In a recent closed thread of mine ' A Balanced View, Can You Handle It', I didn't articulate my thoughts very well, although a few got it.
With the visit last weekend to the Cape Town Hi-Fi Club's speaker shootout meet, my thoughts formed a little better.
My opinion : We all listen to music differently and by extension expect/want different things from it.
An example : In the meet, although all the technical specs - flat frequency response, slopes, distortion, etc on certain speaker pairs was discussed, tested, etc, there were aberrations in the final listening that was acceptable to some and not to others. Many valid technical reasons, measurements and opinions were given. However, to me very little was pursued in depth of the actual instruments played.
On Allan Taylor's 'Colour Of The Moon', the title track, right in the beginning there is Chime being struck with a decent initial attack, then you can hear a sold body forming followed by a long decay. We heard this track many, many times with most of the speaker combinations played. There was some debate at one point and there were opinions formed as to what instrument it was, a Triangle, a bell ? None of us guessed it was a chime.
It was far removed from the actual instrument. This has bothered me no end this week. Tone and timbre, among other things are critical to me, i.e. the voice/instrument should have a close approximation of the real thing.Whether it's solid state, valves, headphones, etc, that gives me this, that's what I want.
Have you experienced this? Thoughts?
With the visit last weekend to the Cape Town Hi-Fi Club's speaker shootout meet, my thoughts formed a little better.
My opinion : We all listen to music differently and by extension expect/want different things from it.
An example : In the meet, although all the technical specs - flat frequency response, slopes, distortion, etc on certain speaker pairs was discussed, tested, etc, there were aberrations in the final listening that was acceptable to some and not to others. Many valid technical reasons, measurements and opinions were given. However, to me very little was pursued in depth of the actual instruments played.
On Allan Taylor's 'Colour Of The Moon', the title track, right in the beginning there is Chime being struck with a decent initial attack, then you can hear a sold body forming followed by a long decay. We heard this track many, many times with most of the speaker combinations played. There was some debate at one point and there were opinions formed as to what instrument it was, a Triangle, a bell ? None of us guessed it was a chime.
It was far removed from the actual instrument. This has bothered me no end this week. Tone and timbre, among other things are critical to me, i.e. the voice/instrument should have a close approximation of the real thing.Whether it's solid state, valves, headphones, etc, that gives me this, that's what I want.
Have you experienced this? Thoughts?
