How does one get off the merry-go-round?

Dan, I did not realize that you started one of the most popular audiogon threads!

So are you "off the merry-go-round"?

Art

ps: who invented the name "merry-go-round"?

Loss of job!

Macrojack, thanks for your positive response. Sorry I didn't get back earlier, and I note that other people are obviously not REALLY interested in getting better sound; strange addiction, this hobby, where a lot of people believe they are condemned to be forever on the merry-go-round, and that there is nothing that can be done about it, eh?? Obviously I'm new here, but I've been fooling around with this "madness" for 40+ years, so at least a couple of lessons have been learnt along the way. Also, being curious, I looked at one or two of your other postings and it appears you're coming from a very similar direction as myself. As an example, mentioning the high efficiency Zu speaker -- straightaway you're going to make life easier for yourself using a speaker like that; an early (in years back) foray for me was a DIY effort using Goodmans Axiom 301's, driven by an absolutely miserable nothing of an amplifier!

Anyway, on with the show, so a few more thoughts:

* Pretty obviously, getting digital right is hard, the ferocious arguments STILL continue, but it certainly can be done. With vinyl, you can be sloppy and get away with it, the result will still be very pleasant and musical to listen to. Digital is a hard taskmaster, you might be 99.9% there and the sound will be excrutiatingly unpleasant and fatiguing to listen to, but persevere! If you can just get that last 0.1% to fall into place, then you have magic. Think of it like very high power binoculars, if the focus is not perfectly right the result will be a messy blur; then just one little extra small twist and everything snaps into beautiful view.
* Also with digital, just because you get it right for a while does not mean it will stay right during a listening session. A classic behaviour trait is that the sound may sound reasonable but not special at first, then build up to a peak of quality, and then go off, sound worse and worse the more you listen. What this means is that you still have weaknesses that haven't been sorted out.
* Even nothing DAC chips can sound good but you have to warm them up, condition them thoroughly first -- this is not news for many people. What I find works fast is a test track of maximum level high frequency sine wave, say 18kHz, set on repeat for an hour or so, sort of like belting the living daylights out of the chip! Obviously, don't have the amp on, or have it at very low level; the latter does a nice job of starting to warm up the tweeter and its crossover bits.
* To see where your power amp is at: put on some fairly driving rock where the drummer is having a good time on the cymbals fairly constantly through the song, at a very LOW level. If your system is half reasonable you should be able to hear the shimmer of those cymbals beautifully captured ( if you can't, go directly to Jail, do not pass Go, ...). Then slowly wind up the volume. At some point, for many/most systems, that good cymbal sound will disappear. If you can get to maximum volume with no change of the cymbal sound, congratulations!
Otherwise, you have another (set of) weakness(es). No, this is not the speaker, I repeat, not the speaker that's the problem! I have heard absolutely rubbishy bits of speaker having no trouble at all peforming excellently; no, typically it's the power amp's power supply starting to collapse, behave badly, spray plenty of nasty interference into the rest of the system, etc

Okay, there's a bit more to play with; so is any of this making sense to more than one person?

Season's cheers,
Frank

Frank,

To see where your power amp is at: put on some fairly driving rock where the drummer is having a good time on the cymbals fairly constantly through the song, at a very LOW level. If your system is half reasonable you should be able to hear the shimmer of those cymbals beautifully captured ( if you can't, go directly to Jail, do not pass Go, ...).

You say that if the sound of the cymbals collapses when the volume goes up, the problem is with your amp. Where do you think the problem is if the shimmer is not so beautifully captured at low volume?

Drubin, thanks for your response! As regards getting the cymbals to shimmer, I'm talking here, in terms of what's possible, of early Rolling Stones, say. And yes, a system CAN do that.

If shimmer is not so good, double check first through the speakers at VERY, VERY low levels. I mean here at headphone levels, that is, you can stick your ear right next to the tweeter, as if it were actually one side of a set of headphones (this is actually another test I'll mention anon).

If you now get shimmer the problem is deeply buried in the power amp, try another amp as a way of crosschecking, perhaps.

If you still only got bad shimmer at that very low level, try decent headphones from CD player or preamp, with the power amp SWITCHED OFF, pulled out of the wall, right out of the way! If shimmer now exists, try plugging the power amp back in, switching it back on with the volume set to zero OR disconnecting the IC's, that is, nothing coming out of the speakers. Does the shimmer through the headphones go bad now?

Can you see where I am coming from? Keep going back to a simpler and simpler setup, and when that's working OK try adding bits of the system back in. The trick is to isolate where the problem comes in and start working upon that ...

Frank