Silky and soft highs: product of coloration?

Live performances in acoustically uncontrolled settings rarely provides a good reference point for comparison to well-miked studio recordings. High School bands performing in echoing gyms & mall atriums can sound excruciating-- even close up-- apart from the bad playing... Many listening positions in even good concert halls receive lots of reflected sound.

I consider the Anne-Sophie Mutter recording "Carmen Fantasie" as the ultimate test recording for treble sweetness.

That is an excellent recording - although I am not a fan of DG.

I'm wondering if this silky presentation can be considered as a hallmark of quality for amplifiers or rather a sort of coloration that makes the upper treble soft and "pretty"

Your description makes me think of Luxman SS amps of the 80's that did this kind of thing - I have always steered clear of amps that add coloration...I had one for a while (forget which model but it was high end SS) and it became irritating as you could hear the same coloration on everything - nice for light polite piano bar trio jazz with brushes but it spoiled other genres for me...

I find Mobile Fidelity Sound labs recordings often had this kind of "polish" in the highs on their CD recordings - I found it irritating too - I am not sure how they achieved the coloration...but I stopped buying after I noticed the same issue on albums from different artists.

IMHO, rather than focus on one recording - try a variety of recordings to see if the amp is making an honest uncolored presentation....this may mean that some recordings are too edgy or strident but others will bloom...all depending on what they did in the microphones/mix/mastering process.

A great system (not only the amp) can deliver highs with delicacy and richness with well recorded performances. The system is only as good as it's weakest link, so if your sources suck then no amp or preamp can rescue the signal.

Lack of glare, congestion and harshness are hallmarks of a fine system. Put a marginal speaker cable into an otherwise excellent system and you'll hear the glare and congestion.

If you hear delicate details, like fingers on strings, vocal overtones, natural sibilants and no harshness or glare, then you've got a high performance system. If the details are absent or rolled off, then you've got a system that trying to euphonically compensate by softening the highs artificially.

Listen for details and delicacy. Can you hear a bass note's fundemental separately from it's overtones. Can you hear "air" around the bass strings and the woody sound of the bass's body. With nylon-string guitar can you hear the ends of the fingers on the strings and can you tell if the player is using a lot of nail or a little?

Dave

Dave

Dgarretson, This live performance was out in open. I agree with you generally regarding Typical High school band's playing capabilities. This High School band was somewhat special and hence invited to play at many places in So Cal, including Disneyland. Sure their playing can't be compared with Virtuoso artists. In any case, live is live. You can't beat that.

Nethepill, That's reassuring & refreshing. Something is certainly wrong should an audio system make euphonic the treble sound of breaking glass or fingernails on a chalk board or a five year old playing violin.

This thread got me thinking about (HP's?) recent Part 1 review of the Scaena line-array speakers in TAS. Now I've heard these speakers under show conditions together with the Memory Player. Among their very impressive qualities is a silky, mellifluous, utterly grainless treble, set against a jet-black background, apparently achieved without sacrificing detail and attack. Yet the treble of this speaker seemed to take the brunt of HP's skepticism as being "possibly" unrealistic (his reservations about fully committing himself on this point perhaps intended as a cliff-hanger to be resolved in P2.) I'm still wondering myself whether treble like this, while appealing, is entirely realistic. But my general sense is that more typically, very expensive end-high systems err further on the side of stridency and aggression. When modifying equipment I've found that bleeding-edge improvements to power circuits in both SS and tube devices almost always results in a smoother treble, shedding grain that I wasn't aware of until it was gone. Not really a matter of flavors & tastes, and as Chris says, very expensive to achieve commercially.