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January 23, 2010 - 7:17am
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How does your system sound?
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With any luck it will never happen, and you will remain blessed for the rest of your listening life.
Your 'bright' is not my bright...
Your 'huge' is not my huge...
Worse, your transparent gets upgraded when you actually hear...'transparent'!
Enjoy your system and music and forgettaboutit.
Actually i think you should borrow your system to someone like me for a year and ill be happy to describe how it sounds !!!
Not a chance,I'd rather borrow you my wife!
Can she cook ??
She cooks a mean pot noodle!
That's a good question and why reviewers do not get the respect for their experience that they deserve. Many people have a very limited amount of experience with various gear combinations from which to identify sonic differences...not to mention those with a passion for live music. However, those same people are mighty quick to take a reviewer to task for rendering an opinion...a very informed opinion.
My advice is to aquire several high quality recordings and become very familiar with them. Use them for every audition of changes within your system. Chesky used to offer a disc called, "The ultimate Demonstration Disc." It's at least a starting point for identifying the particulars, but there's no substitute for experimentation with different gear and living with it until it tells you what it sounds like.
the chesky disk is a great tool for evaluating how ones system sounds. The LEDR test(on the Jazz/Classical demo 1?) is a particularly useful tool.
Thanks for the advice, I'm in it for the long haul so I guess there will be plenty of time develop an ear.
Where does one acquire a Chesky test disc?
At www.chesky.com
or www.amazon.com
Look for "Ultimate Demonstration Disc" and "Jazz Sampler and Audiophile Test Disc." There are several to choose from.
Thanx for that link, not much for me there but they got
Rachmaninoff and Wagner. So I consider them for a future purchase.
Now where the heck is my vinyl with Gustav Holst the Planets? Most likely in a box in the basement - and walks down to find it.
The only meaning it really has is in comparison to other "well thought out systems" if that makes sense. There certainly is a lot of personal preference but over time you'd find your system fit somewhere is a spectrum between (usually tubes) a Warm/Golden/Lush/Mellow sounding system and perhaps the other end: Revealing/Detailed/Tight/Crisp/Neutral (usually Solid State). Usually the more you side with one end or the other you start thinking the opposite side is WRONG. I find either extreme too much, and I'd say my taste these days is Mid-Neutral leaning toward warm.
I have a powerful and pretty neutral Krell integrated, but my TT/cart/phono-amp (Well_tempered TT with all the rest Grado) and even my CD player (Rega) are all more on the warm, natural side. My speakers are relatively neutral too, but not at all bright or hard (Pro-Ac). I used to want much more mellow gear but as I've gotten a bit older I've wanted gear more in the middle (my ears are still good though and I still hate anything to bright).
In the end, it IS useful to have some idea of what it all means, or reading audio magazines won't tell you much because you have no point of reference. But I wouldn't dwell on it too much.
I must admit to being deeply envious of hifi reviewers auditioning all that equipment, but without a point of reference it would be for me meaningless!:)
If I have to listen to classical, I've always preferred the Haitink version.