Pubul57, really good info. Well, it sounds like you've been through a lot, and with fair comparisons. I have no necessary attachment to any technology, SS or tubes, pres or passives - its all just matter rearranged by Homo sapiens into different forms on this end - but I do have a marked desire, intuition, to simplify, so passives attract me from that vantage. I think its interesting that you would still go passive with an MP-1 sitting next to it, which as I recall, is a pretty luxurious creature. If they've come up with a passive for $135 that'll smack an MP-1, I'm all in!
I hear what you are saying about bloom, if you mean fluid, continuous projection, not a euphonic halo around the source of the projection. I guess I'm sensitive to its lack, and that's where I find the problems; its an existential, deeply buried, discontinuity that I hear. Not simply in the space or the source themselves, which, I think, individually, SS is getting much better at, but in the intra-relationship of source and space as the sound "moves."
My question is, how well does a component catalyze in the listener's mind the experience of sound, and or sound projecting, and of sound projecting in space, and of sound projecting integrally within the space around it, and of sound, at once being separate from space but also, at once, not separate, and, finally, and this has not been discussed by HP or Valin, as sound existing within a dimension. Which is what we do, being conscious and corporeal (Kant had some a priori things to say on this).
It is my position that each of these levels of perception is experienced, validated subjectively, in a progressively "deeper" part of the listening mind. If you listen at one level, then you know that level and all from where you came, and ususally deny the existence (and even, illogically, the possibility) of deeper perceptive levels. Its like being in a plane: at one height, the coast appears as a jagged line. Higher it appears smoother, but it has never been anything but the same coast during the entire ascent. The lower flier only knows one altitude; the higher flier knws that sight of the shore and all below.
And, let's be clear, its not about the mechanism, the ear. It is the mind that is listening. In this sense, the ability to hear deeper is determined by the will to do so. Most of the things we do are by action; as humans, we get somewhere by walking, cutting a tool, talking. And this is the rub with listening deeper, because listening deeper is not a function of cognicizing your way there, but of letting go of the attachment to cognicize your environment and sound, which I call, cognitive fading.
And I can prove it to you, empirically: as you begin to listen, observe your own mind. Note that as you fall deeper into the musical experience, you let go of thinking about that experience.
This is why people have different sounding stereos and why an older man like tbg can listen deeply even though his ears, as a mechanism, may be older. Same with HP, etc. It is the will to let go of one's evolutionary attachment to the action of the mind that is determinant on the depth of listening experience. So we are sure, this is not elitist; everyone is equal in their ability, it is only the will that varies.
Second point that has not been brought up by the magazine writers, and this is a bit more out there. Namely, that as you go deeper, what you are able to hear changes, i.e. knowledge perceived is depth-dependent. If you are attached to your mind's thinking, your mind is more objectively attached and looks to the world as series of objects. This level of perception produces a stereo system where objects are favored over space, which is relegated, many times to a void (stereo as statues in a void of space). At deeper levels, since the mind is at a different symmetry of perception, what is disclosed at that next level changes.
I think this may explain a phenomenon with SET's; namely, that when you first start listeing, yes, dynamics are objectively lacking. As I first sit down and look at the aural sources, being objective in my initial focus, I see this. But as I go deeper, this concern seems to fade at the same rate as the fading of my desire to cognify my experience. Dynamics do not seem insufficient onto the purpose of catalyzing my mind deeper and other variables that I did not objectively notice when I first started listening come to the fore. It is at these next levels that harmonic density and complexity, or their lack, is noticed. And then the next level, when harmonics are sufficiently accurate and natural, space comes into play. And so we search for that next piece of equipment, our stereos an instrument we are creating to catalyze progressively deeper symmetries of listening experience.
And this is also why, if you look at how are stereo language has progressed, it has moved to visual-orientated language descriptors (the objectifying mind wants to see its environment) to descriptors that describe movement (Valin's orb-action) to describing emotion in relationship to object, to (well, if they want to know, they'll have to hire me, at a greatly inflated salary to reflect the monstrous hassle of reviewing...).
And this is the next thing: we don't at first experience what is there when listeing at a new, deeper level, but rather what is not. This is why each new level is more difficult to describe, and particularly at first; because language is cognitively bounded and the more cognition is let go of, the more difficult it is later, when one is not listening and is describing, to bound the progressively deeper experience in language. Hence, the difficulty HP and others are having developing progressive lexicons of language to describe deeper experienced levels.
At the level where the lack of dimension is experienced, the experience almost becomes ineffable to the cognicizing faculties. But that doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. You live in dimension, so why shouldn't you want your stereo to replicate, catalyze your mind's experience of it, also?
F1a, I not sure that is what you wanted. Maybe you were just kidding! Sorry for the length - its hard to cut down.
Now, that should give everyone enough targets to shoot at!
