Fidelity

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!!

I agree with Marco, if your enjoying the music and it sounds good to you then leave it alone. The most important thing is to enjoy the music. I've been all over the place with my system over the last 20+ years. I'll get it "dailed in" and sounding good then catch a bad case of the upgrade bug and change something. Then I screw up the senergy and end up changing things big time to get it back to where I had it. Over the years I've spent more on my stereo than on my house.Right now I have it sounding good and I find myself making excuses to listen to it. In addition, I've been ignoring my chores around the house. When the system sounds good I spend a lot more time sitting in front of it and reading which is a good thing.

Marco,

I have an appointment on Wednesday for an ultrasound of my sack to get fitted with my cryoed jockstrap with the teflon and air dialectic. I'll let you know how the system sounds after the upgrade.

Prpixel - Let us all know if your ding-dong makes it to the top floor after
the procedure. If not, you may want to go back to your source and have
them burrow a few extra caveties, insert some carbon-fiber tubes and
you can fill'em with lead shot to keep the nasty resonance down. They
call-em "Raised Pleasure Ribs" I think. The woman will be
stairing with lust, and you'll never get sand kicked in your face again at
the beach whenever you wear that Speedo.

Marco

A lot of good responses. Supportive, I think, and I appreciate it. Exertfluffer: When you say that a lot of audio systems fall short of fidelity in terms of dynamic realism are you saying they just cannot produce the accurate size and dimensions of the event? the wrong words no doubt, but something like this? I notice with certain recordings I own that some aspects of the performance seem out of balance with eachother. Some instrument seems unnaturally forward in the mix, and then a little larger than you might imagine they would be by comparison to other instruments. Also, with classical I am often amazed that no matter how loud you play some recordings everything seems a bit minaturized. It is, of course, but I have always thought this had to do with the recordings-compression, of a sort.Sometimes when I read here I get the impression that people have picked out an aspect of fidelity they especially value and go with that. Some will say tonality is most or all of it. Others say speed. Is it a case that most system combinations-regardless of price, wont combine to produce the dynamics, tonality and speed necessary to convey the sort of realism people write about here.Are there a lot of recordings out there just waiting to be fully realized but the components available just arent up to the job? Or do we need really really really big rooms to house this realistic sound properly.