jonandfamily,
My own subjective impressions, especially of amplifiers, aren't much use to other people I think. We all have different tastes, different hearing, different criteria; what I hear as uninvolving will be someone else's musical nirvana.
And by "bleached" I'm talking of timbral or tonal color, nothing to do with dynamics. I tend to sort of see colors when listening to sound (and clearly so do some other people, which is why lots of audiophiles refer to colors in describing sound). When I listen to my acoustic guitar I always "hear" a golden sparkly tone. I'd take that recording around to various systems and speakers: from most of them, I don't hear that tone. It's more silver/gray. And that's my main complaint with most systems: they sound "bleached" of tonal color, which is what I always perceived whenever I was able to compare Audio Research amps with, say CJ amps, over the years (and that's only a few times, really).
That doesn't mean someone else will hear the same thing. Although...it was interesting to see it described that way here, and I have seen the Audio Research sound described similarly over the years. Just like the CJ sound is often described as "golden."
My pal loves his Audio Research amp - had it forever, doesn't want to part with it.
My own subjective impressions, especially of amplifiers, aren't much use to other people I think. We all have different tastes, different hearing, different criteria; what I hear as uninvolving will be someone else's musical nirvana.
And by "bleached" I'm talking of timbral or tonal color, nothing to do with dynamics. I tend to sort of see colors when listening to sound (and clearly so do some other people, which is why lots of audiophiles refer to colors in describing sound). When I listen to my acoustic guitar I always "hear" a golden sparkly tone. I'd take that recording around to various systems and speakers: from most of them, I don't hear that tone. It's more silver/gray. And that's my main complaint with most systems: they sound "bleached" of tonal color, which is what I always perceived whenever I was able to compare Audio Research amps with, say CJ amps, over the years (and that's only a few times, really).
That doesn't mean someone else will hear the same thing. Although...it was interesting to see it described that way here, and I have seen the Audio Research sound described similarly over the years. Just like the CJ sound is often described as "golden."
My pal loves his Audio Research amp - had it forever, doesn't want to part with it.