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Why does my laptop annoy me less than my rig?

I listen to a lot of music from the two itty bitty speakers in my PowerBook G4. And it gives me a lot of pleasure, even though it's distorted, there's no bass, and I'm missing most of the detail. Same goes for my clock radio. I like to wake up to rap. For some reason, it's amusing to greet the day with rhymed obscenities distorted and enclosed in a little piece of plastic. I also wake up to classical, and sometimes spend half an hour listening to a concerto through the clock radio before taking a shower.

Other times, of course, I listen to my main system. It's not a great system. It's called "midfi purgatory" for a reason: purgatory isn't forever, and I'm determined to buy and tweak my way into paradise. But it's still cost me a fair chunk of cash. Retail value is, um, let's see... close to $5K with stands and cables included. My clock radio was $10. So I could have bought 500 clock radios for the price of my system. (Thank God -- or Ebay -- I didn't pay retail!) And my system isn't bad for the money in any particular dimension of evaluation. It's very dynamic, bass is crisp, and pianos, as well as narrators, sound real. Certainly in any way of comparing audio system, my rig whips my clock radio (and laptop) by a ridiculous margin.

And yet... My clock radio never annoys me. Neither does my laptop. My system annoys the hell out of me! Strings can be thin and metallic, complex passages get muddled, cabinets resonate at certain frequencies if the volume is up, most music is fatiguing when played at realistic levels, and so on. I'm trying different things, of course, room treatment, swapping components, and so on. And the annoyance gets a little better, but it's still there.

I have a theory. The theory is that the clock radio is so far from realism, we just don't expect it. So there's no annoyance factor in its falling short of realism. But my system is just close enough that we really notice what's missing... that gap between our simulated acoustic instruments and those very instruments, live. Hence, the annoyance.

Analogy: HDTV on a big plasma or LCD is really cool. But I notice moving edges, and they really annoy me. In fact, in all such systems, I always notice something that isn't quite right and annoys me. The picture is much closer to just looking with the naked eye than a standard TV set is. And yet, standard TV sets don't annoy me for their lack of realism. I take them for what they are. Automatically.

I'm not about to give up on getting out of purgatory. But I wonder if my annoyance is an inevitable result of getting closer, but not quite arriving, at auditory realism. Any thoughts?
qualia8
phd
1,285 posts
 
Qualia8, I hope you don't believe that by my above post I'm promoting a Bose radio, far from it, I was being a bit sarcastic. I've never owned a Bose product however I was more or less agreeing with you & understand the concept of your comparison of a table top radio which is accepted as is, to your main rig which falls on more critical ears.

Dred, I too have gone through preamps & power amps trying to get a desired sound. It is also true that all recordings are not created equal. To switch in different components that do well with soft music & then change to components that will do rock is not practical. My solution was to use a quality preamp with tone controls, they are used sparingly. I can now play any music I want & enjoy it by adjusting the tone with my remote from my seat. Maybe not the ultimate audiophile solution but a practical one. I still have my mega-buck preamp as well but it has been put up in my closet for the time being.
qualia8 OP
49 posts
 
Dred: I have had the same experience with classic rock. I did most of my classic rock listening on my college roomate's cheap vintage setup, and it sounded great. We actually did what college roomates do and started a band doing classic rock covers. We both had massive Fender tube amps for our instruments, and naturally, that sounded great when reproduced through a tube amp. Distortion didn't really detract. It was just more of the same.

But now that I've got a really accurate setup, my classic rock stuff actually sounds worse: sterile and emotionally detached. (Current recordings by classic rock artists excepted. They sound pretty good, but still the magic is typically gone from the music. The best classic rock was made decades ago.)

And classical music recorded in the 80's seems to be thin as well. My 60's recordings are much better. Yes, there is only so much we can do on the reproduction end. A lot of the problems are on the recording end. And a versatile system, one where I could switch systems, or at least have tone controls (yikes!) would go a long way towards solving the problem.
qualia8 OP
49 posts
 
Phd:

I gotcha. One of the things that got me interested in hi-end audio was a visit to a Bose store when I was vacationing in New Hampshire/Maine and stopped in a little town for dinner with some time to kill.

An upleasant experience all around. The worst part was the in-store theatre demo. You walk into a smallish theatre. The speakers are covered with black cloth. They play a preset program, where you're supposed to hear "dramatic" and "natural" sounds. And then they lift off the black cloths to reveal tiny cube speakers. "Whoa!" you're supposed to say. All that big sound from those itty bitty speakers?

Except that I was covering my bleeding ears by that point. The sound was too bright at the top, edgy, and bulging in the lower-mid, without any real rock-solid bottom end. I was highly irritable on walking out. God, how could anyone see that demo and walk away with the system? It *was* loud, but not beautiful by any stretch of the imagination.

Knowing nothing about high-end audio, and having only positive impressions of Bose, as "an engineering company" that spent a lot on R&D, [they do have a cool electrical suspension coming out for autos] I expected really great sound. But walking out of there, I knew something was up. Marketing was way too slick. And I had no way to compare Bose to other systems, similarly priced. This got me thinking...

I still don't know how to react when friends brag to me about their recent Bose purchase. "Yeah, I got the Acoustimass blah blah blah." I try to find the positive: "Well, they do have a nice digital eq for room compensation." But I'm just dying to tell them how much better they could have done for the money, especially buying used on A'gon.
phd
1,285 posts
 
Hi Qualia8, it is true that some folks are satisfied with a Bose system maybe because the importance of the ultimate two channel system don't appeal to them. Or in our way of thinking they just don't know what they are missing.

True audiophiles actually represent a small segment of the population & it is difficult for them to understand why the majority of Americans can be satisfied with a Circuit City system, & why they don't put alot of emphasis here. I have a local friend here that is a videophile. He has come over to my house & listened to my two channel system & thought it sounded spectacular but because he loves his movies, that is where he puts his money. I hear things like when can we get together & watch a good movie, there is nothing like a good movie to take your troubles away. I will never get it although I do like to watch movies on occasions but music first.

Further my current use of a preamp with equalization I know is not an audiophile thing. Most preamps with tone controls are considered midfi or less. But I have recognized there are some pretty good ones out there that incorporate tone controls that have a limited effect on the overall sound quality. How long I can live with this setup I don't know but I will still keep my state of the art preamp just in case.
qualia8 OP
49 posts
 
If you don't mind my asking, Phd, what sort of preamp (with controls) are you using?
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