Crossover Capacitors for Accuton Tweeters - Solen -> ClarityCap -> Jupiter -> Duelund

Hi Bill,
I like your "rants" they’re grounded in logic and stimulate thought. Given the gist of Raul’s 2nd post I believe he’d agree with you. No room, system or component is without fault and we as listeners choose and live with our accepted/inevitable compromises. A couple of years ago I heard jazz trumpeter Roy Hargrove perform at a local jazz club. My table was at the very front of the stage. I could have reached out and touched his horn. While playing some ballads with his fugelhorn the tone was  utterly full, warm and saturated with beautiful richness. Just sheer beauty. This is what I hear, I can’t speak for what others may hear. In my humble opinion many components strip away this very real warmth and harmonic richness in the chase for so called accuracy and detail.

A live vibraphone, tenor saxophone or cello for example are just undeniably rich and tull of color and richness in my live listening experiences. It seems in current High End audio these qualities are to be shunned and have taken on a negative connotation. This mindset doesn’t work for me. For me a good 300b amp doesn’t add color, it preserves it.
Charles

This thread took an interesting turn... always good to hear everyone's opinions.

Dear @brownsfan  : """  What is wrong with enjoying distortions? """

in reality are not the distortion it self but the kind of those distortions and its higher or lower levels.

Distortions levels is what defines/makes differences in the quality level performance of any room/audio system.

All room/audio systems have inherent distortion levels, so always exist trade-offs and in each one of us systems we already choosed our self " best " trade-offs that put us nearer to our targets. Nothing is perfect.

"""  those venues with which I have experience don't even deliver a consistent voice  ""

agree. Everything in a venue could change each one of us perceptions of what we are listening, even attended in the same seat position. Things are that the  people that attend to the venue  the same day as us is not not only exactly the same number/popullation but their seated distribution is not always the same and certainly not always people go with the same kind/fabric of clothes and all those has influence in what we listening there. But even musician/players are not seated exactly the same each session after sessions and many times they don't have the same day by day " mood "
. Even room temperature could be not the same and temperature has its own influence in the instruments voice.
Normally the venues has an overall "signature "  that depending on those and other surrounded characteristics shows some kind of little " deviations " from the overall venue signature.

How can we enjoy MUSIC and not DISTORTIONS?  well we can't avoid several kind of room/system distortions and the best we can approach is to put at minimum those distortions and to achieve that we have to be aware/identify those distortions and this is extremely difficult and as difficult too is to be sure from where is developed that distortion.

Nothing is easy in audio when we are looking for " heaven " and this is what makes audio so interesting other that ENJOY THE MUSIC.

R.

@rauliruegas I may not be following your line of reasoning correctly.  If I am missing your point, I apologize.   Consider the music of Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Page.   These two individuals, by almost unanimous consent, are two of the greatest guitarists of all time.  It is my understanding that they both deliberately introduced distortion into their guitar work.  It was a part of their creative expression.  Distortion was/is an integral part of their art, and without it, the music cannot convey the intended message.  Or consider Nelson Pass, who developed a 2nd harmonic distortion generator for those who wanted to introduce a bit of SET flavor into their solid state system.  My point is that not all distortion is subjectively objectionable.   My previous mention of the great violinist Isaac Stern delivering a live performance that emulated the death cry of a tortured cat, which I hope never to hear the like of again, provides an example where a perfectly undistorted absolute reference recording would not be subjectively desirable.  

Recently, someone mentioned that it is generally not good for a listening room to be ruler flat.  Rooms that don't have a bit of high frequency roll off can be perceived as too bright.  Consider another scenario.  Typically, one's ability to hear the highest frequencies is diminished as one ages.  For such an individual, might it not be advantageous for such a person to have a system or room that provides an offset for that hearing loss?

I'm not saying there is no value in measuring a room's frequency response and decay times.   Those measurements can most certainly be a guide as one attempts to optimize a room.  But the final arbiter must be one's ears.   I'm not saying there is no value in taking objective measurements of hardware.  Those measurements can be invaluable in assembling a system that works well together.  But the measurements cannot tell you how a particular piece will sound.  Again, the ear must be the final arbiter. 

Most of the folks around here are well informed listeners.  They frequent live venues and have a pretty good idea what a recording of acoustic music should sound like.  They also know when a system, a system component, and yes, a particular capacitor delivers that special level of engagement, which may well not measure as well as another choice that may objectively measure better.  

Enjoy the music indeed.  Don't worry about the distortions until your ears or your emotions tell you that you need to worry. 

Yes but, I don't want to add additional distortions to Jim or Jimmy's guitar just the ones they add.

TISH