hifi characteristics

I am on a roll now...the timing question has made me think...

in a list of order, which are the more vital characteristics of sound, and which the lesser...

pace, timing, imaging, bass, tonal colour, smoothness, listenability, imaging, soundstage, dynamics, ad inf. I can't think of any more yet...

 

Count 'smoothness' out for a start! That's for the plinky-plonky beard-stroking audiophiles, IMO.

 

and don't let this spiral into a musical fidelty vs naim vs valve debate

 

I reduce the whole caboodle to; does it make a pleasing noise? If yes, end of story.

Ask not what you can do for your hi-fi, ask what it can do for you.

 

Mr Data

I only know what one of them is,and thats "ad inf",the rest is just baffling

how about adding "disappearing" to your list? the ability to let you forget the equipment is there,or is that listenability?

 

i'd put that under imaging & soundstage tbh

 

What about 'effortless'? If a system sounds like it's going purple in the face when you turn the wick up, then it bugs me. The weird thing is, the saddo's who work in hifi shops always demo things at that level..I guess it's important to Wadia-mischief too, because his home system keeps it's control at loud-ish levels. Most syystems sound like they're working too hard

 

Coherence throughout the frequency range, transparency, detail ...

and like Tones said.

 

Total musical cohesion, if you have this, all the other traits happily slip into place, except Thwack, you got to work at that a bit

 

Timing is more important than heavy bass, I like the mid range to be smooth enough to flow effortlesly and treble to be noticable but not too bright it becomes tiring to listen to.

 

I tend to go for a sound which has plenty of 'cut'. Being in a job where I listen to live music almost every day, it's sometimes difficult to be objective - live sounds more often than not aren't 'smooth' and do, as a whole, have upper midrange prominence (acoustic notwithstanding). Possibly why I'm a ProAc fan!

Seriously...I'd go for a sound system which is 'fast' sounding - one reason why I changed from an LP12 to a Gyro some 10 years ago, to inject some pace into my music. The Linn was a really nice piece of kit but to my ears tended to dominate the music with too much of its own character - so much stuff just sounded the same.

As to tonal qualities - the human ear does have an amazing knack of 'getting used to' tonal inaccuracies. Something which sounds coloured (perhaps even slightly unpleasant) at first, given time will begin to sound the norm and perfectly acceptable. That's why I'm not keen on A/B demonstrations. As to portrayal of musical values (can you follow the tune/what the bass player's doing? etc etc) it's far more cut and dried.

Just imho of course.

 

I agree completely. If you listen to a speaker with a tonal imbalance - say a 3dB-6dB lift at 2kHz - your mind quickly compensates. If you then switch to a flat speaker you will hear a corresponding dip at 2kHz. I'm not keen on A/Bs either.

Peter Qvortrup has written an interesting paper Are you on the road to Audio Hell? in which he proposes that the best equipment is that which differentiates best between various recordings and bits of music. Interesting stuff.

 

Thanks for the link Steve - I'll read it in more depth at a later date.

I got the chance to have a very 'involved' chat with Peter at a recent Bristol Hi-fi show. When I told him I was musician by trade it just meant that he was going to chat for longer!

Anyway... at first I found his A/N products rather 'strange' in their tonal portrayal but from past experience (and sticking to my word) I thought 'stick with it lad'. So I did. Nearly 2 hours later I came away with a new-found respect and delight for what I'd been listening to. Music should tug at the soul and take it on a journey. The Audio Note gear did just that. To me, that is what hi-fidelity should be. And did I think about whether the bass was too light? The treble a bit too incisive? Somehow it just escaped my mind.

Peter's extremely opinionated (there's an understatement) and has no doubt upset as many people as he's made happy. But he's definitely doing something right.

 

I'd second Steve's link. It's worth printing out as too long to read on screen. The article takes no hifi hostages. For the authors it's all about how accurate your system reproduces the source music. So it doesn't matter whether it's a good/duff recording, as the source is what you only have. Furthermore, for them, it makes no sense to talk of this speaker being good for classical, that spk good for dance music etc. A radical proposition for some

There's a certain kind of 'zen simplicity' to their argument. The search for hifi nirvana is the accuracy of the system, and that's what should motivate upgrades.

If you select components based on skewed/inaccurate tonal characteristics then the overall experience of listening to music is diminished and can lead to frustration. Quick A/B listening doesn't work for them and leads to alsorts of problems in the longterm...such as audio hell

Then again, if u mainly listen to dance music, wouldn't you want a bass heavy system

 

Isn't that what they have monitoring speakers for?

 

Good evening Mr 7v, nice to see you in action sir, consider tonal quality with correct phased temperal coherance, most good bellwire manufacture to 'b' list celebs

 

Yep

Yet many dance music bass heads would go after speakers perceived for reproducing a deep bass etc, adding subs and alsorts. I suspect many of these systems would be 'tonally inaccurate' according to Peter, but highly pleasureable to the bass head listeners.

While the pursuit of accuracy makes a lot of sense, some folks would prefer to tailor their systems to 'colour' the sound in a particular way.
What's wrong with that? Audio hell here we come

 

When he talks about accuracy, I don't believe that Mr. Qvortrup holds 'tonal accuracy' to come above all else. In his paper he talks of comparing two speakers and deciding which shows up the most differences between different recordings. The one that shows up most difference is the most accurate (at least I think that's what he means in his paper).

When I design a speaker enclosure I talk and sing (sort of) into the hole where the drive units go. I aim for a fairly natural sound which requires a minimum of damping. I have tried this with some AudioNote cabinets and they sound like caves by comparison. Some of this will disappear with damping but a character print of the enclosure remains. AudioNote speakers have many charms and give (to my ears) a musical, enjoyable and listenable presentation - as Gromit found. However, I wouldn't rank tonal accuracy as their main property, nor do I think that that is Peter's aim.