Best Midrange?

Good grief, what heathens / chavs we have here! That's a proper Art Deco fireplace!

 

Hey, I like it! I also like the martian.

 

JC,

In what way are modern speakers better? Higher power handling is undoubtedly one area, but that's not an issue if the old design is as efficient as Tony's Yorks are.

Any others?

Joe

 

I'd argue modern speakers were better in a like for like for like basis, e.g. a pair of Tannoy Canterbury SE are better than my DIY Yorks, a pair of Klipsch Heresy IIIs are better than Mk Is, a pair of Quad 989 are better than a pair of 57s etc etc. The argument only falls apart when idiotic hyperbole / advertising rhetoric comes in from people trying to position what is effectively an LS3/5a replacement as something it is very obviously not.

 

I'd nominate this for the post of the day award!

 

If you mean me ?

Neutrons are LS3/5a replacement.

ADM9s are something else.

They can replace your whole hifi system.

You could put it all in a museum (or a skip)

and just use an iPad as a source.

JC

 

JC, remember, I've heard them! They are a nice little speaker, they sound like a nice little speaker, and they sounded like a nice little speaker with a sub when the sub was turned on. There is just no escaping using the word 'little' I'm afraid, but I'd have no hesitation in recommending them to anyone looking for such a thing. I rather liked them.

Tony.

PS no iPod exists which would hold my music collection even in crappy 128kbs format.

 

iPad, Tony, ........ not iPod !

JC

 

Yes, I meant iPad - the largest is 64GB, which is nothing, unless you were simply meaning using it as a control surface for server based audio.

FWIW I'm absolutely certain computer based audio of this type is obsolete, a dead duck before it even became a live duck. The Elcassette of the digital age. The Spotify / cloud model is the future, ripping CDs / buying from iTunes / local storage really is for chumps and will look like having a collection of 8-track cartridges in a few years time. Just pointless.

The only formats that will survive are vinyl (for it's historic importance), and to a lesser extent CD. Beyond that it will be subscription based cloud distribution. I'd put money on it.

 

I don't think you're fully in the groove with digital yet Tony.

Firstly let me make a few qualifying observations.

Let's leave magnetic tape aside for the moment.

I agree with you about the historical significance of records, - 78s, as well as vinyl (which is a comparatively recent and short-lived medium).

Two things flow from that, - if you want to play your records, then you need a record player, and there's nothing wrong with that, for a record enthusiast, - but they're a dying breed. Most people are no longer prepared to commit the time and space required, and some are dissatisfied with the sound quality disadvantages of vinyl compared to digital.

Secondly, - after records, there is only digital. CD's are a red herring, since they are merely a plastic holder for a digital file, which can be transferred perfectly, without loss or corruption, to any other digital storage device, which might be a local hard disk or a server in 'the cloud'.

It matters not, if correctly implemented, what digital device you use to convey the source file to a DAC, and hence onward to local amplifiers and speakers.

Discrete CD Players are now generically 30 years old and for most people totally obsolete and useless. Not least because of their unreliable mechanisms.

CDs live on at the moment, because they are a legacy storage system, already in use by many people, but new sales are fast fading, although it is a convenient way of sending digital music via snail-mail, and the sound quality is good. Email and electronic distribution has overtaken trucks, and the download is king at present.

But why bother using your own local storage, when you can use a cloud service and stream the source file from there. The sound quality is the same as any other digital source, and the cost and convenience is much better.

An iPad2 running IOS5, and streaming from the source to a DAC, will do all or any of the above, with an unlimited amount of storage and the best sound quality available.

JC

 

p.s. you can always make digital transcriptions of your favourite records if you don't want the inconvenience of a record player.

Done correctly and competently the sound quality is maintained.

JC

 

Find me a 30 year old hard drive that still holds it's data and is of a non-obsolete interface! I know all my CDs still work! CDs are trusted and reliable technology.

According to the BPI downloads only amount to around 17.5% of the market, so CD is very far from dead! (link)

As I say above my suspicion is that we are pretty much at the peak of the download / local storage model. I see only decline over the long-term, and I'm pretty certain that the new cloud products from Apple represents an intermediate step before they abandon the iTunes model and move to a subscription service such as Spotify.

On the CDs themselves; one area I really don't think you understand in the slightest is that a lot of people care a lot about the actual mastering. As music replay becomes ever-more dumbed-down and home audio becomes ever smaller, less full-range and less capable of reproducing dynamic contrasts music is being remastered and re-issued in an ever more compressed and brick-walled manner. As usual the collector markets reflect this with many specific CD masterings / pressings of even quite popular titles already being worth into the £hundreds (e.g. Led Zep 'targets'). People are prepared to pay good money for the best sounding issue, and I suspect as most in the know think the cloud / subscription model will be the clear winner in digital audio they are snapping up the best copies currently available as, like me, they fear things will only get worse when it comes to mastering. If you are really serious about your music quality have a good read around the Steve Hoffman forum (link). The end game will probably be a subscription service for the masses and a collector culture for the discerning audiophile. This is clearly a niche area, but it is the ones in which readers of forums such as this one, pfm AoS, WigWam etc reside in. We actually care about sound quality!

 

I tend to still buy CDs, rip them and then listen to the rip because I prefer the convenience and interface of a media player. But I either own the the CD (in the vast majority of cases) or the file has come from another disc.

Purchased downloads are probably <0.5% of of the collection of around 1500 albums.

I do think that that the cloud solution for audiophiles is some way off - maybe even 5 years+ since we want lossless and that isn't on the cards any time soon IMO.
Therefore I think a HD based solution is perfectly viable until the end of the decade.

I no longer have a CD player in my system at all.
I have a trusty old Meridian stashed away and I wheel it out if a visitor insists on CD and doesn't want me to rip his discs (which if fair enough).

 

I believe the CD player is going to be around for a very long time - it just might not look like what we're accustomed to - and there will always be people like me who like single-purpose boxes / 'players', for a variety of reasons.

Personally - I can't stand the media player approaches I've had a play with so far - the common attractor seems to be a commoditisation I simply don't care for. Turns everything into radio / background browsing. Tony is spot-on about the quality issues involved, though.

Yes I've heard ADM9s too. Have to say if I replaced my entire hifi with something it'd be ... a new Ducati, an old Aston or something fun

 

I agree - I think it will gradually develop into a larger, blacker, format - grooved on the outside .

For the youf of today, digital download is all about ignorance and convenience (a heady cocktail :MILD - for the 'lover of fine audio' it's all about playing with new toys....(us boys do love our toys after all).

 

I haven't touched a CD for months. In fact I hardly play my 352GB of lossless ripped CDs either. Most of the time these days I listen directly from Spotify, and prefer to go digging and find something new than choose from my hard disk.

I wouldn't say that this behaviour of mine is treating music as a commodity, even though I now play my existing collection less. More to the point I feel it is simply feeding my passion for music better than trying to find good CDs.

I'd go as far as to say the less frequent playing of my existing finds helps them to stay fresh when I do return.

 

The thing about the Spotify / cloud subscription model that often gets lost in these discussions is what Simon mentions above: accessibility to a truly vast amount of stuff. I don't know what an average sized music collection is these days, and given that I've records in every room of the house I'm probably way over it, but I've certainly visited people who only have 50-100 records or CDs to their name. As an ideal a subscription service connects you easily to the entire history of recorded music, all of which can be accessed in an instant.

The area where I really think the interface needs to wake up is intelligence / profiling; it needs to get that 'you listened to this, this and this, therefor we recommend this, this and this' thing that Amazon does with uncanny accuracy. Once it gets that it will be amazing as a entertainment / discovery / educational tool. It is all these things as is, though I feel it could go a lot further.

I'm very optimistic about the future as long as a proper subscription model arises that satisfies both the listener and music creators / custodians. I can see a situation in later life when I downsize to a smaller system, keep my favourite 200 or so records, and rely on a (hopefully high-res) subscription service for the rest of recorded music. I just hope the record labels who act as custodians for so much musical history survive to protect and preserve the source material for future generations. As I see it this is by far the greatest risk we face, especially in light of the copyright legislation in the EU that effectively places 50+ year old music into the public domain.

 

Exactly Tony. I can't see it happening for exactly that kind of reason. For a commercial supplier sadly there is no incentive to be a custodian once the minimum legal agreements are met, except the emotional. And we live in a world where that cuts no ice.

Parable from an industry I do understand - my own, Architecture. Both a commercial offer and a private art, it's not something you go into for money, believe me. In the course of any project many little things no one else will ever notice are worried-over and worked-up. But after handover, and the defects period expires (6or 12months) post-handover, all that detail development, all the drawings, all the little notes get packed off to the archive - with a 'Destroy' date on it (6 or 12yrs hence) for reasons of PII insurers and established case law on Tort etc. Morally wrong, but its the world we live in, to our (future) loss.

'subscribe to cloud' ? Me , heck no; I'll remain custodian to my own sketch books, thanks.

 

In the conventional market I agree with you but I'm sure a deal could be cut in a subscription / cloud-based environment. Say for example you are CBS/Sony and Apple do as I suspect and shortly move to the Spotify model - it would be pretty easy to make access to the current stuff conditional both on taking the rest of the catalogue, and paying a rate for it, e.g. if Apple want to have access to Lady Gaga and all the current big-ticket pop stuff then they take all the Armstrong, Monk, Mingus, Davis etc that's moving out of copyright, and also pay a play rate for it. A degree of arm-twisting could be done in this environment that couldn't be done in a completely open free-market. To my mind this is the only scenario where old music will be preserved.

The nightmare is what's happening with the dreadful CD pirates in the UK market where any cock with access to a CD stamper can press classic albums such as Kind Of Blue, Blue Train etc - they are always recognisable as the cover art is wring as ironically the copyright on photos is better than that on the music. I've heard a couple of these and they are crap, it seems they go to effort to disguise the mastering they've ripped and do so by badly re-EQing things, certainly the ones i've heard have horrid exaggerated bass and no life to them. It would be a disaster if this was the way much of the greatest music of the 20th century was handed over to future generations, though as a second hand music dealer I'll no doubt make a good living selling great sounding originals!

 

I Think that's fine, and I get the arguments about wanting to own and enjoy quality originals, but you potentially deny yourself access to lots of new material if you don't also embrace downloads now, and cloud to follow.
Depends what you like, but other than a few obscure artists refusing to use the new platforms, access to new material will become very limited IMO.

We can enjoy all formats and technologies surely, and we are going to be in a state of transition for many years which means we should surely grab our music from whichever source offers the best quality and variety.