In article , Andy Evans
wrote:
Contrary to what Stewart and others think, I've spent 35 years building
and tweaking hifi with one aim in mind - to make the hi-fi system sound
like live music. I didn't use measurements for this, I used my ears
since I've been a professional musician for most of my life.

Well, I've used both my ears *and* measurements. I find the measurements to
have been very useful in helping to identify what to do when my ears
weren't happy. Saved me a lot of 'flailing about' and helped me to get an
understanding of what it happening.


I also did all improvements methodically, switching one thing at a time,
and preferring a closer approach to the original sound, more fidelity in
instrumental timbre and more detail, reasoning that any unrealistic
timbre or detail masked was not 'fidelity' to the source. OK. ~ Now the
point is this: How many of us know exactly how acoustic instruments and
voices actually sound?

These days I only go to half or dozen or so live unamplifier music events a
year. Used to go to far more when I lived in London. So in my case this is
a matter of 'memory'. I seem to be able to hear the 'sound' in my head a
lot of the time, but this obviously is fallible.


If you go to live classical or jazz concerts where music is unamplified
(plus folk etc), it actually has a particular sound to it which is
smooth, natural, even bland. It's unimpressive in many ways compared to
our "delusional" hifi kits and our delusional hifi language. It doesn't
have 'warmth', or 'bloom' or 'bass slam' or even PRAT. What it does have
is a lot of nothing - nothing between individual instruments except
space. To reproduce this it's necessary to reproduce a lot of nothing,
which is the fantastically difficult bit. It means no gloss on the
treble, no large soundstage to instruments - they should sound like
small point sources in exact locations in the soundstage - no 'dynamics'
that aren't actually there, and no 'bass slam'. Pretty boring you might
say. And very hard to achieve -

In general, I'd agree. For me the hard bits tend to end up with:

1) Silencing things like faint mechanical 'buzz' that affect my ability to
get quite bit and silence 'sounding right'.

2) Speaker choice and placement and acoustics. In my experience these
dominate the ability to get the kind of 'solid and clear' stereo image you
describe.


you have to eliminate resonances, all
sorts of interferences etc etc. You don't so much 'build' a syetem but
'take away' infidelities of all kinds. At this point Stewart must be
rubbing his hands and saying "I told you so - acoustically transparent".
Jim must be happy that the amplifier doesn't exist.

Afraid I don't know what the sentence above means.

[snip]

Why this post then? I just eliminated another level
of grunge - yes, more has "gone" leaving the sound a lot better. I
started by using better speaker cables (solid copper core, the previous
ones were coloured). Then I wired my whole system through a monster
variac which I have (25 amps). Obviously an effective mains cleaner.

Having routinely used variacs during amplifier development I'd say that
they don't have any real effect as a 'mains cleaner'. Indeed, I'd say that
if anything they can upset the mains by producing a higher - and load
dependent - source impedance for the resulting 'mains'. The ones I've used
do nothing much to 'clean' the mains - either by ear or by measurement.

Can't recall the details of the variacs, but used a variety, and was
working on amps at the time that had to deliver very high powers as well as
pre-amps with MC stages.

[snip]


Hi-Fi seemed delusional. I'm sure this post will be of little use to
those who listen mainly to rock and amplified music, but for those who
listen to classical and acoustic music, getting closer to 'nothing much
except the live sound of music' may matter a lot.

FWIW I listen mostly to classical and acoustic music, but my own experience
seems quite different to yours. If I got the effects you describe I would
have redesigned the PSUs in the amps, or altered the amps to be less mains
sensitive. Indeed, I spent a lot of time sweating over just that. :-)

Slainte,

Jim

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