Ozzzy189 wrote:Yes davidHb, just bin it off and focus on the music. How did we ever manage before?
I'm not a fan in the slightest. I may be in the minority but hey, I can live with that.
I've thought a bit carefully before responding to this, and to the points Fredrik made. I am conscious that Fredrik is the host of this forum, and in current circumstances I am grateful for the hospitality. So the last thing I would wish to be is in any way discourteous or disrespectful. But in plain honesty I have to say that my own repeated experience of Space Optimisation (SO) and its sibling Exakt is so far removed from what Fredrik describes and you imply that, even allowing for the fallibility and variability of human perceptions, I find the difference of view quite bewildering.
Let's begin with what we agree on, which is really the most important part of the discussion. I entirely agree that audiophile Hi-Fi is all about the music. I also agree with Fredrik that the task of the Hi-Fi system is to reproduce or re-create so far as possible the emotional experience of the original performance (howsoever you define 'original' in the particular context of the recording). For this process to work, the system has to remove (or not put in place) barriers that will distract the listener and reduce the emotional impact. The stated purpose of SO is to remove or reduce distracting artefacts produced by the interaction between the speakers and the listening room. So SO is designed not to add artificiality, but to remove it.
Of course we completely disagree in our assessments of the effectiveness of SO, and I'm afraid that at present I can see no way to bridge that disagreement. I have listened to a number of system demonstrations with and without SO, as well as, extensively over several years, to my own progressively developing system. In all cases, using SO with careful modelling of the room and Tune Dem adjustment of the parameters has made the music for me, and, when I am in company, those listening with me, easier to connect with, more immediate and more engaging (which is essentially what I understand by the term 'more musical').
My earliest experience of just how effective SO can be was in the old Hidden Systems showroom at Hartley Wintney. This was very early in the life of SO, even before the Davaar 150+ watershed in the development of the Linn software. Chris was demonstrating to me the (at that time passively connected) Akubariks that I still have (and which Fredrik, incidentally, has listened to), driven by an ADSM/1 and Akurate 2200 amplifier. the demo was mainly conducted with SO switched on. When, to demonstrate its effect, Chris switched it off, the music immediately became less clear, less engaging, and lifeless by comparison.
All in all, then, I hope that, even on this forum, respectful differences of opinion on the effectiveness of SO can continue to be expressed. It remains to be seen what changes the new version of SO will bring (as I have an Exakt system, it's not available for me yet). Even for an SO supporter like me, the new version will have to be seriously good to better the Paulssurround adjusted settings I am currently using.
David