merlin said:
If I sit in front of a pair of speakers powered by some 18w triodes pumping out 3% distortion and my impression of that is the same as that of a live perfirmance, I simply don't give a monkey's how that is done - I simply enjoy the experience.
The number of those who have tried to go the so called accuracy route, and invested fortunes in very expensive amplification and speakers,
That's a different kind of folly. Only a sucker spends £5K on a cd player when the same (and sometimes) better accuracy can be had for $100. Excellent amplifiers are available for substantially less than $1000, and many AV receivers have outstanding performance all rolled up into one neat package.
Good speakers are not cheap, but again, $1000 will get you a pair which will be limited by the aesthetics of their placement in the room (not their ability). For $5000 you can get a first class pair of speakers (eg. Quad 988's).
Wrapping that up,
accuracy does not have to cost a fortune. People spend a lot of money on designer hifi because it looks nice and they believe it to be different, even though there's no evidence that it is actually different, there's just copious and fanciful reviews, coupled with forums such as this where word of mouth provides "group therapy" for the easily led.
only to end up selling the lot and ending up with some nice valves and high efficiency speakers is legion.
Just how much is your system worth? And how much have you saved in your "downgrade to distortion"?
As you say a lot of people do change, and for something that is provably worse (in terms of distortion), but I would be inclined to argue that they have swapped one kind of folly for another: an overly expensive accurate system, for an overly expensive
inaccuracte system.
I'd also argue that many of them are smug about how they can "hear the difference" because now a difference does exist, and they can identify a change in the system, albeit a change for the worse. I guess there is some pleasure in hearing the difference. However, the change is not perceived as a backward step, but is typically hailed as an improvement, rather than heard for what it really is. The folks taking this path, can rightly be labelled as "deaf", and it is therefore ironic that they see themselves as the "Golden Ears". Moreover, these folks seem to be the habitual serial changers too, constantly looking for the new kick.
BTW: I wouldn't be surprised if you get bored in a few months and seek out a new level (and definition) of musical reproduction
You can save yourself a great deal of money by realising at the outset that nothing is perfect and you should choose something that you feel sounds closest to live music. Indeed technical measurements should not be published as they are rarely of any use to anyone when trying to assess the musical enjoyment available from the equipment.
Nonsense. In properly conducted double blind tests where people were aked to assess the subjectice quality of a speaker based on sound alone, there was excellent correlation with the measured performance of the speaker. Speakers that measured well were subjectively well liked. "loudspeaker measurements abd their relationship to listener preference: part 1 & 2"J Floyd Toole, AES April/May '86. Another interesting finding was that people who prefered "bad speakers" were usually selecting speakers that compensated in some way for a hearing deficiency that they had. So, if you find yourself in a small select group liking some esoteric speaker, which doesn't measure well, then you might have some hearing impairment
I have a suggestion: if you are going to persue the inaccurate path, then you have to give up your right to criticize a recording and the recording process itself. You can't bitch and moan about the recording unless you have some idea what it sounded like in the studio and there is after all a standard for studio monitors: EBU Document 3276-1998..
I've given this a lot of thought, and I'm starting to think we made a
major mistake when we did away with tone controls in the '80's
People are now substituting whole components to achieve the effect of a minor amount of non-adjustable tone control.
