|   ????????What's THE best system?????? | musbdeaf
Aug 17, 2002 8:16 PM | | I had the pleasure of listening to a Studer/Revox system about 15-20 years ago through fullsize Klipsch corner horns,and Escala's. We also listened to these speakers through various Macintosh amp/preamp variations including an extremly powerful tube set-up. We listened in a very well designed room. I was amazed to say the least! I understand HK bought out S/R several years back. But HK doesn't seem to build anything of that caliber from what I've seen. Is Mac still as much a leader as it was? It seems many people buy a mishmash of mfg today, not buying complete systems. Why? Is there a mfg out there that stands above the rest? Just curious. Oh...and don't forget speakers. Thanks! |
| re: ????????What's THE best system?????? | Haoleb
Aug 17, 2002 10:01 PM | | My dream system
Mark Levinson No 33 mono amps ( $35,000 )
dunno what pre yet..
Al'on Exotica Master refrence speakers ( $120,000 )
Mark Levinson transoprt/dac.. dunno how much
and about 3k in cables
and 5,000+ cd's....Mostly Pink Floyd |
| re: ????????What's THE best system?????? | 9ball
Aug 17, 2002 11:33 PM | | I may seem like a bandwagoneer, but I think the ultimate pair of speakers is the B&W Nautilus. As far as electronics there are so many brands that make fantastic equipment it's really hard to choose. Krell, Theta, Pass Labs, Accuphase, you could go on forever. I don't think there is a clear best. |
| re: ????????What's THE best system?????? | Haoleb
Aug 18, 2002 12:04 PM | | The Nautlus would be 2nd or 3rd on my list.
my top 3 speakers.
like i said ALON exotica master refrence
Eggleston works IVY
and of course those beautifull B&W Nautlis |
| re: ????????What's THE best system?????? | wanderingbob
Aug 19, 2002 10:08 AM | | There's certainly no consensus on the best equipment, even limited to well-defined categories. My "dream system" would be two-channel and would include solid-state electronics, electrostatic speakers, and a built-from-scratch listening room:
Mark Levinson #390S or Krell KAV280cd CD Player
Mark Levinson #335 or Krell FPB300cx Amplifier or Krell Master Reference Amplifier
Martin-Logan Statement E2 or Magnepan MG 20.1 or Quad ESL 989 electrostatic Speakers
If the "format war" between SACD and DVD-A is decisively determined, I would also want a high-resolution player in the new format.
I'm not familiar with tube electronics and cannot comment on that type of equipment.
Bob Garder
wanderingbob@yahoo.com |
| re: ????????What's THE best system?????? | skeptic
Aug 20, 2002 4:00 AM | | If you are a lover of classical music and are wondering if the state of the art has improved drastically over the last twenty years to the point where you actually think you're hearing live music, I'm afraid the answer is no. That's because all so called audiophile sound systems are built to the same paradyme; a siganl source (cd player or phonograph) two channel preamplifier, two channel power amplifier, and two loudspeakers. To be sure, every element has been tweaked and tweaked again and each tweak has its partisans who swear that their tweak is the holy grail. There can be raging battles over tubes vs transistors, class A amplifiers vs class AB, mc cartridges vs mm, passive preamps vs active. Even the wires have their tweaks and their partisans. And not just the speaker wires, but the interconnects and the power cords. Equipment has advanced from the sublime to the ludicrous and so have the prices. This is the only sector of the electronics industry where you pay more and more and get less and less. The purist view is a "minimalist" view. And newer designs don't necessarily translate into better "useful" performance. Twenty years ago, a state of the art system would cost say $10,000 to $15,000. Today, you'd be lucky to buy a good power amp at that price. A typical high end system consists of (IMO) a very exotic turntable, tone arm and cartridge (say $10,000 to $20,000), a passive preamp (say $3000) and a phono preamp (say $2000), or an active preamp (say $10,000) a power amp (say $15,000), 2 way ported 6 inch speaker systems (say $20,000) miscellaneous cables ($5000.) Total cost around $50,000. Of course, if you want top of the line equipment, think about 10 times that price. If sound systems were rated on a 1 to 100 scale where 100 equals experienced concertgoers being fooled most of the time into thinking they are hearing a live performance and 1 equals people with normal hearing immediately identifying that they are hearing a sound reproduction system practically every time, then I'm afraid the state of the art is still at or close to 1. The main deficiency... nobody has figured out how to reproduce the effects of the concert hall acoustics which plays a major role in the perception of sound at live recordings. (Those who disagree are inexperienced with live music or deaf IMO but in either case are wrong.) Now let's see how much flaming we get from the "audiophiles." |
| re: Thanks for your honesty Skeptic! | musbdeaf
Aug 20, 2002 8:07 AM | | Everyone seems to make glorious comments about this or that equipment. In most cases they either own this equipment or someone they know does or worse still that's what the guy at the audio store told them. Skeptic, it's a shame that "the state of the art" is so redicuously oversold. But, I unfortunately can be a sucker too. I recently listened to a Mac system through Mac speakers. I also listened to a Mark Levinson through don't remember electro-statics. I did not see a jump out at you difference. Is the Macintosh worth the money? Is there something else I should definitely be listening to? They set my Yamaha system up in the Mac room for me. I can clearly hear the difference from my Yamaha RX777. Though my Klipsch legend 100's still sounded great hooked to the Mac. Can you tell me if Klipsch is worth my money, or should I be listening to something else? I listened to Mirages and was very disappointed. They were very blah and sounded muted compared to the Klipsch. I realize the Klipsch are very bright, but unfortunately I have some higher freq. hearing loss, so these must help to compensate for that. I do listen to classical a great deal of the time. Mostly at very low levels. But I still enjoy jazz, blues, and rock cranked. I'd rather not get exotic. I'd also like to stay within one mfg for the various components, other than the speakers. I'm only interested in two channel. I still MUSBDEAF! Thanks again! Fuel to the fire ;] |
| This would mean....... | thefloyd
Aug 20, 2002 8:27 AM | | ....there is no way in hell to accurately reproduce the sound of live music--correct? If this is the case, what would be the point of spending 50-100k on equipment? I guess this is your point. However, I have never heard a system this expensive so cannot really comment. I can say that the more I have spent, the better the sound has become. Logically, I guess this would mean the sound WOULD be better the more cash you shell out--but I probably will never find out--my $15,000 system sounds darn good to me!
KG |
| This would mean....... | skeptic
Aug 20, 2002 8:52 AM | | First of all accept the fact that sound reproduction systems do not create music but a facsimile of music just the way a photograph is not reality no matter how good the camera or the film is. Do these state of the art systems create good convincing facimiles? Within narrow limits, to a degree yes but remember that the concept of two channel stereophonic sound is over 60 years old. (It was invented by Walt Disney Studios for their movie Fantasia.) The smaller the ensemble that was recorded and the closer in size the room that a performance would be heard in is to your listening room, the more accurate it potentially is. Live versus recorded demos were successful as long as 70 years ago. But the next time you go to a live concert, look around you. Look at the vast concert hall. 300,000 to 900,000 cubic feet. Most of the sound you hear will have bounced around those walls before it gets to your ears. And what a difference that makes. Read a book about acoustics, acoustic architects, and acoustic engineers. See all of the trouble they go to to build, tweak, remodel concert halls to optimize the sound. Then be aware that your sound system can't reproduce any of it, at least not in any meaningful way. Your room? a couple of thousand cubic feet. The difference? Not only a lot more reverberation but of an entirely different quality.
After nearly a lifetime of experience with sound systems, I am convinced that the main difference between the sound of one sound system and another is almost entirely due to "frequency response." Sounds simple enough but this is a very complicated subject and entirely different than we normally think of it as. One major issue is the high frequency dispersion of tweeters. This can account for a major difference between the sound of two speaker systems that measure the same on axis. Room placement is also an important factor. And of course the room acoustics. That system that sounded so great at the show room sounds entirely different at home. Another is the way recordings are made. There are no standards. A system that sounds great with one recording may sound horrible with another. Which recording is right? There is no such thing as right in this arena.
My advice, buy equipment you enjoy from reputable manufacturers who will be around to service it if and when that's needed. Don't buy far more than you can reasonably afford to spend. Save a lot of money for recordings, they are worth much more than the equipment. This stuff depreciates very quickly unless they become collectors items such as McIntosh Equipment. Beautiful to look at and use but no longer standing alone like it once did. |
| Good Point | 9ball
Aug 20, 2002 11:11 PM | | I used to be a trombonist and sometimes I would go up in the balcony of the large concert hall and just take in the beautiful sound of rehearsal while the hall was empty (trombones often would rest for 40 minutes to an hour at a time if we played at all). The most amazing thing was to hear a single oboe or clarinet or bassoon. An instrument so quiet but so rich sounding due to great accoustics. Such is the problem I have with much of the high end equipment I've listened to. It sounds very refined and detailed, but in a way too detailed. It doesn't sound nearly as alive as a real instrument. Many audiophiles complain of equipment that sounds "bright" but, at least brass instruments, are very bright sounding. To me, most jazz is supposed to have an edge but the sound tends to be smoothed off by expensive equipment. I've heard quite a few expensive setups but I've never been captivated by anything, and was especially disappointed when I got to hear dual monobloc Levinsons playing over B&W Nautilus 802's. B&W has always been my favorite but this was over 40 grand I was listening to, and it did not at all sound much if any better than systems that cost a fourth as much. You get what you pay for only to an extent. There is a price/quality curve with audio equipment. I feel there's a place in the market where you get a good amount of benefit for spending more money, but it levels off at a certain point. I try to buy equipment somewhere on that curve to the point where if I had spent less money I would have had to get a noticeably inferior product, and would have spent much more money to get a little bit better of a product. Of all the electronics I've listened to I definitely like Accuphase the best, but that's just me. If I get rich anytime soon I'm getting a pair of B&W Nautilus because I can't imagine how cool it would be to see them sitting in my living room! |
| Good Point | skeptic
Aug 21, 2002 3:08 AM | | Only a concert goer who spends some time in the audience of a concert hall will know what real music is supposed to sound like. The reason that the current paradyme can't reproduce the tonality of musical instruments as they are heard live is that the tonality is inherently bound up with the reverberation. What I'm saying in plain english is that as the sound reverberates, the tonality changes. That's because the the surfaces of the concert hall absorb higher frequencies to a greater degree than middle and lower frequencies. Typically, the RT for a concert hall at mid frequencies is about 1.8 to 2.2 seconds but it might be only 1.2 seconds at say 12 khz. What this translates into is that the sound reaching you first along the direct path has the highest high frequency content hence the most "bite" and then as the reverberant components reach you the sound becomes mellower. Therefore, compared to live music, recordings sound both thin and harsh on one hand and indistinct and unclear on the other. The ability of a single musical instrument to fill up the large space by taking several hundred milliseconds for each note to die out makes it sound much more powerful at the same volume as you would hear it in a recording at home. Hence, the sound of a symphony orchestra in a concert hall or a pipe organ in a cathedral even playing softly has an entirely different tonality and sense of power than any home music system of the type you can buy can ever produce. As I said, the state of the art is primitive and the efforts of the best manufacturers to improve it considering why it has reached its limits are laughable. |
| This would mean....... | Mr Peabody
Sep 6, 2002 10:49 PM | | I can agree with some of what you have said. I personally can live without all the reverb of a live show. One should always audition the potential equipment in the room it's intended to be used. The point of buying good gear is to be able to hear the difference between the characteristics of one recording & another. Although frequency response is important, so is resolution, your better gear is able to retrieve more information & better convert the information off the CD, vinyl or whatever source and maintain the information throughout the system until projected out into the room. Excluding financial limitations, I think what one spends on hi fi is relative to what they can discern from it. If you can't hear the difference between Yamaha & McIntosh, then it would be foolish to buy McIntosh. But if you can, then it's worth it. It's not just trying to sound like a live show, it's about trying to get a saxophone to sound like a saxophone. And it's true, unless you were standing there when it was played into the recorder, you wouldn't know the sound of that original signal. But you should be able to tell which system makes that signal sound the most like a saxophone. We all have our own perception of what we think music should sound like, and what is pleasurable to our senses, that's why there are so many brands to choose from. No right or wrong, but if you are unable to discern the difference between levels of equipment, who are you to judge those who can. If one has the funds & can justify the difference to themselves, more power to them, for those of you who can't, well that's why Wal-Mart is the number one retailer in the U.S. |
| re: ????????What's THE best system?????? | wanderingbob
Aug 21, 2002 7:09 AM | | I agree with some of your observations, but I do feel that the ability to reproduce music accurately has improved significantly in the last twenty years.
First, I doubt that electronics and speakers will ever be able to reproduce a live musical event so accurately that experienced concertgoers couldn't tell the difference most of the time. Your analogy with photography is a good one - both pursuits are examples of the principle of diminishing returns. To get the nth degree of realism, much more exacting and expensive hardware is necessary than for the (n-1) degree. Another good analogy would be exotic sports cars, where a car capable of a 225 MPH top speed (for example, the Ferrari F40) costs many times more than a car capable of a 200 MPH top speed (for example, the Chevrolet Corvette).
However, I disagree with your analysis of the cost today relative to the cost twenty years ago. Inflation, which has averaged 3 percent per year, would increase the cost of the identical equipment manufactured under identical circumstances by 75% over a twenty year time frame. Your example of a high-end system built around a turntable is probably the most expensive type of system possible because the turntable would probably be equipped with a separately sold tonearm, cartridge, and perhaps a phono preamp.
IMO, a true high-end system could be assembled for much less than your figures (about $16,000) using a two-channel paradigm but a digital front end:
Krell KAV-280 CD player with HDCD decoder ($3,250)
Krell KAV-300il integrated amplifier ($5,000)
Quad ESL 989 electrostatic loudspeakers ($8,000)
This equipment incorporates an extremely precise CD transport and DAC, pure Class A amplification, and line-source, low-mass loudspeaker drivers. Notice I consider this system "high-end", but not "state-of-the-art." A system closer to "state-of-the-art" could be assembled for about $25,000 by using a CD player with output level control, thus eliminating the need for a preamplifier. This system would offer increased quality and resolution from the digital source, the amplifier, and the loudspeakers.
Mark Levinson #390s CD player with HDCD decoder and output level control ($6,700)
Mark Levinson #335 250 WPC(8 Ohms) 500 WPC(4 Ohms) ($7,500)
Martin Logan Progidy loudspeakers ($11,000)
Admittedly, none of this equipment is even remotely "affordable" to the average person, but when one makes the decision to build a "high end" audio system, one must also make the decision to leave "affordable" behind.
As far as the ability of current "high end" two-channel system to reproduce music accurately enough to warrant the high cost, I think it's possible if you consider the listening room and the quality of the recording itself. How many owners of "high-end" equipment really have an optimal listening room? Very few build a listening room from scratch, and most pre-existing rooms not designed for audio force many compromises. If you want to hear the best performance that "high-end" audio has to offer, you must install your "high-end" audio system in a dedicated listening room, with optimal dimensional ratios and room shape, acoustic treatments where necessary, dedicated high-current circuits for the amplifier(s), and so on. If the "wife approval factor" causes you to install your "high-end" audio system in an oddly-shaped living room with a bank of windows that resonate at 50 Hz and a fireplace that resonates at 70 Hz, don't complain about the performance of the "high-end" system! You haven't heard its best.
Also, no reproduction of recorded music will ever be more accurate than the quality of the original recording. Mass-market offerings, in which different instruments and vocalists are recorded at different times, then mixed in a studio, never contained any real soundstage, imaging, or coherent phase information in the first place. Such recordings, even on a "state-of-the-art" |
| re: ????????What's THE best system?????? | skeptic
Aug 21, 2002 7:45 AM | | I'm sorry but not surprised to say that this is what I would expect as a typical "audiophile" response. The question raises some real thought provoking notions about what a "high fidelity" sound system is trying to do and how you go about judging its success or failure.
Why do we have these systems in the first place? The answer for me is that the recording engineers of yesteryear tried to duplicate the beauty of the sound they heard at the performances they attended while making live recordings of some of the worlds greatest musicians and ensembles and recognized their failure. This was to be a kind of chronicle of an event or hypothetical event. Recordings which are made of "electronic" instruments or which are deliberately "processed" do not qualify. Now here's where a lot of people are going to get really mad. IMO, only classical music (including opera) merits the cost and effort of high fideltiy sound reproduction. It is the only music that qualifies on the basis of the skill and genius of the composer, the artistry of the performers, the beauty of the sound, and the overall often profound nature of the experience. Sorry but if it didn't exist, I don't think that this industry would ever have gotten off the ground and I certainly wouldn't be interested in it myself.
Given the enormous cost of the best equipment and the universal extent of its failure to serve its stated purpose, there is absolutely no justification in its cost or even its existance. IMO, the people who are spending their time and effort on researching, producing, and selling this equipment, although they may be making money, in their efforts to advance the state of the art, they are barking up the wrong tree. They are going down the same dead end path everybody before them has travelled. In the normal course of events, much better and far more accurate sound systems will come into existance, but not by the methods currently persued. |
| re: ????????What's THE best system?????? | wanderingbob
Aug 21, 2002 9:11 AM | | "I'm sorry but not surprised to say that this is what I would expect as a typical "audiophile" response."
I noticed you weren't able to invalidate or even refute anything specific about my response, including my comments about optimal listening rooms and the quality of recordings.
"Why do we have these systems in the first place? The answer for me is that the recording engineers of yesteryear tried to duplicate the beauty of the sound they heard at the performances they attended while making live recordings of some of the worlds greatest musicians and ensembles..."
I agree with this statement.
"IMO, only classical music (including opera) merits the cost and effort of high fideltiy sound reproduction. It is the only music that qualifies on the basis of the skill and genius of the composer, the artistry of the performers, the beauty of the sound, and the overall often profound nature of the experience."
What about other acoustic music? Bluegrass? Jazz?
"Given the enormous cost of the best equipment and the universal extent of its failure to serve its stated purpose, there is absolutely no justification in its cost or even its existance."
If the stated purpose of "state-of-the-art" equipment was to reproduce a live musical event with _perfect accuracy_, then you are correct, manufacturers have failed to date. However, I haven't read that claim from any of the reputable manufacturers. I do believe that today's equipment gets closer to that goal than the equipment that was available twenty years ago.
"In the normal course of events, much better and far more accurate sound systems will come into existance, but not by the methods currently persued."
Are you saying that engineers, manufacturers, and consumers should totally abandon the incremental improvement of existing technology and idle while waiting for some hypothetical new technology to emerge?
I work in the computer industry. The newest PC's available today - for example, 2 GHz processor-based Pentium IV's - work on the same basic principles as the original 4.77 MHz IBM PC, introduced around 1980. Both use semiconductors to represent data as 0's and 1's in memory chips, both essentially process one instruction at a time, and both use discs coated with magnetic domains to represent data on storage media. However, the experience of using the IBM PC with it's green text on a black background is worlds apart from the new PC. Although I would certainly welcome a real breakthrough in PC design (for example, many parallel processors, memory using crystaline solids, or optical rather than electronic data paths), incremental improvements have certainly been successful with the PC.
Bob Gardner
wanderingbob@yahoo.com |
| re: ????????What's THE best system?????? | skeptic
Aug 21, 2002 9:58 AM | | I would not argue the merrits or demerrits of particular pieces of equipment here. Besides the vast number of them, as I said each design philosophy has its partisans. Whether a particular combination produces great sound is always open to debate according to whose definition you use. That's the problem. What objective criteria is there except reproduction of a live performance? And that of course is where it fails. As for the room it is installed in and the manner of installation, it can optimize an admittedly limited reproduction but no home environment can remotely duplicate the sound quality that a concert hall imparts to music. It is as integral to the end effect as the notes, musicians and instruments themselves.
I'm an electrical engineer myself. I also used to be an audiophile although I don't put myself in that category any more. Engineering efforts are often judged on the bang for the buck theory. Your 225 mph sports car makes no sense on the road if the speed limit is 65 mph. Then it becomes something else, a status symbol, a toy, an ego trip, but not a practical vehicle for everyday use. On a drag strip it may be a different matter.
I don't think that the comparison with computers is a necessarily fair analogy. There is much advance still possible with PCs although the bang for the buck notion certainly has gotten us far better performing, more reliable software and hardware at much lower cost over the last 25 years inflation or no inflation. Depending on the software application, we may have reached the point of diminishing returns. For e-mail, word processing, and spread sheets, which are most common corporate applications, better performing pcs won't get us anything. On the other hand, for autocad, animation, real time virtual reality, pcs have a long way to go.
Are today's audio components better? Judging from all the people who cherish vacuum tube amplifiers and vinyl phonograph records there is no consensus. Is the markup greater for high end components? Yes, infinitely greater. Do you think that the cost of transistors, transformers, breadboarding pc boards, potentiomenter has gone up so much? Not really. Are new desings that much more clever and innovative than the older ones? Not really.
Will equipment continue to improve incrementally indefinitely? It can't. When you have achieved 99 percent of what is possible in a given paradyme, there isn't much further to go. Unfortunately, that paradyme only considers 20 to 30 percent of the answer and so the other 70 to 80 percent goes unaddressed. In this case, the problem will have to be viewed from an entirely different perspective.
While I enjoy bluegrass and jazz too, there is for me a completely different realm that classical music fits into. I enjoy cold sangria and cold beer on a hot summer day but it's different than drinking 1945 Chateau Mouton Rothschild in the right context. The sound of a Guarnarius violin in expert hands playing the Brahms violin concerto is something you don't forget easily or quickly either. Call it snobbery if you like but this is why I'm interesed in music in the first place.
I don't say that people shouldn't enjoy buying, listening to, comparing, trading or having fun in any other way with any audio equipment including the most expensive ones on the market. What I am saying is that by my criteria which I recall from decades ago was the criteria everyone once said was their goal, the progress made in the last twenty years is far less than what needs to be made if that goal is ever to be achieved. And I believe that it can be. |
| re: ????????What's THE best system?????? | piece-it pete
Aug 21, 2002 9:15 AM | | Skeptic,
Although I like MANY types of music I would agree classical is the single most beautiful, complex type of music. The one best musical event that stands out in my mind was about, oh 2 years ago...
The Cleveland orch. was playing Tchaikovskys' 4th at Severance Hall. The "quiet point" of that work features a single note on a dbl. bass - it was magical. I know that short of some sort of brain implant I'll never hear that same, perfect note on ANY stereo. (I think 9ball knows what I mean!).
I think music reproduction is like reading/ writing history - no matter how well researched, no matter how many points of view, no matter how many eye-witness accounts, it cannot be described in it's totality.
Not to say a H/K amp dosn't sound better than a Sony..
Oh well.. let's start working on that implant!
Pete |
| re: ????????What's THE best system?????? | skeptic
Aug 21, 2002 11:51 AM | | That is one terrific symphony. You don't usually hear it much since the 5th and 6th are so much more popular or so it seems to me. The third movement is all pizzacato. I always listen for the double bass line in parts like that. Most sound systems don't reproduce it even if it's on the recording. just the cellos if you're lucky. And what can you say about the last movement? Only that it's fantastic. I've always thought of Tchaikowsky as the master of melody. And a great orchestrator too. |
| re: ????????What's THE best system?????? | 9ball
Aug 21, 2002 8:36 PM | | I'd have to say Tchaikovsky's 4th is my favorite to play. I always thought the 4th was more popular than the 5th or 6th. Maybe I just haven't heard as much about them. My favorite symphonies to test systems with are Mahler 5th, Shostakovich 5th, Dvorak 8th(sometimes called the 4th), and Tchaikovsky's violin concerto. I guess this is just because they're some of my favorite works, but I feel these works reveal every shortcoming that's hidden within even the best equipment. I think they're all Deutsche Grammophone recordings. Wow, thinking about this stuff makes me want to get out and hit some auditions. |
| re: ????????What's THE best system?????? | skeptic
Aug 22, 2002 3:10 AM | | Well it made me go do some listening.
I'm holding DG 453 088-2 in my hand right now. It's Von Karajan conducting the Berliner Philharmoniker playing Tchaikovsky's 4th, 5th and 6th. Wonderful performances and recordings are what you get almost every time from DG.
In my house (I live with a violinist) Jascha Heifetz is god so there's his recordings and then there's everybody elses. Hearing that Guarnari cut through the rest of the orchestra and reverberate throughout a vast concert hall against the silence is really something especially when he plays the cadenza. (it's on BMG/RCA) I was fortunate to hear him live at Carnegie Hall in the 60s.
Try Rostropovitch's performance of the Dvorak Cello concerto (also on DG.) If you're not familiar with this work, I think you'll like it a lot. This is IMO the greatest performance of the greatest concerto. Unfortunately Yo Yo Ma's recording was rather a dissapointment to me. Try the Dvorak 9th symphony too. Some people consider it his greatest work. BTW, the reason for the confusion in the numbering of Dvorak's symphonies is that around the 1960s they discovered four previously unknown ones and had to renumber all of them.
The Shostakovich 5th is probably my favorite symphony written in the 20th century. Of the two recordings I listen two most frequently, I prefer the Everest's re-release of Stokowski's performance while my violinist likes the Bernstein/ NY Philharmonic recording (CBS.) What's yours?
Happy listening. |
| re: ????????What's THE best system?????? | Mr Peabody
Sep 6, 2002 11:59 PM | | I am off to find that perfect new musical technology for you & the world, but before I go answer me this: which perfect note should I reproduce for you? The one heard by the person in the 5th row center or 25th row center or 50th row right section or 10th row left section? Based on your facts, they all would have heard the note differently & at different times. Please tell me which is correct. Was yours the correct seat? Why bother recording music at all, we can't do it to perfection? |
| re: THANKS for all the AUDIOPHILIA...But answer my questions??? | musbdeaf
Aug 22, 2002 2:07 PM | | Is Mac still good equipment? What will it cost me? Are Klipsch quality speakers? Will they work well with Macintosh? Am I making a mistake? I learned a lot about reproducing sound. But let me experience it firsthand. I want to purchase a high quality two channel system, and will probably design/build a room around it. I don't have $100,000 to spend either. I'm hoping I can afford the Mac. Your input is greatly appreciated. |
| re: THANKS for all the AUDIOPHILIA...But answer my questions??? | skeptic
Aug 22, 2002 2:59 PM | | McIntosh is good equipment. Klipsch is good equipment. They will work fine together.
What is the best system in the world? There is no such thing. The question is absurd. But even if there were, the answer would change in five minutes when the next whizbang came on the scene.
What, you don't like last years model any more? Don't tell anybody I said this, but they knew at the factory all along that what you said is true. But wait until you see this year's. They fixed all the bugs. And all it costs is an extra........... |
| hmm... | snickelfritz
Aug 30, 2002 3:07 PM | | These are the first components I would consider auditioning for a reference quality system:
*B&W Nautilus 800 speakers (biamped)
*Mark Levinson Amplification
*Proceed transport
*Theta DAC
*Kimber PBJ interconnects and 4TC speaker cables.
(these are excellent cables, but not priced in the stratosphere) |
| re: ????????What's THE best system?????? | Mr Peabody
Sep 6, 2002 9:34 PM | | McIntosh was bought by Clarion some years back. I don't know if their quality is still up to par with the old stuff. I would have my doubts. I do not recommend mix-matching components. The best systems I have experienced are ones where the components were the same brand. There is a "synergy" that is created by matching brands & I know it's absolutely true. I am not familiar with a wide variety of tube brands, but a combo of Audio Research driving a pair of Martin Logan's knocked my socks off. In solid state, I like Krell driving Dynaudio speakers. This is a combo I haven't heard anything beat yet. I use Krell cd player & amplification. Here again, when experimenting with different components in various parts of my hi fi chain, nothing produced the results like all Krell. Dynaudio is the most honest/nutral speaker I have found. These are my favorites, but today there are several choices in great gear that would be looked upon like Mac was in the old days. Krell is still the original company. Even Levinson sold his company to Madrigal which is under the large Harman umbrella, so I guess in a way HK still does make high end gear. Several companies still embrace tube designs, I mentioned Audio Research & there are others like Cary, Conrad Johnson & VTL. Check websites for dealers in your area & have fun listening. |
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