What is your reference?

Being a musician, I have 30 years experience playing and recording music, so I am very familiar to say the least with what "live" music sounds like. It also helps that I live in NYC, which allows me to attend many concerts of all styles and sizes. I lean towards speakers that have huge soundstage capability, like Avalon, Audio Physic, Aeriel, even though I have B&W Nautilus 805's myself, (an aesthetic compromise). The emotional response to feeling as if you are in the same room or at least in the playback room is what I look for. Even an amplified live situation often allows you to hear some of the original source, instead of hearing only the P.A. system and that is what I like to feel like I am hearing. Funny, I have been giving this some thought myself lately. The DCS upsampled CD's through the Avalons' does it for me. I haven't had the chance to hear a great system using a turntable for a long time, but the superb quality of the SACD format reminded me just how much fun I used to have listening to records.

What a wonderful thread! I too am graced with a Steinway B (1940) to allow my daughter and me wonderful music-making, but find it striking how different it sounds depending upon lid-angle, corner-loading, etc. Repeated voicings for the pianist (instead of for the listeners perpendicular to the lid) has taught me a lot about how malleable a great instrument can be. My tuner/tech, a jazz pianist, prefers a much brighter treble than I do. (I remember how I used to use piano recordings to tweak crossovers in speaker system design BEFORE I got the Steinway. I have to laugh about it when I realize that it takes only a few pinpricks in a key's hammer-felt to change the piano's brightness WAY more than the differences in many excellent recordings of Steinways. I told piano techs that I use piano recordings to evaluate/tweak speaker systems, and they chuckle, knowing full well that "standardizing" a grand piano is like freeze-framing a chameleon: the truths have many colors. Nonetheless it seems that recording engineers more and more have a "reference Steinway" sound they converge upon.... I'm assembling my reference 2 channel system, and have been worried that my new ParsifalEncore/AlephP+2s/RedDawn were too bright, or harsh, or uptilted, y'know...just so much more revealing up top that I now need a new digital source. Time for calibration! Last night I caught Cleveland Symph Orch w/ Dohnanyi in town (Boston's Symphony Hall), where I had back-balcony seats for Tchaikovsky's Fourth. The sound was tremendously dynamic, clear, LEAN, startling in its immediacy (especially considering the distance...although that IS what Symphony Hall is famous for), and with a complex, visually-noncorellated soundstage! Was the performance magnificent? You bet! Was the sound pretty? Nope! Does it get any "better"? CSO/Dohnanyi...what do YOU think? Hmmm...surely I've heard "warmer" orchestras (and prefer the more-intimate Jordan Hall for its warmer acoustic). The leanness was due to some combination of balances involving the instruments, their combined loudnesses as conducted, my listening position, Symphony Hall, the habits learned by the orchestra from playing their normal venue, Severance Hall, etc. The performance garnered 7 curtain calls. A trusted Boston Globe critic referred to the enormous cohesive energy, while still allowing soloists and groups to display their prowess distinctively, albeit the whole sometimes sounding "narrow-bore". I had to laugh when having my morning coffee over those last words. Here I am, like so many audiophiles, chasing the holy grail of "personal" neutrality, honesty of reproduction, "timbral truth", etc., and often forgetting the variances of real music-making. I'm starting to understand the need for high resolution as a prerequisite for (linear frequency response) extension, clarity, ambience, and all the fruits thereof. Warmth and weight are relatively easy compared to a clean, extended top end. Cleveland's "white-hot" exuberance pinned me back: up til now I had been happy with a soft-topped, highly resolved stage that put Diana Krall or Bill Evans AT MY PIANO...and this is wonderful. But can I find an affordable CDP/DAC that will allow CSO's lighning bolts to come through, without tearing my head off, or prohibiting me from enjoying those 80% less-pristinely recorded CDs we all have?.... I've started to use good violin recordings, especially those with lots of partials (check out Didier Lockwood's Tribute to Stephane Grapelli on SONY/FRANCE, or Martin Hayes Live in Seattle) to evaluate resolution and system balance instead of piano, and will invite violinist friends over to help out. (I'm currently trying to decide whether my old Rotel 855 drives my demo Bel Canto better than that Pioneer DV333. Damned if I can tell which is more realistic! All I've figured out so far is that the unscientific substitution of the RedDawn in one leg of the test resulted in a loss of resolution great enough to swamp the differences between the transports. OY! Is the Nordost therefore "hyperactive" or "zippy"? Sure...and certainly way too revealing of upstream artifact for most systems...maybe just as lesser orchestras couldn't have gotten away with CSO's high-energy up top, either! I'm finding the challenge of securing a sufficiently resolving front end for this amazingly transparent system itsself a fatiguing chore. (I have the BelCanto DAC for one more day, and here I am chatting instead of listening!) I suppose I might have to end up choosing a "warm" set of cables or lower rez DAC to reduce fatigue until higher-res software matures in a few years, but I hope not. Thanks for the opportunity to share. Ernie

Subaruguru, thanks for comments. They are among the most intelligent and insightful I've come across any Audiogon forum. You obviously have a passion for and have educated yourself about music. The pursuit of sonic accuracy is extremely important to our hobby, but only if it is done to support the music. The recording process is an active process where the artist and engineer conspire to creative an illusion from which musical truth can emerge. Elements in this process are the recording hall, the choice of a specific instrument and its setup, microphone selection, mic placement, EQ, added reverb and/or delay, compression/limiting and post performance editing (good musicians can and do play "bad" notes). When performed by talented people this processing is transparent. As listeners we should also be active. We should consciously tweak our systems such that they positvely contribute to the enjoyment of the musical experience. It's that emoitional (not sonic) truth that I want my system to let through. P.S. I too use Pass electronics (P pre and 5 amp). I think they are a superb product and a great value. I use Discovery interconnects and OCOS cables. The speaker are Monitor Audio 50s w/ REL stereo subs.

Did not describe my own system in original post, so here it is: CAL Icon MkII Power Boss HDCD, Van den Hul The Second, Bryston BP-25 pre, AQ Opal balanced, BAT VK-200 power, VdH silver for highs and AQ for bass, B&W 802's with North Creek Music outboard crossovers. Very warm, tonally precise, open sound with no harshness, no fatigue whatsoever. Sound compares favorably to local symphony in concert, but can still kick out the jams on rock and jazz. Most realistic sound so far is old version (NOT brightly lit remaster) of Philips CD of Beethoven's 3rd by Masur. If an orchestra could be shrunk to fit in my living room, this is what it would sound like.