He seems to prefer a detailed sound that has come across ever since he had the music fidelity monster amps with what I think were Wilson’s. I picked this up from all of the reviews I used to read that he wrote. He describes things well and then buys the gear he likes so it’s very easy to determine from reading the reviews of the gear he likes to understand what he prefers.
Videos of Acoustically-Coupled Audio Recordings
- Thread starter Ron Resnick
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He seems to prefer a detailed sound that has come across ever since he had the music fidelity monster amps with what I think were Wilson’s. I picked this up from all of the reviews I used to read that he wrote. He describes things well and then buys the gear he likes so it’s very easy to determine from reading the reviews of the gear he likes to understand what he prefers.
nothing wrong with details. it is the bad timbre, lack of coherence, lack of balanced weight, fake midrange. Details in his system are fine
which why some of us don't go down the video road.
virtual system dissection. and say it enough times and it becomes the truth. and then gets neatly fit into all sorts of narratives, with all sorts of agendas.
it's neither a good thing, nor a bad thing. but it is a thing.
Same argument. Then you shouldn’t do it physically as well. As to when the videos become representative to proxy for physical, has been discussed
un-ringing bells is not the way of the web. and the post reader does not neatly follow a fair format, they just run with the impressions. it's in the wind....
we all have our own filters. or....not.
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A full sounding, natural midrange for vocals should not have to depend on a center speaker.
I agree. I think full range, dynamic, room filling sound with a wide and natural sound stage should be possible with just one channel and one single driver too. I understand why it doesn't work that way. Ultimately I think we need to accept a compromise somewhere and all of us decide where that is for ourselves. Most audiophiles stop at 2 speakers. I'm happier with 3. I suspect I might be a little happier still with 5 or 7 but I'm surprised at how many issues are solved for me by just adding one more speaker so for now that's how I roll.
i think our speaker systems and rooms ideally ought to compliment the media we choose. otherwise we compromise our signal paths or sources.
sooooo, i have a purpose built 2 channel room with a built in shape and built in diffusion for 2 channel media, then a separate 9.3.6 multi-channel Dolby Atmos home theater room for movies and multi-channel music. my home theater room is more compromised acoustically, since i'm not chasing reality and it's my lesser focus. who knows how that 'popcorn' movie is supposed to really sound? and i have my 2:35 10 foot wide picture to distract me anyway.
i play the media where it belongs.
a center channel in a 2 channel room is going to be a trade-off somewhere for 2 channel media. especially for analog. unless you have a 3 track tape deck and appropriate tapes. but we all make our choices. i love my Trinnov dsp, but i keep it where it belongs.....far away from my 2 channel room.
even if i was 2 channel digital only, i would not dumb down my Wadax digital to feed a center channel.
sooooo, i have a purpose built 2 channel room with a built in shape and built in diffusion for 2 channel media, then a separate 9.3.6 multi-channel Dolby Atmos home theater room for movies and multi-channel music. my home theater room is more compromised acoustically, since i'm not chasing reality and it's my lesser focus. who knows how that 'popcorn' movie is supposed to really sound? and i have my 2:35 10 foot wide picture to distract me anyway.
i play the media where it belongs.
a center channel in a 2 channel room is going to be a trade-off somewhere for 2 channel media. especially for analog. unless you have a 3 track tape deck and appropriate tapes. but we all make our choices. i love my Trinnov dsp, but i keep it where it belongs.....far away from my 2 channel room.
even if i was 2 channel digital only, i would not dumb down my Wadax digital to feed a center channel.
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MF stated that the video represents fairly closely the sound of his system. I take him at his word. What I am hearing from his system which is comprised of components that he has chosen over time and with many choices and exposure and his own set up skills presumably the way he wants it set up for a sound he likes, I can only presume this is a reflection of his preferences and nothing more.
The sound of the system presented by his own video is consistent with a type of sound I understood him to like based on the reviews that I have read from him in the past. All of this is consistent and makes sense to me. I’m just saying that his preference clearly comes through in both his writing and the presentation of the sound of the system through his own video which he states as being representative.
while he might think it resembles his sound, he might strongly disagree with your description of what you heard. and you both could be right.
it's a video. you are not sitting there in person both hearing the same thing.
yes but again disagreeing with the sound has happened with me and ALL Wilson owners in person as well. All this is true also in physical demos, it is just that you don’t agree to what degree can the video be extrapolated to physical in room. Which is what this whole thread was about.
Mike, I think the point Bonzo is trying to make is that MF states the recording represents the sound of the system fairly well. Nothing more nothing less. We can listen to the video and get a sense of what system sounds like confirmed by MF. Of course we may not agree or prioritize the same attributes that he does, but it is a fairly close representation of the sound of the system and that is a very interesting comment. I applaud him for listening to the video, recognizing the similarities, and then his willingness to share it publicly. It would also help, if he took the time to critique his own video and discuss how it does and does not sound like his actual system.
It would be an entirely different thing if he said that the video does not represent the sound of his system or if he stated that he recorded his system and it doesn’t represent the sound so chooses not to share.
Coming from an influential reviewer, his comments are worth noting. Perhaps he is recognizing a small degree of interest among the audio file community for this kind of thing.
Member Tima just got some new horn speakers for his SET amplifiers. I heard the combination with him live, and it is fantastic. He’s in the process of setting up the speakers in his room and it is quite amazing how changes in speaker position and orientation and microphone/ seating location/distance are reflected in the sound heard from the videos.
In this case, the videos are a very useful way to share and discuss this kind of information. The progress is easily documented.
This sense of representation and videos as tools is the topic of the thread. People can certainly disagree, but it is an interesting discussion nevertheless. Even Ron Resnick recently posted a video of his new system. It’s wonderful as a supplement to his description for those who can’t actually hear the system.
In this case, the videos are a very useful way to share and discuss this kind of information. The progress is easily documented.
This sense of representation and videos as tools is the topic of the thread. People can certainly disagree, but it is an interesting discussion nevertheless. Even Ron Resnick recently posted a video of his new system. It’s wonderful as a supplement to his description for those who can’t actually hear the system.
Peter said they have both heard the demo live, so it will be at David’s, so it will be Lamm, and for Tima’s room size the jbl or the tad 2401/2
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The Lamm ML2.2 amps have been here about a year -- used those and the Lamm M1.2 monos in my review of the Wolf von Langa SON field coil speakers. Some time back I had a thread here on fwb about speakers to use with the ML2s. Now in house are the JBL M9500 speakers purchased from David (hat tip.) Been doing work on my room with lots more still to do. Couple early pics and some info here.
Either you are bothered by the inter-aural crosstalk caused by 2 speaker systems or you are not. I really like 2 channel audio recordings and overall prefer them to multi-channel recordings. They have all the information I need in them to create the soundstage I'm after. The problem with using just 2 speakers is that it significantly damages the signal that actually reaches your eardurms because of inter aural crosstalk that is extreme in the case of a center panned phatnom image. Usually there's a centerpiece performer that's panned center, so that's exactly where I don't want that to happen. Because that interference pattern is so strong, it's very diffucult to mask it with room reflections without seriously compromising the imaging and tone overall. My experience is it just can't be done to my satisfaction. Nature never has two sound sources playing nearly the identical signal at the same time so much as to make it sound like a single sound source coming from between them.The 2 speaker phantom center totally works if you're right between the speakers but it has a unique sonic effect that is peculiar to stereo systems. You either like it or you don't. I don't, so I see standard 2 speaker setups as not suitable for sweetspot focused listening, but better for party mode, moving around the house, dancing, or sitting off axis and listening casually. Just enjoy the spacial effects but don't get caught up in analyzing the sounstage accuracy. There's a limit to what it can do although you can learn to hear through the error, similar to looking at a stereoscopic image when a lot of light is bleeding across into the wrong eye. The ghost side images are there messing things up but some people can learn to ignore them better than others.
2 speaker setups are an audiophile tradition, and people have come to want to hear that crosstalk interference as a feature, a historical artifact of reproduced home audio. If that's what you want then that's really easy achieve. I dont' like it so I have to make efforts to hear what I want to hear. A physical crosstalk barrier works beautifully but it's not a practical setup. Recursive crosstalk elimination schemes also work but to my ears they alter the signal purity too much, adding their own audible and undesirable artifacts. Dolby upmixing is interesting too. I should experiment with it some more but so far I feel it's a bit too agressive, although usually better than just using two speakers. I do not understand how it separates and steers the sounds to new channels. I just use very simple channel mixing
Regarding signal purity with channel mixing, I can digitally mix a left and right channel, and then mix the inverse of one channel back in, and that channel disappears entirely. There is no hint of it left, and no mark on the original channel. I know this because If I then mix in the inverse of the original channel I get pure silence. The digital sigal is comprised entirely of zeroes. Digital summing and subtracing of signals is extremely pure as long as you don't clip anything. I'm pretty sure that no passive network in any speaker can be inversed with that degree of purity. So yes, I'm adding a step to the signal path, but if it's degrading at all, it's orders of magnitude less degrading than what's happening between the amplifier and the speaker drivers in even the very finest speakers with a passive network. It's not something I'm going to be hear and be bothered by. There is a way to implement my method of crosstalk reduction and center channel derivation without any channel mixing. It can work with a standard 2 channel system - pure analog, whatever. It would just be a type of speaker and would present a normal load to a 2 channel amplifier. I did a quick experiment by jumbling some speakers together and heard it work. It was an ungainly mess but proved the concept. I might build a speaker for myself using this method just for the convenience of not requiring the signal mixer in my playback chain.
you completely lost me right there.
why would i care about the best possible analog and digital sources, if i'm going to be limited in performance by the dsp engine? unacceptable to me in my 2 channel room.
my system building culture would be turned upside down with your approach.
i could agree that at modest performance levels that your approach might be a preferred net benefit. heck yeah, dsp everything. but not at the highest levels of media and sources.....and rooms. and the best preamps are not 3 channel, so you are restricted there too, in your preamp<->amp interface. big steps backwards.
i can see a three channel tapes and three channel systems being superior. but that's a pretty small music universe to invest in.
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