full-scale orchestral music—best test of speakers’ potential?


Here’s a general observation made after visiting many rooms and listening to many loudspeakers at CAF: full-scale orchestral music, i.e. recordings of large symphony orchestras, provide the most demanding test of a speaker’s abilities.  I’d argue this for two reasons.

1. Audio systems attempt to create a simulacrum of an acoustic event in your living room.  That original event may have occurred in a tiny jazz club or a huge arena, and everything in between.  That is to say, the space in which it occurred may be very similar in size to your listening room, or it may be very different.  Given the size, on stage, of a full orchestra, and given the size of the auditoriums where they play, it’s very challenging for a system to reproduce the impression of that size in your living room—none are perfect, but some are better than others in providing the right kinds of cues.

2. Another variable here is that the music played may have been acoustic or electronically amplified.  Recordings of acoustic instruments and voice remove one extra step in the long chain of reproduction: we know pretty much what a violin should sound like, but what should a certain Gibson guitar through a certain Peavey amp sound like?

Massed violins playing fortissimo are the most stringent test of a speaker’s treble range.  In room after room, I heard rock, pop, jazz, blues, folk, etc. etc. reproduced really very beautifully, but often when an orchestral piece came on, it could sound harsh, steely, astringent, nails on chalkboard.  The fault of the recording, you say.  But a few speakers (I’m not naming names, to avoid that kind of argument), didn’t do that, and sailed through the test.

128x128twoleftears
There are no standards for Polarity
That nonsense went out in the 60's. Studios and engineers were very cognizant of polarity and gear was wired so the studio maintained it. By the time CDs made their appearance, it was a non-issue.

A studio may have been Pin 2 or 3 +phase, but what went on tape was correct polarity.


You all are underscoring an issue that is seldom considered:
YOUR acoustics (hearing).
It's unrealistic to assume that everyone's hearing transmits audio nuance EXACTLY the same - from our tympani's, our Cochlear complex, our auditory nerve canal and, finally, the brain itself - the most subjective (read: interpretive) instrument in the chain.
If we all possessed precisely the same personal audio delivery system, start to finish, there wouldn't be nearly so much room for our debates, would there?

"If music be the food of (life), play on!"  
Bo
 
You are orthogonal to reality.
Please provide laboratory test data to support that most CDs are inverted polarity relative to the master tape.

None that I checked ever were.

And, Mr. Kait, please answer a question that has always bothered me about the green spray you sold to absorb IR in CD players. Energy can’t be destroyed. So what did the green spray change the IR into? Heat? Nope. Heat is IR. Mass? Did the CDs get heavier with every play?