How do you add color?


For those of you who are adherents of straight wire, ruler flat frequency response, accurate and neutral sound, artists’ true intentions, etc. ... please stop reading now. You’ve been warned. If you continue to read, you might get heartburn and since I’m a nice guy, I don’t want to do that to you.

Now, for those who are not opposed to adding a bit of color and flavor to tune/tweak the sound to their liking, what is your preferred method of madness? Speakers, amps, preamps, DACs, cables? I know many who like the combination of solid state amps with tube preamps. Lately, a lot of upmarket DACs are using tubes (Lampizator) or R2R to add a sort of tube-like flavoring. Let’s say you’re happy with your solid state amp but want to add a bit of tube magic to the chain, would you get there by way of tube preamps or tube DACs? Or both -- which might be too much of a good thing perhaps?

128x128arafiq

Now if we want a better TRANSLATION of the specific acoustic trade-off conditions in some specific music recording, we must create a room able to optimally make possible this translation , nevermind the relative qualitative variability of the gear components ... It is acoustics domain i spoke about ...

The gear pieces are more or less optimal for each one of us to convey this recording trade off choices as an analog/digital information processed line for sure, gear matter for sure , but they will not beat the room conditions for this acoustic TRANSLATION from the living recording Hall or studio into the acoustic conditions of your room...Acoustic room conditions change impact way more than a dac change in most case..

TIMBRE is first and last an acoustic concept nor a gear engineeering concept...

Then buying a tube pre-amp to improve "colors" or "balance" between components is notenough for  solving the acoustic problem about tonal color perception from recording playback in YOUR ROOM for your ears... Buying a tube pre-amp is only good to improve the performance of your system but in the SAME room acoustic condition...Upgrading may be not always the solution...Acoustics rules nevermind the level and price of your system...This does not means that acoustic improvement will compensate for bad gear design , it means that gear design will NEVER replace acoustics defects ..

"Gotta love a conversation about sound  that’s talking about color.   Aren’t those two different senses?  Go figure!  Only audiophiles……"

Yes, but we don't have agreed on terms to describe these things, so we make them up.  Would it make more sense to talk about the ratio of even vs odd harmonics? How would you decide your preference?  Who would understand that?  How about moving the image fore and aft with 1/4 dB equalization changes?  Color. Warm, clinical, musical, natural?  Our feeble attempt to describe something we are not sure how to measure.  Then we get into even harder things like dynamic compression which happens in all speakers and in some electronics.  Is that "life" or is 1/2 dB @ 4K life? Or is that "flavor"

@mapman,

**** Gotta love a conversation about sound that’s talking about color. Aren’t those two different senses? Go figure! Only audiophiles……****

Not really 😊

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmeu3dwBjdGzVIQT6wZ1TzdxyH2573tsn&si=IVCHb6XodL1UAk2V

I’d wager Mr Spock would call this topic “illogical”.

 

Then Dr McCoy would bawl him out and Kirk would give a speech about being human. This would be an episode called “The Color of Sound” where a strange alien probe makes the crew have mind wiping psychedelic dreams whenever a certain tune plays. Then they take over the Enterprise and only Spock can save them thanks to his unwillingness to see color from sound. Great episode! Make it so!