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. 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?
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 - 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.
It all sounds great. Except that this isn't the gospel according to Stewart.
Because:
a) I'm quite sure amplifiers and indeed componants sound different, and I've
been doing systematic choices between componants to eliminate infidelities for
countless years.
b) I've done all this by ear
c) I use all valve equipment, and I don't think I could get transparency so
easily with solid state.
d) I don't think valves sound 'warm' - another delusion - the ones I build
sound smooth (to my ears smoother than solid state) and dynamic (without a kind
of 'greyness' I hear in some solid state products)
e) I don't think there is such a thing as 'acoustically transparent', only
approximations towards this goal.
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. Some studios use huge toroids for this, like over 1K VA
isolation transformers, e.g. mine is over a foot in diameter and 6" high. My
first reaction was that the sound was boring. The "foreground" of the sound was
less obvious - the soundstage was the same, neither more forward or backward,
but instruments sounded relatively tiny and melodies less 'obvious'. There was
a lot of nothing between instruments, and their actual location was spookily
exact. The sound seemed quieter because of this, and also the treble seemed dim
initially. In fact the treble was all there, and the sound of the triangle and
cymbals was exactly right, just not spread all over the place. It took a while
for it to dawn on me that this was the closest I had come to the sound of live
music. Yep, smooth, quite bland, a lot of nothing but loads of fine detail,
faithful timbre to instruments - in short a step further towards acoustically
transparent. No warmth, no bloom, no PRAT, no bass slam. Spooky. After a little
while I started to get excited! And looking back on the whole saga of 'warm
valve amps', PRAT, slam etc etc, the whole business of 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. It's taken me 35 years to eliminate enough grunge to actually get this
far, and no I couldn't have got there sooner or even at all with a big Krell -
I know that one very well, my brother has a Krell and Apogees, and I've heard
all manner of big ss amps in high end demos. I'm quite unrepentant about how
I've made my Hi-fi sound natural, and all the changes I've done have been
carefully thought out. It's a bit like Salome's seven veils - you have to lift
all the veils to see what's really there, which is, errm, nothing. Thought for
the day.

=== Andy Evans ===
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