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What is "better" sound to you?


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In the mid 80s I was spending a lot of time working on stereos. Building and modifying equipment. My brother caught the bug to. Once, when our elderly father was out for a visit, he was interested in coming to the high end shop that I did some of the mods for, to get a better understanding. He was hard of hearing. We went to the back room, the one with typically just a single system in it, and put an LP on. The shop tech had just made some very inexpensive interconnects (20 or so feet long) wih twisted tefzel wire wrap wire, that he was ABing with the MIT cables that tended to share top billing with Cardas in the room. The cheap interconnect was sounding awfully good. My dad was sitting the sweet spot, with a a smile on his face. We switched to the MIT and replayed the cut. "That sounded more like a violin, did that wire make a difference?" My brother and I still scratch our heads about that. I don't think he heard anything over 2500 hz.

 

It's a hard question, what sounds better? Talented designers have a pretty clear grasp on the sound they want. Based on what's important to them. I've yet to hear a a system that did everything perfectly, there's always trade offs, and this is where that question becomes the most relevant.

 

First thing, I don't want to be aware of the speakers at all. I don't want to have any sense of where they are located. (This is, unfortunately, often not possible with some recordings.) I'm willing to sacrifice some timbal accuracy, but really want to get micro dynamics right, and also willing to have some compression, but not much. Coherence, the complete sense of what is making the sound--the way the overtones emit from the right place, the palpability of a singers voice, that's better sound to me. On a good recording, I want the musicians right I the room with me, and in a great recording, I want to be right in the room with them.

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Extreme detail is a good thing, and is very revealing. The extra details also promote larger soundstage, more 3-dimensionality. Stock cables provide more details than the fancy expensive aftermarket cables. A lot of higher end cables blur the sound just like the same way audio receivers and amps do. As a result you lose out detail.

bunny

 

To me, detail can become a problem when it doesn't jibe with the soundstage presentation. If I am listening to a singer and a chamber orchestra, and I have the volume set so that it is about as loud as it should be given the recording's perspective, I don't want to hear a level of detail that tells me that I am a foot away from the string section. This is all part of the "coherence" that I mentioned earlier. Don't get me wrong, it isn't that I don't like detail, but systems (and recordings often do this) that have a spotlight quality, allowing one to hear an abnormal level of detail, harm the illusion of being in the same space as the performers. I am lucky enough to hear live, unamplified music fairly regularly, and want to recreate that quality.

 

But this is just MY listening bias. I know some people really want every last detail, and some want every bit of dynamism; they are no more right or wrong than I am in their desires. Luckily, there are good systems out there for all of us.

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Paul is trying too hard to apply objective analysis to a purely subjective experience.

 

I don't think it was a matter of trying too hard. Acknowledging that it is a subjective topic, it seems very reasonable to ask listeners what their biases are, and most posts have done just that. I have a feeling that most CA members are very analytical in many aspects of their lives--audio just being one of them. Even the dyed in the wool subjectivist can be analytical.

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Listening to music is one of the things I allow myself to do without being analytical. IMO there is no aspect of listening to music that can be made better by listening analytically.

 

If I sit down to try and listen to an equipment change (this is where the analytical comes in), and find myself lost in the music, several songs later, I assume that everything is working just fine! I think most of the comments in this thread have been about listening to equipment (well, obviously listening to music, but paying attention to equipment) to ascertain what sounds "better." Hopefully everyone here spends almost all their time listening to music and only a bit listening to equipment. I can only do the latter in small doses; at this point, mainly setting aside a few hours in a weekend to try out different things. If something seems better, I leave it and enjoy the music until the next tweaking session.

 

That said, I'm also guilty of comparing, say, Gould and Kirkpatrick playing a prelude, and it's hard to say at what point the comparison crosses over from emotional to analytical (although probably quicker with Gould...)

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