Musicality. The holy grail?

Interesting Paul. I'm not sure what the LS3/5A crowd would say to that, nor the valve boys with small rooms. In what way are bigger systems better musically?

 

Hummm, I think you chaps are just being merely jolly japes today
Ok, lets put it this way, I hate Sterile, uninvoving, smoothly bland, huged fleshed out staged, buckets of niceiness dross, that could bore the bollox of a charging Rhino at 30 paces on a blistering hot summers day in Chipping Ongar :SLEEP: :SLEEP: :SLEEP:
So I have a more open sound with a touch more detail fair cop, but you can't drive a number 47 to sheppards bush through it's holographicaly silky suspender belt
I have a tightly focused, dynamic, alive, thwacky i(s there such a word as that , **** it, we'll use it anyway), articulate, ultra tight, dilithium propelled bass, I just haven't heard a 'tonaly pitch accurate & 'Natural' system recreate this in any form, elsewhere, else I've fallen asleep listening to it, Sorry soap box is out tonite WM

 

Sorry I don't quite agee.
The earth is (more or less round) and not flat. This is a fact.
If you see it flat looking from another view and you insist in believing that the earth is flat, then you are simply out of the reality.
Your convintion is base on one or maybe a few particular point of view and it doesn't contain any other views which would make you change mind. In other words your opinion is based on a very limited / restricted knowledge or experience which distorts the reality. I believe opinions should be based on wide knowledge and experiences. I can understand that this is not always possible and therefore I accept also that people, including myself, may have wrong (out of the reality) convintions.

 

Yes you have sir, and you are living with it Last time I heard it anyway it even played nicee music with aplomb

I agree that the Wadia sound is not strictly neutral (or should that be neutered?), but it has all the trademarks of proper hifi. We have both spent considerable sums (well OK not compared to Titian ) on our systems. I'm just intrigued as to what you feel you have got back in return

I know my next upgrade will be in the chair/sofa department, an oft overlooked part of the replay chain

 

You can ask the LS3/5A crowd and the poorly endowed valve boys yourself.

But orchestras and rock bands cover bottom to top, soft to loud, small systems don't. It is sometimes necessary to compromise the music to fit with cost constraints or room constraints, such is life.

I'm surprised this isn't obvious. And of course not everybody wants all the music all the time.

Paul

 

Merlin, in return, for not a major outlay, I have mangaged to 'Throw together' a musicaly engauging and dynamical powerful communitor of tunes, that I enjoy listening to at every oppotunity, weather in the room or out, it has to power to draw me in the room, and keep me there totaly immersed in the music, some times for hours on end, so I feel I have a fair return for my time, money and patients
Next upgrade, well I have a comfy sofa, so now a drinks chiller in the front room, for when the music makes me lazy and I can't be arsed to go to the Fridge WM
Plus a free Physco-analist to help me through my 'Dark days'

 

Please let me know when you get the drinks chiller in.

 

I'm sure a psychologist would have a field day with the last few of WM's posts (assuming that s/he didn't have a heart-attack at the prospect of the number of research projects a study of his oevre would yield).

WM is now doing what Lewis Carroll did (but less stylishly) - defining words to mean exactly what HE wants them to mean, but then going overboard when people disagree with him by using them in a manner everyone else understands. This is a particularly pointless mechanism of communication. He's also getting progressively more bizarre in pretending he's got these unique demands.

The Michaels are right in that "hi-fi" IS what we're all after - fidelity to (our perception of) the original event. What WM raves against is merely some of the characteristics of some "high-end" sound.

As came out in some of the more rational flat/round jousts we've had in the past is that different people are differently sensitive to the compromises involved in producing a facsimile of the original event. Some are unconcerned about tone quality, whereas other may be less concerned about leading edge attack. Horses for courses.

I've always maintained that "musicality" is equally obtainable from a megabuck system, or a £10 Roberts trannie radio. If you need the kind of system some of us have around here to hear the "music" in what you listen to, then I can only assume it's particularly appalling music or performances to which you're listening. Saying a piece of kit is more or less "musical" is just a cop out - if a reviewer (who does this for a living) can't analyse and put his finger on which bits of a system's performance is getting in the way of his enjoyment he's just not very good at his job. If the reviewer has any point it's to communicate to the reader whether the attributes of a piece of kit indicate it may be the right course for that particular horse.

What we spend time/money on is progressively removing the compromises that prevent the music sounding natural or "real" - according to our personal sensitivities. In my case the big obstacles are a "closed-in"/boxy sound characteristic of too many speakers, hashy treble and then poor dynamics. Getting rid of all of these at once...costs time, effort and/or money.

It may come as a bit of a shock, but WM's not unique ( ), but just a bit more obsessive than most of us. He's basically a flattie (although would hate to admit it) - in that rhythm and dynamics are the things to which he's most sensitive - but then goes a lot further towards the "roundie" attributes of imaging, stage and then tonal accuracy. To rail as he does against these features is just disingenuousness and hypocrisy - with a fair dollop of attention-seeking too. By all accounts he now has a system that does rather well (as opposed to that rather impressive producer of aural barbed wire he had a year ago).

 

Thanks Graham, used any Flash lately Wow Lewis C EH? was the man not just slightly bonkers oh well, why fly in the face of public opinion, I'm not justifing anything, I have some what lower expectations of a self styled classical guri. seek and yee shall find.
Oh Graham, you tease...
"To rail as he does against these features is just disingenuousness and hypocrisy - with a fair dollop of attention-seeking too. "
Only because I held you as my roll model oh wise one , I obviously can't live up to your exhaulted high standards of musical interpolation, please forgive oh master of classical madness, I only hope I can appease you in some humble way.WM

 

What a mixed bag Graham.

I agree with everything you've said in the box above.

However, I just have to say that telling someone else what they like or dislike in something as important and personal as music reproduction should be punishable by death - at least.

After all, W-M's the only person who needs to be concerned with 'Tone quality'.

 

What if you didn't need to worry about 'trade-offs' like that any more? That would be nice.

 

I'm not worried.

 

That was my point.

 

Aahh