I’ve always felt a full drum kit and cymbals are near impossible to reproduce, I used to share flat with band. It’s the ability to simultaneously combine force and finesse with multiple textures, tempos and tones that few systems can mimic. Up close the volume and dynamics are scary, it’s why drummers are notoriously deaf.
I often tune speakers using under milk wood with Richard burton As voice is so rich and diction so perfect.
Vitus sia025, brinkman Bardot deck and nyquist dac,Boenicke w8se, Melco server, audiovalve sunilda phono, kondo Cables, lots of Stillpoints, Ess rack.
Worldwide 40 million chickens, ducks, and geese die daily for the plate, savage and wasteful.
Gabba hardcore.
Current system 1210 GR. CDP - Meridian G08. Amp -Sugden A21I - Sig. Wharfedale Lintons.
Location: Navan
Posts: 378
I'm Jo.
Good call for a thread.
I listen to recorded opera, lieder, and chamber music, and also have spent some time in the concert halls listening to the same stuff live. There's a fairly wide gulf between the two, usually in favour of real over electronically reproduced sound (though not inevitably so). In my opinion the human voice is the hardest to reproduce properly. This has been my conviction for the last couple of decades and I've spent a fair amount of money trying to progress up the hi-fi ladder pursuing a balanced set-up that did some justice to the artists and composers I was interested in. For me much of my thinking about hi-fi has been how rto educe the simulacrum effect that listening music through hi-fi seems to involve, but especially where works have one or more vocal parts. It seems to me that technology still has some way to go. Of course, those canny enough to have made better choices in what equipment they have bought, and those fortunate enough to have been able to afford more capable gear, might have more encouraging exeriences to relate.
Location: Seaford UK
Posts: 1,861
I'm Dennis.
Piano and human voice, but it is a real problem to get well recorded voice. Our survival has depended on thousands of years of detecting subtle tonal variations of voice, and so we are very well attuned to it.
It is also far easier to reproduce voice in band limited speakers like the LS 3/5a, and harder on full range ones.
Due to our need to identify the size and distance of predators and prey we are particularly sensitive to phase variations.
Vitus sia025, brinkman Bardot deck and nyquist dac,Boenicke w8se, Melco server, audiovalve sunilda phono, kondo Cables, lots of Stillpoints, Ess rack.
Worldwide 40 million chickens, ducks, and geese die daily for the plate, savage and wasteful.
Location: North Island New Zealand
Posts: 1,757
I'm Chris.
Very true, hence the whole audio path should not alter phase. We should examine minimizing phase variation where- ever possible.
Loudspeakers, and amplifiers used to drive them are often thought of straight away as changing phase due to inability of the voltage amplifier model, vs the better method of current driving of loudspeakers , but other equipment contributes as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electr...c_loudspeakers https://www.current-drive.info/
That's highly debatable. 99% of recordings are not phase-accurate and most speakers are not phase accurate and most rooms have reflections that will put sounds out of phase. If it was really an issue then almost all systems would sound rubbish.
The question should not be what is the most difficult instrument to reproduce as that is not the starting point, it should be what instrument is the most difficult to record. You've already lost some of what makes the instrument sound real at the microphone as microphones are not perfect.
Current Lash Up:
TEAC VRDS 701T > Sony TAE1000ESD > Krell KSA50S > JM Labs Focal Electra 926.
Location: Seaford UK
Posts: 1,861
I'm Dennis.
Amusingly Peter Walker stated that all loudspeakers sound terrible, but his no more so than the others. (paraphrasing).