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Re: More HE2002 pix at....

some people have pointed out that aspects of my show commentary seems questionable. i welcome the criticisms and would like to make a couple comments, not so much in my defense but just to clarify.

i respect Steve's position on not commenting on the sound at shows. the fact that i do comment doesn't mean i think his points aren't valid, they indeed are. room acoustics, setup conditions, etc. etc. can all change the sound of a system dramatically. however, i don't think this should discourage us from describing what we hear. if you don't believe my comments are useful then you can ignore them, in which case my report provides just as much information as the "objective" ones which provide only names and prices. however i think a good number of people are curious as to what others thought of the sound, and that is why i comment on it.

it goes without saying that my impressions are highly subjective, and especially given the show conditions, should be taken with a good grain of salt. but i don't think the fact that a system is part of a show exhibit should be an excuse for poor sound. it's a cop-out to completely avoid passing judgement on sound quality and let exhibitors off the hook. as bad as the conditions may be, they are not impossibly bad and exhibitors should be more than capable of putting together a system that sounds at least decent, particularly when the prices are in the tens, even hundreds of thousands. the fact that some systems DID sound fantastic, and often with very reasonable price tags, is proof of this.

i know a lot of people will take issue with my criticism of tube gear. given that the majority of rooms seemed to be using tubes of some sort, there is no doubt as to their popularity with audiophiles. however, i stand by my assertion that many - not all - but many tube components are colored. take this into account: when walking down a hallway at the show, before even looking into the room or even seeing the name of the exhibitors, i could instantly say "sounds like they're using tubes" just by the sound coming out of the room. and every single time, i was right. i can hear tubes from a mile away. they have a slightly nasal quality, with a higher amount of harmonic distortion that interferes with the timbre and harmonic structure of many acoustic instruments. i was a violinist for many years and had constant exposure to all sorts of different instruments (e.g. hours of orchestra rehearsals every week for several years). i know what an oboe or a clarinet or a trumpet sound like, and to me many tube components interfere with the fundamental tonal quality of the instrument.

again, this is not to say i hate all tubes. in fact, one of my first amps was a Conrad Johnson MV-45, and i loved it. i've listened to a variety of tube equipment and thought many of them sounded excellent. there are definitely aspects of reproduction that tubes excel in, and i appreciate those qualities. my problem is not so much with the tubes themselves as the products using them. too many of them seem to tailor the sound to what people want to hear; many people have referred to this as tube "euphonics." whatever you want to call it, it is not accurate to me, and tends to impart a similar quality to all recordings heard through them - a "coloration." that said, i thought some tube gear sounded very neutral and didn't exhibit these colorations to the same degree - the Kora gear comes to mind. again, it depends on the component, but it seems that a lot of tube gear is tuned to sound colored in this manner. maybe it's what some people want to hear, but not i.

another person wondered how i could make the distinction between the sound of different components in a given system. this is much harder to defend, and i will admit that a great deal of intuition (and maybe even a little foolishness) comes into play when making such a bold assertion as "the amp in this system had flabby bass." this is how i see it though: different types of components have different types of colorations. when i say bass is flabby due to a tube amp, it is because i sense a general warmness and bloom that extends from the lower midrange down to the midbass. this can be due to the speaker, but usually it sounds very different when the speaker is at fault. there is an audible difference between high mechnical Q (speaker) and electrical Q (amp), among other things. the ability to capture transients is also very different between electronics and speakers. in general, mechanical time constants are much longer than electrical ones, so the quality of transient response of an amp and speaker are quite different things. i could go on and on, but it is difficult for me to describe and i'm not sure my argument will be very convincing anyway. i can only say that empirically i've been able to ascertain the different sonic qualities of components in a system fairly accurately. a lot of this simply comes from experimentation over the years.

in any case, i'm babbling far too much now. thanks again for everyone's comments; apart from the slightly snide tone of one of them i appreciate them, negative or positive. your thoughts will help me shape my show report for Bound for Sound into something hopefully informative and entertaining for our readers.

cheers,
marc


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