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The shortcomings of 'high-end' sound

Posted by njjohn (A) on March 3, 2007 at 15:06:46

I'm a trying to clear up a room here and so I am playing these very good otl amps with these speakers (VMPS RM2's) to see if I want to haul them downstairs to the basement and put them in storage. Well the sound is so good that I decided not too.

So now I am trying to understand the difference between this sound/set-up and a 300b parallel amp with Galante Symphony speakers.

Otl's are about as clear as you can get. They have great tone, the sound is great. Airy yet can be penetrating. Notes are real nice. There's not much wrong with high-end, it can be very good.

The sound is still a little bit over there by the speakers. It doesn't float into the room towards the listener. There is a tad of seperation between the music and the listener. But it is still engaging to some extent and it just presents the whole of the music very nice. Instruments are seperate and clear. I could certainly live with it. It is excellent especially if you don't know other possibilities.

The parallel 300b is a John Hogan amp. It has vintage transformers.

The sound is way more hard-hitting. The horns and instruments now have a sound that can blow you away. Picture yourself in a subbasement jazz club with a table right in front of the band and the musicians are in an hypnotic trance. The horns are blowing away and they're all off in whatever space they go in.

I'm not really a jazz fan going to hear jazz in Lincoln Center or Carneigie Hall. I'm a jazz fan in these NYC subbasements where music can be transformational. I'm not a rock fan in Madison Square Garden. Give me a smaller space like the defunct Fillmore East or smaller. Music in the right settings is not nice: it's powerful.

We have to start looking at these other variables. Thrust, impact, etc..

If that is what a little distortion does, or if that is what happens when sound bounces around the walls of a small performance space, and some opts and stuff can pick it up or mimic it, then we need to look at it to get to the total experience of sound/music.

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