"Iain Churches" wrote


Agreed, absolutely. One of my seniors at Decca used to talk about
the *mf* (musicality factor) of a performance or a system. Music is
all about emotion, and I applaud people like Keith who are taking
the trouble to find the elements of an audio system which can reveal
the audible emotion embedded in so many performances at so many
levels.



You don't have to shift far from this ng to find there are a great many
people who are pushing and shoving to get more out of their 'audio
systems' - much more so on the continent than in the UK, it would seem - and
I think it would be fairly safe to assume that many (if not nearly all) of
them have come from 'normal' SS/CD/2 and 3 way speaker systems and, like me,
they became dissatisfied with the resultant sound at some stage....??

(Also, there are those who have realised that, after all the brouhaha and
hype, 'modern kit' doesn't cut the mustard and are now struggling to get
back to the sound they enjoyed better some 20/30/40 years ago.)

It would be easy to bang on about 'life', 'atmosphere', 'emotion' as though
they were some sort of magical properties inherent in the kit but the truth
is the answer's a lot more prosaic - it's much easier to get to the
'emotion' in a bit of music if you can at least hear all the notes,
instruments and words and if the 'tone' of voices and instruments hasn't
been made flat and bland by what I can only presume is the application of
too much feedback and enormous amounts of current being rammed through busy
crossovers (in tiny boxes) at ludicrous levels merely to produce a 'dynamic
sound'....???

(And failing - for me, it's definitely a case of 'less is more'.....)



I feel there is no one type of system that can be all things to all
music and all people. Perhaps a good SS amp is a fairly satisfactory
all-rounder? For small classical ensembles, a good SET with a pair
of Lowthers is an incredibly good combination. The high sensitivity
of the speakers is such that only a few mW of power is required to
fill most listening rooms, and at that level a good SET amp has very
low THD figs. Some people who are not accustomed to this kind
of sound talk about what they perceive as light bass. Go to a
concert, and listen to a string quartet. Not much bass there either:-)


The bass thing with the firewood horns is interesting. I've had a number of
people here who have made agreeable noises about the bass (favourable
comparisons with their own speakers) which, I have to say, I would have
regarded as 'light' in certain circumstances, having been hung up for a
while on trouser-flapping air pressure myself - until I realised that it
wasn't doing anything for the 'sound quality' and absolutely nothing for the
clarity, depth and detail.




I don't think Keith has a different set of aspirations, although I do
think his approach is unorthodox and out of the box (so to speak). It's
certainly changed my way of thinking about reproducing music.


That's where it hangs - to get to grips with SET/Horns on (preferably)
vinyl, you have to be prepared to drop some of the baggage you will have
acquired if you are coming from the above-mentioned 'normal' SS
amp/CD/multiway boxes and the problem in this group is that not many people
want to risk it. I can revert to a SS/CD/2 way speaker system with a couple
of minutes any time I want whenever I need to, if I need confirmation that
I'm at least headed in the right direction...

Asitappens, I have two separate setups on the go atm - vinyl is played on
the SET/Lowther all-valve system (wot else?) and
CD/DAB/FV/DVD/MP3/TV/FM/PVR/DVDR is played through an SS amp amp into the
'Pinkies' (single FR driver speakers) for convenience and to prevent the
Lowthers getting an accidental 'full volume' rude awakening....!!