You Know You Really Have Something When Your Stereo....?

[Digi&Analog Fan]

Probably the members whose systems are in the top 10% performance wise on here are best fit to chime in, since they have qualities that lesser systems don't. But what are some sure signs that you notice, when your audio system is really and definitely beginning to reach for the stars performance wise? I will give a thing or two I noticed as I go along, responding to the conversation in this thread. Here are a few to start.

 

 FLOOR TO CEILING IMAGING: even with instruments and voices on the extreme left and right. With less exceptional equipment the image tends to have more image height in the middle, where the identical left and right channel vocal information mix so the singer sounds like they are positioned dead center.. Much harder to achieve floor to ceiling image height on the sideas versus in the middle.

 

BIG BASS: the size of a bass guitar sounds like it is pretty much floor to ceiling also, instead of a smaller sound riding on the bottom of the rest of the music, and you can hear all kind of texture to the notes also. Some people don't believe there can be open sounding bass, but there is.

 

 ECHOES GALORE: Not just from the singer or loud instruments but quieter subtler instruments like wood blocks, even while lots of other instruments are playing. If your system is truly high resolution, its amazing how many little echoes you begin to hear in the music. 

 

 PANNING: Where before you heard an instrument on the left and then hear it again on the right, like a deep drum. Now you can hear the continuity better and that the instrument is actually often panning from left to right; on rock records mostly. The in between of its journey is clearer and you can hear the instrument moving from left to right or vica versa. Studio manipulation effects like that become more fun and easier to hear and make out.

 

 What are some things you notice if your system is way up there?

 

 

[Digi&Analog Fan]

I could be overlooking something, but with all the discussions, has anyone mentioned room acoustics as a possible cause. AR 3  speakers have been describes as reverberant field speakers.

[Digi&Analog Fan]

Thanks Kal.

 

SOUNDS LAST LONGER : Things like struck triangles go on for seconds longer as their decay hovers in the air before disappearing. 

 

 

END OF TRACKS:  Think you know  the last note on the fade of favorite much played tracks? There are "more" notes before it totally fades into the between track silences. Wow!

[Digi&Analog Fan]

There is no doubt that sound coming out of more channels than 2 can sound more believably palpable. Your system might be able to make it obvious that some instrument definitely sounds "behind" or "further back" than some  other instruments, but if you had a third and fourth speaker behind your main two, with one of the channels devoted to that "behind the others instrument", chances are it would sound more palpably there and more palpable in its depth imaging than the illusion of depth your stereo creates. An older audiophile that I was talking to on the phone years ago, I played him a track over the phone and when I walked back across the room over to turn off my stereo, and he didn't't know what I was doing, he heard a change in the sound,, the right channel speaker was right next to me and the left channel speaker was 7 feet on a straight  line to the left of me. When hearing that, before I turned off my system he commented, "wow you can really hear a lot of space between the instruments now". The instruments coming out of the left speaker about 7 feet away to the my extreme left all of a sudden sounded to him like I had a quad setup with speakers behind speakers. Stereo at one time looked like it was going to be 3 channels. Some of the old Citation amps had a 3 channel switch on the front. A good stereo can create a good illusion of depth, but it could be better still. I am a 2 channel man but realize things could be even better.