Lol... I forget alsoI keep telling myself small woofers are just as good as larger ones, and they are faster ! Wait is that a good thing ?
The Mysterious Case of the Listening Window! By Jeff Day, Positive Feedback
- Thread starter PeterA
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sure; you should share it. but temper the broader implications a little....or don't if you prefer to get a reaction.
i'm all for pro vintage, pro simple and pro generic. basically i like pro anything. and we can learn from what gear you personally left behind in your particular situation. then we can draw our own conclusions.
but i don't like to see painting with negative broad brushes. and if/when you do there will be conflict involved. which a few even enjoy. for every action there is a reaction.
just my personal views. but i'm only here for fun and positives.
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Totally agree. Especially this constant talk about parallel universes and cheech & chong, like transparent before, is over the top by now. Folks cannot understand the understated power of Spartan speech
Yes, Peter, I've had the distinct impression that in the past few years you've expanded your horizons quite a bit actually and in several ways and you are to be commended for this seemingly growth you've been experiencing. But I am speculating.
I don't know anything about Mr. Day except this one article. But apart from my speculatvie conclusion of his perspective, most of what he wrote was nonsense to me.
As for speculation or "incredible presumtions", you / we speculate or presume about most things in and out of audio forums. How many times have we observed or ourselves have looked at others' still pictures of their systems and said, wow I'll bet your system sounds awesome when in fact we've not a clue what it may sound like? Or the thousands of occurences where one describes a product, a sonic characteristic, or technology and either believe or disbelieve based on the limited information of a few posts without any firsthand observations?
Even in the recent pin-point imaging thread some came down pretty hard on a few members for their perspectives - all potentially without knowing another's entire perspective. As I recall you partook in some of that. That's also speculation and/or presumption.
IOW, we issue speculative judgements or presumptions in perhaps every last thread and maybe in every last post. And we speculate or make presumptions in our minds a thousand times more than we do in the forums. Some things we dare not type.
So if I speculate on one's listening skills based on my limited info, it should be no big deal. In fact, and I've said this several times before, that high-end audio's greatest deficiency IMO is without doubt a general lack of listening skills. To the best of my knowledge, that is a fact.
I would even attest that MQA Ltd was banking on that fact when they first introduced MQA in late 2014 with their out-of-this-world performance claims like, "For the first time ever we're able to hear exactly what the sound engineers heard in the studio." Almost as if no other equipment or speakers even mattered and the only thing that did matter was if the little green light was on to authenticate the format. I presumed that they speculated that most all would buy into the new format if the sonic praises came from the right sources (think editors-in-chief). And many bought into it hook, line, and sinker and all based on IMO naive speculation and presumption. And it almost worked.
To this day, I've yet to hear a single MQA formated recording, yet in late 2014 and early 2015 you should be able to find numerous posts by me trying to warn others that their performance claims were entirely impossible to achieve and that if they were truly interested in performance levels they were claiming they were barking up the wrong technology tree altogether. Yes, that was my speculation and my presumption based on my limited information and to the best of my knowledge I was rather accurate.
So if somebody's listening skills are brought into question over a somewhat nonsensical article they wrote, what's the big deal? Like my momma used to day, if they have the nerve to write the article you'd better have the nerve to speculate or presume.
This hobby is all about listening skills, isn't it? I mean 5-year olds appreciate music too. Shouldn't something make us a little more appreciative than they? Some people (not saying me) really put in their due diligence to develop listening skills to discern / interpret what they hear. Yet, there are too many others who think listening skills are inherited at birth because we can hear from both ears. Or worse, our listening skills evolved from being both predator and prey. Talk about being incredibly presumptive or speculative.
BTW, the retail cost of my source and amps is $4k. Tell me nobody here isn't incredibily speculative or presumptive about that.
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Ron, you have a good point here. No system can do it all perfectly, everything is compromised one way or another. There is value in emphasizing particular aspects of performance more, and with it, creating a narrower listening window.
On the other hand, setting up a system properly in the room, and getting the electronics right, can go a long way to again widen the listening window.
I'll try to address both points in terms of my experience with my own system.
When I bought my current two-way monitor/subwoofer system almost three years ago, I made a conscious choice: For a price that I could afford, I wanted to have a speaker system that on chamber and smaller ensemble music (up to 15 to 20 players) was superb in quality, and would give me the intimate kind of presentation that I like and which is less easily obtainable with other speaker types. The system had to be just good enough on large-scale music. The latter quality was sufficient for me to being able to enjoy all music, but with my natural focus more on smaller scale music. I did not want to compromise on smaller scale music in exchange for having, for the money invested, a somewhat better orchestral performance.
Yet with the changes in electronics over the years (notably, the insertion of the Octave HP700 preamp into my system) and very substantial changes in acoustics and in speaker/subwoofer setup in the room, with most recently a dramatic gain in the latter, the orchestral performance has gone from "good enough" to quite excellent. The most recent (rather non-audiophile) change, two separate industrial medical grade isolation transformers for a) the digital source components, and b) preamp, has further catapulted orchestral performance. Yesterday I was flabbergasted at the performance with my favorite Rite of Spring by Stravinsky (Boulez/Cleveland). At a quite loud listening level (peaks up to 96 dBa, > 100 dB) there was an utter effortlessness of presentation on this wild music, with a relaxed ease yet still explosive dynamics, facilitated by low distortion and noise that also allow for a marked increase of an already high resolution, both in terms of separation of instruments and of timbral micro-detail *). The ease was more like you would expect from a well-adjusted system with multi-way floor standers; it is quite a turnaround from the initial impression of strain and hardness of sound especially on more complex music. It seems in the end I got much more with this system than I originally bargained for!
Obviously, the performance on smaller-scale music has dramatically improved as well, far beyond what you heard two years ago upon your visit (and hey, even Dido sounds good now
).So I am with ddk that proper setup can very much widen the listening window (the changes in my setup have been partially inspired by ddk's suggestions). Peter has also heard the listening window of my system becoming wider lately, which he mentioned on this thread.
You can never know what the listening window of a given system is if you have not yet discovered its true potential. I cannot say I have yet with mine, but the progress has been quite a surprise for me.
Apparently from the opposite direction, Mike Lavigne reported here that by working on his setup over the years he has optimized his system that excels on large-scale music to also be able to successfully portray intimate music, and widening the listening window in this manner. In terms of the actual scale of large-scale music of course his large room is important, and my own system simply could not fill such a room with loud music, so his system in his room has more overall potential. But for what my mid-sized room allows, the system now delivers.
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*) I should also mention WBF member DaveC and the incredible resolving power and natural sound of his analog signal cables in my system (D4 interconnects, SMSG speaker cables), which both made my current sound possible and more and more reveal what they are truly capable of. Thank you and Bravo, Dave!
it is satisfying to move on down the road and expand the capabilities of your system where more music is more real.
Al, i had no intent to report anything as a done deal (can't say how it was perceived), what i posted was a possible approach.....
over the years i have certainly aspired to accomplish ultimate performance with intimate music; room tuning to an extreme degree, sitting in the nearfield, and lots of source investment and fine tuning.
but would everyone/anyone agree that it's a done deal? unlikely. all i can say is i am happy with it. and i can grab any piece of music and feel i can get all of what is on the recording. it checks all of my boxes and the few compromises/choices are ones i like.
No I don’t. I don’t feel stupid Because I enjoyed them for years and my friend Ack wrote an incredible review of my system the first time he heard it with those cables in place. He does not enjoy it when I remind him of that fact.
I’ve also made investment mistakes in my career but life goes on when learns the lessons.
I have since learned and moved on. I feel humbled by the experience but not stupid. I don’t even view it as a mistake. It was the right thing at the right time.
One of the things that I find good Tim is that so many here do put so much effort in trying to communicate their experience of sound and you’d be among those who work with most diligence at trying to get that part right.Sure.
But there is a here and now. That language has some fixity can be an advantage when everything is in a state of change. In the carnival world of audiophilery we find sound can be really difficult to describe. Sure some say keep it simple, just listen, no talk, no need for fancy words. Then someone asks "What's Best", or "what do you like about the Altc 817?" or "what's this natural sound people are talking about? - I thought all sound was natural." Having words in common can really help when shared understanding is a goal. Some suggest we've been spoonfed an audiophile vocabulary that leads us in the wrong direction. Sorting that out might be painful and confusing, but perhaps worth a try.
It would be great if our community was closer and we could all get together and share more listening in our systems. I think it’s good to try and get more exactness of understanding but given how incomplete the marriage of words and thoughts can be especially when trying to understand the richness and complexity of our experience we also perhaps need to gap fill and read in to what is written to build a better picture as best we can.
Simply given how our sample is so small we struggle to get the kind of range of responses and complete union in agreement to then start locking all the various concepts in our kit as well as the exact terminology applied perhaps more than we have.
I completely agree that working on getting better on agreements in concepts and also understanding in how people perceive sound is definitely worth persisting with but we also can potentially lose some traction as well if we also lose ourselves too utterly in semantics.
Flowing with interpretation in written understanding is always going to factor in discrepancies and what those values are exactly. In an all too distanced world it is just another limit that helps to continue to separate us all.
I suppose that’s why I feel that now looking more towards correlations and connections rather than discrepancies could bring great benefit at this time. Happily we can find these perhaps more in the music that we are listening to if not always the way we all then are hearing it’s sounds or then having the same approach to understanding these things.
PS The only rules is of course that Bruno rulz
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Oh, so you're a science relativist then?
Well, that's okay as long as you don't go with that too much on scientific issues that affect your individual personal responsibility with respect to our role in society.
Agreed. MQA is a technical scam.
Some may like its sound, but not because it is objectively better. It cannot be.
I find relativism least helpful in science Al when driving a fast car off the edge of a flat earth... oh yeah no, it’s relativity that is unhelpful then... oops my bad
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Seems a bit contradictory to me. You call Mr. Day's perspective "nonsense" based on one article. Then you seem to criticize some members "for their perspectives-all potentially without knowing another's entire perspective".
How can you judge / speculate what Mr. Day said is "nonsense" based on one article you read versus Mr. Day's entire perspective?
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I don't think I was criticizing others for their speculations / presumptions without first knowing another's entire perspective as that would be asking the impossible. If that's how I came across I apologize. Rather my intention was to illustrate how all of us including those accusing me of being incredibly presumptuous are also just as potentially presumptuous. As I stated then, just as we all are in every thread and perhaps every post and quite possibly in every facet of life at every waking moment. That was my point. And no I never once made any mention of others like yourself seemingly sounding hypocritically pious.
Pretty easy actually. I read and interpreted the article. I'm sure Mr. Day has many talents and areas of expertise but based on what he wrote in that one article, I just wouldn't take take him seriously regarding things related to high-end audio. Except perhaps that he's enjoyed listening to music for a long time. Maybe you think I need to read 25 more of Day's articles or maybe the next guy thinks I need to read 75 articles first before drawing my conclusion. For me, based on the things Day wrote in this one article, one article was all I needed. And as I recall it was early in the article that I began speculating his article (and potentially all future articles) wasn't of much value to me. Maybe he said a thing or two early on that were dead giveaways. To me.
FWIW and IMO, there aren't many writers / reviewers worth reading. Forgive me.
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I am having plenty of fun with modern retro and that makes her cry too... without hearing it...Brad, she was crying because she realized she was not getting a new car in a foreseeable future, as you where going to spend the money on vintage high-fi
You mean you’ll stick with a number you can’t back up in order to start an argument, right??
No actually. It was to prove a point. And it worked. I think. Besides, arguing with a relativist is a no-brainer walk-in-the-park slam dunk 3-pointer homerun every time. So why bother?
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I went back and re-read my posts in this thread - my goodness , 31 - that's too high percentage wise although maybe 2/3 of those are not on the topic you present here. I find the relevant posts: #13 (first), #38, #63, #96, #175, #191, #248, #273, #314, #322. I re-read looking for something confusing, inconsistent, or circular that I wrote. I didn't see any of that, but feel free to point out some 'problem' wilth anything I"ve written thus far. I hope I haven't been too unclear to cause that within yourself with regard to my "objections."
You presented the Day article for us to look at and I read it. My approach to that was to consider it whole - as an article (or whatever noun is preferred.) I found it readable, with many andecdotes from Day. Apparently the anecdotes - most of which were unconnected as I read them - were a preface or lead up to Day's discussion of his notion of listening windows. Once he got there I'm thinking huh? is this another anecdote. I thought the article was scattered or disjointed at that point. It is really all over the place. But okay - it's his column. It may tie to together for him, and while some of it was mildly entertaining to read, it was largely biographical and I kept thinking 'where is this going.' It wasn't a review, or an editorial (though maybe it should have been) or a how-to; it wasn't expository. As I got closer to the end I thought it was a waste of (my) time and didn't see a high value as you did in presenting it to us to read. Like I said - different reactions, different opinions.
So, with a focus on listening window ....
Apparently the listening window discussion was the key to the article. I didn't think his listening window discussion was particulary cogent. Notice I'm talking about the way he said what he did.
Open his article, and go along with me. I hope I'm not skipping or omitting.
DAY: "I have been pondering for quite some time why enthusiast hifi after the 1960s evolved the way it did, with much - but not all of it - becoming increasingly amusical, at least from a music lover's perspective of wanting to be able to enjoy a wide spectrum of music of various recording periods and quality. "
Okay some hi-fi has gone off the tracks, beome increasingly 'unmusical' for the perspective of someone who enjoys a wide spectrum of music types.
DAY:The ability of a hifi system - or the individual components it is composed of - to be able to play a wide variety of recorded music from different periods, of different styles, and of varied recording quality, I refer to as the listening window.
The ability of a hifi system to accomodate music diversity is what he calls a listening window.
DAY: The listening window is a subjective measure of how wide a variety of recorded music one can listen to through a high-performance audio system and still have it sound and feel believably like a live music experience.
Okay: The ability of a hifi system to accomodate music diversity (ie., the listening window) is a subjective measure of just how diverse a set of music it can play in a way that is realistic.
Here I'm unclear about what is subjectively measured. Subjectivity - I take that to be something that is a matter of someone's opinion. I'm guessing its not the music diversity that is subjective, but it could be - 'how different is this music from that music. He probably means subjective belief about does it, or does it not, sound realistic. O...kay.
DAY: My parents console televisions stereos from the 1950s and 1960s had a wide listening window that allowed for enjoyable listening of pretty much anything of any recording quality. How was that accomplished?
Note: he's introduced the term at this point as a descriptor, but remember it is a subjective measure of believability - how is that believability accomplished. Here is where I thought the payoff would come - we'd get some real information. What makes up or causes a wide listening window.
But no ... we don't learn how his parents console accomplished a wide listening window. Instead of that, we get:
DAY:Yet many contemporary audio systems fail miserably at having a wide listening window, and can only accomodate a very narrow listening window of superb recordings, or risk sounding decidedly amusical on average recordings of great music.
A narrow listening window results in their owners buying the same audiophile recordings over and over again with each new remaster of the same old recording, because that's the only thing that sounds good on their stereo systems. "
Me: Huh? This isn't an account of the believability of his parents console to play diverse music. It doesn't follow. He doesn't tell us.
Then Day proceeds to tell us "An increasing number of us hifi nuts and music lovers again want a stereo system with a wide listening window - like many of those high-performance vintage systems so easily achieved ..." Do an increasing number of music lovers want to play all different periods, different styles of varied quality? Perhaps. For me there are many many types of music I have no interest in playing on my stereo because there are so many that I do want to play.
DAY: " My vintage audio system has an extremely wide listening window, and it superbly plays back music from any recording media of any quality while still making it sound and feel like a valid musical experience.
For me that's what high-fidelity audio is all about, and the non-intuitive part of it is why do so many high-priced and high-performance enthusiast audio systems totally suck at being able to accomplish that feat when some of the vintage gear could do that so easily? What's the secret?
Okay - at this point Day has assumed what he's trying to establish. He begs the question.
But, but maybe now we'll learn the secret ingredients of subjective believability with music diversity. Why so many high-priced stereos do not have it, when some vintage gear - like his parent's console or his Stokowski Altecs - has "it". What is the secret?
Do we learn that secret - do we get an answer to the question that Day poses?
No - we get just another non-sequitar:
DAY: "There's a few audio companies I am familiar with that have figured out how to do that, like the aforementioned Audio Note (UK) systems of Peter Qvortrup, or the First Watt and Pass Labs systems of Nelson Pass. "
"With each of those sets of electronics powering the "Stokowski" Altec loudspeakers I get an impressively wide listening window."
No secret is told - he just talks about his equipment.
At the end...
DAY:"Over the next year or so, I want to tell you more about what makes this wide listening window possible in a high-fidelity, high-performance, audio system ."
Another tease.
My objection? I didn't think Day's article was all that compelling - it was somewhat disorganized and poorly argued. I did enjoy reading the part about Stokowski comparing the sound of his orchestra to the sound of it reproduced. I did enjoy reading that Day wanted his system to sound like live music. But that was not a revelation to me. Maybe if it was written differently I may have had a different reaction.
thanks for the recap. Overall, I thought the article so odd and meaningless that I suspect not even an earnest sophomore audio enthustiast would attempt to write something this nonsensical. The topic was fine and dare I say even important but that's about it for me.
Well summarized. I should agree with him on tannoy and Altec but frankly what he writes and why he does things always makes me want to snooze by the first para. So despite knowing about his blog I don't follow it
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