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In Reply to: RE: The difficulty with that would be... posted by Neil49 on November 20, 2015 at 13:02:20
Where I come from, money is referred to as "green aspirin." Ultimately people who manufacture and sell stuff have to make money to stay in business. They take what they can get for their products. For audiophiles who spend thousands on power cords coming up with a fist full of hundreds should be no problem. For a guy with a factory and bills to pay it's a life preserver.
Follow Ups:
I'm curious, where do internet trolls come from?
Why, everyone knows internet trolls come from under LAN bridges....
Cerebrate!
I don't know where internet trolls come from but I'm going to take a wild guess and it is only a guess. I'd guess some of them come from the ranks of reviewers who have more than a cozy relationship with manufacturers of equipment they review. I'm not casting aspersions on any individual, I have no evidence, and I don't mean all reviewers, but I get suspicious of people whose reviews rarely if ever find fault with anything or sugar coat them when they do. Are there such a things as insider pricing? Of course there are, I knew enough influential people in the "audiophile community" who got them. It's true in many professions including my own. I make it a policy to avoid getting insider prices on the same brands I recommend to people who hire me so I often settle for less than the best available. Many people get discounts from their employers on the products they manufacture or sell. That's normal. You have to trust to the integrity of reviewers whose opinions you value. If it is ever found out they got special favors they'd lose all credibility so they have an incentive not to. Yet there are always people who take bribes feeling they'll never get caught. Happens all the time that they do and it ruins them.
...but there are a few honest, decent people here, even reviewers.
.
I do believe that. I just don't believe for the most part they are anymore qualified to render an opinion than anyone else. This even goes for manufacturers including ones I know personally. Other than the fact that they have reviewed a lot of equipment in the past, I don't see what makes their opinions more valid than other peoples'. JA himself admitted in an interview on Home Theater Geeks that he could not distinguish the sound of a recording he made of a Steinway piano and the piano itself when much of his audience could. He seemed in the interview to be puzzled by the whole thing. That's not to say he isn't honest, in fact I have no reason to believe he isn't. However these reviewers seem to me to use other audio equipment as their reference rather than live unamplified (real) music. Their familiar relationship with manufacturers and the concession prices they can get products for gives me reason to wonder if their opinions are influenced even subconsciously by that. I don't know, but in some cases it might. I'm not pointing a finger at Stereophile Magazine either, I'm speaking in broad generalities about all reviewers. In Wine Spectator Magazine, at least as it once was, a panel sits in a room, someone brings in open bottles of wine in brown paper bags so the tasters can't see the labels, they are told the generic type of wine, and they write their reviews not knowing anymore about them including the price. That seems like a more reliable way to get an accurate assessment.
...audio reviewers and wine reviewers are no better at rendering an opinion of what I might like than anyone else.However, they have more experience at critical listening and critical tasting than most everyone else - so I value their opinions to help me decide what to try to find out what may suit my tastes.
I dislike buying wine without tasting it and I would never buy an expensive audio component without listening to it.
And I can give you numerous examples of WS reviews that were way off base.
Edits: 11/28/15
Most good wine stores have tasting sessions where one can sample a variety of wines, usually if i cannot get to taste , i generally choose the prettiest label and bottle from my region of choice ...
Same for Audio .... :)
Go Rossi ......
JA himself admitted in an interview on Home Theater Geeks that he could not distinguish the sound of a recording he made of a Steinway piano and the piano itself when much of his audience could. He seemed in the interview to be puzzled by the whole thing.
Return to about the 31:00 mark and he clearly explains that while tonality and amplitude are similar, the reproduced sound lacks the "bigness". He goes on to speculate about the relative pressure differences when a small diaphragm must reproduce the same level as one far larger.
I find that apparent image size is quite important to my perception of live music. And why I favor tall line sources instead of mini monitors. :)
> > JA himself admitted in an interview on Home Theater Geeks that he could
> > not distinguish the sound of a recording he made of a Steinway piano and
> > the piano itself when much of his audience could. He seemed in the
> > interview to be puzzled by the whole thing.
>
> Return to about the 31:00 mark and he clearly explains that while tonality
> and amplitude are similar, the reproduced sound lacks the "bigness". He
> goes on to speculate about the relative pressure differences when a small
> diaphragm must reproduce the same level as one far larger.Thanks for correcting the poster on his miscomprehension of what I actually
said. I also wrote about this experience at the link below, describing
the difference between the live and recorded sounds of the piano as
"The Esoteric-CAT-Vivid-Stealth system got right not only the tone colors
of the real thing, but, to my surprise, also both the loudness and the
microdynamics. The transients were sufficiently spiky, and the impact of
the recorded piano was as viscerally overwhelming, as the real things
had been...However, as pleased as I was with both the recording and the
playback system, the 'bigness' of the 9' Steinway had been diminished.
Even with the same tone colors and sound-pressure level, the instrument
and the loudspeakers were exciting the room very differently.Sadly, this mistaken idea that I couldn't hear any difference between the
two presentations seems to be gaining currency :-(
John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Edits: 11/24/15
Says alot about the vivid speakers (and setup) John, if it captured that much of 9'Grand...
MJ, may switch gears and speakers .. :)
Go Rossi ......
When we reasonably disagree, let us at least accurately state the position to which we do.
As you might imagine, I disagree with your perspective on the realism of large panel speakers vs. small point sources. In that same HT Geek video, you opined that a panel speaker reproducing a solo flute would necessarily "get it all wrong".
My feeling is that is determined by the miking technique. While I understand your reasoning behind using a close technique for the live vs. recorded experiences in both the HT Geek video and the link in your last post, I aver that such is unnatural when the intended playback environment is one's home environment. Isn't that the target for recorded music?
When the miking does include the hall's sound and is not IN YOUR FACE, then I find that all instruments consume their relative space in the soundfield. And yes, I like that soundfield to span both the height and (exceed the) width of my room. You also commented on voices and a comment by Bob Stuart? concerning speakers the width of the human head. Similarly, with my large stats, I find that with well miked recordings, voices "float" in front of me in a natural perspective. There are definitely very closely miked examples where you feel like you're looking down their throat, but I don't optimize my system for those examples.
For me, getting a realistic image size is essential to fooling my senses that I am actually in a live space. Another more subtle aspect concerns line sources vs. point sources. I find that the sound of live music does fall off more gradually than a point source's log scale. One of the most compelling aspects of the large Sound Lab speakers is that the sound field changes very little as a walk around my room . In front of them. In back of them. Sitting down. Standing up. Near. Far. There's no need to set my listening position at "tweeter height". The result is very natural to these ears.
Perhaps that is my way of communicating what you observed in the linked article:
"Even with the same tone colors and sound-pressure level, the instrument and the loudspeakers were exciting the room very differently.
...succeeded in every sonic parameter but one: the intensity of the original sound. Intensity, defined as the sound power per unit area of the radiating surface. "
A natural ease?
I can agree and concur on the added benefits as you described when using a large linesource dipole vs that of a point source box speaker.
Unfortunately large width type panels dont do small as well as they do big and last but not least , their artificial fast decay in the bass/midbass region, does let them down some what, panel lovers like to use the axiom "speed" in describing said deficiency..
Apart from that good stuff... Yeah. :)
Go Rossi ......
Edits: 11/24/15
Whatever. While the diaphragm's mass is less than the air around them, they don't accelerate the air!
What you call "artificial fast decay" I call lack of hangover.
Ok, we disagree, pass the wine .......... :)
Go Rossi ......
n
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