Ultra high resolution

Seems to me there is a message vs the messenger thing going on here.

If the message is bad news I don't kill the messenger, in this case, the stereo. The message is the music. IOW I won't fault a system for playing it like it is- that is resolution plain and simple. OTOH resolution is **not** 'detail with added brightness'; I call that 'detail with added brightness' :)

IME a system with a bright or clinical quality is obscuring the musical message. That's not resolution!

Actually, Atmasphere, it is resolution and in certain cases some might even consider it ultra high resolution. It just may not be refined or beautiful sounding resolution.

But when you mentioned detail with added brightness, you neglected to include negative sibilance, harshness, glare, hash, grain and perhaps a few other negatives. All of which is also revealed and all of which can be either absolutely minimized or possibly eliminated altogether while maintaining the highest resolution imaginable.

As you probably know a truly resolving playback system should reproduce everything with tremendous accuracy.

Whether it be beautiful music, AC grunge coming from the wall, digital noise coming from the CDP/DAC, time-smearing ics, or a combination of a small host of other shortcomings (pick your poison) a truly revealing system is going to reveal every last shortcoming along with the music.

That is resolution. Albeit, unrefined.
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Hi, Mrtennis. I've enjoyed your posts so please don't take this the wrong way. I couldn't disagree more with your strategy because based on your logic in your posting above and the direction you're heading, you're likely to end up with an expensive transistor radio.

In a similar thread about a month ago I responded with the following comment:

"So if some potential detail rears its ugly head out of sequence or too prematurely in the evolutionary process, then the first thing we want to do is call it evil and squash it rather than nurture it."

I couldn't have said it better myself. :)

-IMO

i don't think it is noble or necessary to suffer withen listening to some cds.

one has two choices, if one finds it unacceptable to tolerate unpleasant sound. one can avoid listening to some recordings or adjust, i.e., voice the stereo system so that what is heard through a pair of speakers is tolerable.

obviously, such a situation implies inaccuracy or coloration. yes, that is what it is.

why object to inaccuracy when a recording is an inaccurate representation of a live performance. consider the microphone, wire, and electronics.

i will leave it to the more philosophically inclined to analyze the principle of trying to accurately reproduce an inaccurate recortding, as compared to editing an inaccurate recording. in both cases, the result is inaccuracy.

MrT, are you saying that you don't like the harsh, shrill sound of many CDs and most CDP? Well, we can all agree on that. There are players that will eliminate that on most CDs (some old stuff from the 1980s just can't be rescued, IME). That's not hi rez sound, IMHO, it's an inferior attempt at hi rez that merely substituted one inaccuracy for another.

As for calling a recording (I'm assuming a good one) "an inaccurate representation of a live performance" consider actually attending a live acoustic performance. It'll sound different from every seat in the house. Those of us that like detail sit closer and you that like a homogenized sound sit further back. Neither position is "more accurate", it is what it is. Recordings are no difference.

Mic coloration in classical recordings, these days, tends to be very small. The Tacet recordings, in particular, are very cleanly recorded. I heard Reference Recordings from the hall and on CD or vinyl and they're very, very close. Played in high resolution, these recordings are simply wonderful.

Hi rez does not include, uptilted highs, high frequency haze or artificial harshness, IME. Many high end (read as expensive) systems DO have uptilted high, high frequency haze and artificial harshness, because there's some failure in the sytem, IMHO. This is not unusual and I'm thinking that this is what you've heard and rail against. I don't blame you.

Also I understand your seeming disgust. There's a dealer here in the Denver area that sells poorly set up Sonus Faber speakers. If you were to listen in their showroom you'd probably wretch at the etched, harsh sounds coming out of the system. When questioned, they sniff and say that's how they're supposed to sound and lots of people buy them because they're so good. I'm frankly amazed that they sell anything. Trouble is, the Sonus are not the problem, it's that dealer's poor setup.

That attitude is fairly persistant in the audiophile world and it's hard to find a really sweet sounding hi rez system (there usually in someone's home) but when you hear it, it can be a revelation.

Dave

i will leave it to the more philosophically inclined to analyze the principle of trying to accurately reproduce an inaccurate recortding, as compared to editing an inaccurate recording. in both cases, the result is inaccuracy.

MrT. You and many others are missing the point. The idea is not to reproduce a live event - that is not the goal of "accuracy". The reason for pursuing accuracy is so that you can enjoy the music as close to what the artist/producer/sound engineer intended on the media you bought. Often the intent is NOT to recreate a live realistic situation but something even more impressive and involving! Often the intent is to simply create pleasant sound and your CD (which has inherently extremely high accuracy) has already been passed through a myriad of devices and techniques to create desired effects (including deliberately added harmonics from tubes and special microphone placement and mixing techniques). Furthermore the studio which is working on the next CD of your favorite mega successful artist is probably using facilities and gear that are well into seven figures! Worse, every studio engineer is carefully selected by the artists and will put a different "spin" on the work - such as the way Daniel Lanois has heavily influenced albums such as Peter Gabriel's So, Bob Dylan's Oh Mercy and U2's All that you can't leave behind. Why would you not want to experience this work fully? Why would you not want to fully enjoy the famous "gated drum" sound invented by Hugh Padgham ( of Police fame ) and Phil Collins (even if it is not "real" in the purist sense). One of the most famous 'audiophile" albums ever - Pink Floyd's DSOTM only exists as a studio engineered product by the the band and Alan Parsons and more recently re-engineered by Guthrie.

Why then would you want to choose inferior gear that colors the sound and disguises what the studio/label originally heard and issued from their facilities?

What you are proposing is akin to going to an art gallery to enjoy seeing expensive artwork with heavily tinted eye glasses with lenses that are dirty, scratched and distorted and, on top of it, asking the gallery to dim the lights too! Perhaps you prefer everything seen with a yellow or brown tint through distorting lenses with dim lighting - a pleasant atmosphere indeed - but are you actually seeing everything the artist/producer intended - what are you missing when your speakers compress the music dynamics, roll off the bass or "BBC dip" in the midrange?

MrT. It is you and other audiophiles that are missing the point when you compare recordings to 'live music' only as a reference. The fact is the recording studio is an integral part of the overall artistic product. Reproducing realistic live music is just one particular goal of audio reproduction and I enjoy it very much too but it is not the ONLY reason.

Becuase "all audio reproduction" is inherently inaccurate compared to the real live event does not negate the usefulness of accurate audio reproduction. Would you say that accuracy in eye glasses is philosophically pointless because none are quite perfect as 20/20 vision?