GWM…Gear Weight Matters! Join the movement, but in an un ironic way and without interruption.
How do you judge audio components and speakers?
I would say - listening to music you're familiar with, and comparing. We can talk about tight/bloomy bass, midrange clarity, treble extension and things of that nature. We can also be very specific with regards to how a particular track is supposed to sound; based on high-performance gear that we were able to experience - but only if it purports to be accurate without sonic colorations. Therefore, I guess you could say we have a reference point. This part is what I would consider "objective performance."
Along with this, measurements go hand-in-hand.
On the other side of the coin - subjective performance is how we "want our systems to sound." If the vocals are too bright or sharp, if snares or unpleasant sounding instrumentals ruin an otherwise good song, it's usually because the system is too accurate. So high-end audio is about chasing an ideal that doesn't exist in reality - but in the minds of audiophiles who are seeking a very particular kind of sonic presentation that bodes well with their music library as a whole....giving you just enough detail to keep you interested, while at the same time having a sense of realism, presence, and imaging that makes the speakers dissapear. We are seeking the illusion of a live performance.
The above are just my points. Feel free to share what you think. If you think I'm wrong, I don't mind.
Cheers.
Jack
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😊👍… +1. By the way the absolutely best component I have received by this criteria was my Silent Running Audio isolation platform. Heavy duty, all wood crate… multiple layers of insulation all screwed together. Best packaging ever!
By the way, we were joking about weight / number of parts… However, personally after fifty years of pursuing the high end… reading professional reviews, auditioning and owning ever increasingly better sounding gear there is a very strong correlation between weight and cost with sound quality. Although I have never led these variables I bet you could use my proposed methodology and reduce the time to identify great components and assemble a system. I’ve never had enough money to leave anything to chance. |
@twoleftears truth. |
And to that end this process has been for my vintage equipment...recently (on the digital forum) I am adding digital in a new system. I ran my protocol thru my home theater configuration (just using it as a learning digital test bed) and while great for U571 and other movies, I discovered that is was exhausting to listen to music on for any time period...I was somewhat surprised at that... |
@stuartk No expertise needed…just plug it in between your source and amplifier or preamplifier. Any questions can be answered by rep from Sweetwater. |
I have a set selection that I initially evaluate each component/change thereof... 1.) Maria Callas- Carmen 2.) Frank (Live at the Sands) 3.) Michael Legrand Ice Station Zebra 4.) Caprice Viennois 5.) Skynyrd (the spoken vocal at the beginning of Sweet Home Alabama) 6.) Natalie Dessay/Legrand Entre elle et lui 7.) Mountain/West, Bruce and Lang Full length, snippets, chords and riffs....and like others mentioned, for around a week as I calibrate my experience to my expectations |
@stuartk I have a dbx 1231 Dual Channel 31 band EQ. I can fine tune the frequencies that need to be addressed, unlike the Schiit. Also, the RF filtering and isolated transformer was a must for me to prevent EMF contamination in my installation. Kinda expected to ship it right back, but damn if it ain’t working some kinda magic that I’m finding hard to resist. Cable changes are rendered even more obvious when using the dbx as well, which kinda shocks me. Still could try a high end PC on the unit but it is fed through a decent power distribution outlet but maybe? Anyway, Sweetwater gives me 30 days no hassle returns so why not for $465 |
It is not the best there is for sure... But my ratio S.Q. / price is over the roof... The best description is i prefer it to my 8 headphones...They are in a drawer definitively... I begun my journey with headphones...I modified them all with success...My speakers/room beat them all now... But it will be impossible to create this without acoustical control and not only some treatment, also filtering and decreasing control for the electrical noise floor, and vibration control... The last improvement is an intimacy who rival all my headphones... i am really happy so much that i dont even want to upgrade some day to my dreamed amplifier... Berning ZOTL... It is no more necessary... Many years ago i was frustrated with this 500 bucks system...Same system...And i am in heaven... My best to you...
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i used springs...my speakers areon my desk, relativelu big one for a desk... All my gear is behind my screen comnputer... I used 4 springs boxes (chineese cheap one) under the speakers.... For the intehrated the same recipe will do the job... And under springs different materials ( bamboo plate cork plate granite plate sorbothane) But springs under my speakers too.... Thanks for your kindness i wish you the best....
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I have two key criteria: First" Do instruments sound like real instruments? (with the caveat that even the best recording chains have a lot of potential for signal degradation). Second - does it sound like real people playing music? (A difficult thing to define but see below). For me, the evaluation is drawing on the synthetic experience of playing/recording/listening to music across a wide variety of genres played on a variety acoustic and electric instruments.
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I have come to believe that the biggest scam that has been perpetrated upon the high end community is the removal/degradation of tone control/equalization. Currently, I am demoing a dbx 1231 equalizer in my system because I dared to wonder what my music would sound like when adjusted for room anomalies. Of course it requires 2 high quality interconnects to connect my CDP to my Integrated, but otherwise it’s simple and quite unsettling…in a good way. Not only can I adjust my favorite music to sound it’s best in my environment, but the dbx does something else I hadn’t even thought was possible…it improved the sound quality overall. In fact, the dbx lowered the noise floor and has unleashed a more fully fleshed out pallet of sonic colors and tone and with greater body and dimensionality! The results I’m getting are not unlike using a high powered tube amp with an exceptionally low noise floor. It is disconcerting to have realized this so late in my journey . So much money and time could have been saved…better late than never. |
I call BS on that. This is the a problem with listeners that are measurement driven. An accurate system neither adds nor detracts from the recording. A system can be a lot of things but never too accurate. Go to the music store and rent a snare drum, bring it to your listening space and tap it. Accurate is the reproduction of that sound. If your "so called accurate" system snare doesn’t sound exactly like the snare you rented then it’s not really accurate is it? A system should be musical, it should be intimate. Those vocals, solo, harmonies should draw you in, embrace you, make you actually feel the sadness or joy or despair the musician is trying to impart on you. How do you get there? Just simply listen. That’s all it takes, listening. When you change something it’s either more or less. It isn’t a percentage better, how could it be? It can be better at one thing at the cost of something else but music is as music does.
You said you don’t mind being called wrong but that is absolutely, unequivocally wrong
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I will limit my observations to loudspeakers for this response... Indeed, as Andrew Jones said recently, almost all recordings have manufactured information, they are not the replicas of the exact music space. So, listening for accuracy is a very elusive quest at best. Thus, the No1 prerequisite to establish for yourself whether the speakers are "higher fidelity" than the ones you already use, is 1. be very familiar with recordings, and 2. be even more familiar with acoustic live events. (I mean symphonic concerts, with proper instruments and acoustics - a live event at a bar is although still live but can have a terrible sound nonetheless, as room acoustics is very far from optimal.) All in all though, we seem to corner ourselves into a dead end when singling out a single parameter and trying to elevate it at the expense of others. (Resolution, frequency range, precise imaging...) A balanced loudspeaker needs to handle all aspects, not one falling suspiciously short. It’s a much happier combination than overdoing one and falling short on another. For example having resolution but not at the expense of tonality, and having frequency range but not at the expense of dynamic range. When all is balanced, then I can find a loudspeaker that I can live with on the long run.
So what does all that have to do with listening to new speakers? Well, watch out for the balance in the sound. Listen to what is the strength that stands out! That’s also a warning sign that you need to inspect that it’s not at the cost of another parameter. For example, if textural resolution is razor-sharp, make sure that it was not done at the expense of tonality and timbre. First, just let the speakers break in properly. I just play them without expectations for a month, and listen to random things, including streaming movies... Often, playing non-audiophile records and material will tell more about the character of the speakers - as special audiophile recordings were made to sound special, and they will so on any loudspeaker. Yet, for me it is vital that I can play any recording. Sure, they will not sound stellar, but they all should sound better than I ever heard them before. And that’s all I ask for. I’m interested in the musical heritage of all mankind. Playing the most diverse material on a loudspeaker for a few months will establish precisely and accurately whether I want to live with those speakers or not. More precisely: I never met a pair of speakers that did all or failed all. All of them have a special place in my heart, and I know which to pull for a specific experience. They are singers, and each singer has her favorite song that nobody can follow just the same way.
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@jackhifiguy I'm in agreement with most everything you stated. I'd only suggest a system can't be too accurate, rather the recordings that sound inferior are inaccurate. However, I understand what you mean, many times we want our systems to have a bit of sweetening in order to sound good with mediocre recordings. In a perfect world one would want an accurate system to reproduce accurate recordings. |
ghdprentice,
My modestly sized Mytek Brooklyn Bridge was packed with components and weighed a veritable ton. It ran hot. It also decided to go completely black & dead a couple weeks after the warranty expired. I replaced the Mytek with a Cambridge CXN. The Cambridge is standard rack size and is a veritable fly weight by comparison. I haven't opened it up to look, but I'd guess that the device separates the streamer and DAC sections with a good deal of empty space. In any case, it runs extremely cool. That lack of heat gives me confidence that it'll last me far longer than the Mytek did. I am also enjoying the sound of the Cambridge much more than I supposedly should be. |
Imaging, and "disapearing speakers" , are not "extras" they are acoustical fundamental factors which can perfectly be controlled at will by understanding of room acoustic... And ALL acoustical factors anyway are interrelated, bass,dynamic, treble, mids, imaging, soundstage , LEV/ASW ratio, Timbre, they all reacted together to any change in the room... People dont realize it because in their non controlled room all these factors work in a non synchronized and non optimal way in an apparent separated way ... Like i already say, even a single straw location can change the sound of a room and in some well prepared conditons it is perfectly audible...I know because i experimented it non stop 2 years in my audio room ... By the way i dont need "mythic" speakers to do the job, only relatively good one... Acoustic is a science which can improve any good speakers, never mind his brand name... But sometimes to increase for example transient and dynamic we must also decrease the electrical noise floor of the System/ room/house... And any speakers, even "mythic" one will need vibrations and resonance control to improve timbre and all other acoustic factors... |
I would broadly agree with everything you say, especially the point about some systems being too revealing for certain less than perfect recordings. The problem wortj bearing in mind is that it's virtually impossible to find anything that comes close to satisfying so many differing criteria. Therefore, whenever I hear music being reproduced, I tend to try to keep my evaluation as simple as possible by focussing on a few essential qualities as possible.
2 life-like timbre 3 dynamic range, transient speed and attack.
Anything else, imagery, disappearing speaker, articulate natural sounding treble etc would all just be extras. Alas, my search for this mythic speaker goes on. |
To evaluate a system we need not only some well known recordings but a room adapted to the specific system we want to evaluate if not , how could you know the real potential of the system under evaluation in bad room conditions ? Not the reviewers perspective for sure, who change the gear he listen to every month and who will never bother himself to optimize the gear under evaluation in the best working condition....( it takes months of listening experiments to tune a room to a specfic system) Us customers we are conditioned in a Pavlovian way about gear upgrade and the attention focussing on gear brand name, with NO or VERY FEW BASIC knowledge in audio magazine about the way to optimize what we already own.... They sells gear, they dont inform about the essential... Who will pay their publicity if they will inform us that we can afford high-end sound experience at low cost modulo mechanical, electreical and especially acoustical information ?
---Diminishing returns or/and accelerating returns are subordinated to the OPTIMIZATION PROCESS... ---The optimization process is constituted by the three working dimensions controls : mechanical,electrical and acoustical ... ---The relation between the audio system and an acoustically controlled room reveal how bad system worsen way more and good one improve hugely more...
Evaluating by the weight and the number of internal pieces is nowadays meaningless...Minimal design can mean low noise and each addition of new processors in the design is a trade-off between the speficic associated noise which is introduced and the way it will affect, correct, or degrade the signal... Engineering is an ART based on science....Not on weight... My dac is minimal in parts and weight and stupendous in my acoustically controlled room ....And The Berning ZOTL amplifier for example weight very little... Sometimes less is way better....
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I typically start with weight. I have found a very close correlation between increased weight and higher sound quality. Then I generally look at cost. I find that the cost of heavy audio components correlate highly with the sound quality. After that, I just have to read reviews and listen to them to make sure they correspond to my personal taste… which has been honed by attending symphonic concerts monthly for the last ten years. |
@twoleftears ….Touché |
I agree, nothing better than a densely populated and very heavy component. I suspect a lot of other folks would agree as well. :-)
I also agree (because I'm so agreeable!) with artemus 5 - especially when it comes to tweaks - I find I often don't miss them at all, even though I thought I had something meaningful. |
First, I weight the potential new unit, like Upscale recommends, to make sure that I'm getting my money's worth. Then I pop the lid and carefully count the number of electronic components, and also gauge the amount of free space, to ensure bang for the buck. Obviously, the more packed the better. That's why a company like Denafrips score high on my rating scale. |
I put a new piece of gear in the system and listen as usual for at least a week. During that time I am gathering mental notes of differences I hear. After I am sure I have the essence of the sound the gear produces, I then insert the old / former piece and listen. The question...what is missing? Ive found that I can more easily detect what is missing easier than what is added. This also tells me what the new piece may have added which is now missing with the old unit in the chain. If I like the added information, then the new piece is a keeper. However once I found that the new piece didn't really add anything and the old piece was indeed preferable |