Also i have noticed on these sites, nobody discusses music or what they listen to,(strange).
Mick, what music do you listen to then? I'm basically buying up CDs I used to own have on vinyl as I've got back into "Hi-fi" in the last few years as I was P**** off with popular music in the 80's/90s plus the advancement in technology has made listening via the digital domain more of a pleasue.
I've just got "Raising Sand" Robert Plant/Alison Krauss and I'm very disappointed with the overall sound either my copy is a dud or there's something not right with the mix or mastering, anyone else experienced this?
I bought Raising Sand and it sounds superb. It is a little bit of a vintage/ dark sound to it which makes it quite atmospheric.
I've got a marantz KI Sig which it sounds ok on. However, I'm thinking of buying a better cd player and tried an Ayre cd7 last week. It sounds much better on that (everything else does too). I'm going to audition a Meridian G07 and Naim CDX5 soon so will see what it sounds like on that.
Wotlsice, i have no actual preference my tastes are fairly varied as long as it's not heavy rock,i have quite a lot of classical but i'm no egg head, the type of music i tend to favour and artists are as follows, Jennifer warnes(the hunter) Katie melua(piece by piece) Janis ians(braeking silence)(billys bones) Nora jones,Shawn colvin,Sade,Eva cassidy,Madeleine peyroux, and many many more, i only started my collection twelve months ago so i am still leaning, have just ordered van morrison awaiting arrival,.
paul, i have not altered my speaker cables, just added two to by-wire, does anyone else find a big difference to the sound when they do this,would be interested to know.
To everyone in general, Nordost odin interconnects and speaker cable,i.e interconnects price;£12500.00 pounds, speaker cable price;£11000.00pound per Mtr run, add that lot up and see what you could buy for the money.
I've got Quad 99 CDP2 and 909 power amp into Quad 989s and things sound pretty good to me usually (obvious exception being crap in crap out). I agree about the dark sound but it is a bit OTT and too bass heavy. Her voice dosent shine like I've heard on her previous albums and both voices dont have enough presence. I appreciate the contrast bewteen the 2 vocal styles but it just doesnt sound right to me as an overall piece although some tracks are better than others. In the meantime, I'll give it some more listens.
Let me know how it sounds with audition gear.
Re cables LOL ! I've given the Avid blacks back now but it would've have been an interesting comparison using this as the source material.
Re loudness: I tend to play things a tad on the loud side but I admit I turned this one down a bit.
I'll let you know on the cd dems. I'm waiting to see when I can borrow the Meridian. This is all a departure for me cos I normally listen to vinyl but I was shocked how good the Ayre sounded and am looking forward to hearing the others.
I get what you mean about the bass heavy mix which will probably be accentuated by your Quad 989's rolling off a bit in the treble. I've got Monitor Audio Studio 20's which have a brighter sound so that's why I haven't noticed your take on it as much. I love the album though.
On Cables I demoed some Transparent which didn't work as well in my system as the treble is brightly lit. They may work well in yours if you can borrow some from a dealer.
Some similarity there I have a couple of EVA Cassidy I think her voice and phrasing is stunning I prefer the "live at blues alley" unbelieveable good for a live performance (even with the Backroubd PA hiss and an out of tune guitar in places) and I've heard some Nora Jones although the overall production didn't do justice to her voice IMO although I havnt her her on my set up.
However, I still have to get down form time to Deep Purple/ Machine Head esp the remixed/remastered version - surely one of the greatest rock albums ever.
What Van Morrison CD are you getting, I recommend the Healing Game, I've only got one VM CD and this is it. I saw him perform it at the Hexagon in Reading and I was knocked over by the musicanship and performance. Some of the sax solos (not his) are real quality. Unusually it has acoustic/upright bass and electric bass on a number of tracks.
Wotlsice, have (live at blues alley) great, Van Morrison (still on top greatest hits 2.) Somewhere on this av review there is a feature on nordost Odin cables i think i may have made a mistake on the price of the speaker cables , i think it should be about £1200.00 pounds per Mtr, still incredibly steep,i remember working it out not long ago, and for the interconnects and four meters of speaker cable it worked out at about £25,000.00 pounds its just totally unbelievable.
Watlsice, have just looked up nordost odin cables, interconnect per pair 1mtre £10,000.00 pounds, speaker cable per metre £12,500.00 pounds, if you go to home page and look up interconnects you will find it there, so if you need two metre's per side plus interconnects it would cost you £60,000.00 pounds, its absolutely hilarious is it not,i don't think i shall bother, i think i will buy myself a new merc.
Mick, for that sort of money forget the merc, go and buy yourself a couple of flats, in seven years they will have doubled in price, now whatever happens on the Hi fi front at least you will have twice as much to spend.
Maybe then you will realise what a con it is, and buy yourself another couple of flats. Do that for ten years and you will be a millionaire, without a Lottery ticket in sight, trust me, since first posting on this sight, and with your money to spend. I have purchased two studio flats and a one bed house, now I am in the trows of buying a 'high street shop' with two bed two bathroom flat above. And I still think my 'Tripath' amp and cheap cable system sounds better than most, until I hear better I will carry on down the property route.
"how do you guys audition components then just by reading the technical spec?"
It is a very common view amongst "subjectivists" that their mortal enemy, "objectivists", never listen but merely examine numbers. Nothing could be further from the truth. Admittedly, I have the benefit of a small amount of engineering insight that helps me separate the most profound BS from the things that matter, and what distresses me most about the current view of audio reproduction is that it suits nobody but the sales and marketing folks to espouse the view that home audio has more in common with musical instruments than engineering. Reading a typical review of a loudspeaker, you could easily substitute the word "violin" in lieu of the loudspeaker under test and the review would still make perfect sense. And for what it's worth, the quoted spec. of most equipment is so imprecise as to be valueless.
Hi-fi equipment is not a musical instrument. Most of the kit has a simple role - to reproduce the signal at the input terminals as accurately as possible. Now whether you or I like the sound of that accuracy is another issue entirely, but if I were to confine myself to just one opinion about home audio, it is that an accurate system is more likely to please more of the people more of the time across all genres of music and speech. It is my view that 69% of all moans about the quality of your sound originate with the speakers; 29% with the room in which the speakers are sited and everything else, about 2%. Once the room is sorted, most of what remains is a matter of frequency balance of your discs - the bass is not warm enough, the fiddles sound too harsh, the voice is a bit nasal etc. etc. Much of this is adjustable with a decent equaliser at a couple of hundred quid.
So how do I audition speakers? I start with a single known good recording of the human voice. We all hear voices all day long so we know what they sound like. You simply listen to this for ten or fifteen minutes at natural level, sit and walk around the room a bit then ask yourself, "could this be a real person sitting there reading to me"? Most of the time the answer is clearly, "no". Very few loudspeakers can pass this test - a test far more demanding than merely deciding whether a particular record sounds "nice". The amazing thing is that many speakers that do pass the test go on to be highly satisfactory when it comes to music of all shapes and sizes. Why? Because ACCURACY is the parameter that pleases most of the people, most of the time.
Modern recording techniques are far from perfect. Most of the equipment is quite good these days but too much music is recorded cheaply by people with too little experience, in environments that are not well designed. The result is that there is less consistency than there should be and this in turn can make listening judgements difficult. It is quite possible for different speaker cables to cause small differences in frequency response; some amplifiers will be more prone to this than others, but it is all down to predictable, boring old physics, not magic molecules of silver or the nature of the insulation between the wires. To misquote Doug Self - "changing your speaker cables seems to be an awfully expensive substitute for decent tone controls".
What a sensible explanation. I think if you've got the basic components right the rest is just tidying up. You're probably right to start with the speakers.
However where would that leave the review magazines if cable is not rolled on virgins thighs but is just cable?
Many's the time I find a good review more entertaining than listening to the component described. That's why I'm now more careful about swapping kit.
John, only joking about the Merck i don't have that sort of money. Well done with the properties hope everything works out for you, but please be careful don't overstretch yourself, cast your mind back to 1989 through to 1992 at this time we were pushed out of the ERM (European monetary fund) interest rates hit the roof, for me personally they hit 16.5% i had bought factories and houses in the eighties and borrowed heavily to acquire them, when the crunch came as expected i was in shit creek, so i ended up pot less with nowhere to live, no business 900 quid in my pocket and the world as my oyster, John i really don't think i will bother this time, but John i wish you all the very best for now and the future(good luck).
where would that leave the review magazines if cable is not rolled on virgins thighs but is just cable?
Now that is, quite literally, the $64k question!
I'm as big a capitalist as the next man and everybody is entitled to make money in whatever (legal) way they can. But, in my opinion, some of the vendors of err...audio accessories come dangerously close to crossing the line that separates the crooks from decent society.
The best evidence I can offer to support this view is simplicity itself. Do some Internet research and see for yourself just how few documented ABX tests exist for products at the dodgier end of the audio money trough. Now if $10k speaker cables really DID do something extraordinary, why aren't the manufacturers clamouring to perform public ABX tests to prove their worth to a cynical and disbelieving world?
Oh, sorry - the world isn't cynical and disbelieving. The world actually swallows it - whole. Three generations of audio enthusiasts have been so overawed by the superb marketing effort that these vendors have conducted ceaselessly for the last 30 years, ably assisted by co-operative reviewers, blackmailed magazine publishers and profit-hungry dealers that the average audio enthusiast is surrounded by influences telling him that the cables are (almost) more important than the kit connecting them together
Mick, appreciate the concern, having purchase the flat I still live in in 1980, living through 16.5% interest. But being lazy I did nothing about it, rode the storm, then watched as prices got back on the 'double every seven years' route. Now I think , although we are going into difficult times hopefully, not that bad. Two reasons, first we now have a serious housing shortage and second the next few years will see renting take off big time. So like you I think I may have it cracked and, like you I may come unstuck. But if I leave this planet a million in dept then will I worry!
No doubt others on this forum will complain that it is not the place to speak of these matters, but personally I find it a whole lot more interesting than re-debating a subject that has been debated for thirty years.
If the listening public have not realised what is going on now, and has been for so long, then I will bow out.
Thanks again for all your support, if you could e-maill me I will send you a copy of my recent papers:-
- THE REASONS TO BUY - and I think a more powerful paper - THE REASONS TO RENT.
Sorry all, I have just realised the connection. Late last year, I ordered a pair of speakers over the 'net', never heard, never seen, they were huge, too big for the room. After some deliberation I decided to redecorate the largest room in the flat, now that involved an interior decorator and he did a good job and in only three days. Now that impressed me to the point of suggesting 'if we can make such a change here in three days' what could we do in a small flat. That led me to an agent with the question 'what is the a rock bottom small flat', that led me to buy one. Since doing that I have read 'andyshure.com', and that led me into the idea of letting it, rather than 'do it up and selling it', and that has taken me into the property market. So there is a close connection, I would not be there, but for the speakers, but I am now there big time. It is now seriously 'big time', since that flat I have purchased 'the coffee shop' place (a large studio), and a gorgeous one bed detached house (will be for myself in time), and last week a mock Tudor high street shop in Barnet with a luxury two bed, two bath flat above. So since June this year I have become a major force in local properties, known by all the agents, and all because my speakers were too large for the room, that is the reason and is the connection.
Recently I have been invited to meet Shelly of 'Podium Audio' so maybe some new speakers, I wonder where they will take me, and all for for the aim of 'sonic nivana'
John...
PS if anyone wants to set up a Hi Fi or exotic lighting shop in Barnet then please contact me, despite all the new trendy shops in the area (nails, knicker shops, the mirror shop etc.) we have neither of the above and Barnet is a seriously expensive, designer oriented area, and one that has money to spend, particularly on 'designer lifestyle' goods. It could even be a good outlet for 'silly overpriced' cables, but in reality it is certainly the place to sell trendy and very expensive light fittings or sound equipment. We have only one Hi Fi / entertainment shop in the area, we have about eight estate agents, but we have no lighting shops, so think on. I firmly believe that in the next few years Barnet will become the 'Knightsbridge' of North London. The mirror shop is totally unique, they have mirrors cut to your requirements, they have mirrors depicting guitars, buildings, famous figures and the Simpson characters all beautifully hand cut into mirror, I have never seen anything like it before. But that, and the market, and the shopping mall are some of the attractions of Barnet. not to mention some of the lowest crime rates in London, and the best schools, so a smart area to be in.
So four days ago, I post a message here and no one has replied. am I really from another planet.
I find it hard to believe that in four days, after all the heated discussions re: cables etc. that the whole subject has disappeared into obscurity, no one has mentioned the great 'cable test day' no comment has been made on my 'life style' change, no one has even commented on my 'Tripath beleifes', what is even more disturbing is that no one has even said anything on the forum, not even Dave the editor.
Did I say something wrong, have I upset you all, am I the end of all discussion?
John...
P.S. I am passionate about Hi Fi, if anyone would like to hear my system, then they can, I am an open house, I have no secrets, my e-mail is available, I have nothing to hide, my only reason is to enlighten, to educate, to illuminate, I really have no other reason for life itself.
I now have only four passions in life:-
1] Writing, I love it, getting ideas across, creating ideas. Since the property scenario, I have written a paper on 'the reasons to buy', and another, 'the reasons to rent' and a paper on 'communication', am now writing another on 'the way to think', so how exciting is that?
2] Sound reproduction, that has been with me since the age of thirteen, and after many frustrating years, I think I am now getting there.
3] Interior design, relatively new but compelling, exciting and ultimately rewarding.
4] Electronics, hardware, software, getting results what ever the route, but relatively boring compared to all the above.
