Valve sound versus solid state...

[Marco]

Reading the lastest on pfm, I couldn't help but giggle (rather uncontrolably) at this from 'Bourney', an ex-customer of Mr Dunn's and the person whose comments he was referring to when starting the thread:

I am sure you can see i dont take things personal and i dont take hifi that serious either.its just for fun.i only listen to music for fun and to make me sing along and to lighten my mood, distract or relax me, i have no deeper technical interest in music I am afraid. i dont care about interaction wth musicians, the sound of the cleaner in the next studio or the acoustics of the hall it was recorded in, i only care if i like the song and if my stereo can play it without it interfering with me hearing it how i like to hear it, coloured or not.

However as an afterthought to the above, you made it personally directed at me by saying that ` i dont get it' and it is my posts that initiated you starting the thread....and thats fine. i do however recall you saying very recently that you liked my attitude to music and hifi, whereas you dont seem to feel the same way since i chose to stick with my valve amps

Hahahaha... Et Voilà! The agenda, exposed in all its glory... Priceless!

I don't think any further comment on the subject is needed. One wonders why Tony allows it the bandwidth. Incidentally, I totally agree with Bourney's remarks here:

i only listen to music for fun and to make me sing along and to lighten my mood, distract or relax me, i have no deeper technical interest in music I am afraid.

That pretty much sums me up, too, and why I rarely engage in lengthy and often painfully dull 'intellectual dissertations' about music, seemingly popular and considered de rigueur by the cognoscenti before being officially labelled as a 'genuine music lover'. I would never claim to have the diverse musical knowledge of, say, Beechy, Chris, John or Snapper, but I bet that I enjoy listening to it and derive as much pleasure from it as they do!

Perhaps *that* is why some of us ('bottle heads', or 'sandboys') don't always describe differences in music when using hi-fi equipment with the panache of a musician or 'music geek', despite listening to it and enjoying it daily. And for those of you who consider yourself as a "music geek", I use the term with no offence intended - far from it, I would love to have your knowledge

Why does everything have to be so 'black and white' for some people? Absolutism is the root cause of so much that is wrong with hi-fi and the enjoyment of music, and as such has much to answer for!

Enjoying recorded music has got bugger all to do with the type equipment we use or how much we love music or 'sound', but rather *how* we listen to music, what we derive from it in an emotive sense, and what stimulates our brain. How 'seriously' we take the analysing and deconstructing of it - or indeed whether we're interested in doing that at all, or obtaining a historic and encyclopaedic knowledge of a multitude of artists and genres, has no bearing on our 'status' as a music lover. Human behaviour isn't that simple!

I suspect that for many of us, what Bourney describes above is all that's needed for our choice of music to hit the spot nicely, without some futile attempt at analysing the performance of our amplifiers (valve or 'sand') with the predilections of a trained musician.

In summary, Mr Dunn wants to neatly pidgeonhole valve and ss users into categories which suit his (commercial) preferences as a designer of 'sand amps' in order to justfy his beliefs and convince himself that he is 'right', which sadly demonstrates more than a little insecurity to accompany his already narcissistic tendencies.

Marco.

[The Grand Wazoo]

That pretty much sums me up, too, and why I rarely engage in lengthy and often painfully dull 'intellectual dissertations' about music, seemingly popular and considered de rigueur by the cognoscenti before being officially labelled as a 'genuine music lover'. I would never claim to have the diverse musical knowledge of, say, Beechy, Chris, John or Snapper, but I bet that I enjoy listening to it and derive as much pleasure from it as they do!

Marco,

You should reach unheard of pleasure levels when listen to the albums that are currently ambling their way to you (faster than a speeding pullet courtesy of the Royal Mail). This will be the case whether you listen to them through valves or solid state - guaranteed!!

PS Still waiting to read your reply to: Analysis Paralysis http://theartofsound.net/forum/showthread.php?t=2739

[Marco]

Nice one, Chris. I look forward to their arrival and will report in the music room after listening.

I can't promise that it will all be 'musical' observations, though!! According to the 'cognoscenti', as a valve amp user I'm not allowed to be into music.........

PS Still waiting to read your reply to: Analysis Paralysis http://theartofsound.net/forum/showthread.php?t=2739

Sorry; I had forgotten all about that. I promise I'll get to it later

Marco.

[Ali Tait]

Valve amps ROOL!!!

[The Grand Wazoo]

I can't promise that it will all be 'musical' observations, though!! According to the 'cognoscenti', as a valve amp user I'm not allowed to be into music......... .

Marco

I remember a salesman & a group of his acolytes pouring scourn & derision in a very vicious way, and in public, upon me because I had the temerity to make the observation that I didn't think the gear he was demonstrating conveyed much of a sense of a soundstage.

I walked away vowing never to put a penny in certain people's pockets (dealers & manufacturers), leaving them tittering to themselves - they no doubt went back to tapping their feet in a highly rhythmic manner. Now that is SALESMANSHIP!!

I can't help wondering why certain manufacturers bother to sell speakers in pairs if "a soundstage is irrelevant" - their words...........ho hum

[Steve Toy]

It has been said that talking [writing] about music is like dancing about architechture.

Enough said, although talking about music is fine in the section allocated to this particular purpose.

Specific references to music programme in hi-fi reviewing are useful but not essential.

[The Grand Wazoo]

It has been said that talking [writing] about music is like dancing about architechture.

Enough said, although talking about music is fine in the section allocated to this particular purpose.

Specific references to music programme in hi-fi reviewing are useful but not essential.

Specific references are only meaningful when they are used to elaborate a point.

Alternatively, it is of course very useful when the reader intimately knows the recording being used and their system has the same shortcomings as the writer's system had before. (I don't know...........something like a hump in the mid-bass perhaps............? .....ahem!)

That's all fine as far as it goes, but it leads to things like every exhibitor in a show using the same album - Dark Side of the Moon, anyone.....Dire Straits, for God's sake............

The ultimate conclusion is that you only listen to what makes your system sound 'good' and that's not what a hi-fi is for is it?

A few quotes from Frank Zappa are called for here.....

'Everybody believes in something and everybody, by virtue of the fact that they believe in something, uses that something to support their own existence'.

'One of my favorite philosophical tenets is that people will agree with you only if they already agree with you. You do not change people's minds'.


And this, I feel is kind of relavent to digital music -
'The computer can't tell you the emotional story. It can give you the exact mathematical design, but what's missing is the eyebrows'.

[Marco]

Everybody believes in something and everybody, by virtue of the fact that they believe in something, uses that something to support their own existence

I like that - how true! I think that Mr Dunn should acknowledge that he comes into this category with regard to his choice of hi-fi equipment the same as anyone else!

Specific references are only meaningful when they are used to elaborate a point.

I completely agree, Chris. In that context they can be extremely meaningful, but *only* if someone else knows the piece of music being referred to as intimately as the person making the reference - and that is far from always the case. Otherwise, they are virtually meaningless.

I find this particularly true when people use Classical music as a reference, which is something I rarely listen to. My eyes glaze over, as they may as well be talking about Champagne than Chopin.

I think all we can do when describing equipment in relation to music or 'sound' is write what's genuine and comes from the heart - and hope that someone else relates to it in the way we do, rather than attempting to analyse the relationship between music and hi-fi through the eyes of Karajan.

Marco.

[The Grand Wazoo]

There's another quotation that I love which is particularly apt here. It goes something like:

'If the only tool that you have is a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail'
(Abraham Maslow).

I used to use it quite a lot in reference to the foreign policies of a certain Mr Bush!

Yours open mindedly
Chris

[MartinT]

I find this particularly true when people use Classical music as a reference, which is something I rarely listen to. My eyes glaze over, as they may as well be talking about Champagne than Chopin.

I agree only to a point. If you describe to me the sound of a system using, say, big band music my eyes may well glaze over too, but you could still impart useful information about the acoustic, dynamics, stereo staging etc. that I could understand. When I describe my system using classical music as a reference, I do try to confer a general idea of performance rather than just wax lyrical over the music, which I understand has minority interest.

By the way, when a friend wants to listen to my system I usually suggest they bring their own music. However, I will always play them one classical piece as I believe it brings more understanding about performance but, more importantly, it often generates a surprising interest in what I'm playing. Classical just doesn't register on people's horizons but it doesn't mean there isn't latent interest waiting to be piqued.