16 bit files almost unlistenable now...

[gmgraves]

4 hours ago, R1200CL said:

 

I totally agree. 

 

That’s why I paid the $499.

As I paid for my W10 licenses, that has free upgrades. So far. 

 

Good SW should be paid for, not rented.

Still I rent my music through Tidal, and movie through Netflix, though I’m also paying for renting and developing their SW. 

 

However. Somehow Roon and others need a income in order to develop and and do maintenance. The way Roon solve things with a client server approach is unlike no others. I think it can’t be compared. And in addition you get MQA first unfold. 

 

Roon is now developing a new mobile platform BTW. 

I don't think it's worth $500. At least not to me. JRiver, once you learn it is very powerful. It would be nice if they could make it a bit more user friendly. Like I said, I played with a trial version of Roon and I liked it, but I'm retired and while I'm doing fine financially, I can't throw money around willy-nilly like I used to when I was making lots of the green stuff as a Silicon Valley engineer. So to me, $100/year or $500 for a lifetime just strikes me as way too expensive. 

[gmgraves]

17 minutes ago, R1200CL said:

 

No, wrong. You buy. That’s my understanding of a lifetime subscription.

What is your understanding ? That you rent it for the rest of your life, if so, what’s the difference and how does it matter to you ?

My understanding is that you can pay $100/year for an annual subscription or you can pay $500 for a lifetime subscription. Even when I could afford to spend $500 for a lifetime subscription to Roon, I wouldn't have done it, because I think it's too expensive. I also think $100/year is likewise too dear. JRiver costs $50 and it's yours. Upgrade for $25 if you want to when upgrades come out, but you don't have to. I've a friend who is using JRiver Media Center 18 and is perfectly happy with it. I have Media Center 23 and I'm perfectly happy with that. When v.24 came out, I looked at it and decided that I didn't need what 24 brought to the table, and didn't upgrade. My choice. 

[gmgraves]

13 hours ago, Ralf11 said:

 

that is what all software co.s want you to do - rent, rent around the clock

Yeah, that seems to be the current "business" model. I can see where the model would be attractive to a lot of companies, especially if one used the software through a web browser. It eliminated the need to have to develop software for multiple platforms; IOW, one size fits all. When I need a flow-charting or block diagraming program I use LucidChart which is a web-based "equivalent" of Microsoft's Visio (but it's not really as good). If MS would port Visio to the Mac, I'd buy it in a trice, but Lucid chart which one rents for $10/mo works fine. What I do, is on the odd occasion that I need it, I go and rent it for a month. Then I cancel and come back when I need it again. I'd rather buy, but I don't use it often enough to justify $10/mo for a running subscription to it. 

[gmgraves]

12 hours ago, Cary said:

 

I am so glad I am not the only person in the world who looked at roon and the rental cost and said no way.  Call me stupid, call me old fashioned, but I prefer to pay for and outright own my purchases.  Jriver has been great, bought it 5 years ago and have paid $25 to upgrade it to the current version a few times.  

 

And if you'd "bought-into" Roon five years ago, you would be (either way: yearly or lifetime) out $500. What has JRiver cost you in that 5 years $100 - $125. And you can stop at your current level and it will continue to work just fine (until your OS developer changes something that breaks the version you happen to have. Then it will cost you $25 to get it working again. Awww!

[gmgraves]

3 minutes ago, danadam said:

So if that didn't change then technically even with lifetime subscription you are still renting. You only have a promise that you will own it if the company goes under.

 

Yeah. you'll certainly own it when there is nobody left to collect the "rent". 

 

4 minutes ago, danadam said:

In another words, what's the difference? To me it is: does it work without internet connection or not?

No, Roon doesn't require the internet to work, but it does rely on it for some features. If they went under, certainly that part of the program that does require the Internet would, of course, disappear. 

[gmgraves]

10 minutes ago, danadam said:

Are you saying that it still provides some features even when you are logged out? I don't know, I don't use Roon, but those answer seem to suggest otherwise:

From Running Roon without WiFi or an Internet Connection:

All I remember from my trial is that Roon goes out on the internet to get things like album art and other meta-data. It doesn't use a web browser, but it does need an internet connection. But then iTunes has to go get those things off the internet too if you don't buy your music from the iTunes store (and who does that? iTunes bought music sounds wretched!)and rip it from your CD collection. Of course even if you do buy your music from Apple, you need an internet connection for that as well. 

 

17 minutes ago, danadam said:

The number is 30 days. Roon software requires an internet connection, but supports going offline for up to 30 days. This is a core part of our license checking system. You may not be able to see how this works but the pirates can.

See, now that, I didn't know. I only used the trial version for about a week and didn't know that you can only go 30 days without an internet connection before Roon cuts you off at the ankles (or whatever they do). 

[gmgraves]

17 minutes ago, audiventory said:

 

I can't understand how to fund development, researching, make product better and support it with "lifetime" subscription.

Believe me, they don't rely on lifetime "subscriptions" for their cash-flow. I suspect most customers pay yearly (do they allow that $100/year to be paid monthly?). 

[gmgraves]

7 hours ago, mansr said:

It's called DRM, and there's a reason we don't like it.

OK, maybe I'm being a bit dense here, but could you explain what a policy of only allowing a user to access Roon without a Internet connection for 30 days before shutting them down has to do with Digital Rights Management?  

[gmgraves]

12 hours ago, R1200CL said:

 

Just to be clear what your paying for:

 

Thanks for the clarification. 

[gmgraves]

On 7/23/2018 at 4:13 AM, R1200CL said:

 

I totally agree. 

 

That’s why I paid the $499.

As I paid for my W10 licenses, that has free upgrades. So far. 

 

Good SW should be paid for, not rented.

Still I rent my music through Tidal, and movie through Netflix, though I’m also paying for renting and developing their SW. 

 

However. Somehow Roon and others need a income in order to develop and and do maintenance. The way Roon solve things with a client server approach is unlike no others. I think it can’t be compared. And in addition you get MQA first unfold. 

 

Roon is now developing a new mobile platform BTW. 

Were it $49.99 instead of $499.00 I would buy it myself. But while it is better in some ways than JRiver Media Center (especially the user interface), it is not 10X better. In fact, it's not 2X better. It's maybe 1.5X better, so perhaps I would pay $75.00 to buy it.

[gmgraves]

29 minutes ago, diecaster said:

 

That may be true for your purposes. But JRiver doesn’t come close to offering the same functionality as far as I am concerned. Roon does zones and JRiver does not. That’s a show stopper right there. Roon is a true server (Roon Core) with multiple clients (Roon Endpoints). One or more Endpoints make up a zone. I have zones in my listening room, home office, bedroom, and garage. All can be active simultaneously and be playing different tracks. All are controlled using my iPad or iPhone. 

Looks like you're stuck, then. Luckily, JRiver does everything I need it to do, and iTunes does about 75% of what I need a music program to do. (no native high-res support or general server capability are it's main drawbacks to me). 

[gmgraves]

4 hours ago, diecaster said:

 

Stuck? You mean liberated! I am a lifetime subscriber. Roon does everything I need it to do. If I think I need higher quality playback, HQPlayer is an option for my 2 channel setup. Roon now supports Chromecast which opens up an already expansive choice of output devices.

Yeah, stuck in the sense that you don't have any alternative. There is no other product that does what you need it to do. The comment was not meant to be a pejorative.

[gmgraves]

On 7/13/2018 at 5:29 AM, numlog said:

Even with the best 16bit recordings and I can now notice this distinct hazy and compressed sound , it's really surprising how clearly audible it is once you get to moderately high volumes.

That's not the format. It's what the producers/engineers and other muckety-mucks at the record companies want those releases too sound like. Neither the bit depth or the sample rate have anything whatsoever to do with the kind of sound that you are describing.

[gmgraves]

6 hours ago, NOMBEDES said:

 

@fas42 I respect your opinion, but unless you have some rather high end studio grade remixing equipment, I doubt you can make a poor recording sound like a good recording. Maybe you can coax improvement - but to state that there are “almost no limits “ to how good the sound can become- must be an overstatement.  Great recordings will sound.....well, great....and three great systems will all sound great in different ways, so OP should find the system that coincides with his preference and only “upgrade” as an extension of his hobby.

 

@Allan F  Your “high resolution” system will transmit a poor recording in all its horrendous detail.

Well, I do have some decent studio grade mixing equipment, and I find that once a mix is put together into a two (4 or 5.1) channel final release mix, there's really no way of taking it apart again, to fix whatever ills the record company has visited on the recording. 

 

And yes, the statement that there are no limits to how good reproduced sound can become, is hyperbole of the first order even if Frank believes otherwise. The worlds best, most revealing system still doesn't sound anywhere within a continent's breadth of the sound of real music playing in a real space. It simply doesn't and would fool no one who has experienced the real thing. 

 

And in my experience, the better the system, the worse poor recordings sound. The worst sounding recording that I believe I have ever heard was a fancily packaged two-record set of The Moldau  by Smetana on the Hungaritone label. The first time I played it, I remember thinking to myself, "I would swear this was recorded on a wire recorder if I didn't know that wire recorders couldn't do stereo." It sounded worse than 1930's era 78's and the better my playback equipment became, the worse it sounded. I sold it to a second-hand record store for pennies.Too bad too, it was a very nice performance by the Budapest Philharmonic. 

[gmgraves]

56 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

Luckily for the music loving everyman, you're completely wrong, George. The sound of real music in a real space is very accessible via playback - I still remember quite keenly going to live performances after reaching this point, and now and again being disappointed by the "real thing" not hitting the buttons as much as replay did for me ... too far away, the performers weren't in a good zone, the instruments weren't in the best shape, not enveloping enough, etc ...

And you're nuts, Frank! The sound of a full symphony orchestra in full song is IMPOSSIBLE to create artificially with any audio equipment. Not difficult, not expensive, but IMPOSSIBLE! It cannot be done!

This was made very clear to me a number of years ago when I was visiting New Orleans Louisiana. I was walking down the side walk one evening on Bourbon Street in the heart of the French Quarter after having dined at Antoine's, then the oldest continuously operating restaurant in the New World. It was May and quite warm in NOLA, and all the doors to all the night spots (the Latin Quarter is pretty much all night spots and restaurants) were open. As I walked down that side of the street, passing establishment after establishment I could note to myself: there's live music playing here, but it's a PA system there, and here again is live music and here again is a PA system. The difference was so great, such a chasm between them that OUTSIDE, passing the door I could tell. Sticking my head in the door, merely confirmed that my observations were correct. I can always tell live music from canned or "augmented"; always!

In order to reproduce a full symphony orchestra would, in the average listening room, require an amplifier of greater than 1000 Watts/channel and the speaker that could handle that amount of power. Also the entire system would have to have, across the board, distortion that at full volume was below the threshold of human hearing. and flat frequency and flat power response in the room from below 10 Hz to better than 30,000 Hz with essentially instantaneous impulse response and no hang-over or ringing at any frequency. All of this is, of course, as I say, Impossible with current technology.

Now if you're talking about pop and rock recordings, you might be right. They don't exist in real time outside of a recording studio anyway (and in concert situations, the performers have to take the "recording studio" with them!) so who's to know what they actually sounded like in the studio, and anyway, I wouldn't care. I'm talking about real, acoustic classical; music played in a real space. Hi-Fi can only approximate it and I suspect that it will be thus for many years to come.

[gmgraves]

13 hours ago, fas42 said:

And what's the difference? The PA system!! These operate, normally, at such a low standard of SQ that it's like saying a car from the 60's can stack against a modern vehicle of similar type, in key areas. Sound reinforcement is about LOUDNESS, being bulletproof no matter how much it's abused - finer details of tonality are of very little consequence for such equipment.

 

The best "PA system" I've come across were a pair of Bryston monoblocks, driving Dynaudio speakers - this delivered seemingly unlimited potential for SPLs, with complete clarity - could do the drumkit at several paces, realistically, with ease.

That's not the point. The point is that live music has a quality about it that simply cannot be reproduced by electro/mechanical means in a way to make it indistinguishable from live music. It is so obvious, that one can distinguish it from canned or sound reinforced just by passing a doorway in which live music was being played. 

 

13 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

And what's the difference? The PA system!! These operate, normally, at such a low standard of SQ that it's like saying a car from the 60's can stack against a modern vehicle of similar type, in key areas. Sound reinforcement is about LOUDNESS, being bulletproof no matter how much it's abused - finer details of tonality are of very little consequence for such equipment.

 

The best "PA system" I've come across were a pair of Bryston monoblocks, driving Dynaudio speakers - this delivered seemingly unlimited potential for SPLs, with complete clarity - could do the drumkit at several paces, realistically, with ease.

 

 

The power is not required. There are plenty of measurements done of what peak SLPs are in the concert hall, in the audience seats, and it's well within the reach of normal rigs; yes, within the orchestra itself the dBs can be frightening - if you are "unlucky" enough to sit directly in front of the brass section, ... but this is not the situation for the paying listener. The subjective impact of a live orchestra in full flight, the "bigness" is because the harmonic content, and complexity is delivered with no obvious audible flaws - this is what a playback setup has to get right.  And I've heard that consistently delivered by what I call, "competent playback" - the one limitation I usually hit is that I run out of gain - the volume is set to maximum, but the combination of recording levels, and the intention of the designers to not have the amplfier clipping stops higher peak SPLs.

 

 

Both classic and pop, rock 'work' - if I get the rig to do rock recordings with full visceral impact, then orchestral climaxes are easily handled. The goal is that the sound hits one with a tidal wave of intensity, without the slightest sense of any issues - it just rolls over one, with "zero pain" ... this is magic stuff, and makes the exercise of pushing a rig to this point all worth it ...

Like I said, you are delusional. No audio system can possibly sound like real live music and it never will. There are many reasons for this, but noise and distortion and other limitations of the electromechanical process are at work here. That's all and that's it!

[gmgraves]

12 hours ago, PeterSt said:

 

Of course. That is because each band is sitting right in the shop window (say etalage in French ). No band ? then it is PA.

haha

That's not true. The bands were, for the most part, not visible from the street. Do you believe that High-Fi can be perfect like Frank does ? 

[gmgraves]

47 minutes ago, PeterSt said:

 

George, yes. It is even my very example of the live bands, that once you can't differentiate the band from the stereo when walking on the street and listening from outside, the stereo must be the better one. I use it explicitly by means of walking outside (around to corners and then in the garden) to observe how "live band" I regard it.

I also have the toilet test, which is simpler but I think more down to the merit :

Go to the toilet, close the door which is good for the test and other reasons, also close the door to the living room (quite normal but again good for the test) and observe the still audible frequency spectrum. If things work out, you will here the same spectrum as in the living room (the stereo assumed there). Overweight on bass ? then things are not right. Hardly highs ? then not right. These both though, merely express the general merit of the system, like you referring to 1000W to be necessary for etc. When I read that, I thought to ask you for the math on my 118dB sensitive speakers and the knowledge about the 2x brigded amplifiers of 30W for the bass section.

And that this has been measured for 89dBSPL maximum THD of 2.7% (which is inaudible at 20Hz because you hear nothing indeed).

And that I out of everything could do the math on kick drum surface, pressure (mm of dent-in (excursion)) and reflect that on to woofer surface per speaker side (which is 3x15" in my case) again including the excursion of the woofers (which is depicted by the THD desire).

blablablabla

IOW, I sure try.

 

But I think you read my "report" about the drum kit being indistinguishable in all aspects ... this was in this very thread IIRC.

 

The toilet test is the real test because as you will notice (try it !!) that certain frequencies jump out. So now this is not about inherent merit like good sub bass or undistorted loud highs, but about how equal the performance is.

Did you try it already ?

Still not ?

OK, take your time with it. But if you do, you will notice that you have frequencies jumping on to you. And the biggest fun : you don't observe them audibly in the listening room. You are used to them ... (there).

The toilet hides nothing from you. 

All in other words : to a certain extent, if the toilet test succeeds (all frequencies come to you in even fashion) the "live band" will be close. No guarantee yet (because of rolled off bass and highs) but better yet. And the point is : we (our brain) work with such information. Buzzing ans standing waves and all what a stereo can do wrong ... it is not the real thing. Well, you know that.

 

Wow! Like I said to Frank, it might be easier with pop music, which is largely artificial anyway as there is no "live sound". Even at concerts, one is listening to SR equipment through an entire studio's worth of mixing and sound shaping gear and the only "real" sounds being produced (and thus need to be picked-up by actual microphones) are the drum kit and the singer(s) as well as the occasional trumpet or sax, and they are generally "Frapped" (captured with a contact mike affixed to the instrument itself). I've always maintained that unless one was in the mixing room when the final mix of a pop session was being done, or, if one at least had the same make and model of speakers that the session was mixed with, the listener has no idea what the pop recording is supposed to sound like. I gleaned this from years of working around Coast Recorders in San Francisco. I watched many pop bands' recordings being made there. Some of the artists I watched record were Walter (ne Wendy) Carlos, It's a Beautiful Day, Country Joe and the Fish, Jefferson Airplane, and many others of which I don't think I ever knew the names (and certainly have forgotten them, if I had heard them). Like most studios in the US, Coast Recorders used big JBLs for monitoring, and every pop recording I saw being made there was tailored  to sound "good" on those speakers.  

But you and Frank must be in the minority if you think a hi-fi system, any hi-fi system can even come close to perfection. I have never heard anyone else make that claim. I can guarantee you that Gordon Holt didn't believe that it was an achievable goal. A laudable one, perhaps, and certainly what the industry is supposed to be striving toward, but they know that it is not something that was likely to ever be possible across the entire spectrum of recorded music. 

[gmgraves]

6 minutes ago, fas42 said:

Live music has that certain "quality" because it doesn't have the irritating distortions that conventional playback always introduces. Eliminate those audible anomalies - and, voila, the qualities of live music making are in the room! This is the transition that occurred for me on that first good rig, over 3 decades - the difference is, as the muses report, chalk and cheese ...

 

What a champion of the obvious you are this day, Frank! Of course live music has no distortion, but the problem with music reproduction is not just on the playback side of the equation. No microphone is without distortion, no microphone preamp is without distortion and no mixer is without distortion and no recording format is without distortion. I suspect that there are more of your "weak chain-links" on the recording side than in even the most mundane playback system. 

 

12 minutes ago, fas42 said:

Most people are unaware, because they have never experienced it, or it's been a chance occurrence, never repeated. Peter is one of those individuals who actively chase it, like myself - and each is coming from different directions, because of their experiences to date.

Most people don't experience it because, unlike you, they hear music with their ears rather than their imaginations. A good audio system like mine can get close, but no cigar. My system, when playing back my own recordings, sounds virtually identical to what I heard through my headphones while I was making the recording. That's pretty good, but also there's the rub. My playback system almost perfectly reproduces the recording, NOT the performance. The former is a very attainable goal, the latter is impossible. Because, as you yourself pointed out above, the performance has no electrical and mechanical distortion in the ordinary sense. And what distortion there is in the instruments playing (like through instrument amplifiers and electronic keyboards and guitars and such), well, that's part of the performance too and needs to be captured as well.

[gmgraves]

1 minute ago, kumakuma said:

 

Many folks here have very good systems yet few report the miracles that you do so probably the percentage of those being fooled is quite low.

Well, most of us are convinced that Frank hears his system through the filter that is his mind. In there, small improvements become miracles and larger (yet still tertiary order effects) become epiphanies. I suspect that much of Frank's love affair with his stereo is the product of his satisfaction with what he has been able to achieve - real or imagined. 

[gmgraves]

30 minutes ago, fas42 said:

The number one reason is that the rig has to be in an extremely well sorted state -

But Frank. Most systems are! For most, this is a hobby. People take great pains and great pride with their hobbies. Most are "well sorted".

[gmgraves]

1 hour ago, fas42 said:

Yes, the point can always be made that recording introduces artifacts. But my experience to date has been that exceptional clean playback is still sufficient to overcome those distortions that are impossible to remove, that are within the recording data - yes, this is remarkable, but I have come across nothing yet that's put a dent in my thinking here; the converse is true, the more I experiment the more I learn that the remaining "impossible" recordings can still be "rescued".

You refuse to believe that this is all in your mind, don't you?

 

1 hour ago, fas42 said:

"Virtually identical" is still not good enough ... a competent rig recreates the sense of the performance - as someone who had heard the difference a vast number of times, completely at the mercy of the quality of the playback, there is no dilly dallying about this aspect - either the playback is "in the zone", or it ain't ...

Virtually identical is as good as it gets with really good amplification and excellent speakers (not to mention a high quality source and, I definitely have that). You do realize that the phrase "the sense of the performance" Is, essentially meaningless, don't you? No, on second thought you probably don't. 

The difference between us, I guess (and assuming that you aren't hallucinating) is you are going for maximum excitement to your replay and I'm going for maximum accuracy to the recordings I make. This way when I play them back on the truly transparent system that I have put together, I can hear the mistakes I made, the mistakes the musicians made, where my microphones could have been placed a little closer, or perhaps a little further away, and that the piano could have used a barely "cracked" accent mike, or that my overall record level was a smidgen too low or perhaps a bit too high; things like that. When I listen to other people's recordings, I do so with the confidence that I'm hearing exactly what the recording sounds like because it mirrors my own recordings so well. A system that is euphoric to the point that it makes everything sound magical (like you say yours does) is not at all what I'm after. I want to hear it as it is, warts and all. It's a hobby, sure, but it's a hobby to make it a better tool! 

[gmgraves]

16 hours ago, fas42 said:

Recordings are marvellous archives of creativity in music - spending your time focusing on imperfections is a bit of a waste of an opportunity to get pleasure from life. The designer of acoustic spaces will listen to one of the great live performances of some piece of music, but then spends his time complaining bitterly about how he could only hear how bad the acoustics were ...

 

What makes you think that I'm "wasting an opportunity to get pleasure from life"? My system sounds precisely like I want it to, and need it to, sound. It sounds like the recording, irrespective of how that recording sounds. IOW, it sounds like MUSIC when the recording sound like music. It's a tool when I need it to be, and a source of great pleasure when I need it to be that.

 

Frank, you make an assumption here every day that simply is not in evidence. You assume that your playback system sounds better than the systems of everyone else on CA. Not only do you brag endlessly about your modest system with the NAD amplifier and the "boom-box" speakers, but every time someone catches you in an error, you back-pedal and pretend that you didn't make the original wrong or outrageous statement. For example: you said in one post that recording quality doesn't matter, your system, following your "method", made all recordings sound great. When several people pointed out that the more revealing the system, the worse bad recordings sound, and therefore recording quality (which is at least half of the audio system) most assuredly IS important, you back-pedaled and said, sure some recordings are terrible and there's nothing one can do about that. You do this all the time while preaching that your way is the only way. But every time somebody tries to corner you about what's so special about your "method" you wiggle out of it with vague references and often contradictory and always confusing statements. Maybe that could be forgiven were English not your native language but it is (well sort of, being Australian English and all  ). We could all put you on our "ignore" list, and some already have, but you're always such a gentleman about all this, it would be a shame to do that. Why don't you drop this particular subject and discuss other aspects of audio? You seem to have a lot of audio experience that I'm sure you could share with us. Talking about your "method" all the time just infuriates people on several levels. To many, it looks as if you've set yourself on some kind of a pedestal as the ultimate arbiter of what sounds good and what doesn't. Yet, to my knowledge, in all the almost 3000 messages that you have posted here in seemingly every thread, since you joined last year, you have helped no one attain the holy grail that you believe that you've achieved. Don't you think it's time to move on?

[gmgraves]

20 hours ago, fas42 said:

I have said that there are plenty of recordings which are technically poor - but a competent playback allows one to discard those negative aspects, subjectively. One doesn't try and fix the recording - in the first instance at least - because it's not necessary. And, one can always deliberately destroy the integrity of what it sounds like - for some perverse reason ... I am assuming the recording session had the desire of having the listeners derive some sort of postive experience.

 

Yes, you did say that EVENTUALLY after a number of others pointed out how absurd was the notion that recording quality didn't matter. But your insistence that playback quality could negate those negative aspects is equally absurd. The better and more revealing the playback, the worse bad recordings sound. That's the real world. Now, if you have put together some FrankenSystem that homogenizes everything so that it sounds the same , then I'd agree with you. if your system brings great recordings down to the level of mediocre or poor ones, then I can easily understand and agree with your otherwise ridiculous premise. Because in playback of recordings, it's just like in computers - "garbage in, garbage out".

 

20 hours ago, fas42 said:

Because the key part is getting convincing SQ. I could talk endlessly about the colours of seat covers, and what sort of trinkets to hang from the rear vision mirror - but I don't think that will make the experience of driving some vehicle more interesting.

 

What infuriates people is that I'm not "going down the right path" - I don't rabbit on about the usual sillinesses; well, because they irrelevant. If a rig sounds lousy, then it stays sounding lousy until someone does something more useful about it ...

 

What I'm sharing is a method that works. If people aren't interested in that that's fine - I'm just leaving breadcrumbs for others to think about.

No the key part is whatever the hobbyist wants or needs!  You can't dictate what other people 's taste in sound reproduction are. And the bit about seat covers et al, is irrelevant. Nobody is talking about audio trinkets here. 

You're wrong. What irritates people is that you say the same things over and over and over in every thread you visit but they are devoid of content. But you're just bragging about something that on the face of it doesn't even make sense! You never seemingly help anyone attain this state of audio Nirvana you constantly brag about achieving. You write a lot (almost 3000 posts in a year) and say nothing. That's what's irritating. 

 

And you aren't sharing anything! your posts are totally devoid of useful content. And you've left a trail of contradictions, and vague allusions to procedures that wouldn't do anything even if they were applied to a system. And we don't know what your system sounds like, and we don't know that we'd even like your system! And from your comments about a system like yours making bad recordings sound good, makes me damn sure I wouldn't want a system like your,s which is obviously veiled enough to cover the incompetence and poor recording practices that make so me of the garbage recordings out there! And that's the only way the assembled audio components could make bad recordings sound decent is to homogenize all recordings so that they sound all the same. Great systems, revealing systems, make bad recordings sound worse than poorer equipment. That's an incontrovertible fact! the physics of systems says that It has to be that way. How else could it be? (rhetorical question. Don't try to answer it).

 

Also, given that your goal is merely to "share a method that works", why don't you? You've been asked over and over to drop the mystery. And don't you think that by posting what is essentially the same thing over and over, in every thread on CA that you have shared enough nothing? Don't you think that by now everybody on CA knows you and knows about your "method"? Of course nobody is quite sure what your method is, because aside from a few worthless tidbits, you've still, after almost 3000 posts, not told us. 

[gmgraves]

12 hours ago, semente said:

 

I understand very well where you are coming from and I have experienced this removal of veils of gunk from the signal to achieve a level of clarity and smoothness that is disarming in its effortlessness (realism depends on the recording technique as @gmgraves has mentioned repeatedly). The difference is that both the system I've experienced this with (and use as reference) and @PeterSt's system use low distortion quasi-fullrange transducers whilst your are tiny boom boxes.

 

I've also experienced how comprehensive modification/optimisation of circuitry and PSUs has improved the performance several different models of CD players and amplifiers. Again, the intrinsic performance potential of those units played an important part in the sonic outcome.

 

The performance of every commercial equipment can be improved, albeit some more than others.

 

Some topologies have more performance potential than others.

OK how do YOU reconcile the fact that Frank has this great revealing system yet, it doesn't make bad recordings sound worse by revealing more of the recording's awfulness? high resolution systems by their very nature cannot make bad recordings sound better, it can only reveal what's on the recording in greater detail and clarity. The only way to make bad recordings sound better is to homogenize them so that all recordings , whether good or bad, sound the same. That's what cheap systems do, isn't it?