On Jan 2, 2014, at 9:59 AM, Ken Norton <ken@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
<snip>
> It was a rude awakening when I started working around all these
> engineers that invented and created the REAL stuff for REAL use. Of
> course, we had REAL calibrated test gear at our disposal.
Yea, the guys who need to make it work for living have stuff that's the real
deal. They have actual standards to meet.
<snip>
>
> 3. Processing. As little as possible. The room, speakers and
> amplifiers should be as closely matched as possible to avoid any
> equalization adjustments. For speakers, this means that size usually
> matters. For the room, this means that there should be no nasty modes.
> For the amplifier, it needs to be able to push/resist the speaker
> correctly to avoid distortion.
It's interesting that you picked those three, in that order (welcome to my
club!). Most people don't realise how much the room helps--or more often than
not, hinders. After that, speakers are the biggest thing, followed by the amp.
I'd say that's a 90/split. Then of course, it's garbage in garbage out, so
whatever you're playing has to be pretty decent. Sure most of is it livable but
the few recordings that are truly well mastered really come alive and are a joy
to listen to.
>
> 4. Everything else should just be as transparent as possible and
> shouldn't be colorizing the sound or changing the tone. Again, do as
> little as possible and keep the audio chain as short as possible. As
> mentioned earlier, 10% investment gets you 90% of the way there. It
> takes really good ears to hear the difference between 90% and 95%, but
> you just spent the cost of a luxury car getting there.
The hard reality of diminishing returns. Holds true whatever your passion.
>
> Most audio nuts will howl at my own choice of Bose speakers. The same
> old tired phrase of "No Highs, No Lows, must be Bose" echos through
> the room. While I agree on a pure technical front, there is no denying
> that they sound good most of the time and they sound even better to
> everybody in the room, instead of great to just one person. The
> problem they have, and why they don't go all the way, is that they
> require ungodly amounts of equalization to sound right. To make up for
> that, it required tons more amplifier to push past the
> equalization-induced losses and for some reason, Bose and tube
> amplifiers don't seem to be a good match, so you need an even bigger
> solid state amplifier to get them to sing right.
You do have to hand it to them that they can take such cheap components yet
make it sound decent.
--
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