Plus and Minus

Both of the first issues have to do with the reason you buy stuff. For personal enjoyment. We can in fact compare live music to a system and try to recreate that experience, but... I usually don’t want to. I want it to sound good to me. Same with tweaks. We also run into the lack of visual experience in our systems. Lacking the eyesight of the performance we may seek to compensate for it with exaggerated imaging cues, Like Kurosawa adding smoke to a live volcano so the sense of heat transfers better off the film.

Personally, I do not care what your guiding light is, so long as it’s your taste and your wallet that are involved and no one else.

I’ve become universally disillusioned with the notion that high-end = exorbitant prices. I don’t buy gear to brag to my friends of the weight of my system or the multiple 8 gauge power lines I had drawn from a personal nuclear reactor to power my system. This is especially true with speakers. The list of speakers over $10K I have listened to which I felt were worth it are perhaps 3 brands.   Under this amount though, I've heard lots of speakers I could recommend.


Best,

Erik

Erik, if you could, would you. if you could and had all the means, would you buy the absolute best you could buy?

OR Does any of that play into it? I know you like quality sound, have you gotten where you won’t be changing things. Done that’s it?

I sure was for 16 plus years...Very close again, but I’m pretty happy with my selections... I kept the cost WAY down, except for a few blunders, a cable drop...for one..True "Monkey Bone" experience.

Regards

Recreating live music is a fantasy. What we do instead is, everything has its own sound character. Its not necessary to match exactly the live sound to create the impression of the actual instruments. The system is merely the last link in the whole chain of recording, mastering, duplicating, and finally playing back. Its technically impossible for the last link in the chain to produce something that was never there to begin with. It was lost in the very beginning at the microphone.

i agree w miller completely on this one, as he says above

using live music as a standard for one’s hifi is utterly ridiculous, given where we are listening

do you have any idea what a live drum set, a trumpet , a tenor sax, a double bass or concert grand piano will sound like in your 17x22 living room played at performance level?  you would cover your ears, RUN OUT OF THE ROOM it would be so loud - if you stayed in the room and listened for long you would have hearing damage

get real boys and girls

what we are dealing is a massively scaled down, miniaturized characterization for homebound consumption

this NOT recreating reality - that notion should be given a rest, to put it kindly

Hey @oldhvymec I've decided to start a new thread to answer your question so as to not derail the OP. :)

The concept of reproducing a live event make no sense in the absolute...For sure...

What is a live event? is it what we listen to coming from where the one microphone or where the many microphones are on the stage? Is it where the pianist or the trumpeter are? Or more where the first row listener is, but which one, the middle one,or the one at the right end or left end of the row? last row?

There is NO live event.... There is MANY live events...

But we choose to record one with one or many microphone...

In MY room, what i listen to from MY specific electronic components, which are, i am pleased to think, rightfully embedded with MY devices and method, what i listen to then , has no direct relation with what you will listen to, each of you, from the same cd, nor to what the pianist, the trumpeter or the many different rows listeners listenened to in the alleged " live event" that is different for all of them....

The right question in audio for all of us, except for those who recorded the live event and mix it, the real question is not the problem of how to be faithful to a non existent unique " live event", but how to output the choosen recorded event amongst many possible, with our specific audio system, in our specific room ....

The answer to that is simple for me: Dont upgrade, listen many times first, and embed everything, mechanically, electrically and acoustically in the best way... It is a step by step fun experience anyway...

Then you will feel your "monkey bone" from the heart beating , this is called an "orgasm"...

And buying a costly new audio component will seems with the time passing more and more like a lost of money and a diminushing return on investment and sometimes a not so more useful and wise investment...

Audiophile experience come from the ear-brain experience and experiments, not from the money in your pocket at all, and not from a non existent original unique live event... But from a choosen recorded event by the recording egineers that will be different for sure in all house on earth....

Will it sound good in your house?

If it sound more than good in my 500 hundred dollars audio system rightfully embedded, why not in your room?
Asking this question is the beginning of the solution...

A clue: for most of us the solution IS NOT an upgrade of speakers, amplifier or dac .....it is how to embed what we already have....

At the end my truth is that audiophile experience MAY cost peanuts....Do it the right way with your ears and trust them first.... Simple.....

And OP it is you that will know if a "tweak" is positive or negative, if you cannot decide it is sign that you must  try other thing....

All my embedding devices are low cost, homemade often, and it is not necessary to buy costly tweaks at all to remedy the mechanical, electrical and acoustical dimensions... The only painful action is not so much paying money than paying attention to sound, listening, thats all....

For other clue my thread; "miracles in audio.... "



My best to all....