Carey1110,
Yes, WC's system is enjoyable to me, even from my mediocre computer audio.
The most important question you posed is how do I know when the glass is clear? From my vast experience of hearing live instruments and voices of all types in many venues, I have a composite familiarity with the idea of "clear." I often walk past a house with an open window and the drummer is playing--I know it is live and not a recording, because of the freshness and general clarity that is hard to put into words. I walk past a playground where kids are playing handball, and hear the crispness of their hand slaps. Same for the basketball players and hearing the lower pitch of the bouncing basketball. When I walk daily, I listen to the natural sounds of spoken conversations, close and further away. All these sounds are crisp, so I really don't understand why anyone would deliberately not want crispness in their music, but they are free to like any sound they want.
Recording engineers often play games with their artificial processing and manipulations. This is less applicable to naturally recorded classical and jazz. Even so, the concept of crispness still applies as a desirable goal--the processing is not so bad as to interfere with the perception of crispness underneath the layers of processing.
A separate case applies to my use of EQ. I would like to find an EQ that has a clearer glass window than my Rane EQ. Some recordings have a distant perspective created by engineers who use mellow mikes and mix in distant omnidirectional mikes. I can take such recordings, use my EQ to boost HF judiciously to successfully make the perspective much closer, to my liking. The famous Mercury Living Presence recordings of the 1950's are widely respected for their upfront, live perspective, hence the name, "Living Presence." Even I didn't realize until as recently as 20 years ago, due to my experience in EQ, that these Mercury recordings were done with EQ. One day I'll get a more transparent EQ with better electronics than my Rane, but even today the Rane's very flexible EQ functions vastly outweigh its slight liabilities for transparency.
But the issue of audio flavoring superimposing itself on the natural colors of live music is still important. I want maximum transparency without the coloring of electronics. EQ is a special case which corrects much of the defects of all speakers and the choices of the recording studio that I hear as nullifying much of the live excitement of natural music. Did you ever go to a store which has parallel mirrors on opposite walls, look into the mirror, see yourself in the first reflection, then look slightly off axis and see the multiple reflections? How about noisy analog recordings where several generation copies are vastly inferior to the original? A great thing about digital is that many generation copies still sound close to the original. These two analogies help explain my position on this subject.
Quality violins are hideously expensive, and I would love to own a few. I had to settle for my present 1890 Theodor Paulus violin because it was affordable and it had the approximate type of sound I like best. That sound is detailed and brilliant with still enough tonal sweetness. But I do like a variety of tonal personalities in other violins. This gets me back to my overall view that I appreciate tonal variety and beauty of natural unamplified instruments and voices, but don't like electronics that cause additional coloring superimposed on the natural colors.
Yes, WC's system is enjoyable to me, even from my mediocre computer audio.
The most important question you posed is how do I know when the glass is clear? From my vast experience of hearing live instruments and voices of all types in many venues, I have a composite familiarity with the idea of "clear." I often walk past a house with an open window and the drummer is playing--I know it is live and not a recording, because of the freshness and general clarity that is hard to put into words. I walk past a playground where kids are playing handball, and hear the crispness of their hand slaps. Same for the basketball players and hearing the lower pitch of the bouncing basketball. When I walk daily, I listen to the natural sounds of spoken conversations, close and further away. All these sounds are crisp, so I really don't understand why anyone would deliberately not want crispness in their music, but they are free to like any sound they want.
Recording engineers often play games with their artificial processing and manipulations. This is less applicable to naturally recorded classical and jazz. Even so, the concept of crispness still applies as a desirable goal--the processing is not so bad as to interfere with the perception of crispness underneath the layers of processing.
A separate case applies to my use of EQ. I would like to find an EQ that has a clearer glass window than my Rane EQ. Some recordings have a distant perspective created by engineers who use mellow mikes and mix in distant omnidirectional mikes. I can take such recordings, use my EQ to boost HF judiciously to successfully make the perspective much closer, to my liking. The famous Mercury Living Presence recordings of the 1950's are widely respected for their upfront, live perspective, hence the name, "Living Presence." Even I didn't realize until as recently as 20 years ago, due to my experience in EQ, that these Mercury recordings were done with EQ. One day I'll get a more transparent EQ with better electronics than my Rane, but even today the Rane's very flexible EQ functions vastly outweigh its slight liabilities for transparency.
But the issue of audio flavoring superimposing itself on the natural colors of live music is still important. I want maximum transparency without the coloring of electronics. EQ is a special case which corrects much of the defects of all speakers and the choices of the recording studio that I hear as nullifying much of the live excitement of natural music. Did you ever go to a store which has parallel mirrors on opposite walls, look into the mirror, see yourself in the first reflection, then look slightly off axis and see the multiple reflections? How about noisy analog recordings where several generation copies are vastly inferior to the original? A great thing about digital is that many generation copies still sound close to the original. These two analogies help explain my position on this subject.
Quality violins are hideously expensive, and I would love to own a few. I had to settle for my present 1890 Theodor Paulus violin because it was affordable and it had the approximate type of sound I like best. That sound is detailed and brilliant with still enough tonal sweetness. But I do like a variety of tonal personalities in other violins. This gets me back to my overall view that I appreciate tonal variety and beauty of natural unamplified instruments and voices, but don't like electronics that cause additional coloring superimposed on the natural colors.
