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High Performance Audio - The End?

Steve Guttenberg recently posted on his audiophiliac channel what might be an iconoclastic video.

Steve attempts to crystallise the somewhat nebulous feeling that climbing the ladder to the high-end might be a counter productive endeavour. 

This will be seen in many high- end quarters as heretical talk, possibly even blasphemous.
Steve might even risk bring excommunicated. However, there can be no denying that the vast quantity of popular music that we listen to is not particularly well recorded.

Steve's point, and it's one I've seen mentioned many times previously at shows and demos, is that better more revealing systems will often only serve to make most recordings sound worse. 

There is no doubt that this does happen, but the exact point will depend upon the listeners preference. Let's say for example that it might happen a lot earlier for fans of punk, rap, techno and pop.

Does this call into question almost everything we are trying to ultimately attain?

Could this be audio's equivalent of Martin Luther's 1517 posting of The Ninety-Five theses at Wittenberg?

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Can your Audio System be too Transparent?

Steve Guttenberg 19.08.20

https://youtu.be/6-V5Z6vHEbA

cd318
mikewerner
119 posts
 
To clarify,
I am saying that a low distortion system is NECESSARILY high resolution.
A high resolution system is NOT NECESSARILY low distortion.
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twoleftears's avatar
twoleftears
5,320 posts
 
Everyone knows that the Adante was a flawed design.  Released to much heralding, look how short a time it remained in the Elac line-up.  It was discontinued because it wasn't selling (duh), and it wasn't selling because people were listening to it and comparing it to other similarly priced speakers.  If you're going to vaunt a "giant-killer" (a dubious concept at best), at least pick a half-decent model to promote in the first place.
mikewerner
119 posts
 
What if you have a high resolution system in a crappy room? There will be distortion in the sound from comb filtering, modes, etc. 
Or a speaker with a non-flat frequency spectrum. The resolution can be high but the sound is distorted.
These equal high resolution and high distortion.
I am using the broadest meaning of distortion, not just THD. If the sound wave produced at the listening chair is different than the recorded sound wave, then it is distorted.


douglas_schroeder
3,281 posts
 
"Flawed" is a pretty harsh assessment of a budget speaker. It had severe fiscal limitations, a price point to hit. Some slack has to be given for that. True, the hype has been over the top. I certainly was not overly impressed when hearing the bookshelf Elac that people were falling over themselves to make hyperbolic statements regarding the performance. It was another bookshelf. One that did impress me duly was the Ryan Speakers bookshelf model. 


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