The Mysterious Case of the Listening Window! By Jeff Day, Positive Feedback

[Lagonda]

Hi Peter,
To my way of thinking it really depends on what you mean by "Should systems be able to play all kinds of music". There is the "warts and all" school of accuracy that you should hear everything captured on the recording and there is the school of a system should make all recordings musical and enjoyable. There is also the school of all recordings should be well differentiated because indeed they do all sound different; however, it doesn't mean that the system renders most recordings "unlistenable" and only the top 1% of audiophile recordings comes through with some semblance of music.

Those who support the "warts and all" school of systems probably think their systems are extracting the most information from the recordings and that this is the best that can be hoped for in the real world. However, they have not stopped to think whether or not their systems are in fact editorializing the recording and placing undue emphasis on distortions in the recordings with distortions of their own. A kind of multiplier effect on emphasis of leading edges, for example, or pushing forward of soundstage (thus flattening and sharpening the effect). To think of this visually, look at some of the lower quality flat panel TVs out there. They have at first glance astounding resolution but the longer you look you see that there is an unnatural tilt to the way the images are portrayed. Most of that is some kinds of digital artifacts that creep into the picture (LG I find particularly offensive this way...and Sony one of the best at removing it). You can also see effects that become unnatural visually with things like Contrast and Sharpness tools with TV and/or computer graphics. This would be a system with a narrow listening window and to me encompasses a large % of commercial high end.

Once you overemphasize a particular effect this then has two impressions: 1) It LOOKS like more resolution but 2) It also have a distinctly over represented artificiality to the resulting image. This is also where I think DDK is getting his bias that pinpoint imaging is an artifact (sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't is my view...knowing which is which is an interesting challenge).

IMO, any system that makes a large number of recordings essentially an exercise in analytical dissection, is doing something incorrectly to overemphasize those analytical traits that may or may not be in the recording.

Those who support the "All recordings should sound musical and enjoyable" are deliberately detuning the replay to mask over any distinctions in the recordings themselves. Many vintage systems sound like this (but by no means all of them)...and many lower quality modern playback systems fall into this trap (cheap tube gear being one type of culprit). You will see inexperienced audiophiles swing into this camp after spending a long time in the "warts and all" school and fed up with the fact that a lot of music they used to enjoy is no longer accessible on such a system. So, they swing to the other extreme of low(ish) fidelity but at least initially more pleasant experience. Eventually, boredom will set in here though as the sameness to everything renders music listening uninteresting. This would constitute a wide listening window but not one that will bring long term satisfaction. It represents a much smaller % of the available high end but a lot of the inexpensive Chinese tube amps and digital I have heard would fit here...for example. Many vintage speakers also fit here, IMO, but by no means all of them.

The way that allows for a high degree of differentiation but doesn't throw the baby out with the bath water, is a hard balance to strike. The assumption here is that a system should be able to tell you clearly the differences in sound quality between recordings but that it has, shall we say, natural levels of resolving insight and not exaggerated forensic levels (that are largely from arifacts and/or emphasis on certain traits). It allows you to know that a lot of rock recordings are so-so to poor but you can still enjoy them without running from the room screaming. For sure, some recordings are still excrement and will sound poor on just about anything...that is the reality of life. But it shouldn't render you to where you have a few recordings that sound great and the rest difficult to sit through. When I talk about having a wide listening window, it would be this scenario that, IMO, is the most desireable as it allows you to hear more closely what is really going on in a recording without destroying the message and prevents boredom of sameness at the same time. This represents a very very small % of the gear/systems out there and IMO, is represented by the best tube gear, digital gear and speakers typically of high sensitivity (could be horn, dynamic or planar), where nuance, without exaggeration, results in an engaging but differentiated experience.

As usual you seem to dismiss all the people that have found bliss with good SS gear, many on this forum are previous SET owners that are now perfectly happy with their modern SS gear, tubes are not the only game in town, and for some of us tubes do not quite do it for a lot of the music or speakers we like.

 

[morricab]

As usual you seem to dismiss all the people that have found bliss with good SS gear, many on this forum are previous SET owners that are now perfectly happy with their modern SS gear, tubes are not the only game in town, and for some of us tubes do not quite do it for a lot of the music or speakers we like.

As always, it is IMO... if your gear makes you happy then all good. I am not dismissing people, only gear...if you tie your identity to your gear so tightly that you take personal offence then there is not much I can do about that. I personally hear things that I cannot live with when listening through SS gear (lack of timbral accuracy, presence and lifelike dynamics). For me, what they do wrong are deal breakers, whereas what SETs do are not deal breakers.

 

[morricab]

As usual you seem to dismiss all the people that have found bliss with good SS gear, many on this forum are previous SET owners that are now perfectly happy with their modern SS gear, tubes are not the only game in town, and for some of us tubes do not quite do it for a lot of the music or speakers we like.

FWIW, I let the electronics choice drive the speaker choice and not the other way around...I have found this results in a more satisfactory result as the electronics (source, amps and power) produce the most music destroying distortions. Speakers have more gross distortions but they are psychoacoutically less detrimental...at least this is my current (as of last 15 years or so) working hypothesis. This flies in the face of the "speaker first" crowd but I follow my observations...not conventional wisdom.

 

[Lagonda]

FWIW, I let the electronics choice drive the speaker choice and not the other way around...I have found this results in a more satisfactory result as the electronics (source, amps and power) produce the most music destroying distortions. Speakers have more gross distortions but they are psychoacoutically less detrimental...at least this is my current (as of last 15 years or so) working hypothesis. This flies in the face of the "speaker first" crowd but I follow my observations...not conventional wisdom.

As always, it is IMO... if your gear makes you happy then all good. I am not dismissing people, only gear...if you tie your identity to your gear so tightly that you take personal offence then there is not much I can do about that. I personally hear things that I cannot live with when listening through SS gear (lack of timbral accuracy, presence and lifelike dynamics). For me, what they do wrong are deal breakers, whereas what SETs do are not deal breakers.

Yes by now most of us know your preferences, and i commend you for arguing in categories and not with the brands you sell, it gets less tedious As for choosing electronics before speakers, some of us fall in love with a presentation we hear and have that as a reference when we build our system, i and a lot of other people like what larger dynamic speakers and powerful SS amps bring to the table. I am not saying i could not be satisfied with the dynamic capabilities and finesse of Tangs SET system, but i just don’t see or hear a lot of systems like that that can be had at a reasonable cost. And a reasonable cost is of course a very individual matter

 

[bazelio]

@PeterA - we've talked offline about the "natural sound" (NS) topic but I have a few new thoughts. Mainly gripes, I suppose. One, the pursuit of NS at times (not all the time) almost reads like a religion where a large swath of modern audiophile products are now categorically dismissed. Natural good; hi-fi bad. And while I certainly agree that it's very easy to do more harm than good with a whole lot of what's out there and wouldn't touch a lot of it with a 10-foot pole, I also feel like usual discussion has been thwarted: "It sounds more like live music", to a large degree, has become a replacement for descriptive comparisons, and in the process discussion and sharing of specific sound attributes is lost. It almost reminds me of the "you just need to have faith" response from religious fundamentalists when asked to explain the unexplainable. Discussion just sort of dies right there. This is undesirable. I would like to see the usual discussions around things like tone, attack, decay, etc described as folks "tweak" towards what they consider to be NS. That'll keep discussion alive, help others understand the effect of these tweaks, and determine if they're worth pursing in their own systems. But it's almost as if these sorts of discussion have now crept dangerously and uncomfortably into the hi-fi realm for the NS enthusiasts. Perhaps I'm wrong. Perhaps it's true, but just not to the degree that I'm sensing. Or perhaps it's just all too satisfying to be above the fray (which I can understand!). Second, is the notion of "tweaking" vs "de-tweaking". I have to agree with those who feel that "tweaking" for NS is more to the point than "de-tweaking". I know first hand that it does feel good at times when replacing an overpriced audiophile product with an inexpensive alternative results in a preferable outcome. Examples include replacing air bladder bases with cheap steel plates, replacing in-wall Romex or JPS with a specific stranded wire, utilizing decades old vintage copper wire as interconnect or speaker cables. Nothing wrong with any of this. All valid stuff. But they are tweaks that influence the sonic outcome nonetheless. The notion that these changes are a "de-tweak" implies to me one or possibly two things: (1) This new widget is really the baseline / starting point, and going beyond it is a tweak. This to me is false as this widget is one of many inexpensive alternatives or baselines, which has been chosen specifically for its sound. (2) "If it sounds more natural then it's more neutral". And, of course, moving to a less neutral product is therefore a tweak. Someone earlier in the thread noted that of course one is going to classify their own preferred product as the neutral point of a coloration spectrum. That's a very good point. As for Jeff Day, I am guilty of not having read this particular article yet. I know who he is, and am fairly certain that his definition of "natural" doesn't align with my own. I believe tinned copper Duelund wire and many of his tweaks are not so much "natural" as they are "romantic" sounding, based on personal experience with some of them. I'll get around to reading this article nonetheless. That's all for now...

 

[Folsom]

@PeterA - we've talked offline about the "natural sound" (NS) topic but I have a few new thoughts. Mainly gripes, I suppose. One, the pursuit of NS at times (not all the time) almost reads like a religion where a large swath of modern audiophile products are now categorically dismissed. Natural good; hi-fi bad. And while I certainly agree that it's very easy to do more harm than good with a whole lot of what's out there and wouldn't touch a lot of it with a 10-foot pole, I also feel like usual discussion has been thwarted: "It sounds more like live music", to a large degree, has become a replacement for descriptive comparisons, and in the process discussion and sharing of specific sound attributes is lost. It almost reminds me of the "you just need to have faith" response from religious fundamentalists when asked to explain the unexplainable. Discussion just sort of dies right there. This is undesirable. I would like to see the usual discussions around things like tone, attack, decay, etc described as folks "tweak" towards what they consider to be NS. That'll keep discussion alive, help others understand the effect of these tweaks, and determine if they're worth pursing in their own systems. But it's almost as if these sorts of discussion have now crept dangerously and uncomfortably into the hi-fi realm for the NS enthusiasts. Perhaps I'm wrong. Perhaps it's true, but just not to the degree that I'm sensing. Or perhaps it's just all too satisfying to be above the fray (which I can understand!). Second, is the notion of "tweaking" vs "de-tweaking". I have to agree with those who feel that "tweaking" for NS is more to the point than "de-tweaking". I know first hand that it does feel good at times when replacing an overpriced audiophile product with an inexpensive alternative results in a preferable result. Examples include replacing air bladder bases with cheap steel plates, replacing in-wall Romex or JPS with a specific stranded wire, utilizing decades old vintage copper wire as interconnect or speaker cables. Nothing wrong with any of this. All valid stuff. But they are tweaks that influence the sonic outcome nonetheless. The notion that these changes are a "de-tweak" implies to me one or possibly two things: (1) This new widget is really the baseline / starting point, and going beyond it is a tweak. This to me is false as this widget is one of many inexpensive alternatives or baselines, which has be chosen specifically for its sound. (2) "If it sounds more natural then it's more neutral". And, of course, moving to a less neutral product is therefore a tweak. Someone earlier in the thread noted that of course one is going to classify their own preferred product as the neutral point of a coloration spectrum. That's a very good point. As for Jeff Day, I am guilty of not having read this particular article yet. I know who he is, and am fairly certain that his definition of "natural" doesn't align with my own. I believe tinned copper Duelund wire and many of his tweaks are not so much "natural" as they are "romantic" sounding, based on personal experience with some of them. I'll get around to reading this article nonetheless. That's all for now...

Here’s an issue... the opposite of detweaking is to do different things but no one can tell you why those things objectively should make the music sound better. (Or why the standard is better)

I’d call mass loading a tweak. I think the simple thing is that not all tweaks are good, most are bad.

Arguing validity with 3 wire conductor cables is silly since you can’t generally measure anything correlative (unless it’s effectively broken somehow) but they all sound different. There’s no better engineering for our purposes. However if you worked in the RF field some audiophile cables might prove better. We don’t listen to RF intentionally and generally only when it’s modulated down... or from kitty litter boxes aberrating our music.

Btw Lamm’s marketing about decisions within an amp’s circuit is nothing new, not unique, and has been a topic on interest for (now) the better part of a century probably. It’s good marketing though for someone who imagines something much more special going on then there is... And yet somehow countless designers still muck up their equipment. The point being it’s not because they’ve never thought about, read about, or participated in the same topic of testing out models & topology.

For all we know Lamm disregarded the experiment results of any he performed. That would have been the smartest thing, since ABX testing is useless.

 

[bonzo75]

Peter I’ve been trying out and exploring some different VT-231 6SN7 tubes in my amp, a

I've also been trying 6sn7 varieties - VT 99, the red military 5692, 6F8, and an unique unnamed tennis ball one in the destination audio 45 amps

 

[DaveC]

@PeterA - we've talked offline about the "natural sound" (NS) topic but I have a few new thoughts. Mainly gripes, I suppose. One, the pursuit of NS at times (not all the time) almost reads like a religion where a large swath of modern audiophile products are now categorically dismissed. Natural good; hi-fi bad. And while I certainly agree that it's very easy to do more harm than good with a whole lot of what's out there and wouldn't touch a lot of it with a 10-foot pole, I also feel like usual discussion has been thwarted: "It sounds more like live music", to a large degree, has become a replacement for descriptive comparisons, and in the process discussion and sharing of specific sound attributes is lost. It almost reminds me of the "you just need to have faith" response from religious fundamentalists when asked to explain the unexplainable. Discussion just sort of dies right there. This is undesirable. I would like to see the usual discussions around things like tone, attack, decay, etc described as folks "tweak" towards what they consider to be NS. That'll keep discussion alive, help others understand the effect of these tweaks, and determine if they're worth pursing in their own systems. But it's almost as if these sorts of discussion have now crept dangerously and uncomfortably into the hi-fi realm for the NS enthusiasts. Perhaps I'm wrong. Perhaps it's true, but just not to the degree that I'm sensing. Or perhaps it's just all too satisfying to be above the fray (which I can understand!). Second, is the notion of "tweaking" vs "de-tweaking". I have to agree with those who feel that "tweaking" for NS is more to the point than "de-tweaking". I know first hand that it does feel good at times when replacing an overpriced audiophile product with an inexpensive alternative results in a preferable result. Examples include replacing air bladder bases with cheap steel plates, replacing in-wall Romex or JPS with a specific stranded wire, utilizing decades old vintage copper wire as interconnect or speaker cables. Nothing wrong with any of this. All valid stuff. But they are tweaks that influence the sonic outcome nonetheless. The notion that these changes are a "de-tweak" implies to me one or possibly two things: (1) This new widget is really the baseline / starting point, and going beyond it is a tweak. This to me is false as this widget is one of many inexpensive alternatives or baselines, which has be chosen specifically for its sound. (2) "If it sounds more natural then it's more neutral". And, of course, moving to a less neutral product is therefore a tweak. Someone earlier in the thread noted that of course one is going to classify their own preferred product as the neutral point of a coloration spectrum. That's a very good point. As for Jeff Day, I am guilty of not having read this particular article yet. I know who he is, and am fairly certain that his definition of "natural" doesn't align with my own. I believe tinned copper Duelund wire and many of his tweaks are not so much "natural" as they are "romantic" sounding, based on personal experience with some of them. I'll get around to reading this article nonetheless. That's all for now...

Thanks for writing better than I can explain it. It is precisely the point you make about the "Discussion just sort of dies right there" that I have an issue with, and it's an issue that seems to be creeping into every thread on this forum. I don't feel like alternatives are being given their fair shake, because the result is not "natural" in a way that is completely undefined and open to interpretation, and what's more, simply disregards any of the rather loose standards that the recording industry follows in terms of system performance and acoustics of the listening environment.

I've even recently been told that the electrical characteristics of cables don't matter. I mean, wow... This kind of thing is just going too far and I have a real issue with simply disregarding any objective measure of how gear is designed and systems are setup.

This from a guy who makes cables! The last person you might expect to make such arguments, as much of what I do involves understanding aspects of design that are not able to be objectively measured. Yet, many things can and I've found that optimizing both the technical aspects AND the artistic aspects of design makes for the best outcomes.

 

[DaveC]

I've also been trying 6sn7 varieties - VT 99, the red military 5692, 6F8, and an unique unnamed tennis ball one in the destination audio 45 amps

View attachment 69523

I've seen the tennis ball somewhere before... what struck me is the internals seem to be completely unsupported, except by the wires at the base! Do you know what it is?

 

[morricab]

Yes by now most of us know your preferences, and i commend you for arguing in categories and not with the brands you sell, it gets less tedious As for choosing electronics before speakers, some of us fall in love with a presentation we hear and have that as a reference when we build our system, i and a lot of other people like what larger dynamic speakers and powerful SS amps bring to the table. I am not saying i could not be satisfied with the dynamic capabilities and finesse of Tangs SET system, but i just don’t see or hear a lot of systems like that that can be had at a reasonable cost. And a reasonable cost is of course a very individual matter

Well, I definitely don‘t think you need a big Cessaro horn system to get much of what Tang’s system delivers (That might be the most expensive way in fact other than Living Voice). Certainly within range of something like MBL speakers and amps that you own. I am not trying to change your mind (ok perhaps a little ) but options for under 50k (speakers and amp) are plentiful enough.


What I don’t understand (anymore) is falling in love with a presentation and having that as a reference. I heard Prokofiev “Peter and the wolf” on the weekend at the Tonhalle MAAG (temporary hall for the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra with very nice acoustics) and hearing again (not much concert going under Covid) live strings, horns and percussion (the tympanis...wow!) reminded me again of why I have gone down the path of max dynamics and tone ( we were pretty far back so I won’t get into the whole pinpoint imaging thing again...suffice to say I could easily locate with eyes closed where each woodwind and horn was on the stage And string sections as well. This is my dad reference for tone and dynamics, not hifi.

 

[bonzo75]

I've seen the tennis ball somewhere before... what struck me is the internals seem to be completely unsupported, except by the wires at the base! Do you know what it is?

No sorry, but will ask at some point in a week or two. I think Jac music was the source

 

[PeterA]

@PeterA - we've talked offline about the "natural sound" (NS) topic but I have a few new thoughts. Mainly gripes, I suppose. One, the pursuit of NS at times (not all the time) almost reads like a religion where a large swath of modern audiophile products are now categorically dismissed. Natural good; hi-fi bad. And while I certainly agree that it's very easy to do more harm than good with a whole lot of what's out there and wouldn't touch a lot of it with a 10-foot pole, I also feel like usual discussion has been thwarted: "It sounds more like live music", to a large degree, has become a replacement for descriptive comparisons, and in the process discussion and sharing of specific sound attributes is lost. It almost reminds me of the "you just need to have faith" response from religious fundamentalists when asked to explain the unexplainable. Discussion just sort of dies right there. This is undesirable. I would like to see the usual discussions around things like tone, attack, decay, etc described as folks "tweak" towards what they consider to be NS. That'll keep discussion alive, help others understand the effect of these tweaks, and determine if they're worth pursing in their own systems. But it's almost as if these sorts of discussion have now crept dangerously and uncomfortably into the hi-fi realm for the NS enthusiasts. Perhaps I'm wrong. Perhaps it's true, but just not to the degree that I'm sensing. Or perhaps it's just all too satisfying to be above the fray (which I can understand!). Second, is the notion of "tweaking" vs "de-tweaking". I have to agree with those who feel that "tweaking" for NS is more to the point than "de-tweaking". I know first hand that it does feel good at times when replacing an overpriced audiophile product with an inexpensive alternative results in a preferable result. Examples include replacing air bladder bases with cheap steel plates, replacing in-wall Romex or JPS with a specific stranded wire, utilizing decades old vintage copper wire as interconnect or speaker cables. Nothing wrong with any of this. All valid stuff. But they are tweaks that influence the sonic outcome nonetheless. The notion that these changes are a "de-tweak" implies to me one or possibly two things: (1) This new widget is really the baseline / starting point, and going beyond it is a tweak. This to me is false as this widget is one of many inexpensive alternatives or baselines, which has be chosen specifically for its sound. (2) "If it sounds more natural then it's more neutral". And, of course, moving to a less neutral product is therefore a tweak. Someone earlier in the thread noted that of course one is going to classify their own preferred product as the neutral point of a coloration spectrum. That's a very good point. As for Jeff Day, I am guilty of not having read this particular article yet. I know who he is, and am fairly certain that his definition of "natural" doesn't align with my own. I believe tinned copper Duelund wire and many of his tweaks are not so much "natural" as they are "romantic" sounding, based on personal experience with some of them. I'll get around to reading this article nonetheless. That's all for now...

Hello Brian,

You address your post to me, but I do not think I am any kind of spokesman for a particular approach or specific type of sound. All of my gear is basically very mainstream: Magico, Pass, SME, vdH. I have been experimenting with set up and I go into a fair amount of descriptive detail in my system thread about each of the changes I have made over the last year or so. I have also started threads about the vdH Grand Cru and my SME tonearm comparisons. In most of my posts, I go way beyond the sheer use of the term "natural" to describe what I am hearing. You could even check out the thread about "pinpoint" imaging for my thoughts and descriptions on the subject. I do think you should read the article by Jeff Day I posted in the OP of this thread. He too uses Pass Labs amplification, so there is no attempt by me, or I think others to denigrate the industry or modern gear.

I do not think in terms of tweaking or de-tweaking. Perhaps I have used those terms, but I can not think off hand when I did. I have described what I did in altering my system set up more in terms of "removing" stuff from the system and room. DaveC claimed that "all room acoustic treatments are removed from the room." That is certainly not the case in my room. Over a long process, I gradually removed Tubetraps and diffusion panels. I did it in gradual stages over time while carefully listening to the results. I went back and forth alot. I then removed more. I then removed the absorption panels at the first reflection points. Finally, I removed an absorption panel on the back wall behind the listing seat. This was done over the course of a few months. However, I installed another big upholstered chair and moved the second one near the reflection points on the side walls. I have a big carpet with two pads, I adjusted the wooden slats covering the windows. It is not at all what is implied by the comments that all acoustic treatments were simply removed. I have simply decided that managing the energy in the listening room could be accomplished using my furniture rather than the audiophile accessories or room acoustic treatments of absorption panels, diffusion panels and TubeTraps.

If one looks at some of the videos that Bonzo posts, it is clear that there are a lot of good sounding systems out there. Many of them appear to be in normal rooms without a lot of audiophile acoustic treatments or panels. I am not saying those don't help in some cases. I am just saying I now prefer the sound of my room and system without them.

If you want to call stock power cords or even industrial grade inexpensive Chinese Ching Cheng power cords, tweaks, that is fine. I do think of them as a kind of baseline specifically because the seem to do less harm than the fancy cords I tried in my system. I also think of them as fairly neutral because I do not observe any obvious colorations, as I did with all four audiophile power cords I have had in my system over the years, including some that were very expensive and had very fancy connectors. They all colored the sound in my system, and I prefer the sound without them.

I am sorry to say that my stainless steel plates used for mass loading my rack are not inexpensive. I wish they cheap. I suppose that some will consider them a tweak also. Is a massive turntable platter a tweak? I tend to think of these now as an integral part of my DIY rack. Each material decision affects the sound. Is everything that affects sound a tweak? Is that where this is headed? Call these things whatever you want. I am not suggesting anyone else follow my approach towards how I set up my system. Others can do what they want. I am just sharing what I did for those interested in reading my system thread.

There are many ways to approach good sound. Each of us is free to pursue the hobby in whatever way he wants. I am surprised that using the term "natural" to describe sound and removing audiophile accessories from one's system is so controversial. Your gripe about "natural: good, HiFi: bad" is not something I ever espoused. I have simply moved from the latter to the former because I now prefer that approach to sound. It is that simple. I never claimed one is good and the other is bad, nor that one is right and the other is wrong. Using my reference of live sound, I simply prefer one approach to the other because it is the way I hear things. You may hear things differently. Respectfully, this ggod/bad dichotomy you present is an incorrect interpretation of the many things I have written on the subject of my set up changes. I see all sorts of examples, mostly in photos and in videos, of people all over the world who follow a similar and a more simple approach to system set up. There are many approaches, and we pursue the one that resonates with us at the time.

 

[cjfrbw]

I have to admit that the item that has made me most skeptical of Lamm was his claim that he had the one and only real psychoacoustic model, and that he could incorporate it into his electronics without even listening to them. That struck me as a bit of a reach in the marketing department. It was like he was forcing you to acknowledge his guru status: "Look, Ma, no hands!"

 

[microstrip]

Do you even read what I write or just throw something out because you don't want to answer my questions? Please show me where I said books on natural or any reference to it in that post. I simply said that science of sound reproduction was already mature and there are thousand of books and articles to reference;



If you want a specific recommendation try Beranek's Music, Acoustics and Architecture, on page 54 he has a copy of his exchanges with Stokowski about hall acoustics, I'm giving you this information so it might bring you back to the thread. But now I'm curious please you tell me which classic 50's books that specifically mention the phrase pinpoint imaging, I'd like to understand the context and hopefully learn something here after all this.

david

Unfortunately I now realized that you will never answer my questions, just skillful changes of subject. You never answer questions directly, at best you answer a question with another question, avoiding supplying any real and useful objective information that can be referred or discussed.

This hobby is extremely subjective, surely there is place for all approaches. I only approached the bar to talk about "natural" because Peter raised a few interesting issues that I found challenging and interesting.

 

[ddk]

Unfortunately I now realized that you will never answer my questions, just skillful changes of subject. You never answer questions directly, at best you answer a question with another question, avoiding supplying any real and useful objective information that can be referred or discussed.

This hobby is extremely subjective, surely there is place for all approaches. I only approached the bar to talk about "natural" because Peter raised a few interesting issues that I found challenging and interesting.

That's absolutely not true Francisco and I expected more from you. What did you ask above that I didn't answer? Where are you answers to my questions?

david

 

[jeff1225]

I have to admit that the item that has made me most skeptical of Lamm was his claim that he had the one and only real psychoacoustic model, and that he could incorporate it into his electronics without even listening to them. That struck me as a bit of a reach in the marketing department. It was like he was forcing you to acknowledge his guru status: "Look, Ma, no hands!"

It would be realistic for any designer of any product to have a design philosophy that results in similar result of the product.

 

[Folsom]

I have to admit that the item that has made me most skeptical of Lamm was his claim that he had the one and only real psychoacoustic model, and that he could incorporate it into his electronics without even listening to them. That struck me as a bit of a reach in the marketing department. It was like he was forcing you to acknowledge his guru status: "Look, Ma, no hands!"

As I said earlier, everyone has been interested in psychoacoustic modeling or whatever you want to call it. It sounds more intricate than it is... it simply is not any kind of crazy out there adjustments. If you understand how amplifiers work you’ll know why. It’s not like you can EQ the music predictably, and Lamm certainly doesn’t (much at least) signal effects like a studio so... it boils down to making some mature decisions and ignoring a lot of “common sense”.

So ya, it’s marketing. Otherwise he could have sold his IP for WAY more than he would get from decades of selling gear. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t make great gear; gear that bests a lot of stuff.

 

[Robh3606]

Why would anyone design a system with a narrow listening window as defined in the article? It makes no sense! There is do much variety in music not to mention the recordings themselves I would think you would go as wide as you can. Not wide in a euphoric sense where it all the same but as a window into the recoding to alow you to hear whats there. There are differences in tracks on the same album to suit the song so unique is what it's all about

Rob

 

[morricab]

As I said earlier, everyone has been interested in psychoacoustic modeling or whatever you want to call it. It sounds more intricate than it is... it simply is not any kind of crazy out there adjustments. If you understand how amplifiers work you’ll know why. It’s not like you can EQ the music predictably, and Lamm certainly doesn’t (much at least) signal effects like a studio so... it boils down to making some mature decisions and ignoring a lot of “common sense”.

So ya, it’s marketing. Otherwise he could have sold his IP for WAY more than he would get from decades of selling gear. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t make great gear; gear that bests a lot of stuff.

If he actually designs his gear according to psychoacoustic models of human perception and his design of choice overall is SET because of his ability to match his models more readily with such a design, that is rather telling, no? His SETs measure well in alignment with other model predictIons from the likes of Cheever, Geddes and even Crowhurst. Also Jean Hiraga made some observational predictions regarding distortion patterns being monotonic and Lamm ML2 largely meets this criteria.

 

[DaveC]

Why would anyone design a system with a narrow listening window as defined in the article? It makes no sense! There is do much variety in music not to mention the recordings themselves I would think you would go as wide as you can. Not wide in a euphoric sense where it all the same but as a window into the recoding to alow you to hear whats there. There are differences in tracks on the same album to suit the song so unique is what it's all about

Rob

IDK man, my system sounds like live, unamplified acoustic instruments and vocals at all times. It's what I'm calling "Natural". That's with a capital N, not that pseudo-natural sound with a lower case n.