Fidelity

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.

Timf, on your last point, I have not heard any system that can reproduce the dynamics of a live performance, there's always some form of compression, particularly a full blown orchestral climax. You'd need many thousands of watts and a speaker capable of transducing them to get close to that. It's not just the recordings, it's the playback systems and, to some extent, our listening rooms as well, which can overload with too much volume in a relatively small space. Maybe the WAMM or the IRS V in a huge room can get close, but nothing I've heard. My view, anyway.

Hi Tim,

The term "dynamics" refers to the DIFFERENCE between the softest and loudest amount of sound the system will produce without overloading. The softest sound discernable will be determined by the resolution of the components and the noise floor. The subjective experience of dynamics also includes the speed with which the system can produce the change required as compared the relatively unlimited dynamic range of live acoustic instruments.

Best,

Barry Kohan