29-Nov-2014, 02:00
I did a lot of listening today with KEF Blades and SAM. Now the Blades are big speakers that don't really need a bass boost, but there were a few sections of music I listened to that sounded totally amazing, quite stunning. I tried the same sections without SAM, they sounded kind of the same, but ordinary. There was some almost surreal 3D definition that had vanished. I think there is more to SAM than just a bass boost, like the old "loudness" button on 70's music centres. The point being, if you have the choice, then yes, try to find speakers you can love that have SAM, it can provide that little bit of audio magic that we all crave. I have had SAM for about 3 months now, and I am still finding stuff that delights. It's not all joyous though, with flat bass down to 20 something hz, sometimes you hear things in the recording that are really annoying, like vocal microphone puffs, or remastering efforts to boost bass in old recordings, where amplified and equalised bass conjured out of almost nothing that existed on the original master tape are reproduced with shamefaced inducing accuracy and detail. If you like it worts and all, but stunning when the recording is stunning, with the odd moment of utter amazement, then SAM should be in the mix. If you want everything pleasant, then perhaps not. Although get you can always turn the SAM percentage down, get the phase correction, without the sometimes embarrassingly revealing ultra low bass. It's all good if you really want to hear what's possible together with what's bad.
The bad stuff can be bad but the good stuff can be so good I sometimes wonder if the folk who made the original recording and listened to it in the actual studio fully realised what they had created.
The bad stuff can be bad but the good stuff can be so good I sometimes wonder if the folk who made the original recording and listened to it in the actual studio fully realised what they had created.
