wwb@ihuxn.UUCP (Walt Barnes) (02/21/85)
I have been fascinated to see all the discussion about what speakers to buy, but some very important related topics have been overlooked. How to evaluate HiFi: When you listen, don't try to listen to the components, hear the music. Evaluate the music as you would a live performance, Is it pleasing to listen to? Is it obvious why the composer did a certain thing? Is the intent of the performers clear? I find answering these questions much more useful than discussing imaging, etc. The better the system, the more you will be able to listen to the music and ignore the components. By the way, when you listen to a system, did you know that having another set of speakers (just setting there not playing anything) in the room makes it impossible to evaluate anything. The passive speakers vibrate in response to the sound being produced and pollute the sound being produced, no matter how good the system being evaluated is. Needless to say, those walls of speakers found at some stereo stores are a disaster. (At really good stores, they will have only one pair of speakers in the listening room at a time.) Walt Barnes ...!ihuxn!wwb
rfg@hound.UUCP (R.GRANTGES) (02/21/85)
[] Walt, that idea of multiple speakers interfering with each other has been shot down time and again on this net. You have been sold a bill of goods by a dealer. Your ideas about what to look for are sound, in my opinion, but not necessarily workable for two reasons. First, real musicians, by which I mean musically oriented people knowledgeable about the art are able to listen for what you recommend right THRU the sound, however badly it is reproduced. They know what to listen for and are able to commune with the composer. Ithink they hear in their imaginations more than thru their ears. This is the reason that musicians often have really awful lo-fi stereos. If someone has told them that outfit x is good, ok, they'l buy it. But left to their own, they will be happy with very little. Second reason is that to the people who do not qualify under my first reason, it takes a pretty good system before you can begin to hear the instruments from the mush. If you don't know what to listen <for> you may easily be carried away by neat sounding mush. For example, highly resonant reproduction - I mean with many peaks and valleys in the curve (vs freq) tends to sound much more ...alive, lively, with it, forward ...etc. than flat, non-resonant reproduction when listened to for short periods. Even one emphasized portion of the spectrum can make a speaker sound "better" on short acquaintance. Perhaps one way to implement what you suggest is to take some well received recording (one known to be very good) of, say, a large orchestra playing something dense. See if you can follow different instruments through the passage work on successive playings, or do many tend to get submerged in the mush so you lose them. That's a test of definition failed by a lot of cheap speakers, and one that I would suppose would have to be passed before one could hope to commune with the composer - unless you already knew the piece cold anyway. -- "It's the thought, if any, that counts!" Dick Grantges hound!rfg
dep@allegra.UUCP (Dewayne Perry) (02/21/85)
<bugs never met a line they didn't like>
WRT to Grantges comment about musicians settling for cheaper systems and
"listening thru" the equipment "to" the music, I have two comments.
1. One reason that musicians have cheaper systems is that they probably cant
afford the more expensive ones - certainly not on the average musician's
intake of funds.
2. More importantly, I think that "listening" to canned music may be of
less importance to a practicing musician. At least in one case that
I know of, listening to music on records is of no consequence at all.
The all-important thing is playing and interpreting the music live.
Being a mere bystander is not even a close second to actually producing
it yourself.
There are undoubtedly other reasons as well, but I suspect that many of
us closet musicians are merely sublimating our desire to actually play
music by buying lots of expensive gear and then enveloping ourselves in
sound to forget that we are not making it ourselves.
Listen well - Dewayneark@alice.UUCP (Andrew Koenig) (02/21/85)
Did you know that having only one pair of speakers in the room at a time makes it impossible to conduct any kind of meaningful comparison between loudspeakers? At really snooty stores, they only allow one pair of speakers in the room at a time so the sales help can have the time they need to bias their customers for or against the speakers they are about to hear based on how much profit they make on that brand and how many they have in stock. Let's not rehash this whole silly argument again. I got tired of it the last time.
wagner@uw-june (Dave Wagner) (02/22/85)
> (From: wwb@ihuxn.UUCP (Walt Barnes)) > By the way, when you listen to a system, did you know that having > another set of speakers (just setting there not playing anything) > in the room makes it impossible to evaluate anything. The passive > speakers vibrate in response to the sound being produced and > pollute the sound being produced, no matter how good the system > being evaluated is. Needless to say, those walls of speakers found > at some stereo stores are a disaster. (At really good stores, they > will have only one pair of speakers in the listening room at a time.) How convenient for the golden-ears crowd that this reasoning makes A/B speaker comparisons impossible! I'll take my chances on the passive vibrations rather than on my long-term sonic memory when evaluating speakers! Dave Wagner University of Washington Comp Sci Department wagner@{uw-june.arpa|washington.arpa} {ihnp4|decvax}!uw-beaver!uw-june!wagner "Oh no! I've got . . . . . HAPPY FEET!"
rfg@hound.UUCP (R.GRANTGES) (02/22/85)
[] Right on both counts (poverty and sublimation). I also think there's a large group (myself included) who indulge in hi-fi as a sort of compensation for being given no talent at all for playing or composition. Instead of revenge on God, Salieri could have chosen to build stereo's and collect records etc. In his day, of course, he would have probably collected instruments and manuscripts. Or he could have started to write musical criticism. -- "It's the thought, if any, that counts!" Dick Grantges hound!rfg
ebh@hou4b.UUCP (Ed Horch) (02/22/85)
>> [Walt Barnes] >> having another set of speakers (just setting there not playing >> anything) in the room makes it impossible to evaluate anything. > [Dave Wagner] > How convenient for the golden-ears crowd that this reasoning makes > A/B speaker comparisons impossible! I'll take my chances on the > passive vibrations rather than on my long-term sonic memory when > evaluating speakers! This fact doesn't make A/B-ing speakers impossible, just more difficult. What you do is take the one set of speakers out of the room while listening to the other. A good dealer will let you schedule a private audition after normal store hours and will have extra employees present to swap speakers out of the room for you. When this is done smoothly, the time it takes to swap out a pair of speakers is not significantly longer than the time it takes to switch the speaker cables. Thus, you're not depending upon long-term sonic memory at all. I once compared four sets of speakers this way. Of course, this becomes more difficult when the speakers in question are the 8-foot tall Acoustats and the Infinity Reference System, in which case you have two separate rooms with identical systems in them and you move, not the speakers. Of course, the biggest problem here is finding a dealer that is willing to go to all that trouble for you. Where I used to live, I knew such a dealer, who also would let me do things like compare turntables (in this case the Linn Sondek LP-12 and the Sonographe SG-1) by mounting, while I watched, Linn Basik arms & cartridges on both tables. The last thing I want to say is that I am posting this in the hopes that the "Extra Speaker" debate does not fire up again. If you don't think extra speakers make a difference, that's fine. If you do, then try what I suggest, if you can. -Ed Horch {ihnp4,akgua,houxm}!hou4b!ebh "A record played two years after the recording session has 1.3 trillion degrees of phase shift at 20KHz." -P.Greenspun, CMJ 8:4, p. 13.
rfg@hound.UUCP (R.GRANTGES) (02/23/85)
[] Really sorry, Ed, but auditory memory is so poor that speaker switching has to be "real time", like with a switch, if you want to make real comparisons. Several seconds, or, as in the case you describe, several minutes, might as well be several hours. I can't give you a reference on this (probably our friends at Murray Hill can) but I proved it to my own satisfaction in those wild days of youth wasted in audio salons. You have to be able to make the switch rapidly in order to demonstrate whether or not making the switch rapidly makes any difference. I'm sure you could demonstrate this to yourself. Of course, at this point the truly paranoid says, Fooey, the nature of interspeaker interference is that when more than one pair are present in the same room the effect is created of apparent poor auditory memory. This effect disappears when one pair is removed. BTW, those who say more than one pair don't make an appreciable difference <do not mean> that speaker x in a nice acoustically good room all by itself is going to sound the same as it does when in the typical (e.g., Crazy Eddie) showroom with 575 pairs of speakers. Regards, -- "It's the thought, if any, that counts!" Dick Grantges hound!rfg
tron@fluke.UUCP (Peter Barbee) (02/25/85)
IF WE'RE NOT GOING TO HAVE THIS ARGUMENT -- THEN LET'S NOT HAVE IT!!!!
greg@oliven.UUCP (Greg Paley) (02/27/85)
I find that what I listen for, when evaluating speakers, is the degree to which the human element in the performance itself is allowed to come through. Good speakers get out of my way and allow the performance to take place with no sense of pushing, prodding, or hyping it up. Many speakers produce a spectacular effect, but do so my imposing their own obvious colorations onto every recording, which becomes monotonous and fatiguing in extended listening, even though they may seem to be far more impressive on a quick A/B comparison. This means that the records I choose to compare speakers are of great performances rather than audiophile spectaculars. In fact, poor recordings can sometimes be more revealing than good ones since good equipment will reproduce accurately the noise and flaws of a poor recording, but still allow as much as possible of the music to emanate through these whereas poor equipment will add its own colorations and distortions to those on the poor recording itself, sometimes making the result unlistenable. Things like the Telarc "Time Warp" CD might sound spectacular on many systems, but find one that can extract the tremendous unanimity and fire the NBC Symphony orchestra projects, under Toscanini's direction, on the 1941 recording of the Immolation Scene from "Goetterdammerung", along with the power and richness of Helen Traubel's voice, in spite of what was poor recording even in its day, and you've made a real find. - Greg Paley
gregr@tekig1.UUCP (Greg Rogers) (02/27/85)
> By the way, when you listen to a system, did you know that having > another set of speakers (just setting there not playing anything) > in the room makes it impossible to evaluate anything. The passive > speakers vibrate in response to the sound being produced and > pollute the sound being produced, no matter how good the system > being evaluated is. Oh no! Not this again! Are we going to rehash the whole 4" speaker in the cassette deck argument again? Please lets not start this debate again. Just to show you how much I want to bury this discussion I won't even bother to share the pages of technical arguments that were presented last time. Nor will I even state which side they were on. Nor will I state which side I'm on. I think this was the argument that finally discourged me so much I quit participating in the net for months. Irony, I'm so upset thinking about this I'm back to posting to the net again. Stop! Please Stop! I think my sanity may be at stake here. I'll go to bed now, and when I awake maybe it will just be a bad dream..... Searching for my tongue somewhere near my cheek, Greg Rogers Tektronix
rfg@hound.UUCP (R.GRANTGES) (03/04/85)
[] It was all only a bad dream, Greg. It's ok, now. There, there. Someone's bound to say something wrong and stupid every so often, Look at the unmitigated piles of pure rot that the dealers hand out. I don't think I have ever heard of a line of business where the sales people were so* 1)uneducated 2)unknowledgeable about their product 3)willing to lie rather than say they don't know. 4) willing to lie for any and all reasons - or none at all. The only one that even comes close is American cars.(Well, VW dealers ae the same. Maybe all are). Besides that. Half of the honest people on this net are nuts. And we never know which half we are in, do we? -- "It's the thought, if any, that counts!" Dick Grantges hound!rfg