Quote Originally Posted by Macca View Post
You have to be wary of a falling into the trap of blaming a bad sound, or a 'souless' sound on some particular aspect without due investigation.
Yup, absolutely right. But when you repeatedly hear the same thing again and again, from the 'usual suspects', at various different venues over the years, and in the company of different equipment, it sends out a message that simply can't be ignored.

Also, aside from anything I've heard at shows, I've had considerable experience of listening to some of the gear I'm referring to in home systems, some of which belong to friends, systems I know well, and so can accurately judge what's doing what - and more often than not it has the type of presentation I've described.

The reason why my system works the way it does, which you referred to earlier, is precisely because I've married the best bits of old and new technology, and it took me a long time to 'get' what that was about, what was wrong with a lot of stuff being made now, and why the sound produced by much of it was very disappointing.

The fact is, we've gone sideways or backwards much more in audio than forwards, and thus made little *real* progress, in the area that matters most (getting equipment to sound less like 'hi-fi' and more like music), since the days when all the best (genuinely innovative) stuff was born.

Marco.