Choose your Weapons

[rollo]

  Ok Ok we all have our subjective preference in sound. What is most important to you personally in music reproduction ? Tone ? Harmonic structure ? Dynamics ? Body and soul ? detail ? clarity ? Imaging? all of the above ?   etc. What ?
  Now audiophiles who play instruments appear to have a different agenda than basic audiophiles. I have found that musicians systems [ club members] sound full, rich and the scientific and measurement  crowd detailed and bright. Also i have noticed that the seat one chooses in a concert hall descibes their taste in presentation. The rear of the hall is subdued the front row dynamic and detailed. 


charles

[mdconnelly]

Good question, Charles!   I grew up with music constantly flowing - father played piano, me and all siblings played various instruments and while none of us are (or were) professionals, there is definitely something about the sound of live music that engages and excites.  I wish I could translate that into audio terms - dynamics, speed of transient response, tuneful base, rich mids?   I can't say exactly, but I know when I hear it.

Now, when I really started exploring the whole audiophile thing, I did get caught up in detail, imaging, etc... but then questioned where that was taking me.  Yes, live music generally possesses those characteristics (at least from the right seats), but I know that when I'm listening to live music, I am so not paying attention to that, but rather just getting lost in the music.  And, as with recorded music, a poor performance can be just as unfullfilling as a bad recording or a poorly setup audio system.

I'd be very curious as to how people listen to live music versus their audio system... 

[BobM]

Without proper and natural tone there is nothing. But most "audiophile" systems seem to cover that fairly well. I mean a piano usually sounds like a piano and a guitar like a guitar and a horn, well that can be harder and forget about an organ.

Those last two lead me to a second set of "weapons" - texture and dynamics (both inner and outer). These are what seems to differentiate a good system from a great system for me. The sound of both the wood and string on a guitar would be textural differences, not one over the other. The pluck of the sting (leading edge transient) as well as the swell as things get louder is an example of inner and outer dynamics.

Then I like soundstaging and imaging, but this can usually be addressed by room treatment and speaker setup. I think this is probably the easiest and cheapest thing to fix in an audiophile system, but usually one of those things that most people don't address properly.

Enjoy,
Bob

[mfsoa]

While there's no one answer, I gotta feel the bass in my body!
For much of the music I like (electic or acoustic jazz) it's the foundation for me. And my wife is a bass nut, too, so that's a factor.

I guess I come from the "musician" side, having played drums for a long time - My system is not tilted up in frequency (to me) like many I have heard at Raves. I don't like lively room acoustics.

Soundstaging is very important to me - the illusion that you are hearing that which isn't there - it gets you away from the realm of electronincs to the realm beyond, which is where the magic is!

-Mike

[Deton Nation]

Tone is king. Then dynamics. Then detail which will enhance the previous two.
M

[richidoo]

I like coherence. The feeling that the music is whole, intact, alive. Not cut up into pieces with treble sounding different and timed away from the bass. I'd rather give up some dynamics or tone to have the easy feeling you get from no phase distortion. I like single driver speakers, and active crossover with no phase error.

I am a musician, but I like high resolution better than rich and lush old tubes and transformers as long as the clarity remains natural and coherent.

I like to sit front and center at live shows, as long as they are all acoustic. Amplified shows I prefer further back, depending on how much and how bad the amplification is.

[Black Sand Cable]

While there's no one answer, I gotta feel the bass in my body!

I'm with you. If I'm not hearing and feeling good bass, I don't care how good the speakers or system is in general. If there is no bass, I wont be feeling it.

[tmazz]

I like coherence. The feeling that the music is whole, intact, alive. Not cut up into pieces with treble sounding different and timed away from the bass. I'd rather give up some dynamics or tone to have the easy feeling you get from no phase distortion. I like single driver speakers, and active crossover with no phase error.

I am a musician, but I like high resolution better than rich and lush old tubes and transformers as long as the clarity remains natural and coherent.

I like to sit front and center at live shows, as long as they are all acoustic. Amplified shows I prefer further back, depending on how much and how bad the amplification is.

I think Rich hit on the right word for me - coherence. I want to have it all but only to the point that there is balance between the different aspects. To me as soon as one particular sonic characteristic brings attention to itself there is something wrong.

I first dove into the High End pool in the late 80s when I went out shopping to replace my DQ-10s. After listening to many speakers I worked my choices down to the Martin-Logan CLSs and the Thiel 3.5s. In the end I chose the Thiels because I felt they had a better balnace of the qualities I wanted to hear. While the MLs did some thing extraordinarily well (and much better than the Theils), I felt that the things that ML was not suburb at they were only average at. The Thiels on the other hand did most everything very well, and I was much more comfortable with that balance. To put it in numeric terms I would be much more comfortable with a speaker that did everything at 85% that I would be with a speaker that dis some things at 95% and other things at 75%.  (It just hit me as I am writing this that the CS in CS 3.5 stood for Coherent Source)

I think that one of the reasons I strive for that sense of balance and coherence is the fact that I do listen to a wide variety of music so it is tough for me to try and zero in on one type of sound without putting one or more musical types at a disadvantage. Certainly if I was listening to nothing but baroque chamber music at the time I would have had a pair of CLSs in my house. The wider the variety of music you play the wider the range of demands you will put on a speaker and the harder it will be to find a speaker that can do it all for you (Although speakers are the most obvious example, he same applies, although to a lesser extent for all audio equipment.

As for the difference between the sounds of acoustic and reproduced music (whether it is recorded or live amplified sound) I think it can be summed up in one word - dynamics. Whether it is limit in the peak volume that a speaker or an amp can produce or an interia type effect that keeps a speaker or an electrical circuit from react to a change in input signal with the same speed that to original sound changed. An electromechanical reproduction chain simply does not react to changes in macro and micro-dynamics in the same way that the original acoustic generators of the original sound did.

[JLM]

Tone (the music's juice/body) first, bass (full, gutteral, fast) next, then coherence (imaging without different sounds or dispersion from different drivers).

Don't want thin (no midbass) sound.  Need the foundation of deep/musical bass.  Hyper detail fatigues me and forces the analytical side to overwhelm the emotive side that music has to include.

Would like more macro-dynamics and wider/deeper soundstage from my current system, but always wanting more is what makes us audiophiles.

[Barry (NJ)]

First, I don't want to hear the location of the speakers, they have to disappear into a sound-stage that's both wide and deep. If I can locate the speakers the illusion is shot.

Next, I think would be dynamics, a sudden drum thwack should startle me.

I think tone and timbre are pretty much a given, and I think most systems get that part down pretty well these days.