Guys, (And girls I think? Are there even girls here?)
I like reading reviews or watching them on Youtube. It's not always for something I'm interested in buying. I just enjoy reading about what goes on in this hobby of ours.
My best mate and I recently listened to some gear that's reviewed as 'detailed'. Sometimes it does get a mention of lacking a bit of bass depth, but not all the time.
I have a problem with that. Let me explain it like I explained it to another mate of mine who's not in the hobby.
We were in my living room having a conversation and he could easily understand me. What about if the neighbour starts mowing the lawn? We could still talk at the same volume level, but suddenly we can't hear each other as well. There is still exactly the same level of detail in our voices, but they are now a lot harder to hear. The sound of the lawnmower overpowers the sound of our voices.
Music isn't any different.
If you take the bass away from music, you will be able to discern more detail in the highs. If we can suddenly hear the saliva on a singers lips, but the lower register of the bass guitar is gone, how can that be described as more detailed? No it's not. It's actually less detailed because there's a whole part of the audio spectrum missing.
I tried some speaker cables a while back. They were ribbon cables. There was such a lack of bass, I didn't like them at all. But, I can just imagine someone evaluating them and hearing stuff they'd never heard before in the highs and thinking 'well, I can hear stuff I've never heard before so these speaker cables must be better than the ones I have.'
Just to get back to the experience my best mate and I had when we listened to the described gear; the owner loved the sound. Obviously he had different priorities.
Now a different look at detail. The good kind. I've been playing with a new streamer and power conditioner. And I got more detail out of my system. Quite a lot more actually. But it wasn't detail in the sense that I've described above. It was more of everything. More separation of the different aspects of the music. And the bass? Well, I turned my subwoofers down one dB because the bass became a bit much. i.e. there was more of it and still I heard more into the music.
These two descriptions of detail make for very different listening experiences. The former will lead to listening fatigue, the latter to going to bed tired because you stayed up too late enjoying the music.
What I'm trying to convey with this little rant here is that we should be very careful buying on reviews unless we know exactly what the reviewer means.
What's are your experiences? Have you been caught out by this? Have you bought a hifi component on the basis of 'detail' only to find out later that you don't like it as much as you thought? Did you miss a bit of solidity in your music?
Detail isn't always detail.
I like reading reviews or watching them on Youtube. It's not always for something I'm interested in buying. I just enjoy reading about what goes on in this hobby of ours.
My best mate and I recently listened to some gear that's reviewed as 'detailed'. Sometimes it does get a mention of lacking a bit of bass depth, but not all the time.
I have a problem with that. Let me explain it like I explained it to another mate of mine who's not in the hobby.
We were in my living room having a conversation and he could easily understand me. What about if the neighbour starts mowing the lawn? We could still talk at the same volume level, but suddenly we can't hear each other as well. There is still exactly the same level of detail in our voices, but they are now a lot harder to hear. The sound of the lawnmower overpowers the sound of our voices.
Music isn't any different.
If you take the bass away from music, you will be able to discern more detail in the highs. If we can suddenly hear the saliva on a singers lips, but the lower register of the bass guitar is gone, how can that be described as more detailed? No it's not. It's actually less detailed because there's a whole part of the audio spectrum missing.
I tried some speaker cables a while back. They were ribbon cables. There was such a lack of bass, I didn't like them at all. But, I can just imagine someone evaluating them and hearing stuff they'd never heard before in the highs and thinking 'well, I can hear stuff I've never heard before so these speaker cables must be better than the ones I have.'
Just to get back to the experience my best mate and I had when we listened to the described gear; the owner loved the sound. Obviously he had different priorities.
Now a different look at detail. The good kind. I've been playing with a new streamer and power conditioner. And I got more detail out of my system. Quite a lot more actually. But it wasn't detail in the sense that I've described above. It was more of everything. More separation of the different aspects of the music. And the bass? Well, I turned my subwoofers down one dB because the bass became a bit much. i.e. there was more of it and still I heard more into the music.
These two descriptions of detail make for very different listening experiences. The former will lead to listening fatigue, the latter to going to bed tired because you stayed up too late enjoying the music.
What I'm trying to convey with this little rant here is that we should be very careful buying on reviews unless we know exactly what the reviewer means.
What's are your experiences? Have you been caught out by this? Have you bought a hifi component on the basis of 'detail' only to find out later that you don't like it as much as you thought? Did you miss a bit of solidity in your music?
Detail isn't always detail.
Lifetime Roon, Mac mini, int. SSD, ext. HDD, tv as monitor, key board and track pad on bean bag as remote,Devialet 200, Od'A #097, Blue jeans speaker cable,
Dynaudio C1 MkII.
Jim Smith's GBS.
Northern NSW Australia.
Dynaudio C1 MkII.
Jim Smith's GBS.
Northern NSW Australia.
