Has anyone actually experienced the "Holy Grail" of Sound - Page 3

I am basically already there, the number of well-recorded recordings that have the exact type/style of music I prefer and are willing to tolerate, are growing smaller by the day.
But instead of aborting the baby with the bath water as it were, I just 'suffer' through it and turn a blind eye to the flaws that are displayed raw in front of me; that's all that can be done, and my system isn't even all that 'extreme', some would consider it entry-level even...

I feel the world would be a much better place if dynamics-compressors and lossy-compression codecs were never invented... or at least had never become as popular/mainstream as they have.

I admit, I do in fact absolutely 'hunt' for such recordings. It's not that the unwell-recorded tracks don't sound at their "best" on such systems... it is that they "still" sound like the not-good sound that they are. I think that is what gets under the skin of those types of people.

Some people are just very sensitive (or atuned) to distortions, and are noticing them more than the average-joe. It's the whole gift/curse thing. Once you know what to look for, you find it everywhere it occurrs. (Which is a lot.)

For example, this happens will movie producers as well. Once you know how all the special effects are done, all movie magic sheen is lost on them. They can see all of the tricks and gimmicks and flaws, and they 'hate' watching movies, they see it for the fakeness that it is and cannot get absorbed into the make-believe 2D simulation no longer.
Edited by BassThatHz - 1/18/13 at 1:51pm

1. Do you keep the old and enjoy it just the same? I keep the old gear I have for other rooms and sometimes keep it for the main room
2. Do you discard the old in favor of the new?No
3. Do you trade up just to get new features with no real increase in performance (just features)? No, I try to only upgrade what will yield an improvement in sound/Video upscaling. All other features can be added with a HTPC, Roku, or AppleTV
4. Do you feel that the old stuff is not as good as the products offered today?In some price segments I think the older stuff can offer a much higher value than the new. Look at the price of a new turntable for instance.
5. Do you feel that most equipment upgrades are just not upgrades at all but just trading one for another? Yes, some receivers add small, useless features that are not really needed and increase the price for the new model year
6. Do you ? Receivers/Processors used to focus only on the audio. Today they focus on audio, video, satelite radio, internet radio, pandora, calibration, DLNA, etc. I personally would give up all the extra features to just have pure sound control

Here's what ~$9300 dollars worth of 2 channel equipment sounds like. (Quad mono-block system, 8400w peak power on tap.)

These songs are near-flawless recordings IMO. (The CD originals that is, not my youtube stream LOL)






OR, if you want the subwoofered-up... full-scale $35,000 experience. (2-ch Quad mono-block system, with all subs pumping, ~30kW peak power on tap)
Basically the only difference from above is, more bass & played back at a higher SPL level.

^^^

I almost went the B&W route four years ago when I first started putting my HT system together. Loved the 802D and was OK with getting 3 of them for LCR but the JTR Speaker thread made me realize I wanted more clear output and SPL.

Listening to that makes me wonder if I made the right choice! I absolutely love how the B&W tweeters sound. So smooth and balanced. Maybe I am headed towards a Neosis upgrade to my Triple 12LF.

Man, considering what I have learned about DIY over the past few years on this forum, spending that much on equipment would bug me.

Hell, it bugs me now knowing what I have spent on my (way cheaper than yours) 5 channel surround sound. Intro SEOS and I could have built my own 5.1 or 7.1 for about half of what I spent and see a massive performance gain!

I wonder what I (or some others in here) could do with $35K...



Since we are talking $$$, I'd venture to say that your $35K setup would compare well against some of the $10K DIY systems or some of the $200K systems over on Audiogon...

It just seems hard to associate a $ figure on "The Holygrail."

B+W is a brand I determined is 'not right for me'. The sound is too conservative - assuredly refined and flat - it's not surprising that their 801 is used as a studio monitor by Abbey Road. I mix music, I appreciate that quality in a speaker, but it's not what I want out of my 'entertainment' system. I Now that I'm into DIY it's just about impossible to imagine going back. I believe in maximum headroom - you can pry my subs out of my cold dead fingers. More than anything, CD horns put a smile on my face, I've never heard a dome that I liked as much.
Edited by imagic - 1/19/13 at 7:09am

801 is used as a studio monitor by Abbey Road

...not because that's what the engineers chose, but because they were part of an endorsement deal.

This ^ ^ ^

Their offerings have been quite nice, but it seems you don't see B&W stuff much in studios of mastering houses anymore. They were an aspect of my personal holy grail, years ago. 801s, and their construction were fantastic. But man, I wanted a pair of 808s, ... dynamically, I knew of very little hifi wise, that were likely as stout, dynamically, as the 808's,...I wanted them,..but damn were they expensive, like $8k each in the mid 80s (way too much). And I'm talking back 25-30 years ago. The studio offerings of JBL and Westlake were even more stout, they still are,...and damn, ... the home versions like that SM-1 (1000lbs., TAD equpped, 5-way, dual-18) was and still is, an absolute beast.

Throughout, the 70's, 80's and 90's, I was involved in live, to two-track recordings, and I still dabble today. Aside from live music, my favorite on location sources, were big, enormous, steam locomotives. My Dad and I traveled the country making high end recordings of trains, a la Brad miller of MoFi fame. Well, few things are as demanding dynamically as live steam locomotives,...the big ones. There's only a few left in the US, maybe three good ones. I always thought something like the B&W 808's had my name all over them,...never happened. They were available in both a studio/soffited version, and a more typical floorstander here. There were crazy, multi driver monsters out there, but I wanted total fidelity too. At the time, I wanted no horns, super high quality and capability, ... the 808s were it ... I thought.

Keele's (and Eargle) work on the JBL two ways, and constant directivity (JBL 4430, etc.), was just hitting the studio market. They could hit the levels I wanted, but the front loaded hifi design appealed to me more. I shoulda payed more attention to Keele's work,...genius. His AES papers, damn I love reading all that stuff. Way ahead of his time. Even today, he's still churing out great work.

With regard to the big steam trains, maintenance expense and insurance regulations have dramatically reduced the frequency and all but eliminated these big locomotive excursions. There's but a few left, and my personal fave; the Challenger, UP #3985, here, is the most incredible piece of machinery I've ever seen in my life. When it approaches off in the distance, with the wonderfully rich tonality of it's steam whitsle echoing off the surrounding lanscape, ... I watch my meter level accordingly. The ambient insect noise slowly makes way for the buildup of energy as the locomotive gets closer. The engineer begins whistling for the crossing where I'm set up. The tactile element via the ground is equalled by the visceral element against my skin, the entire body becomes involved in the sound excitation. Nothing like it.

The uncompressed dynamics of experiencing it live, words cannot convey. The peak energy involved in a trackside passing, can't adequately be described, ... and is obviously demanding. And just like the approach, the sound as it trails into the distance is equally as dramatic,... the loudness wanes as the insects become more prominent, the gorgeous tone of the locomotive is heard whistling for the next few crossings. As one can imagine, the incredible dynamics are killer, no doubt. But it's also the thick, lush reverberrant rich sound, both approaching and departing, that's so sweet to capture and reproduce. The direct energy, accompanied by the trailing reverberrant echos that illuminate the surroundings, .... talk about imaging, it's all there.

I digress, .. My point is I struggled mightily to play back some of these tracks with dynamic faithfullness. This led me to products from VMPS, and pro studio monitors. Additionally, it also introduced me to Speaker Builder magazine, Vance Dickason's "Cookbook", and all the wonderful DIY efforts going on in the 80's, and on into the 90's. Pre internet, sources like this were priceless, and industry giants like D'Appololito, et al, submitting lengthy tutorials in every issue were wonderful sources of info. High end drivers from TAD, Eton, Focal, Dynaudio, and JBL, made for some superbly capable efforts.

I've been thru DIY, Cerwin Vega, Speakerlab, Polk, Klipsch, JBL, QSC, and now the Cat12C. I'm happy, and for now, I've moved on to fully optimizing the speaker/room, acoustic interface. Holy grail? .... not yet. I've heard it though, a handful of times, ... that's a different post.

Damn, what a meandering, rambling rant. All from the B&W mention ...

All the best

I think it might be more than that popalock, I have about $13,000 in amplification alone; and all the subs are already DIY, which is additional money.
and a lot of my stuff I bought used... so it would be nearly impossible to beat this for much less than what I basically paid, if purchased brand new or even going DIY for the front speakers.

Your horn tweeter graphs measured amazingly on paper. You guys should upload some videos. I'd like to see what they sound like, and what 100db/watt mains with "maximum headroom" playback sounds like.

There is no way I could hear any JTR products in my area; even something well known like JBL there may only be two shops in town.
My location is too remote and too small-town'ish to be able to audition much of anything.
So I'd have to purchase it almost entirely blindly or make a pair myself, at my own expensive and risk.

On some level, it kind of makes me wonder exactly how loudly you guys are listening to music with your mains????
My B&W's are only 90db/watt, 9x less efficient than horns... so they are definitely not as suitable for attempting to reach deafening rock concerts levels or filling an IMAX theater with loud sounds.
But even with clones and large subs, they still can't overpower my mains as-is.

But some of your mains are like 100db/watt (or more)... so you must be requiring the need to be playing stuff back at 120db worth of treble.
I couldn't even imagine how painfully loud that would be, nor can I see how it would be enjoyable, or all that necessary.
I could see needing them if you throw a lot of parties and want to make crowds of drunk people happy by sizzling their ears off. Drunk people aren't happy with anything less than bleeding.

Even with clone amps ready to explode from being overloaded and such, any drunk guests I've ever had over were never all that "happy" with the hi-fi sound. It wasn't 'loud' enough for them. Despite having 9 subs and clones and such. Just saying...

I don't listen anywhere near those levels (120 db's) with my jtr's. for me the difference is in the dynamics. A gunshot, for example, gets a completely different reaction from me with my jtr's than it did when I had speakers that were in the low 90's for sensitivity.

Not only are the dynamics so much better, but music sounds incredible on the Noesis. Such a smooth, sweet, full sound that has a huge soundstage and great imaging. For the first time in my life I'm strictly a 2 channel guy when it comes to music, my Magnepans couldn't even pull that off. So for me it's the best of both worlds. A speaker that sounds better for music and movies than anything I've ever heard.

Now, I have heard a lot of speakers including a few models of B&W's but I've never heard yours so I don't have any idea how the Noesis would compare to them.

When it comes to the horns and treble - The reason I get a good graph has everything to do with headroom. Since I am using a constant-directivity horn, there is a natural falloff in the highs which reaches about 15db at 20,000 hz. I EQ that away (well most of it anyhow, I leave a bit of house curve)... So no, that power level does not translate to ear-bleeding highs, at least not in my system. It simply restores them to the levels one would expect from a 'flat' HF transducer. I EQ 20,000 at +12 (to keep a bit of 'house curve'), so it takes 16 watts at the top to keep up with 1 watt at 1Khz. The same HF CD horn that is so loud in concert, when pushed to do true HiFi duty becomes much more (relatively) modest in capability. Same thing happens with bass and ULF, live sound applications require cutting the bass off before power and excursion demands blow up the system.

Quoting JBL here: "For most drivers intended for high quality sound or music reinforcement, the mass break-point is in the 3500 Hz range. Above that frequency, the response falls off at 6 dB/octave. In many applications, the fall-off can be ignored, since it may correspond, more or less, to accepted system equalization practice. But in the cases of studio monitoring and music reinforcement, the inherent roll-off of the driver will have to be compensated for."..."JBLs most recent passive dividing network designs have provision for such compensation. Inasmuch as the high-frequency portion of a system is always padded down relative to the low-frequency portion, there is power to spare, thus allowing the compensation to be made with­out additional power input."

Edited by imagic - 1/20/13 at 8:36am

When I really want to feel the bass train, I keep my music on decent listening levels and crank up the bass. I can't deal with 120dB's worth of treble in music. For peaks in movies I'm fine but music is a different story.

Ok, so I have a few questions about bass, subs and altering the levels to what we like to hear. With a 2 channel system it's pretty simple, turn on the system and put the volume where you want it.

What I don't like it all these options, adjusting sub levels and running things hot depending on how we want things to sound. So help me understand how I can have my system reproduce the source without me adjusting things to how I like it. How do you manage all these sub option when recordings are all different as well? It kind of bugs me that my subs are set at X for one recording and then X+2db for others.

This probably isn't the proper thread to discuss be the above post had me wondering....

I use the volume knob on the amp that runs the subs. I know where 'flat' is on the dial, so I can reset for movies after a music session. For music, I tweak 'on the fly', usually album by album. When listening to a playlist, I live with the subs at one level, usually flat. Some movies force me to turn the bass down as well. I'd say most stuff sounds great to me between flat and +3db, so the knob does not move much. Crossover is at 80, phantom center.

I generally just turn on more subs. I have switches for all my amps in the main HT room. if I'm craving more bass, I turn on a few more subs. That way I never have to mess with any settings.

To solve the leveling issue, what I've done is to config the source output to be at maximum at 0-Ref(clip) and the amp output stages to be at maximum at 0-Ref(clip)... relative with to a "known" level on the pre-amp (with the bass response curve EQ'ed to the way I like it).
In this way, all I have to do is adjust the level with my remote relative to the "known" maximum, depending on how agressive or compressed the source material is and how loud I want it to be; and of course never exceeding the max (unless I'm familiar with the song in order to avoid bottoming out the subs).

Now if the song isn't flat, then "oh well"... that's how my system is going to play it back.

That said, I could probably find an XLR based pre-amp on PE to attach to the bass lines of my treble pre-amp to allow them to be remotely controlled independently. I'll have to look into this...
A bass-remote and a treble-remote (or just one universal switcher)... Sweet!
What a great idea!!! (pats self on back)

Must be nice to be able to turn on as many subs as you feel haha

I would say that the criteria would be:

1) It must have vanishingly low distortion throughout the audible-band (at least).
There should be no significant hiss, hum or ground-loop.
It shouldn't sound digital or digitized, i.e. 8-BIT sampling for example LOL
No listener fatigue, even after 2 to 8 hours non-stop.

2) As wide a bandwidth as possible, at least 20 to 20khz (or better).

Those two aren't optional IMO.

3) As high a dynamic range as obtainable. (One might consider THX Ref level as a minimum criteria for this; sounds reasonable to me.)


Basically, being "as true to the source as possible", preferably be an exact replica (within reason).
I want to be able to have my ears 'fooled' into thinking that I'm listening to a human singing in my room directly, not a "human via a mic, undigitized and amped through speakers" (even though deep down we all know that that is what it is).
If it were a true blind test condition I ideally wouldn't want to be able to tell that it was a reproduced simulation vs the real thing.

(Note: There is no live-performance equivalent of computer generated music, such as techno. So there are limits to that generalization. Let's not over-analyze things to that degree.)

The first 3 are measurable metrics, the rest is (more or less) subjective and varies by individual (and their past experiences / knowledge domain).

For me, that about sums it up; and hits all the key points I could think of or wanted to make.




I feel that I am there, to a large degree. (There are still quirks, it's not perfect, but there is no major roadblocks IMO.)
Not sure if you can tell from my videos or not...

Hhhhhoooaaaa!

While I wasn't a door basher or a "shooter" per se, I've spent 4 years of my career in a war zone as both active duty Air Force and Army Civilian. 2 years in Iraq and 2 in Afghanistan.

While I love this hobby, I'm convinced that NOTHING in our hobby will ever come close to recreating the experience of indirect fire or mortors exploding 20 meters from your sleeping quarters.

If any system can recreate that experience, I think I'll pass...
Edited by popalock - 1/25/13 at 5:15am

Explosions create hypersonic shockfront overpressures, exceeding 194db. It doesn't go very far maybe a 100ft for large non-nuclear. Obviously nuclear explosions create them for miles, that's why stuff is flying apart.
So unless you can make the cone go faster than the speed of sound, it ain't anywhere near that violent.
That would require pumping a 4.2khz burst into an LMS and making it go full xmech; ain't happenin'

I love this hobby.

However, I wish I could be satisfied already... Sure would make home life easier...

i think i"ve heard what i thought was real clean, undistorted broad bandwidth reproduction that left me wanting very little more. it all depends on your taste. now, on the other hand if you set out a reference of numbers and criteria then that changes everything and my system would probably fall short somewhere.....