2. misc-audio
  3. 166769-158118

what system musicians prefer? Do they care?

I have never aspired to be a musician, although I am very artistic.  I am bad at singing and never enjoyed dabbling at playing an instrument. But I enjoy listening to music tremendously and I always wondered if being a musician would improve my experience as a listener. It seems to me that musicians (good ones) would have a lot more expertise in sound, what is good quality sound, a good system, a high fidelity speaker.... but I have never seen any proof. Am I just imagining it? Are good musicians mediocre listeners? Are they not obsessed with good sound? Any musicians out there to comment?
One example I know is the  Cambridge Soundworks Mick Fleetwood Speaker System, which I finally purchased last year, I knew my collection would not be complete without it. It's evidence of great talents crossing paths: a  genious speaker designer Henry Kloss, and Mick Fleetwood, one of the greatest drummers of the century (and  the previous one). But I don't see musicians weighing in on what are good systems are, how much is it worth spending and what to focus on. It's much more like rich douchebags bragging about the price of their systems on these forums. 
gano
mahgister's avatar
mahgister
13,187 posts
 
There is nothing like being able to pull out one of the many hundreds of recordings I did as an engineer and listen to the honesty of what I originally heard represented in its natural glory ! No thundering bass, because it doesn’t exist in the real world unless you are talking about a pipe organ. Only an amplified instrument can provide it. No stand-up bass fiddle can push out that much sound without the help of a hefty amp and speaker. It’s a fact. Not to say that the resulting sound isn’t enjoyable, but it’s not natural. Now that every instrument seems to have its own clip-on microphone it is not really the listener’s fault that the natural sound of every instrument has been compromised to a degree of unintelligibility ! Such is state of much music today. Don’t count me in !
Very interesting....

It is the reason why some audiophile unable to control their acoustic crave for subwoofers and dont give a dam about musical timbre...

They listen sound effects and not music....

Someone called my system because i dont connect the only woofer i had a battery radio sound system...

😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊

cd318
2,636 posts
 
@mahgister,
"They listen sound effects and not music...."

That’s all too easily done. Especially at shows where you go from room to room hoping not to have missed anything of significance.

There just isn’t time to sit and listen for more than 20 minutes or so unless you only want to check out a few of the rooms.

So you sit down take a good look at the ancillary equipment and room size etc and then try to get an idea on whichever musical parameters you are most interested in.

For me if a system sounds tonally ’bleached out’ then I tend to leave at the first musical break. In my experience some very high priced systems, despite excelling in dynamics and bandwidth, have often fallen into that camp.

Anyway it looks like the UK Show may well be on later this year.

Of course it may still depend upon the imaginations of various politicians and their so-called health advisers...
frogman
7,472 posts
 
“tonally bleached out”. Great description that I use often. “Gray”. Can’t stand that type of sound. Instrumental sounds have a lot of natural color.
Post removed 
cd318
2,636 posts
 
@frogman “tonally bleached out”. Great description that I use often. “Gray”. Can’t stand that type of sound. Instrumental sounds have a lot of natural color.

I borrowed that off @prof. He has written some excellent posts here and is usually very precise when it comes to describing timbre and tonal colour reproduction.

Even after nearly 40 years of listening to various systems I still think that instrumental colour is one of the most difficult things for any of them to reproduce.

So many of them nowadays just cannot get close. Or even seem to try.

As much as it pains me to have to give Apple any credit I cannot fault the iPad 2 on the grounds of failing to reproduce timbre and instrumental colour.

There's an app on there that features some  60 musical instruments that my kids would sometimes play with.

The tonality would be almost uncanny, and that tiny speaker could certainly put many a full size one to shame.
More to discover