thank you for an intelligent, considerate, response. I am sure that you are correct and that you can hear cable changes, even with pop music. I can hear them too, with all kinds of music, but well-recorded classical and jazz have more “aliveness” to them, so you can hear extremely low level noises, such as people shifting in their seats (if it’s a classical recording), scores dropping, the air conditioning in the hall, and other sounds, even trucks outside the recording the recording venue on some recordings!
I know that it’s possible to hear these things with other types of recordings, My point is that so many people can’t even identify one acoustic instrument, that sometimes when they make a comment, it’s less out of actual knowledge and more out of supposition.
As well, it’s not the people with the better systems who are complaining about the $25,000 speaker systems or the $10,000 amps. It’s the people who don’t have a lot of experience with these components, or even know what they can do, or don’t play the kind of music that displays the brilliance of a new speaker system correctly. And then they blame it on the speaker system (“I could get the same results on my $1200 speaker system“ when actually, they cannot.) instead of the recordings they use or their lack of insight/knowledge around music. They could help themselves by simply being careful listeners, not just “reactive” listeners.
You, by contrast, seem to have insight/knowledge and experience. From the time I have spent on boards (as well as what I hear from my colleagues at many of the major print magazines as well), people make statements that are absolutely ridiculous, but since many people have any knowledge of certain types of music, ignorance, frequently prevails on these forums. And I guarantee you, some of the people I know are brilliant, they design components, they’ve been in the high-end since it began 50 years ago, and they despair just as much as I do, because people use all the wrong criteria for evaluating a piece of equipment. And those of us who are older KNOW that our younger brothers and sisters were never exposed to music in high school, and don’t demonstrate any interest in acoustic instruments, Which I always find funny, because do you think the designers are designing based on ovation or Martian guitars? It’s more likely they evaluate the end results based on recordings with Bosendorfer pianos, Yamaha flutes, and other acoustic instruments.. And a friend who is 30 and in a band complains that none of his friends know what even one acoustic instrument sounds like. When he told me that the look on his face was just so disheartened.I completely understand that people can evaluate using pop, but I don’t understand people smart off at people who are more knowledgeable than they are. Actually, I do understand it, but it’s pretty screwed up that people use supposition instead of knowledge.
I trust what you’re saying implicitly and I think it’s great that you’re happy with what you’re getting out of your records on your own equipment.
