Isn't it really about quality of recording?


Are most of us just chasing our tails?

I mean you listen to a variety of recordings and some sound a lot better than others. Your system has limited impact on how good recordings can be. I am awestruck how some music sounds and clearly my system has nothing to do with it, it all occurred when the music was produced.

We talk about soundstage and imaging and I am not sure all the effort and money put toward a better system can really do that much for most of what we listen to because the quality is lesser than other recordings.

You can walk into a room and hear something that really sounds good and you say wow what an amazing System you have but no!!! It's the recording dummy not the system most of the time. Things don't sound so good it's probably the recording.

The dealers don't wanna talk about Recording quality no one seems to want to talk about it and why is this? Because there's no money to be made here that's why.

 

jumia

In light of all the hi tech hi end solid-state creations with all their fancy circuitry it's surprising there has been no discussion comparing the merits of tubes and solid state or hybrid (whatever the heck that is, I mean where did draw the line in terms of how many tubes are used before you say hybrid).  I say this because really good recordings can be really screwed up by very sophisticated highly revealing overpowered sound recreation boxes. A big clue to me is how fatiguing it is to listen to music sometimes and I never remember it being this way many years ago.

In my eyes the best systems have the simplest circuitry with the best parts and I am leaning toward the tube side which tend to be more old school and less harsh. I've always viewed all the solid state fancy circuitry creations as a way to torture the delicate analog signals. I've never understood why a very reputable manufacture can offer an upgraded component that all of a sudden has found a way to improve dozens of things within their boxes. Really? And why now?

b&w speakers have undergone all kinds of technical improvements and I am perplexed as to what the heck they r doing? And I own some B&W speakers I like them, the newer ones seem dreadful. 

@jumia

I have been at this for fifty years. One by one I have switched each of my components to tubed components. My systems have  sounded better and better over the decades… my current by far the best. I would not be even remotely interested into going back to solid state. You can see my systems under my UserID.

FYI. There are two major parts of a system component… the power supply and the main amplifying stage. Hybrids tend use tubes in one and not the other. In my equipment tubes are used in both.

After just installing a DAC, I find that the vinyls that sounded bad with the TT also seem to correlate with the ones that sound bad when streaming through the DAC.

@rumi  A good home system can make mediocre recordings more enjoyable to listen to, and there are a lot of good sounding recordings out there in spite of the record companies' best efforts to avoid this.  We would really appreciate it, though, if you guys would try a little harder to make better sounding recordings.  We'd even be willing to pay a little more for them.

@jumia I think you're in the wrong hobby.  You don't seem to like anything about audio.

A speaker that makes a crap recording sound like gold is really colored! Sometimes not a bad thing if you listen to crap recordings. Cerwin Vegas sound like solid gold comparatively for a lot of metal that sounds downright shiiit on most (all) audiophile speakers …. For example.