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In the Forum: Horn-Loaded Speakers
In the Thread: High End Munich 2014 impressions ....
Post Subject: Solved problemsPosted by steverino on: 6/2/2014
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 Stitch wrote:
Sometimes we have luck when we listen to a System and we can have the illusion of - more or less - pure music realism, but the majority of Systems are sophisticated hi-fi.


Well, but let's be honest, can it be so difficult to create something which touches the soul? We all know, music is in a way subjective, when it moves you, it doesn't matter what source it is. When you listen to a song in your car and you really like it, didn't you drive another round around the block just to avoid to leave the car before the song ends? Compressed radio signal, hard disc, MP3, limited frequencies but.... it can make you dream...
Why should I spend factor 1000 for something which does not move me? For something which makes me escape after 3 minutes? For something, where I think "Please Mercy!!! Stop that...I Want to go OUT !!!!"




Not to excuse the audio designers but the problem really begins in the recording studio or site. It is not as if we don't know how to make good sounding (accurate to the limit of the technology) recordings. Examples abound. Similarly we know how to build good sounding concert halls. Examples abound. If people would just be held accountable for producing good sounding recordings much of the BS of the audio business would be stillborn. It is difficult for me to assess an audio system because I have no standardized recordings to test it  (using headphones or a treated room). At best I can use pink noise to try to assess general spectral balance but that is a blunt instrument. I am not even saying that all recordings have to sound alike. It is very easy to take an audiophile recording tape and process it so it sounds compressed or has a weird frequency balance, no dynamics, spotlit frequencies etc.Then release the good recording to those who want to pay a higher price and the doctored one that sounds good on the radio or the IPod. I only know what recordings sound good on the system I play them on. When I change the system my preference can change too.

Similarly speakers are so variable that we end up with a plethora of amplifiers that all sound different to cope with the speakers. The speaker developer ideally should have an amp constructed that perfectly matches the impedance and other properties of the speaker. We are starting to see a bit of that with the headphone makers who are putting out headphone amps too. The designer who worked on some Electrostatic speakers also put out the Innersound amp to drive them. (The process described above would not prevent different preamplication components, DACS etc by the way.)

I understand the various objections to this approach which constricts mix and match and extreme optimization.  However that is a process for which an extremely small number of people are expert enough and affluent enough to pursue successfully. Most other people are lost at sea. These are the people who never get into hi-end audio currently or fall out of it Given the competition of better in-home video more people are just dropping out.

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