The sound of systems

Docfoster

My visit to Paul (PAC)'s house today was the first time in a long while that I've heard someone else's system.
Plenty of my mates are into music, but none that live locally are really into Hifi, I haven't hauled my arse round a show for a while and I don't do dealers. Basically I don't get out much when it comes to decent kit.
Tho' today, first and foremost my visit to Paul's was a pleasure: Good company; good sounding kit; good new music and; of course THAT cake... But as I tootled back up the A48 to Gloucester I reflected on how it had been interesting to hear someone else's carefully chosen and poured over system, and how it sounded oh so very different to mine.
Like all audiophiles I like to think that I have selected all of my kit on sound quality alone. I'm largely NVA of course, and its possible that the maverick status of NVA as a brand attracts me. Also, to some small extent i got to know Richard Dunn and Jason (figlet) personally, which created a loyalty and affinity with their products i suppose. But, there's no way that either of those would have subjectively over ridden a terrible sounding performance.
The point is I'm happy with the way my system sounds, as are most audiophiles I would imagine. We're always looking for the next affordable rung on the ladder of course, but I'd wager most of us are secretly proud of what we've thus far assembled.
Paul's system sounds impressive: Dynamic and consummate but without that 'Hifi' artifice/smoothness that can rob some systems of those crucial element of realism, congruence and musicality. (Incidentally his newly replinthed Gerard was a good example of this vis-a-vis Paul's Michell with which we compared it.) I would happily have listened to the system for hours. Yet it sounded so different to what I'm used to - my own system. So different that I struggled to make a comparison when asked for one by Paul.
And, the more I've thought on the various and differing merits of our respective systems (and other good ones I've enjoyed) the further my thoughts have drifted from any musical differences. Over my evening beverages now I'm left more with a sense of the uniqueness of the personal journeys that we as audiophiles have travelled - How at sach upgrade junction that we have encountered, a considered decision has been taken in the contexts of our own curent system, financial circumstances, home environment, music collection, the kit available for auditioning at the time and our personal preferences. These evolutionary routes have been subject to our own particular set of selection pressures, and have produced (inevitably) very different sounding Hifi organisms.
Given a few different twists of fate I could of course ended up with an entirely different system. One with which I may have been equally happy. Perhaps it could have been Paul's system. Perhaps Paul could have ended up with mine. I don't know.
I suspect few of us would surrender what we now have for another system - familiarity being too possessive a mistress - but that's kind of my point. Could we be as familar with a different sonic mistress...?
In any event, the music sounded very good in Dursley today.
Thanks again Paul.

PAC

You're very welcome Ben and yes, the age old hifi question "what did it sound like" is used usually as a comparison of what we are familiar with.  To my mind, as long as a system is designed and assembled (synergy) to deliver as flat a response (no artificial lifts or troughs) across the frequency range, then surely all should sound the same?

I asked myself that many years ago and the answer, as with so many things in life, is not that simple. Most systems that look as if they'd be similar on paper are anything but in the flesh.  That's largely because they don't behave as linearly as we are led to believe.  The easiest example of this perhaps (without getting too nerdy) is to look at what happens in an alternating circuit as frequency rises...as it does, so does impedance and therefore load on an amp, and depending on the amp and it's design, it's response may be very different from another amp.  Valve amps for example, with output transformers like to see a specific load in order to work efficiently and to avoid overload and saturation (which results in distortion). Its not easy to match one properly with speakers as loudspeaker impedance varies with load.

Look at cartridges.  there's so many variables that affect sound such as stylus shape (affecting tracking ability and susceptibility to micro-groove "pinch" and distortion), compliance, damping efficiency etc and not forgetting that much like output transformers of valve amps, the cartridge is also a transformer output based device that also likes to see the correct load and its a wonder that we hear anything resembling accurate music at all!

The loudspeaker is also significant in that two different models of similar size and frequency response may behave very differently depending upon efficiency, cabinet design (including any comb filtering effects of the front baffle), off axis response and crossover design so that you get very different impressions of how they sound.

Then there's the room.  Take one system and listen in your room, the pick it up and move to another different room and it will sound like a different system.

Its enough to scramble your brains thinking about it!

Whenever someone says to me "so and so's system sounds so much better than yours " (and someone did say that to me this evening suggesting I go over and listen to see where I could improve mine)  my reply is "so what?"  quickly followed by "what does "better" mean".

Truth is, no two systems I've heard sound the same.  Most at the level of serious enthusiasts be that at a budget or where significant investment has been made are likely to score well enough for frequency response and distortion but may behave very differently for scale, separation and dynamic response.  That to my mind doesn't make one any better than another as that is a fallacy and not (to my mind) correct thinking.

Truth is, no hifi system can ever recreate the live event, and each live event of the same performance can never sound the same (where sound is projected omni directionally from an instrument and what you hear depends on your hearing ability and the venue acoustics).  Loudspeakers are too crude a device to mimic an instrument that accurately but they get very close indeed and to my mind, that's the secret of being satisfied.  Personal preference!  Get your system to where YOU enjoy it and ignore what other people think. In the past, I've fretted when someone has said that something could be improved or should be improved, I;ve changed things and ended upnot listening to as much music, so it's had the opposite effect.  Put the music first and you do start then to learn and understand what system building is all about...in a nutshell...

it's building a system to work in your own acoustic space well enough for you to enjoy music.  It needs by definition to have as low distortion as possible and as flat a response as possible but mostly, IMHO these days, any further tinkering or fretting is likely to be counter productive to the point of that hifi in the first place! 

Just my own thoughts on the matter.

I think Ben, what I took away more from today's visit (other than the pleasure of meeting your good self)  is that perhaps I should practice more what I preach as you've found how self critical I can be, plus I learned about new music and bands today I'd never have come across and enjoyed the music immensely.  It's when I sit critically listening to hifi and not the music that I know I have something wrong in the system that needs fixing, but to my ears, those gremlins have been banished for now! 

Docfoster

PAC: "Whenever someone says to me "so and so's system sounds so much better than yours " (and someone did say that to me this evening suggesting I go over and listen to see where I could improve mine)"

What a rude twunt. Did he really think that such impersonable rudeness was going to persuade?

PAC

I pay little heed to such comments Ben as my current system couldn't be described as "low-fi". The only people we have to convince are ourselves and I don' need convincing. Given an unlimited budget I'm quite sure I could that I could improve what I have.  However, I'm more than satisfied that the system sounds perfectly acceptable.  I'd rather spend my hard earned on music and the odd bottle of wine!  I do take other people's systems seriously though as part of what I do includes helping others if I can, to make the most of their systems and listening environments.