Walking up 11 floors anyone? Yes, thank you – way faster than that modern technology that doesn’t work 2/3 of the time.
There WERE still people listening to rooms on the 2,8,9,10 and 11th floors, but they were sort of, kind of trapped from getting to the other parts of the show… like to floors 4 and 5 on the other side of the hotel – where we were…. and, you know, visa-a-versa.
Listened to a live CD of Roy Buchanan. Horrible recording quality – but I now believe that Roy Buchanan is a s facile with the guitar, as able to bring out the subtle emotions he is reaching for, with even more dexterity and ease than Jimi Hendrix himself.
Neli drove some of our stuff down today. A couple of more trips tomorrow and we’ll be ready for Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
This year we are showing a 100% Audio Note level 5 system on HRS platforms and rack. This is the first time we have shown 100% Audio Note systems in both our room and the Audio Note room – but as we try and change things a little each year we thought this would be fun.
This will consist of:
AN/E SEC Signature speakers
Kegon Balanced monoblock amps
M9 Phono preamplifier
Fifth Element DAC and Fifth Force power supply
CDT-5 transport
SOTTO and PALLAS cabling
Sogon power cords
Peter Qvortrup – Audio Note founder and CEO will also be in attendance.
At this time I am planning on doing an ‘abbreviated’ show report, like last year.
Interesting things pre-show? It looks like Cessaro and GOTO and maybe Silbatone will have some interesting horn speakers for us to listen to.
Here’s hoping for some good drug-like sound at the show – I can really use it. I bet all of us could. 🙂 On the other hand, we’ve been getting good druggy sound here and it makes me not want to post on the blog or read the trade rags and visit the forums… or go to shows – been a very quiet summer… 🙂 Maybe some drug-like sounds are a little too relaxing? Nahhhhh….
Hedge Funds, Investor Groups buying high-end audio manufacturers? Why? As an investment [do they know something we do not?] or as a hobby [trying to relive their 2nd, or like me, their 19th childhoods?].
I believe ARC, Krell, and Sonus Faber are in this category.
Then a few weeks ago Focal bought [reading between the lines] Naim.
Can we blame these troubles on the ipod? I saw a stat that 16 billion songs have been bought on itunes. That is 16 billion dollars that could have bought a decent system or two – but probably would have gone into CDs a decade ago.
Cisco, of all companies, conducted a survey of our youth and they would rather hang out on the internet than go on a date and rather own a smart phone than a car. That old ‘pendulum’ has swung kind of far from where it was when I was young[er].
Who knows what the future brings, but right now the sector of the market that was setup to be attractive to college students probably isn’t doing very well.
On the other hand, our part of the market, the ultra, uber, stratospheric part of the market is doing OK [would do better if so many people weren’t ‘short’ America deliberately trash talking the economy for personal gain (most large corps are reporting a bettering economy, and even the real-estate market locally is picking up, albeit our home here is still unsold – hint, hint :-).].
As for high-end audio ‘for the rest of us’ [get it? This is Apple’s old slogan], something like a wireless system headed by an iPad with DAC and Amps in the speakers might be ‘cool’ to the next generation [now Neli tells me that something like this was also proposed on c|net earlier today], the generation who will not know what to do with a CD and more than they know what to do with an LP.
… and those hedge funds must be doing this as a hobby – or a write-off – or are looking at a awfully long time-frame which has that pendulum swing back…… back to where we are 🙂
Some music genres are more dependent on various kinds of musical fidelity more than they are other kinds. If one listens primarily to one, or just a few, genres one may be able to get away with a system that has less fidelity overall, and cost a lot less.
It is always true that the more fidelity the better, but these are tough times, and sometimes we gotta do what we gotta do. For example, two of the genres we talked about last time, Folk and Opera, to not need deep tight bass as much as most other genres.
This can be looked at from multiple angles. The post will take one approach. Please feel free to correct or augment.
< --- LESS important ---- MORE important --->
Folk
deep bass, tight bass, dynamics… resolution in the voice band, harmonic richness in the voice band
Reggae
high resolution, high frequencies… PRaT, harmonic richness in the voice band, dynamics and resolution in the percussive band,tight mid bass, deep very dynamic bass
New Age, Some Electronica
deep bass, dynamics, tight bass, …. harmonic richness, harmonic and frequency resolution
Rap
harmonic richness, harmonic and frequency resolution (just enough to make the snare drum listenable, or, conversely, roll off the frequencies in the snare drum region) … dynamics, deep tight bass.
Rock & Roll
[demands seem to be even across all audiophile attributes, however, uber fidelity in any attribute does not lend as much improvement as the uber fidelity would in several other genres – because the recording qualities are typically low]
Orchestra
Deep bass… [everything else is pretty important]
Choral
Deep bass, dynamics… harmonic and frequency resolution [love when the voices resolve into individual voices]
Organ Music
Frequency resolution… harmonic resolution, deep bass
Jazz Fusion
Deep bass, tight bass… dynamic, harmonic and frequency resolution [Jazz fusion can easily become a mish mash without enough resolution]
3 or 4-piece Jazz, Simple Pop
[everything] … harmonic resolution.
By harmonic resolution we mean tonal richness and accuracy – approaching the Real.
By frequency resolution we mean loudness accuracy
By dynamic resolution we mean that notes reach their loudness level in a realistic, true-to-life fashion.
The idea then is to say, well, I am on a budget and I mostly play New Age , so I do not *need* deep tight bass, so I can get smaller speakers, smaller amps, a high-resolution amp [as opposed to a beefy one], clear sounding cables and sources [as opposed to those that are designed to hide, smother atrocities in other parts of the system].
I’d like to start a discussion about which parts of a system a particular music genre taxes the most, not just these genres but others as well, but first an aside…
I think these 3 genres really have a lot in common. This seems kind of strange mostly because, I think, the people who like these various genres only like one and usually dislike (or hate with a passion, the others).
The commonalities:
* The foremost one is that they are all about voice, and not just voice but the story the voice is telling us about. Yeah, Opera has it’s orchestra and Folk its harmonic and guitar and Rap its bass rhythm, but seriously, it is all so forgettable [I would say Rap is less so, but that may be my prejudice].
* Not a lot of people like these genres, being kind of inaccessible in various ways, both in terms of content and with the difficulties in understanding a singing voice.
I think that Opera, however, because it was commissioned by the powers-that-be (or were), is delightfully risque sometimes but not, I would guess, controversial in its day.
However, because Folk and Rap are created by the disenfranchised among us, and can be characterized as ‘protests’ or just plain ‘angry’, they cause(d) some discomfort.
Neli does not like Rap. She thinks the songs, the musicians, are angry AT her. Me? I think they are speaking FOR me. Since about, what? 25%? of Rap is about male-female relations and the way society has gummed up the works [:-)] she is probably right.
But the other 75% is much more interesting, for me anyway, especially the ones about The Struggle of life. And this struggle is something that is also present in Folk and Opera…. [and the Blues. Maybe Blues is a firth primarily vocal genre as well…?].
Anyway, although I consider myself interested primarily in instrumentals, I have been listening to a lot of vocal music in the last year or so. Seems like we all probably ebb and flow through various genres as the years go by… 🙂
During much of recent history, there has been a organization or group that was kind of the standard bearer – which kind of influenced the immediate future of high-end audio: hardware, attitudes, evaluation techniques, etc.
I wonder if this is no longer true – that we as a culture, and especially we as a hobby, have been fractured so much that we are just composed of a lot of different groups, based on some [I would say fantasy] of shared interests – and I ponder if most or all of these are just cul-de-sacs, and lot of niche dead-ends.
In the past [and correct / assist me if need be] we had:
Stereo magazine – Measurements are king
Stereophile – Measurements are still king, but the king is wearing shorts
The Absolute Sound/HP – subjective listening is King
Audiogon – pluralism and shills are king
Audio Asylum – pluralism and nastiness are king
Audio Circle – Discounts, pluralism and disinformation shills are king
…
Lately though, I think none of these sites is any longer dominant. HP reviews and Stereophile reviews and Audiogon and Audio Circle pumps no longer sell that much product. They are no longer guiding the industry.
Perhaps that is because the economy and politics are so dominating the culture these days [the middle class is too poor to buy anything and the wealthy are buying things left and right when they are not scared out of their wits]. So we have lots of very expensive gear and lots of very cheap gear – not much in-between.
And, somehow, the social networks got people hearing lots and lots of opinions, often believing and valuing what a complete stranger tells them.
The only way I have seen out of this mess, this tower of Babble [but better than the old days of a single dominant player!] is to rate things based on many different aspects. Not sure if this would work for Yelp or other rating sites – but we got whole spectrums of lean < --- > warm, dynamic < --- > closed-in, accurate versus non-accurate, etc. etc. and many more which we have talked about and listed on this blog and website many times.
That way instead of ‘it sucks’ we can get ‘it is warm sounding’ and instead of ‘its the best’ we can get them to say ‘it has good dynamic bass’. This would result in the neutering the shills [and the rest of the hyperbole-generating hordes :-)] because, although their goals is to convince everyone that a products is the best for everyone on this and every other planet, all they can now say is, for example, is that it has ‘great dynamics’ – letting all the people who like a more laid back presentation know that this is not for them.
Anyway, our hobby/industry is getting swept up along with all the other more modern industries by what is happening outside the listening room. Sure is fun to watch 🙂
Got this in our email box. Kind of hard to read there… so hopefully easier here:
… and it is. For me anyway.
This whole idea that people can say “XXX mixed on XYZ equipment and therefore – how did they put it – playing the music on their equipment is ‘exactly how it was intended to be heard'” is really kind of BS. Don’t you agree?
I mean lots of music gets mixed with EmmLabs A to D equipment. Great bragging rights but IMHO the music produced with their equipment is intended to sound good. Period.
Play it back on better equipment it is going to sound… better. Period.
I mean, they mix using Genelec speakers? What then? What about old Watt Puppy 5’s? From my conversations mixing engineers use speakers that they feel comfortable with, that they can stand listening to for many hours at a time, and that they feel reveals nuances that they believe they need to hear in order to conjure the best results – i.e. it needs enough bass, for example, so they can make sure the bass is not too soft or too overwhelming.
This has nothing to do with enjoyment, or accuracy, or drug-like effects or anything that we who are playing back music are concerned about [in general. for some people making it sound like it did in the studio, no matter how good or bad, is what they want. It is like wanting the original lighting that a painting was painted with, as opposed to optimum lighting to highlight the overall viewing pleasures]
Anyway – curious to see how these sound in surround sound – all but abandoned by the audiophile world and a goodly amount of the home theater world, if the show setups and economy are any indication . I mean, Wish You Were Here *is* my 5th fave Pink Floyd album … or so [ which is one of my top 5 Rock and Roll bands, so, yeah, I like it OK :-)]
I was listening to our Audio Note Kegon amplifiers, which use a 300B tube.
Now, in general, I prefer the sound of the 211 tubes, found in the Ongaku and Gaku On, and now the Jinro, amplifiers.
But there was something about the 300B sound that really appeals to me.
It *seems* like it reminds me of the sound and feelings I get when I think of the 60s. Nostalgia is an interesting emotion – and hard to describe and hard to know how other people relate to their own nostalgic feelings. And a lot of it is probably just ‘lost youth’.
But this particular 300B sound – and all 300B amps will be sound different, and very few will have the kick-ass control these amps have over the speakers [making for tighter, more accurate dynamics] – but this sound reminds me of old James Bond movies [which seemed luxurious and futuristic back-in-the day], and people who smiled on the street [in Boulder, people walk around in this preoccupied, politely apathetic state-of-mind], bright colors [what happened to all the colors, anyway?], and endless possibilities [they are still endless, but I am too tired to consider all of them realistic anymore].
Of course, this nostalgia giving rise to enjoyment of the 300B is not limited to ‘sound’, but to music genres as well [classic rock anyone?]. Even Jazz leaves me nostalgic – for the time 10-15 years ago when we were just starting out on this audiophile journey.
And, check this out… if you want to like Rap, or Opera [and don’t already]. Just play it for awhile, the wait a few years, and then play it again. The nostalgia you will feel THEN for the music you play TODAY will make the music much more enjoyable. Weird but true, huh? 🙂
… to all sorts of pleasant and annoying noises in our environment?
Is traffic noise getting louder and louder and getting more and more resolution? Kind of a pisser this is.
Are you able to identify the many missing frequencies in the music they play at the gym or at Whole Foods [just fill in the places where YOU experience ambient music]. Kind of shocking that music can still be identified and sometimes even enjoyable in all its sparseness.
Do you find yourself hearing the various resonances in peoples voices and comparing their subtle differences to the singers you listen to most often? Cool huh?
… etc.
We are not X-Men (or Alphas) but we do enjoy a degree of extra sensory hearing power. Lovin’ it.
