or is a carly simon box set the new reference standard for critical listening?
Since I was the one who made reference to this as a musical source for component audition, I thought I'd inject a few comments:
Each day I play different music and it just happened to be this when I compared some cables. What exactly is wrong with Carly Simon music as a valid tool here? Do I need to use an "audiophile" recording or listen to someone's predefined music library to validate the sonic differences that I hear between components? She has an incredible voice, great range, and in many songs that also contain piano, this is in fact a great source to evaluate harmonic structure, piano articulation, decays and surprisingly enough, dynamic contrasts. And the LP is even more impressive.
Do you know what real instruments sound like
Yes, in fact I was at the Minneapolis Orchestra just last week for a Berlioz, Durati, Brahms, Tchaikovsky concert. And two things I heard were immediately clear: 1) so many systems that I have heard have far more high-frequency information than at such a concert; 2) we have a long way to go to produce the textures and decays of massed strings.
How far apart are your speakers?
About 9 feet, center to center....SoundLab A1. They are about 5 feet into the room.
How close do you sit?
Sometimes about 4 feet in front (thanks Jadem6 for making me aware of the magic here), and other times 8-9 feet.
What kind of front end?
Clearaudio Ref TT with Koetsu RWS or Clearaudio Accurate cartridge into Aesthetix Io phono stage via Stealth Phono cable.
Balanced or single ended?
Balanced from Io to Callisto to Rives PARC. Then RCA to CAT JL-3 Sig amps.
Have you owned a vast assortment of gear and cables?
Yes until I finally learned that tuning a system through the use of non-linear cables, something that many people refer to as synergy, is not the way to assemble a music system.
The best stuff requires proper setup and system synergy to shine
Thanks, I'll try to keep this in mind. And again, what many people refer to as synergy, I think of as bandaiding and attempting to compensate for flaws elsewhere. However, this can be very effective to assemble quite an enjoyable system of midfi gear.
There is way too much focus on tonality here. But synergy, or balance as I like to think of it, can have much to do with finding products that excel in areas (like no other products) such as dynamic contrasts, portrayal of space, low-level resolution, etc. This to me is where a decision of a this-vs-that comes into a final purchase and not that a product has more bass or treble energy, etc.
sometimes a cable can be horribly bad and yet make a mal-adjusted system sound alot better
Funny you should mention this. As Joe Kubala pointed out to me when he was at my home, the MIT EVO 350 IC and the Coincident TRS speaker cable, both very clearly colored cables, actually worked quite well together; he was quite impressed at this. But one without the other, when used with his far more tonally-neutral cables, clearly showed the flaws of the cables I had used. And a comparison with Purist cables resulted in the same outcome.
My experience has found that nothing can beat a well tuned system that utilizes networked cables
My experience indicates something much different. Are either of us right or wrong? No. After hearing the K-S, Purist, Jade and Stealth cable products, I have no interest to deal with networked cables. Those boxes are a royal pain as well.
The problem is most people haven't the foggiest idea of what a live unamplified band sounds like sans processing
I do not know where you get your information about "most pepole", but the bottom line is .......... who cares if people have heard this or not. We all have our own musical preferences and we assemble an audio system that allows us to enjoy our music, amplified or not. And this is what it's all about.
