Fidelity

Hi Tim,

I'm sure many of us neurotic audiophiles here (myself included) are envious of you that you can just sit back and enjoy the music that comes out of your system without dwelling too much on what the system does do versus what it doesn't do.

As a manufacturer in the high end sector (vibration control products and loudspeakers) I see it as my duty to push the envelope of what an audio system is able to achieve and my comments on audio forums reflect a sensibility that an uncompromising attitude is required to do so.

Tim said:
"I do like my system the way it sounds now but I know it adds its own sound to the recording."

At the present state of the art ALL audio components (and therefore systems) either take away or add to the signal captured in the recording (and probably some of both). I believe that we can only move steadily forward toward perfect audio reproduction by ensuring that our systems (the individual components, accessories we use and set up procedures) do not alter the signal captured in the recording. It is sometimes a difficult doctrine for many people to apply because the effects of coloration are beguiling and seductive.

I do believe that we should enjoy the music that comes out of our systems (otherwise what is the point?) but I also believe that same type of emotional fulfillment we experience when listening to live music can only be consistently replicated in the home when the system is not making its own contribution the signal it is reproducing.

Best Regards,

Barry Kohan

Just to reiterate a stance that I've personally had for years, as I've been around high end audio as long, is that high fidelity is most challenged in the home environment in the area of "dynamic transparancy". Otherwise, "high fidelity", at least refering to musical accuracy and refinement regarding detail, coloration(or lack there of), soundstage, purity, musicality and such, is stops with DYNAMICS!!!
To me, this is where most audiophile systems fall short, i not the entire home audio market mostly!
I take that back, speakers like some of the better active audiphile offerings out there (excluding Meridian IMO), Avantgarde horns, and similar come much much closer to realism, accuracy, and dynamic REALITY than most!...with the likes of Wilson WATT Puppies a close trailing..

I am imagining how the words high fidelity were first used to describe a genre of audiophilia...

In 1928, group of golden earred audiophiles listening to a bunch of stereos, a lot of A/B/A/B/C/B/A comparisons going on...

And, one system seemed to be heads and shoulders above all the rest... and people started making comments like, "the parts and build quality is built with integrety, and the resulting sound is honest and faithful to the original..."

Well, you get the emotive use of words that are synonomous to "fidelity" thus the rampant use of hi-fi...

Ofcourse, like any emotive use of verbage, it's all relative (the meaning) to the person using it. Definitely a slippery slope if one has to analyze what's going on.

I'll go with Reubant to block, Bob. He said it plain and simple...get out while you still can, ignore these neurotic freaks, and enjoy the music! Be happy. The idea of an objective anything is patently ridiculous. Our senses are as individual as our fingerprints. One man's green is another man's chartreuse, One woman's High-C is another's orange-flavored beverage. What sounds good to you is not necessarily what sounds good to Stereophile...well, I guess most components sound pretty darn good to Stereophile so that statement may be inaccurate. You get the point though. Use your own senses. Trust the force Luke. Or, if you're blessed like at least one of our illustrious audio manufacturers, perhaps God will point out the right gear for you. High fidelity?! What a pile of horse X-cream-mint! True to what? A black and white world? But they can measure it, with scientific accuracy that is unimpeachable...why just look at the sine-waves, and those swell three-dimensional plotted curves like desert sands...and the experts all tell me that I can't get any better without spending ten times the price! Yet there's a whole derriere-burstin' load of "Audiophiles" and Audio-critics, myself among them, who adore the sound of tubes and SET amplification, complete with distortion to write home about that you can measure with a yard-stick. We are charmed and will not be swayed by geeks waving scientific evidence in abundance to discredit our ears and enlighten the rest of the world of the error in our ways. And yet I can also hear the appeal of my good friends craving for the detail and slam of his high-dollar SS rig, which renders so much detail you can hear snow falling on the roof of the recording studio. The more you focus on the specific qualities that the gear has, what it imparts, or does not, the further and further away you will tend to get from the music that moves you enough to pursue such a thing in the first place. Don't let that happen. Run, while you still have your pants. I'm telling you, these guys will take'em and have you wearing cryo'd jock-straps that isolate each of your balls in a cushion of air to eek out that last bit of performance from each of them in the name of truth and accuracy. Meanwhile they'll sell your pants on eBay after they've cleaned out your wallet, and have you begging for more because you can't get it up now unless you have the very latest, greatest, biggest, bestest, badassest device out there that you can brag about right here and enlighten other poor gullible slobs like you once were, convincing them you know what they'll like the best cause you've heard it all and you are enlightened. Oh the horror of it all!

Marco

"The holy grail of hi-fi is to recreate the recording engineers interpretation of the performance in your living room as acurate as possible."
That's a good definition on hi-fi, but not one I care to follow (anymore). I've done some recording in my live, whether in the studio ot be it life, and found that real hi-fi doesn't exist. Even if equipment gets better over the years, it is not possible to recreate a concert-hall in a small livingroom (IMHO). So I gave up on all that, and now enjoy the music. It save's a lot of worrying, although not on money - what I save on equipment I spend on music!!