What is the art of sound?

[Yiangos]

Personally,i fall into cat.1 and 4. A combination of all categories would be great only is the software was good and let me elaborate on this.Yesterday and the day before,i decided to re-arrange my system to see which component to use and which to get rid.
What i found is,when i listen to a good recording(any kind of music.Classical,rock etc),with my system at least,i feel as if i am in heaven.When the recording is bad,i feels like sh.... lol I am not a die hard vinyl-o-phile but at least,when an lp is badly recorded is listenable but with a cd.....well,that is a different story.

[Steve Toy]

Hi Yiangos, (do you have a first name btw?)

Your post has made me look back on this thread started a year ago and I've realised just how much my own system has changed over that time. I've changed every component in it and gone all-valves on my amplification. What I've got now is a system that seems to deliver on all four fronts at the same time as not being so brutally revealing as to trash less-than-perfect recordings.

It's amazing what a good linear power supply can do for a CD player too. Thse kind of upgrades give you more detail and better dynamics at the same time as making poorer recordings more listenable not less. How can this be so?

I've come to realise that a good musical system simply does not trash bad recordings for it doesn't exaggerate sibilance or top-end harshness. One combination of kit I tried at home just over a year ago included two big-hitting (expensive) transistor pre/power amps from two different manufacturers. A decent recording was breathtaking but poorer recordings were unlistenable. The reason for this is the fact that this was one grainy mutha of a combination. I guess at this point the valve seed began to germinate in my head. Why go for "valve-like" solid state when reallly, only valves will do?

[Yiangos]

Hi Steve

Yiangos is my first name btw and before i forget,i want you and everyone else to excuse my English unless you want me to post Greek ! lol yeah,i thought so rotfl. Steve,i know what you mean but here in Cyprus,only the last 10 years you could find a serious hi-fi shop and believe me when i say the owner and stuff don't know anything about hi-fi !
I bought my first hi-fi (well,sort of hi-fi) at the age of 13.Akai receiver/cassette deck Akai loudspeakers and a Goldring/Lenco turntable/arm/cartridge combination.A GL something,don't remember.Ever since (i am 50 now)i am in my fifth system.I only upgrade when it is needed and usually the whole system.I bought my previous system in 1985 and kept it for almost 13 years.I had to purchase a new one only when i blew the drivers on one loudspeaker and couldn't find replacements (TDL RS). I concider myself a music lover with a taste for good equipment not a die hard audiophile who instead of listening to music,tries to find fault in his system and is on a constandly "upgrade mode"
I read a lot of hi-fi mags although i don't believe anything reviewers say.For my,hi-fi mags os like sci-fi.You read for entertainment and because is my hobby and i would like to make an adition here.Although i am into what you'd call "high end" regarding audio and i am a subscriber to "The Absolute sound","Stereophile","hi-fi news","hi-fi plus" and 4-5 others magazines,the only one i really enjoy reading is "Hi-Fi World" and if i ever decide to quit reading hi-fi mags but keep only one,that would be.
Regarding valves now.Remember,i am from Cyprus.If i ever want to get involved into valves,i would have to travel to UK,spend a considerable time visiting shops,listening to equipment etc and if something goes wrong (not rare with valve equipment)i would have to ship them back to UK for repair. Mind you,i am not against valves.I haven;t had the chance to valve equipment but i think you guys are crazy.You must know something we, solid-staters,don't,the same way,we,vinyl addicts,know a few things cd users don't !

[Steve Toy]

Sorry about that Yiangos. I didn't pick up on the fact that English was your second language (it's that good) and therefore didn't pick up on the origin of your name.

As for valve amp reliability they are pretty good when screwed together correctly. The valves themselves just turn up in the post, hopefully unbroken, in little brown boxes as and when required.

As for Hi-fi World David Price posts here on the odd occasion and if you look at page 8 of the December 08 edition, we are in there!

[Yiangos]

No problem Steve.As for valve gear,one day Steve,one day....

[Tony G]

A lot of interesting thoughts here.
The proposed categorisations, which I see as aspects of emphasis in system selection, can certainly be illustrated from my own experience.
Most notably, when upgrading my speakers nearly 2 years ago.
I was fortunate to be able to audition 1 of the potential contenders in my own system for some time with a view to purchase.
The other contender was an unheard, import only proposition, roughly price equivalent.
Not perhaps a complete unknown as I owned a lower model in the range at the time and a higher model using the same driver was exceptionally well reviewed by a tntaudio writer with whom I share an affinity of tastes in reproduction.
The speakers in question had received very good press and for more than a week I was very taken with them, they mated well with my amplifier, made everything sound great, tremendous sense of scale, not quite as dominating of my living space as the ones I eventually bought.
They definitely covered the first two aspects and were not remiss in the fourth.
Until I stopped being in the first flush of love and heard what they were missing, then followed a week of tinkering to see if the problem was elsewhere, I set up a switchbox to switch between them and my then current speakers to check what I was hearing and finally decided that what I was noticing was the compromises that had been made in the design to achieve their design goals.
I still find it a mystery why a speaker with a nominal sensitivity very similar to what I am using now should not reproduce the micro detail I hear now.
Be that as it may, I reluctantly returned them to the dealer with recompense for his trouble in delivering and picking them up again, feeling that it was only proper to do so and also that it was a cheap letoff.
Those speakers have now gone to a home where they are loved, but they were not for me, much as the effortless sense of scale was intoxicating.
I then went through the import thing and after nearly 2 years am constantly delighted with what I hear, yes they are ruthlessly revealing, yes they do not do the bottom octave and I may add bass augmentation at some time but at present, for most of what I listen to and the comfort of my neighbours, they are more than adequate.
Quality of bass, for me, exceeds quantity for most music. They have also proved an excellent system tuning tool.
Enough illustrative digression.
I would propose, and it is covered in various ways earlier in this thread, rather two categories, the first resolution and the second re-presentation.
The first being the ability of the system to retrieve the recorded information and the second its ability to faithfully re present (as in present again) that information.
I expect this is similar to what Marco is referring to as accuracy and feel it most closely resembles category the third, though it embraces the other 3.
I do not set out to find problems with the re-presentation of my system, but should some particular distortion intrude upon the music, then I will embark on tinkering and tweaking to ascertain its source and if possible resolution.
Whilst improved fidelity has often revealed recordings to be less than might be desired, the balance of improved sounding recordings is very favourable and the improvement made by some changes been much greater than expected.
An example here would be the improvement to the performance of the DL-103 after changing from a cheap SUT to an active headamp, another, a particular distortion in vocals on a couple of recordings eliminated after using Mr Yips protractor and painstakingly realigning my cartridge.
The results of the above 2 examples, improved information retrieval for the latter and harm minimisation in the former, resulting in more accurate re presentation, instead of a screech of massed violins there are individual violins, instead of one singer there is a backing singer and some studio reverb.
If the information is retrieved with accuracy in the time domain and re presented with phase coherence then I think tunefulness and all else will/can be re presented given a minimum damage amplification chain and suitable output transducers.
I think that is enough of an essay.

[Steve Toy]

I would propose, and it is covered in various ways earlier in this thread, rather two categories, the first resolution and the second re-presentation.

I think with this we essentially end up with a Flat/Round Earth dichotomy. This is no bad thing but for the fact that many associate Flat Earth with certain brands of hi-fi rather than with a state of listening.

Flat Earth is about coherent retrieval of detail - communication. Round Earth is about presentation - speaker/room interraction, bass slam, scale, shimmering highs, air and space, big soundstaging etc.

A decent system does the lot but "shimmering highs," for example, need to reproduce the rhythm of the high hat rather than just a softened tizz with the sibilance stripped out.

Where there are obvious compromises to be made, communication comes before presentation for me.

[Tony G]

Thanks for your thoughts Steve.
As a latecomer to hifi discussion and not UK resident, I am only peripherally aware of all the to & fro associated with the nomenclature of "flat earth" and "round earth".
I had gathered that there was some association with adherents of certain manufacturers products.
In some respects it would seem that my preferences mirror your own, given that I am happy to do without bass response "flat to 20Hz" in favour of being able to "hear the walls" in the concert hall or studio.
To me though it is all yin and yang, the breathing in and breathing out of the universe, the one becoming the other, opposite but not opposed, holistic and complementary.

Addendum some time later,
it is certainly not my intention to aggravate old wounds and schisms or restart wars of which I have no knowledge. Please forgive me, if, in my ignorance of such historical matters, I may have seemed to be doing so. It is only my desire to deepen my own understanding of the issues involved and partake in some sort of discussion thereon, that prompts me to post. I have seen enough already of interminable and pointless argument in other places where the primary issue is lost in the clamour to "prove" who is right and obversely who is therefore "wrong".
I find it all acrimonious and unwelcoming and I get the impression that those here feel similarly.

[MartinT]

I fall firmly into believing that a well-rounded system is capable of both the communication (foot-tapping, rhythm, dynamics, slam etc.) and presentation (width, height, depth, focus, detail, transparency) capabilities. One or the other of the extremes (e.g. Naim electronics or SET valves) just don't do it for me. I also believe in wide bandwidth, which usually translates into large speakers. I can't be listening to full orchestral music on stand-mounters.

Just all my personal preferences.

[aquapiranha]

I just like whatever does the job to the level I require. for the moment that is valves and full range drivers. This may change if I can better things within my budget.