beck wrote: ↑2020-08-15 07:14
To me personally music comes alive when I forget the sound.
Yeah, me too.
The acid test for me comes when the music finishes, especially if I'm working or doing stuff around the house. Do I even notice? Is there a sense of dissapointment and desire to play something else? Do I sit down for work in the morning and look forward to playing something? Does the system have that "pull" that keeps drawing me back for more, or am I just going through the motions out of habit or sense of obligation cos I've invested a lot on money in it all.
I like your “test” Charlie1 and it reminds me of what I have experienced many times with my Sondek.
A track is playing and I have to get out of the house to get to work. I stand up and go to the turntable to lift the arm but somehow I just linger in front of the Sondek for minutes listening on.
I really have to make an effort to force myself to stop the music. :-)
Thinking back on Charlie1’s Majik versus Valhalla Sondek I see two camps. One camp who wants things to be as orderly and well structured as possible and another who wants as much out of the feeling of rythm and chord changes as possible.
Both wishes are understandable but have difficulty co-existIng.
The structured approach creates problems with the overall frame of the music and the “feeling” approach creates problems with a “packed” sound.
I do not think this will ever be solved. You simply have to choose what makes sense to you.
I tried to visualise your theory and not sure I can make it work...
Hope folks don't mind me picking on them.
In the amp one, I'm where I am cos I can hear some benefit to the Linn amps over the Naim ones, whereas AlbannachFE didn't seem to get anything enjoyable from the Linn amps. But then assuming Fredik is more to the right then the Karousel would have to have a very steep drop-off. And if AlbannachFE were to say that he prefers the Karousel then surely it all falls apart?
Charlie1 wrote: ↑2020-08-25 10:12
I tried to visualise your theory and not sure I can make it work...
Hope folks don't mind me picking on them.
In the amp one, I'm where I am cos I can hear some benefit to the Linn amps over the Naim ones, whereas AlbannachFE didn't seem to get anything enjoyable from the Linn amps. But then assuming Fredik is more to the right then the Karousel would have to have a very steep drop-off. And if AlbannachFE were to say that he prefers the Karousel then surely it all falls apart?
I know Ivor would be glad to see his amps on the right towards the deeper blue :0)
beck wrote: ↑2020-09-01 13:29
Seems that I have to build a Hakai. :-)
I think it would be wise Beck. My struggles with my Linn Ikemi lasted fifteen years. After I plugged in my Pono player and got significantly higher quality sound than the Ikemi could manage I knew my days of spinning silver discs were largely over. I tried many streamers before getting to the Hakai including a Cambridge Audio one at over £1k. None of them were in the same league as the Hakai.
I keep two universal players, one Cambridge Audio B752 (similar in build to the Oppo players) and one Marantz player I picked up for €2k in Amsterdam. DVD Audio, SACD etc. are a little better in my experience than CD but still not even close to playing flac files.
What I really find interesting now that everything I put in my cd player comes out as music (to me) is why some recordings (mainly digital masters) makes my ears slowly close down and others (mainly analog masters) makes my ears want more.
beck wrote: ↑2020-09-01 19:20
What I really find interesting now that everything I put in my cd player comes out as music (to me) is why some recordings (mainly digital masters) makes my ears slowly close down and others (mainly analog masters) makes my ears want more.
With a small piece of felt in the cd tray of my cd player the above statement is old hat and I am out of work. Nothing left for me to do other than listening to (Sibelius symphony no. 2 right now) and hunting more cd’s. The “hifi” is gone. The music is here.
Does this mean I can stop posting clips? I expect so...........(seriously out of work now)..... :-)
My father and his brother amused themselves by playing a game with some mentally disabled people coming past the farm when they were young.
An asylum for those people was placed near by.
My father would offer the person to take one of two coins. A big one not worth much and a smaller one worth more.
They always chose the bigger one. The game became an ongoing event.
Who fooled who?
An experiment was performed to show the difference between mp3 and higher resolution music files. Normal people should listen and choose what they liked the best.
Mp3 came out as the winner.
And peopled by a fair few companies who would like to make you think the biggest, shiniest and most expensive pieces of gear are the most musical. When in reality the opposite is often true.
The LP12 Whisperer
Manufacturer, Distributor, Retailer and above all lover of music.
I'm with the science on HiRes. In my view the one really good thing to come from the HiRes movement is a whole array of digital remasters that are often better than any CD of the album.
The LG V30 does sound good through my HiFi and will serve its purpose as a portable audio player.
It also confirmed to me how much I prefer my R2R DAC to an (in theory) flashier sigma delta DAC. The R2R sounds much more musical.
FairPlayMotty wrote: ↑2020-09-12 17:01
I'm with the science on HiRes. In my view the one really good thing to come from the HiRes movement is a whole array of digital remasters that are often better than any CD of the album.
The LG V30 does sound good through my HiFi and will serve its purpose as a portable audio player.
It also confirmed to me how much I prefer my R2R DAC to an (in theory) flashier sigma delta DAC. The R2R sounds much more musical.
......and my post above was not an attack on HiRes. More a recognition of the fact that a lot of things has to fall into place to create good music.
beck wrote: ↑2020-09-12 17:37
More a recognition of the fact that a lot of things has to fall into place to create good music.
Couldn't agree more - my HiFi journey has been blessed by musicality. Early on it was largely luck. Listening carefully to equipment at demos, taking it home on a loan/return basis and often returning it helped me lots. The worst piece of equipment I bought was a Musical Fidelity amplifier - it was well reviewed but it sounded terrible. It was bought to replace my Sugden A48 Mk 2 and was nowhere near as good. I kept it for three weeks and it went back.
Prior to my Linn amps and my Rega P9 turntable my best musical experience was a very early Sony Walkman (with young ears) :-)
