Anyone who reads the average show report, the average review or any forum runs into the dreaded ‘blowed me away’ or “best I’ve ever heard” or even the infamous ‘best ever’ mixed with your usual sprinkle of awesomes and wows.

To some extent this is the fault of the English language – mathematics is much better at quantifying things. And certainly the culture at large, at least here in the U.S., encourages such obfuscation, equating, for example, the horror of killing 40M people with the local tax collector or the latest starlet driving too fast after a drinking a beer with – well, nothing holds a candle to this particular crime against humanity.

The point is that some audio equipment is significantly better than others, and some systems sound much better than others. Yet any causal, or even in depth, perusal of the information available would have one believe that everything is pretty darn great. That it is all about budget and aesthetics and what is ‘hot’ right now on the forums, or recommended by Stereophile or written up by some Joe who pins a ‘reviewer’ tag on their shirt.

Speaking of Stereophile, at least they TRY to classify things a little – though with their emphasis on measurements, their taking price into consideration, and their lack of long-term reviewing – their A, B, etc. grading is not so very useful. The Golden Ear Awards, as another example [not to pick on them… almost ALL of the online mags do something like this] is a completely random walk through components by people with completely random powers of observation and skill and experience.

I know, I know, people say that quality is in the ear of the beholder. I say that people who use this argument are lazy and are afraid of taking a stand 🙂 I say that there is indeed ABSOLUTE quality that is irrespective of listener and we may or may not be able to measure it today – most likely not – but that it is of a kind of quality that is *theoretically* measurable – that one can imagine that one might be able to measure it someday – given enough time, brains and money.

Sure, we all enjoy the Bose car stereo sometimes. Enjoy it a lot. Sometimes as much, say, as a $1M rig. We also might enjoy the smell of a wild rose in a random alley, as well as the gardens of La roseraie, say. One can hardly equate the quality of the two – but both can be equally enjoyable at certain times under certain circumstances. The point is that quality of audio should not be measured by whether someone MIGHT enjoy it once in awhile [one might make an argument that enjoyment over an EXTENDED period of time should be included in some kind of subjective quality measurement] – that there is an intrinsic quality that is NOT relative to the listener, just like the quality of a garden – that there are a number of measurable and not-yet measurable qualities that set a wild rose garden apart from one of the world’s most cared-for rose gardens. That there is difference between an amp, say, made by someone who then markets it on the forums versus someone who has spent their whole lives building amps and studying what good amps do and don’t do and who TRIES to do the best that CAN BE DONE at a price point, or on an acre, as opposed to ‘good enough’.

It is this contrast, of the not so good with the extremely excellent – that makes life wonderfully fascinating and I would say that the contrasts themselves are also quite… enjoyable. It gives life ‘color’ – these graduations in quality. And it is the descriptions of audio equipment, through incompetence, fear, duplicitousness, ignorance, hive mentality or whatever, who compress everything into a category of ‘good’ – that are drowning us in meaninglessness – that are robbing the hobby, and all of our audiophile lives, of some of its real potential for enjoyment.

I often describe, to myself anyway, the difference between various appealing but different sounds as “one attracts my heart, the other my mind”.

By mind I do not mean technological wizardry – for that kind of appeal the object under the scope has to be the space shuttle, or the internals of a modern CPU chip, or a particle accelerator. Amps, speakers and CD players? Just don’t impress me. But hey, I might be more impressed if I built a few myself.

Anyway…

One of the main differences between Neli’s and my taste is that she likes sound that appeals to the mind more than I do, and that which appeals to the heart less. Not that we are not both enamored of both kinds of sound. We just have – over the course of time – discovered that we will be accepting of more faults in one type of sound than another.

By ‘mind’ I mean largely what we have called sophisticated sound. Well delineated, precise, accurate perhaps under-stated, certainly not over-stated harmonics, great separation, etc. Although this might remind you of a solid-state sound, we have not heard many solid-state preamps nor amps capable of producing this sound – it requires a deftness, an ability to render fine shades of detail and nuance and most of these are built instead to ‘impress’ (or to be inexpensive to build).

By ‘heart’ I mean a somewhat less precise sound, more concerned with continuousness and harmonics than separation between this very subtle sound and that. This kind of sound is more about the music, but the mind has to take a back seat – it cannot wander the subtle interplay of this sound juxtaposed with that, to hear the minute differences in decay between two chimes, one slightly heavier than the other.

See, I really like both kinds of sounds. And in general I design and build systems here that do both.

But sometimes, when updating my wish list (twice daily, don’t you know?), I really want TWO systems. Indulgent, I know.

Is this just me? Is everyone bifurcated like this but not so self-indulgent that they consider setting up two very, very expensive systems?

I certainly get a lot of flak, and will for this post no doubt, from the religious acolytes of one sound or the other. But struggle as I might, I really love both. Chocolate AND Vanilla. And I am right … smack.. in the middle – with no real preference between the two.

In the comments section of one of the previous threads we came up with the following list:

Micro Dynamics low to high:

Soulution – BAT – CAT – ARC – VTL – Pass – Krell – Boulder – Vitus – Spectral – Halcro – MBL – Goldmund – Ayre – Edge (early NL series)

The most recent question was where to put the McIntosh amps on the list:

Soulution – BAT – McIntosh – CAT – ARC – VTL – Pass – Krell – Boulder – Vitus – Spectral – Halcro – MBL – Goldmund – Ayre – Edge (early NL series)

A case can be made for swapping these amps around a bit, based on the particular model (for example, the more expensive Edge amps are more expensive than any Ayre amps and also have much better micro-dynamics than any Ayre amps), and the particular speaker being driven. I also swapped Krell and Boulder – I think that better represents the intention of the brand, and maybe reality too.

Amps also seem have better micro-dynamics as you listen to their more expensive offerings (which would imply that all brands may value this aspect of music, just some value it more than others – for some it is a high-priority, and others not so much)

But it serves to give one a sense of the overall ‘company’ sound profile.

That being able to reproduce the subtle delicacies of music, the ability to tell a real guitar from a guitar synthesizer, for example, is not a priority with many amp builders. Especially big amp builders.

Big amp builders often focus only on macro-dynamics, and some on midi-dynamics. Also, as you understand, there is a continuum between micro- and midi- dynamics, as notes can exist ANYWHERE between quite delicate or as part of the melody foreground.

MIDI-Dynamics, least to most (just making a stab at it, this list will probably change as more thought is given)

VTL – BAT – CAT – ARC – McIntosh -Vitus – Edge – Pass – Ayre – MBL – Spectral – Halcro -Krell – Soulution – Boulder

MACRO-Dynamics, least to most (just making a stab at it, this list will probably change as more thought is given)

Spectral – Vitus – Edge – Ayre – Pass – CAT – Halcro – MBL – McIntosh – Krell – Soulution – ARC – Boulder – BAT – VTL

… and then we can talk about DETAILED macro-dynamics, which acknowledges the fact that micro- and midi-dynamics occur at the beginning and end of most macro-dynamic events.

And then a couple of lists to do with harmonic color (McIntosh, ARC, MBL…) and harmonic purity (more or less reverse the macro-dynamics list…!?).

We’ll leave that for the comments or another post…