@prof,
'It sounds, though, like you are mostly satisfied with your Tannoys?'
I'd say so. The Berkeley's can play almost anything without making me reach for the remote on purely sonic grounds alone. Previous speaker more or less forced me to search for upgrades - mainly with lack of bass or treble issues.
For sure I'd be happy with a pair of loudspeakers that maintained (or even built upon their strengths of cohesiveness and ease) but disappeared (box-wise) a little better.
In particular I'd like to hear some good open baffle designs, or even some maverick designs like the Tekton Moab's or the Ohm Walsh's.
Recently, after years of prejudice, I've taken to have another think about metal drivers and particularly their capabilities in the midrange. Especially after seeing how their use is becoming increasingly common in highly regarded designs such as the likes of the Joseph Audio Pulsars and Linkwitz LX521.4s etc.
@atmasphere,
'I've found that the better systems that are also very transparent will not make a bad recording worse, they simply play it without editorial. However, if something is amiss in the system, then the recordings may well sound worse.'
Earlier today I was playing Matt Monro's The Singer's Singer CD (allegedly the best mastering of his work taken from the best generation tapes available) and frankly some the tracks were barely acceptable on sonic grounds alone.
Some of the songs are simply sublime but great recordings these are not. In particular their bandwidth seemed somewhat compromised, with a less than stellar signal to noise ratio present too.
So I couldn't but wonder whether better speakers (more treble, more bass, a clearer window?) wouldn't just highlight these deficiencies further rather than illuminate their strengths in a better light.
Perhaps, as you say "..the better systems that are also very transparent will not make a bad recording worse, they simply play it without editorial." is true.
It would be nice to think that way.
"However, if something is amiss in the system, then the recordings may well sound worse. So IME some real scrutiny has to be applied to what is considered 'more revealing'!"
Maybe this very important need for careful considered system matching is a kind of consensus we can settle upon.
Perhaps this also goes some way towards explaining why system building can often take a considerable amount time and care, and not to mention - money.
A wrong step, however exalted and recommended it might be, can easily lead to eventual dissatisfaction if it brings along with it it's own 'editorial' preferences.
As @prof said earlier, real progress in understanding can easily get hampered by an increasingly vague and personalised description which itself becomes subject to an increasingly wider range of interpretation.
Largely relevant only to its originator.
No wonder they don't award any Pulitzer prizes for audio journalism.
Not when the limits of language itself will inevitably drag us back into the realms of subjective interpretation.
It's an unfortunate fact of the human condition that experience translated into words and back into experience seems to incur even more losses than any analogue to digital to analogue conversion.
'It sounds, though, like you are mostly satisfied with your Tannoys?'
I'd say so. The Berkeley's can play almost anything without making me reach for the remote on purely sonic grounds alone. Previous speaker more or less forced me to search for upgrades - mainly with lack of bass or treble issues.
For sure I'd be happy with a pair of loudspeakers that maintained (or even built upon their strengths of cohesiveness and ease) but disappeared (box-wise) a little better.
In particular I'd like to hear some good open baffle designs, or even some maverick designs like the Tekton Moab's or the Ohm Walsh's.
Recently, after years of prejudice, I've taken to have another think about metal drivers and particularly their capabilities in the midrange. Especially after seeing how their use is becoming increasingly common in highly regarded designs such as the likes of the Joseph Audio Pulsars and Linkwitz LX521.4s etc.
@atmasphere,
'I've found that the better systems that are also very transparent will not make a bad recording worse, they simply play it without editorial. However, if something is amiss in the system, then the recordings may well sound worse.'
Earlier today I was playing Matt Monro's The Singer's Singer CD (allegedly the best mastering of his work taken from the best generation tapes available) and frankly some the tracks were barely acceptable on sonic grounds alone.
Some of the songs are simply sublime but great recordings these are not. In particular their bandwidth seemed somewhat compromised, with a less than stellar signal to noise ratio present too.
So I couldn't but wonder whether better speakers (more treble, more bass, a clearer window?) wouldn't just highlight these deficiencies further rather than illuminate their strengths in a better light.
Perhaps, as you say "..the better systems that are also very transparent will not make a bad recording worse, they simply play it without editorial." is true.
It would be nice to think that way.
"However, if something is amiss in the system, then the recordings may well sound worse. So IME some real scrutiny has to be applied to what is considered 'more revealing'!"
Maybe this very important need for careful considered system matching is a kind of consensus we can settle upon.
Perhaps this also goes some way towards explaining why system building can often take a considerable amount time and care, and not to mention - money.
A wrong step, however exalted and recommended it might be, can easily lead to eventual dissatisfaction if it brings along with it it's own 'editorial' preferences.
As @prof said earlier, real progress in understanding can easily get hampered by an increasingly vague and personalised description which itself becomes subject to an increasingly wider range of interpretation.
Largely relevant only to its originator.
No wonder they don't award any Pulitzer prizes for audio journalism.
Not when the limits of language itself will inevitably drag us back into the realms of subjective interpretation.
It's an unfortunate fact of the human condition that experience translated into words and back into experience seems to incur even more losses than any analogue to digital to analogue conversion.