes ago, Confused said:

I have heard it said that there is no such thing as a bad recording. Maybe you need to find a way to play YouTube clips through your fully sorted Edifier speakers? (or just plug some headphones into your laptop) FWIW, the King Canyon track sounded OK tonality on my headphone rig, and I am the king of being irritated by tonality issues. That said, on first listen it was immediately obvious it was am actual recording, not a recording of a system in a room.

Well, I think we've worked out who would prefer to listen to Tears for Fears, versus King Canyon, .

I'm sure that there is rap out there that has been brilliantly recorded. But I might have to kill the person who insisted that I listen to a steady diet of it ... certain styles of music will always interest me more, on my, no, not fully sorted setup; as said just before, part of "how people can come from different angles".

43 minutes ago, Confused said:

 

I doubt that!

Maybe I should just aim for, "always knowing exactly the right note of humour to inject" ...

5 hours ago, fas42 said:

I'm sure that there is rap out there that has been brilliantly recorded.

Rap? Who said anything about rap? Now I am genuinely confused.

5 hours ago, fas42 said:

Maybe I should just aim for, "always knowing exactly the right note of humour to inject" ...

This certainly helps. Tonality of humour is also important. In places like public forums, a bit of self effacing humour is much more likely to be well received that a somewhat mocking tone. Give it a try!

8 hours ago, Confused said:

 

Rap? Who said anything about rap? Now I am genuinely confused.

Just an 'extreme' instance of differentiating "bad recordings", from "music that doesn't do much for me"; the latter category requires superb reproduction to allow one to understand, and possibly appreciate what the musicians were aiming for. Opera is more conventional example of that; and just so happens to be what the first CD we ever bought was. But other people can't bear females shrieking away - 'cause that's what it sounds like, on normal equipment, to them ...

8 hours ago, Confused said:

 

 

This certainly helps. Tonality of humour is also important. In places like public forums, a bit of self effacing humour is much more likely to be well received that a somewhat mocking tone. Give it a try!

Humour varies greatly between countries - I, never, mock anyone. But in countries where having a go at someone who doesn't think the same way as yourself is part of the furniture, then everything said by other people will always be looked at through that prism of thinking ...

I really would like to believe that the Kii stuff can sound good, but this sort of thing is making that very difficult,

Was the previous due to the "lousy recording device!!" ... ummm, no - same occasion, device; different room ...

I am starting to feel that I am stalking this thread!

Anyway, just to say that the above clips are from Hi-Fi Show Live held at Royal Ascot Racecourse in the UK last weekend. (Which if nothing else, is a genuinely spectacular venue, very impressive)

This is not too far from where I live, and I attended on Sunday. A great show, and some pretty decent systems there.

A quick check indicates that there are no clips on line of the systems that I particularly enjoyed. Not yet at least, maybe you will stumble across one one day? ....

That's the end of my stalking for now, carry on sir.....

And so I shall ... .

Take or leave what I put up here - it's purely intended to give a sense of what I look for in sound reproduction; the idea is that a YT video makes it obvious when there are issues in the presentation, versus not showing anything that I can complain about. It can't replace being in the room with the rig, and being able to play tracks specifically aimed at highlighting shortcomings ... a system wins, in my book, when it never puts a foot wrong, ever. I'll say now that I have never got to such a place - I've had peak listening experiences with setups by other people, and at times with mine; the goal is to reduce the number of less than best times to as close to zero as possible ...

Perhaps one of the rigs in this,

Looked to be a pretty good turn out, to visit ...

There's a comment by Ricardo Franassovici in there, which is 100% on the money: it's not the audiophile mumbo jumbo - it's about how the sound makes you feel ... as I've said many times, a system working well delivers specialness everywhere; within a few inches from the front of the speakers, at the other end of the house, through an open window while in the garden ... . I scratch my head at those who put a "system in every room"; this is a quite bizarre concept, to me.

On 10/4/2023 at 11:32 PM, fas42 said:

 

There's a comment by Ricardo Franassovici in there, which is 100% on the money: it's not the audiophile mumbo jumbo - it's about how the sound makes you feel ... 

Ummm. Looking at the video, that is not quite what he said.....

In fact, I doubt Ricardo Franassovici (King of the audiophiles) has ever used the term "audiophile mumbo jumbo" in his life. As for "being on the money", he was demoing systems in the £200K+ range, so we can agree on that. If I were to purchase, I guess the sound would make me feel very much poorer, if nothing else.

As an aside, I remember bumping into Ricardo at a show a few years ago. He recognised me from a dealer event earlier that year. "What speakers do you have?", he said. "KEF Blade", I replied. He then said, "ah yes, I can never remember names, I remember people by their speakers". 

The demos at the show that I personally enjoyed were the Martin Logan 15A Electrostatic Speakers with AVM amplification. I also liked the new Blade 2 Meta, which was being demoed by the new Hegel amp. Perhaps a coincidence or something else, but these were both relatively simple set-ups, streamer, integrated DAC/AMP. Some other systems had about a dozen boxes to make them go. The new KEF LS60's were excellent too, considering their relatively low cost. (relative to the other kit there, not relative to normality) The LS60s are of course fully active, just add a smart 'phone and you are good to go.

There were a lot of other great systems there though, and some very positive comments about the Boyer room, which was a favorite of someone I was talking to at the show.

Imagine how much time you could spend "sorting" this lot!

5 hours ago, Confused said:

Ummm. Looking at the video, that is not quite what he said.....

 

Yes, there's a technical term for what I did - "paraphrasing", .

5 hours ago, Confused said:

 

As an aside, I remember bumping into Ricardo at a show a few years ago. He recognised me from a dealer event earlier that year. "What speakers do you have?", he said. "KEF Blade", I replied. He then said, "ah yes, I can never remember names, I remember people by their speakers". 

I tend to remember audio people by their attitude, ... that is, how "locked in" they are to certain ideas, and thinking ...

5 hours ago, Confused said:

 

The demos at the show that I personally enjoyed were the Martin Logan 15A Electrostatic Speakers with AVM amplification. I also liked the new Blade 2 Meta, which was being demoed by the new Hegel amp. Perhaps a coincidence or something else, but these were both relatively simple set-ups, streamer, integrated DAC/AMP. Some other systems had about a dozen boxes to make them go. The new KEF LS60's were excellent too, considering their relatively low cost. (relative to the other kit there, not relative to normality) The LS60s are of course fully active, just add a smart 'phone and you are good to go.

 

There were a lot of other great systems there though, and some very positive comments about the Boyer room, which was a favorite of someone I was talking to at the show.

Thanks for letting me know.

5 hours ago, Confused said:

Imagine how much time you could spend "sorting" this lot!

 

Quite a lot, actually! There's a glaring issue, staring at you from this picture - they're using cable lifters, which may or may not be useful for that particular rig. But they have been put in place by someone who hasn't got a clue about the point of them: either don't use them at all, or make sure they actually lift the cable well off the floor, all the way along! Many of the rituals of audio people remind one of the cargo cults of tribes, who draw pictures of planes in the hope that this will magically make one appear, to drop some goodies ...

If you're going to be fussy about cables, you have to be 100% strict! Halfway houses are completely useless - high resolution rigs are ruthless in making it obvious that the SQ is not quite right; because attention to detail went Missing In Action. Just yesterday, I wasn't happy about how a CD was sounding - it took me about half an hour to discover where a cable was contacting something that it shouldn't have been ... yes, "ridiculous stuff!"; but after doing this for a few decades it's second nature to know what one has to investigate, to sort out the matter.

I give up.

Carry on Frank.

Talking of the Blades, here's a pair in action, later in the clip. Very sharp looking, there's no doubt they work as a styling exercise; the sound? For this setup, a good starting point - provided the material is not particularly testing, comes across OK; but for more vigorous music, it's definitely not in the game ...

They sound like poo.

4 minutes ago, Confused said:

They sound like poo.

If they are, why ... ?

Well, I've found one,

Poo, or not poo?

And another hint,

This is getting closer,

Obviously, the brands you mentioned above, .

As mentioned in the comments to the clip, this has a "live feel" - there are still issues with the sound, but some very important elements are in place; there is bite and vibrancy to what you hear ... we have a collection of blues tracks, which we played yesterday - and so much of the material conveys that level of "raunchiness" ...

Last call on this particular item ...

Definitely, poo ...

To show how there are good rigs out there,

Pretty well spot on ... I can't really fault anything here ...

I've spoken a few times positively about PS Audio products recently, based on what various people were saying - but wasn't particularly taken by hearing their latest stuff in the flesh, at the recent audio show. And this video is a good representation of that experience,

Nominally reasonable, but it doesn't check enough boxes - the smell of 'hifi' is too strong; a giveaway is the stridency in the voice when she goes for a bigger note.

This is the sort of sound where I would really start to dig in, to work out where the gremlins are that kneecap the SQ ... could take some time to debug the causes, and then work out solutions - but it would be worth the effort .