How close to the real thing?

Hi Peterayer,
I was really being a bit facetious. I can't imagine a more difficult task but to record something so loud and over such a huge area and make that come out anything like the real thing. I've read through this whole thing also and I agree with you brother. very subjective, lets just enjoy our tunes, Good Listening, Tim

Interesting in this discussion is that virtually no mention is made of that nasty stuff, "distortion", by name. My experience is that ALL systems distort, some nicely, adding a soothing patina to the sound, but the majority inject varying amounts of relatively low level, edgy, unpleasant and irritating distortion which then overloads the ear and brain when you turn the volume up. I'm talking here of non-linear distortion, not frequency or phase response effects.

As mentioned, many musical instruments are naturally LOUD, but nasty, amusical, low level distortion is not part of unamplified sound. If you eliminate the majority of the unpleasant stuff from a system, which is typically very difficult to do, then even a very ordinary setup can sound hugely realistic.

One easier way to get there, as some know, is to use highly efficient speakers with powerful amplifiers; if the components are virtually idling when in normal use then you have a much better chance of keeping "bad" distortion at bay ...

Frank

I would think high efficency speakers with powerful amps would make distortion and noise worse -- no?

Mapman ,

The ohm's will not come close to reproducing the size or power of a grand being played in your house. A very good hi-fi system can sound like a piano, but will never fool you into believing it is a real piano, the size and power would never be the same..

>I would think high efficency speakers with powerful amps >would make distortion and noise worse -- no?

No, systems typically either use powerful amps and low efficiency speakers, or low powered amps and high efficiency speakers. The outcome is roughly the same in each case, the setup runs out of puff at a certain point -- think of a small, light car with low capacity engine as compared with an SUV with a big V8, their maximum rate of acceleration would be roughly the same; any really decent performance vehicle is always about a light body propelled by a high powered engine. Of course, in this analogy, the combination has to be carefully matched and tuned to realise the potential performance and prevent problems, but this is just engineering!

The analogy follows into the audio world -- I once had fun in a large, noisy electicals store: hooked up a fairly mediocre but high wattage Japanese HT receiver to a good pair of Klipsch main speakers, wound up the volume, the sound was clean as a whistle and cut right through the store; a store bloke came running from the other side, yelling turn it down, not because it was distorting but because it was so dynamically loud ...

Frank