Re: [LAU] Questions from an audiophile to some engineers - Linux-audio-user

13 Apr 2007

Gordon,

Did i insult you personally or something?

Your email is full of baseless assumptions about me and my experiances.  
Perhaps no offence was meant, but it reads that way.

I have not purchased the system yet, and claiming that any component is "shit" 
is nothing short of rediculous.  The Bel Canto Ref 1000s have been reciveing 
awards  from various audio publications all year.  More over *I*  like them. 
I like the synergy between them and the Gallos. Your exeriances may vary and 
you are welcome to them.

Again i may be talking about a different kind of compression, but It's not 
obvious that the rock stuff will be heavily compressed.  My Nine Inch Nails, 
Tool, Porcupine Tree,  Pink Floyd..etc is not compressed heavily.

It's not that i care about the minor details of the sound its that i enjoy the 
presentatoin that well recorded music can give. The loss of sound staging is 
actually distracting on good speakers. When you go from one track with an 
expansive stage to one that sits in a small, flat hole between your speakers, 
you notice.

It's not that i have "more money then sense." in fact these speakers are
going 
to be quite a stretch for me and i like them much more then some pairs that i 
just heard tonight that cost 3 times as much. No i don't care about "solid 
gold speaker cables". I do care about quality equipment though, or rather 
equipment that i like the sound of.

Bearcat

On Thursday 12 April 2007 in an email titled "Re: [LAU] Questions from an 
audiophile to some engineers" Gordon JC Pearce wrote:
...
 On Wed, 2007-04-11 at 10:34 -0600, Bearcat M. Sandor
wrote:
  There is something that has been bothering me for
a long time that i have
 never recieved a satisfactory answer to. I keep asking audiophile people
 like myself, and it only just occurred to me that i have this whole list
 of audio engineers here to pester..er..ask.

 Why is it that most of my CD's suck as far as recording quality? Now,
 don't bite me, i'm not talking about you folks. I know all of your
 recordings are awesome! *nods wisely*

 As i mentioned in another thread, i am in the process of purchasing an
 audio system: Gallo Accoustic Reference 3.1 speakers, Bel Canto ref 1000
 mono bloc amps, and my computer+RME HDSP aes-32+ RME adi-8qs for the front
 end. 
Well, you've paid far too much for your equipment.  Anything you listen
to will be coloured by your perception of how it should sound having
been filtered through thousands of dollars of expectation.

Bel Canto amps are shit.  I could chew up a handful of 2N3055s and 741s
and fart a better amp.

  If i listen to a well regarded recording like
Mile's Davis' "A Kind of
 Blue" the sound stage is spread out, the drums and piano have weight, and
 the cymbols have shimmer.

 Then when i put on one of my heavy metal or popular cds the sound stage
 colapses to a very smal area right between the speakers (live recording or
 not), the kick drums and piano sound almost wet and the cymbols are cut
 short. 
Well, obviously.  The rock stuff will be heavily compressed compared to
the jazz CDs, leading to quieter sounds being clipped and cymbals
pumping wildly.

  I have almost 700 cds now (ripped lossessly to my
hard drive with flac).
 It occurred to me that once this system is in my house i'm gonna start
 playing the discs that are well recorded instead of all of it. That means
 that about two thirds of my music is gonna be not played so much. Sad. 
The saddest thing of all is that you care so much about minor details of
the sound and don't enjoy the music.

  So, my question to you is what causes these bad
recordings most of the
 time? Is it musicians who can't afford good producers and equipment?
 Are kick drums, ambiance and cymbols hard to capture?  Is it compression
 to make things sound "louder"? Are they saving money by mixing for low-end
 systems figuring no one will care? 
No, it's whiny people with more money than sense, and an overdeveloped
sense of their own listening skills.

No offence intended.  I get sick of hearing similar rants.  Next you're
going to tell us you're upgrading to solid gold power cables, or some
such.

Gordon 