[turkey]

For what it's worth, I've heard almost every speaker there sound great and sound terrible at different shows.  So it is tough for you as the end user to find what you'll really enjoy.

I would be just as happy if all the displays at shows were static displays.  I don't think you can make any real decisions based on what you hear at a show.

I like talking to the designer to see where they're coming from and then it's time for an audition in my system, at my house, if I'm still interested.

[Mrs. Ninja]

I'll follow it up and say that ANYTIME people start talking about what "great value" someone's equipment is, then that equipment is, by definition, mid-fi.  If it were "true" high end, then they would use terms like "best in class".

Where did you get these "definitions"?

Wikapedia defines High-end audio as, "High-end audio is a term used to describe a class of consumer home audio equipment marketed to audio enthusiasts on the basis of high price or quality, and esoteric or novel sound reproduction technologies. High-end audio can refer simply to the price, to the build quality of the components, or to the subjective or objective quality of sound reproduction."

So its a subjective ratio of price:build quality:to objectivity of sound reproduction. Just having one of the ratio lower dosen't make it no longer High-fi it makes it even better.

and

This is my favorite by silcom.com, "Equipment that is always expensive and pretentious, and sometimes excellent. Also see Hi-Fi Fetishism."

So seems this is the way we want people to see high-fi, as so out of reach of the masses that it could only truely be done by the very pompous. No wonder we are branded as a bunch of stuffy old men with our noses up so high we can no longer see where we are walking. Could it be off a cliff?

Mrs. Ninja

[TONEPUB]

I have never been to an audio show. But i see a lot of posts from people coming out them that seem to check their hobby at the door. I wouldn't expect a system to sound good at first, even in a well thought out system in some one's home can sound off at first. It takes time to adjust and at those shows that really isn't possible.

So for me at those shows i would look at gear in terms if i can work with it. Does it have features i am looking for or that i am use to working with.  How does it sound at this volume or maybe will it work with my existing gear. Its a hobby thing not a shock and awe thing.

This is an awesome post.....

[werd]

This is an awesome post.....

thanks Tone... you are welcome to publish it.....hehe

[audioengr]

Beyond all of the obvious things, like music that you are unfamiliar with and rooms that are not yours etc., I believe the main differences in opinion have to do with preconceived notions of what it should sound like.

IME, most audiophiles are "used" to a certain kind of sound, and it's usually not live.  If more of these folks spent more time at live concerts, particularly up close and personal without PA systems, they would have an entirely different concept of what is good sound.  Show them a live playback and they become confused.  Not sure whether it's good or bad because it's so different from what they are used-to.

Many describe a "bright" sound when you are playing in-your-face jazz or big-band, but this is exactly what it's like.  Horns are bright and really loud.

Sometimes its the track too.  If it is closely miked orchestral, then the percussion tends to be to hot, not like a real concert.  Sometimes it's the track, not the system.

Many listeners are conditioned to a "stereo" or "hanging in space" sound.  If they dont hear this, then its not good.  Lots of folks that like the tube sound are conditioned this way.  The midrange vocal may be really live, but the rest is missing, the accurate highs and the bass.

With some, the only "live" trending systems that they have heard were also harsh, annoying and fatigueing, so they are biased against anything like this and therefore prefer the "warm" sound.

It is possible to have your cake and eat it too.  Accuracy, liveness and dynamics without fatigue or harshness.  The problem is that only .001% of systems can deliver this recipe.  Therefore, we mostly crave what sounds "pretty" rather than what sounds "live" IMO.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

[rollo]

 Well gee wiz guys tell me its not so. Sound is subjective to the beholder. Audio shows are just that. Showing the gear. Sometimes they actually get good sound.
  for the seasoned show goer no biggie. For newbies its a rat race to the finish. getting everyones opinion to form your own.
 We have been there done that. Nowadays the fever is coming back with reasonably priced products that perform very well. The difference between high end gear and the modest has gotten narrower. Especially digital.
  My advice go back to the concet hall and listen to live unamplified music. If one plays an instrument than the chase is much easier. Use that as your reference. You can't go wrong. Why ? Its your liking and your ears, room etc.

charles

[rollo]

Beyond all of the obvious things, like music that you are unfamiliar with and rooms that are not yours etc., I believe the main differences in opinion have to do with preconceived notions of what it should sound like.

IME, most audiophiles are "used" to a certain kind of sound, and it's usually not live.  If more of these folks spent more time at live concerts, particularly up close and personal without PA systems, they would have an entirely different concept of what is good sound.  Show them a live playback and they become confused.  Not sure whether it's good or bad because it's so different from what they are used-to.

Many describe a "bright" sound when you are playing in-your-face jazz or big-band, but this is exactly what it's like.  Horns are bright and really loud.

Sometimes its the track too.  If it is closely miked orchestral, then the percussion tends to be to hot, not like a real concert.  Sometimes it's the track, not the system.

Many listeners are conditioned to a "stereo" or "hanging in space" sound.  If they dont hear this, then its not good.  Lots of folks that like the tube sound are conditioned this way.  The midrange vocal may be really live, but the rest is missing, the accurate highs and the bass.

With some, the only "live" trending systems that they have heard were also harsh, annoying and fatigueing, so they are biased against anything like this and therefore prefer the "warm" sound.

It is possible to have your cake and eat it too.  Accuracy, liveness and dynamics without fatigue or harshness.  The problem is that only .001% of systems can deliver this recipe.  Therefore, we mostly crave what sounds "pretty" rather than what sounds "live" IMO.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

  Well said. Live music is bright but not threadbare. The weight of live is IMO is what is missing for most music reproduction. Gestahlt in other words. I guess non fatigueing is really the key to great sound. Even a live performance can be so. Lincoln center before the alteration was NOT the place for a violin concert. Where as Carnegie is.
  The room the room the room.


charles

[Mrs. Ninja]

Yes and we think just alike and see just alike I mean we could be practically the same creature and yet we perceve things so very different.

Put a man and a woman to compare anything, a car, a apinting, a speaker, a color for the wall, a piece of clothing and what the two will percieve and proccess in thier brain will be different.

Mrs. Ninja

And with the Ninja and I that is a good thing

As to Jeff your Audiologist and old wives tales I give you just a few of the many studies that have been conducted and come up with the women hear better then men conclusion....its why we have bigger vocabularies earlier in life. I can produce more if you would like.

1. Professor John Corso of Penn State University in the late 1950's and early 1960's.  Dr. Corso simply used a soundproof booth, headphones, and a tone generator.  He consistently found that the girls hear better than boys do, especially in the range of frequencies above 2 kHz.

See John Corso, Age and sex differences in thresholds, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 31:498-507, 1959; also John Corso, Aging and auditory thresholds in men and women, Archives of Environmental Health, 6:350-356, 1963.


2. Professor Jane Cassidy at Louisiana State University, Professor Cassidy, in a study of 350 newborn baby girls and boys, found that the girls hearing was substantially more sensitive than the boys, especially in the 1000- to 4000-Hz range which is so important for speech discrimination.

See Jane Cassidy and Karen Ditty. Gender differences among newborns on a transient otoacoustic emissions test for hearing. Journal of Music Therapy, 37:28-35, 2001.

3. A variety of more recent studies using more sophisticated technology have not only confirmed the superior hearing of girls at higher frequencies, but have also begun to demonstrate the anatomical basis for that superiority.  The group led by Hiroaki Sato was the first to demonstrate consistent sex differences in the anatomy of the inner ear:  girls are born with a cochlea which is shorter and stiffer than boys.  The shorter, stiffer cochlea provides a more sensitive frequency response. 

See their paper, Sexual dimorphism and development of the human cochlea.  Acta Otolaryngologica, 111:1037-1040, 1991.

4. A few years later, a French group led by Thierry Morlet demonstrated that the hair cells themselves are stiffer (and therefore more sensitive) in girls compared to the hair cells in boys.  See their paper, Development of cochlear active mechanisms in humans differs between gender, Neuroscience Letters, 220:49-52, 1996.

These differences may help to explain sex differences in language acquisition. For example, the average 18-month-old girl has a vocabulary of about 90 words, compared to just 40 words for the average 18-month-old boy; see figure (source: Simon Baron-Cohen, Svetlana Lutchmaya, and Rebecca Knickmeyer, Prenatal Testosterone in Mind: amniotic fluid studies, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004.

JUst to name a few....

Still love me Jeff?

Mrs. Ninja

Absolutely not true.  I've talked to three board certified audiologists now and they've all told me that men and women's hearing measures identical.  Granted, some of us have exposed our ears to things that have changed our HF hearing, but the common thought that women have better HF acuity is an urban myth.

Talking to a couple of psychoacoustics guys, they have said that in the caveman days, women concentrated more on hearing the sounds of babies and men listened more carefully for approaching animals, but again, the actual hearing mechanism is identical.  There is nothing in the physiology that would make women hear HF better or worse than men.

Perhaps in today's modern cave, more men have gone to extremely loud rock concerts or used noisy power tools, but that's it....

[woodsyi]

Lol ya, base your listening habits off of Woodsyi! His perception of good sound goes up exponentially with the amount of alcohol consumption. 

Only good stuff, dude.   

As I commented to BRM when I was leaving the room, I didn't like the sound from the room with speakers named Zinfandel and I can't stand the wine, zinfandel.  Is it a mere coincidence?    Everyone brings different evaluative software to these shows.  You just have to key in with folks who typically like similar sounds but you will have to be the ultimate arbiter of the sound you like...

[Mrs. Ninja]

The room the room the room.

What is the most important thing for great true to life sound, Alex?

[Tyson]

I never, ever listen with my eyes.  My favorite speakers look like @ss (Geddes Abbeys), and my current custom tube amp has crap sprouting out the top of it like cancerous electronic tumors.  Since I put my gear in a cabinet that has doors and frosted glass on the front, the looks are completely irrelevant to me. 

BTW, I am NOT saying that a marketing term makes gear hifi or midfi.  I'm talking about when reviewers discuss the sound of your equipment, if they use terms like "best in class", then from a pure sound quality perspective, you qualify as high end.  If they use terms like "great value", then you are in the mid-fi category (but punching above your weight class).  Ever notice that you never see a negative review?  That's because reviewers have a sort of coded language they use to shield manufacturers.  Terms like "great value" mean "I liked it but didn't love it", or "Hey, if I didn't have my reference gear (which is clearly better), then this piece would be OK".  Sorry, but that's the truth.

[woodsyi]

Typically most value is not the same as the best quality.  In this hobby of asymptotically diminishing returns, the best value is probably found at the base of the steep rise in cost over quality graph.  I would not call that midfi but it's not at the top either. 

Klaus and Alex had really one of the best value package for $5500 in the Odyssey room but they know and admit that their stuff is not at Symphonic Line level.  Nor is the price, which is the point.

[Tyson]

I liked the Odyssey room this year, but then I like it every year.  You are right, it's not the Symphonic line, it's the "great value" line.  And Klaus understands that.  And I have no issue with that.  My problem is when manufacturers think that their gear is world class, and it just isn't, like AVA seems to.  Good for the $$?  OK, maybe.  Best in the world?  Not even close.

[jtwrace]

I never, ever listen with my eyes.  My favorite speakers look like @ss (Geddes Abbeys

   When will you have a pair then? 

[gstraley]

  This post started out slow but really turned into a having a lot of good comments. I started this post in General Audio and it was moved. This may be off the RMAF topic but...
   I find similar experiences when I go to audio dealer showrooms. You go to listen to a pair of speakers and end up with equipment that you may not be familiar with. Some even still have the switch on the fly boxes to change gear real quick. I really do not end up knowing what you are listen to half of the time. I am listening to the speakers that I came to listen to or everything else? I know everything else plus the speakers. Epecially the switching box.
   About 5 years ago I went to listen to a pair of speakers that were highly recommended to me by a friend. I even brought my tube integrated  amp that I was using at the time. I wanted to get some kind of handle on how they sound and if the amp was powerful enough to drive the speakers.
   After listening to their gear hooked up to them and not liking what I heard I had them hook up my integrated amp. Better but still not great. Another friend that was with me at the time looked at me and said that the speakers must suck. I knew that my other friend knew what to listen for and that he was usually correct. So I asked the dealer if they would let me take them home to audition them. My buddy looked at my like I was crazy. He said why do you want to waste your time and energy moving them.
   Got them over to another friends house and compared them to his Dunlavy SC 4a's. Immediately you could hear how slow the Dunlavy speaker were compared to these. I then took them home and compared them to the speakers that I was using at the time. They really sounded much better than my other pair of speakers and IMO the Dunlavy's. I then bought them and am still living happily with them.
    To this day my buddy that went with me to the Audio dealer to listen to those same speakers at the showroom cannot believe how much of a difference that they sound with my gear and my room.
    Moral of the story is that one should really hear gear in their system with the music they listen to before purchasing (if possible).

Gregg

[DustyC]

I've haven't been to a RMAF yet. But the last Stereophile show convinced me that attending exhibits at these shows is alot like "speed dating". The exhibitor has only a few minutes (or the length of your chosen tune) to make a good impression. I then can decide whether or not to examine at a dealer, the manufacturer's equipment based on that few minutes.

[Wind Chaser]

...attending exhibits at these shows is alot like "speed dating"...

Exactly!  And that's why they shouldn't be taken too seriously.

[ltr317]

I liked the Odyssey room this year, but then I like it every year.  You are right, it's not the Symphonic line, it's the "great value" line.  And Klaus understands that.  And I have no issue with that.  My problem is when manufacturers think that their gear is world class, and it just isn't, like AVA seems to.  Good for the $$?  OK, maybe.  Best in the world?  Not even close.

For some AVA owners they are world class.  The point being different strokes for different folks.  I don't have any AVA equipment, but I never belittle some one who happens to like equipment that may not be my cup of tea. 

[TONEPUB]

Yes and we think just alike and see just alike I mean we could be practically the same creature and yet we perceve things so very different.

Put a man and a woman to compare anything, a car, a apinting, a speaker, a color for the wall, a piece of clothing and what the two will percieve and proccess in thier brain will be different.

Mrs. Ninja

And with the Ninja and I that is a good thing

As to Jeff your Audiologist and old wives tales I give you just a few of the many studies that have been conducted and come up with the women hear better then men conclusion....its why we have bigger vocabularies earlier in life. I can produce more if you would like.

1. Professor John Corso of Penn State University in the late 1950's and early 1960's.  Dr. Corso simply used a soundproof booth, headphones, and a tone generator.  He consistently found that the girls hear better than boys do, especially in the range of frequencies above 2 kHz.

See John Corso, Age and sex differences in thresholds, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 31:498-507, 1959; also John Corso, Aging and auditory thresholds in men and women, Archives of Environmental Health, 6:350-356, 1963.


2. Professor Jane Cassidy at Louisiana State University, Professor Cassidy, in a study of 350 newborn baby girls and boys, found that the girls hearing was substantially more sensitive than the boys, especially in the 1000- to 4000-Hz range which is so important for speech discrimination.

See Jane Cassidy and Karen Ditty. Gender differences among newborns on a transient otoacoustic emissions test for hearing. Journal of Music Therapy, 37:28-35, 2001.

3. A variety of more recent studies using more sophisticated technology have not only confirmed the superior hearing of girls at higher frequencies, but have also begun to demonstrate the anatomical basis for that superiority.  The group led by Hiroaki Sato was the first to demonstrate consistent sex differences in the anatomy of the inner ear:  girls are born with a cochlea which is shorter and stiffer than boys.  The shorter, stiffer cochlea provides a more sensitive frequency response. 

See their paper, Sexual dimorphism and development of the human cochlea.  Acta Otolaryngologica, 111:1037-1040, 1991.

4. A few years later, a French group led by Thierry Morlet demonstrated that the hair cells themselves are stiffer (and therefore more sensitive) in girls compared to the hair cells in boys.  See their paper, Development of cochlear active mechanisms in humans differs between gender, Neuroscience Letters, 220:49-52, 1996.

These differences may help to explain sex differences in language acquisition. For example, the average 18-month-old girl has a vocabulary of about 90 words, compared to just 40 words for the average 18-month-old boy; see figure (source: Simon Baron-Cohen, Svetlana Lutchmaya, and Rebecca Knickmeyer, Prenatal Testosterone in Mind: amniotic fluid studies, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004.

JUst to name a few....

Still love me Jeff?

Mrs. Ninja

I still love you, I just disagree.  My daughter didn't start talking till 23 months.

Some of that may be true with infants, I'm sure.  But the audiologists I talked to all were measuring adults.  They also told me that a lot of hearing acuity is hereditary, as well as your chances of losing your high frequency hearing. (kind of like baldness) 

Personally, I think no one has taken a wide enough sample, but that is strictly my opinion.

[a1p1]

Studies on infants cannot be assumed to apply to adults.  Another factor is that needs to be considered is noise exposure.  Men, particularly historically, have greater noise exposure (occupational, recreational, military service) resulting in high frequency hearing loss.  The differences across individuals of either gender is much greater than the differences between men and women.  As with most things, broad generalizations rarely apply to individuals.  People like different equipment, have different priorities, biases, budgets, etc.  It's far from as simple as women hear better than men therefore....