How close to the real thing?

Timlub, as notes of interest I have had almost the same number of years as yourself wrestling with this bizarre and at times excrutiatingly frustrating "addiction", and also my room is almost a perfect size match to yours.

For me, when the system is working correctly, i.e., low levels of distortion, the auditory experience is that the end wall completely dissolves and the room becomes attached to the location where the recording was made, the "window" experience, I guess. If a large scale orchestral, then exactly if one were sitting in a private stall in the concert hall. It is no longer that of a musical event in a room, the sensation is that the whole house has somehow been transported and is sitting next to where the musical event is happening, and is a mere extension to the "soundstage". Very hard to get to happen, but very much worth it!

Frank

Hi Frank,
My back wall also dissapears. I get a soundstage from my speakers to maybe 10ft behind my speakers and they are 6.5 ft from my back wall. My speakers are 106 inches apart and on some recordings, I do get a soundstage extended a couple of feet past my speakers in width, But never can I take an orchestra that its natural width would be say 25 feet and get my system to reproduce this. Within these limits, I get Outstanding instrument placement on width as well as depth. If anyone has any ideas on how to improve...
I'm all ears.

Timlub, glad to hear how you're doing! If anyone here could see my current setup they would laugh hilariously, it looks a mess... Speakers roughly 2 ft from back wall, about 6 ft apart.

What I learned to concentrate on, is eliminating all, and I mean ALL, unpleasant distortion from the system, and this can be very, very difficult to do. Everything matters, as they say, and if you don't fix everything then you are making it very hard to get it to happen for yourself.

How low should the distortion be? A simple test, when the system is working flat out on a "difficult", or any recording, is that a speaker completely disappears. That is, standing a foot away directly in front of one (left or right) speaker and in line with the tweeter (or high end reproducer) your ear/brain cannot pick that the sound is coming from the drivers. "Believe it or not ..." as I think someone once said ... :-)

Why this can happen is that the ear/brain compresses the loud sound, rather than the system. This is what happens naturally; how else can a player in an orchestra tolerate the sound level around him if this didn't happen ...

Frank

Hi Frank, Well,I've read all that you've had to say and am sorry to say that I just don't buy it. Yes,my speakers absolutely dissapear. I don't want to discount your opinion, but I've been around this game for a long long time. I have found a long time ago, even when I started in this business in 1979, That measurable distortion is so far below our hearing that it was unconceivable to hear. Most tube amps measure higher distortion than solid state, yet tube amps nearly always have better staging than solid state. I don't know what type of distortion that you are quoting, i.m, thd?
What equipment today has distortion ratings that are a concern?

some recordings, I do get a soundstage extended a couple of feet past my speakers in width, But never can I take an orchestra that its natural width would be say 25 feet and get my system to reproduce this. Within these limits, I get Outstanding instrument placement on width as well as depth. If anyone has any ideas on how to improve...
I'm all ears.
Timlub (Threads | Answers | This Thread)

Try a different DAC,or CD player.I tried one DAC that made my soundstage that can go extremely wide at times,shrink down to about 3-5 feet.A friends budget(Teac?)CD player made his 8-10 foot speaker width sound like 50 feet apart.Sounded good on some music,like a reverb on other types of music, The equipment specs don't seem to mean much here.