High Performance Audio - The End?

@dutchtreat,

"Visited a friend recently, who has a grand piano in her music room. Listened for about an hour, noticed what makes it sound real. Timbre at all frequencies, all notes. Percussiveness. Sustain, damping pedal effects, different sound played pianissimo to forte."


Time and time again piano crops up when evaluating the authenticity of any playback system, as does listening to live unamplified music.

You're fortunate in that you have access to a wide range of live sound. 


"My guitar, recorded with the same mic, sounds like my guitar, sans alteration. My wife's speaking voice, ditto."


Again, live sound. Again, great reference points. On the occasion I've heard a live sound recording played back through speakers I'm always impressed by its immediacy and dynamics. It's the kind of thing that I've rarely heard in any commercial recordings.

I'm not sure why modern loudspeakers no longer have felt surrounding the drivers the way they did with the tweeter for example on the LS3/5 for example.

It sounds like you're getting great results with well recorded music but I hope you don't mind if I ask  how your system is with some of the more standard pop /rock recordings in your collection?

Think about this...
If a playback system is low distortion, then it is high resolution.
The contrapositive statement is:
If a system is low resolution, then it is high distortion.

I regularly listen to "poorly recorded music" through a low distortion system and am amazed at how good it sounds. One of my favorites is "1967 Billboard Top Rock'n'Roll Hits." Really, I am slack jawed listening to the music. It sounds fantastic!

Note the common error of logic made with the above statement:
If a system is high resolution, then it is low distortion. This is NOT true.

This helps explain much of the seemingly contradictory statements made in this thread.

"Time and time again piano crops up when evaluating the authenticity of any playback system, as does listening to live unamplified music."

In my case yesterday, playback system helped me evaluate the piano. It reminded me that it is time to tune it.

I listened to my new record yesterday, new to me as it was made in 1950s. I compared it with piano behind me. Record won.

Thanks glupson, that is really funny!

If I was forced to listen to contemporary music for last 5 years which is played on the most popular stations then investing into HiFi which is revealing would probably be waste of money.  You can't force sunshine on a cloudy gloomy day.  However my music tastes are wider and go way back in history which consists a richer concoction of music then the above given example so I would prefer a more revealing system which for instance, recognizes the tone of the piano (which changes in use and surroundings) and can tell the difference and give correct tonality between wound steel strings and nylon treble strings from two guitars playing on the same track.