Silky and soft highs: product of coloration?

Nethepill, That's reassuring & refreshing. Something is certainly wrong should an audio system make euphonic the treble sound of breaking glass or fingernails on a chalk board or a five year old playing violin.

This thread got me thinking about (HP's?) recent Part 1 review of the Scaena line-array speakers in TAS. Now I've heard these speakers under show conditions together with the Memory Player. Among their very impressive qualities is a silky, mellifluous, utterly grainless treble, set against a jet-black background, apparently achieved without sacrificing detail and attack. Yet the treble of this speaker seemed to take the brunt of HP's skepticism as being "possibly" unrealistic (his reservations about fully committing himself on this point perhaps intended as a cliff-hanger to be resolved in P2.) I'm still wondering myself whether treble like this, while appealing, is entirely realistic. But my general sense is that more typically, very expensive end-high systems err further on the side of stridency and aggression. When modifying equipment I've found that bleeding-edge improvements to power circuits in both SS and tube devices almost always results in a smoother treble, shedding grain that I wasn't aware of until it was gone. Not really a matter of flavors & tastes, and as Chris says, very expensive to achieve commercially.

I play with professional orchestras occasionally as a sub and I'll say that MOST instruments sound edgy up close. Classical instruments are meant to be heard from the middle of the orchesta section of the auditorium, not 10-feet away. From the listeners' perspectives they'll generally sound "silky" and smooth.

OTOH, very few studio recordings sound natural. Trumpeters use the proximity effect of the mics to make their solos sound warmer, engineers add reverb and select mics with euphonic sounds for each instrument. I often record myself on trumpet to hear what's actually going on in front of the horn. Without proximity effect, reverb or EQ, it's very "raw". I love that sound, but it's not what you get in most recordings.

Dave

Once more, although instruments can sound bright and harsh at close range, they have in real life "body" and "bloom", that is what you can only hear when music is reproduced using the best (and unfortunately also most expensive) electronics.

Chris

03-30-08: Dazzdax said:
"Jaybo, you mean the other way around? Grainy violins that turn silky smooth through amplifier? Either way, violins in real life do have a certain graininess and texture but also bloom and airiness, which are altogether difficult to reproduce."

If recorded at close range, violins SHOULD sound grainy. A crummy, inaccurate amp might make them sound "silky" but a truly great amp will make them sound like violins at close range.

Really great amps, like Jeff Rowland Design Group's, don't alter the sound to soften it. Softening is NOT a characteristic of a fine amp.

The recording engineer will more often than not soften the string sound by setting the mics far enough away so that they sound silky. The character of violin sound tends to soften as you move away.

Dave

The ability of a system to reproduce the scrape of multiple bows on strings is something that is not in the purview of an amplifier that always sounds 'silky'. Such an amplifier is glossing over detail.