do you think what you listen to cd's on effects your idea of good tone ??

Keira-WitherKay

this morning after a hellish week of gigs and teaching ..... after 6 days of working till late in evening i had a day off...i convinced carol my partner to take the dogs and leave me with time to lie in the bath .......... for at least an hour......... and i decided to listen to some music while i did........... i took out a paco di lucia cd and grabbed the mini hifi from the guest bedroom and lay back to relax..only to find within a few minutes i was thinking eeeeeeeeeeeuuuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhh !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! what a tinny horrid guitar sound............ and this was the cd i love thru my main system and headphones.............. so yeah it was the system, not paco that made a potentially great sounding album sound crap

so i started thinking ......... how many people in the modern day and age have a good hifi system??? ....do we rather listem to cd's in our cars which are traditionally bass heavy or on ipods which are very imeadiate .....or on docking stations that have minimal bass end................

is it this lack of good reference that makes so many people wanna buy /upgrade gear continually cos they just not happy with the tone.......... or sound so bad live cos they think their tone is good ............. NOT

so my question/debate is do we ever get to hear what a real guitar should sound like when we listen to cd's .....be it acoustic or electric thru an amp............... but does our idea of a strat thru a twin reverb match what we hear on recorded material ..even if we know the artist uses the same gear ..............is the recorded material mastered/treated so much that we forget what an actual strat straight thru a twin reverb sounds like .... or do we expect the mastered result

same with acoustic........... every paco cd is mastered so how can we hope to sound similar in tone ......just strumming our nylons live ..... hehheheh lets just forget about playing ability
and also if we listening to music in our cars do we expect our live real guitar sound to be that bassy or if we listening on computer gaming speakers or a mini hi fi like i did do we become happy with a tinny sound.................

just a debate/question so what do you think ????

and 2nd what would be an acceptable standard in hifi ( and i mean affordable too) to get natural sound............ ??/ i know gearhead will have the answers for this half of the question

Sean

Keira WitherKay wrote: and 2nd what would be an acceptable standard in hifi ( and i mean affordable too) to get natural sound............ ??/ i know gearhead will have the answers for this half of the question

Affordable?
I don't think Gearhead is the one to ask, his hi-fi has these huge bulbous bottles sticking out the top of it ??? the thing is probably *easily* worth more than my car ?

Keira-WitherKay

Sean wrote:
Keira WitherKay wrote: and 2nd what would be an acceptable standard in hifi ( and i mean affordable too) to get natural sound............ ??/ i know gearhead will have the answers for this half of the question
Affordable?
I don't think Gearhead is the one to ask, his hi-fi has these huge bulbous bottles sticking out the top of it ??? the thing is probably *easily* worth more than my car ?

? yeah well i just know he's our resident audiophile ....... but there must be a system that gets natural sound without needing me to refinance the house ? and just thought even though gearhead would personally have the 'rolls royce" of systems he could advise on the "toyota " of sound systems............. just a hope

Gearhead

Gearhead has got one answer to the 'acceptable standard': there is none. In the olden days, studios used to all use the same monitor speakers for mixing purposes. These were relatively well balanced 'flat response' things. If you get the sound 'right' on those, you make the audiophile happy. With a high-end system this sounds great.
Nowadays they mix with monitors with mid-heavy characteristic and the result is that on a flatflat system everything sounds scooped, impressive at first but annoying later.

The other thing is the hideous amps we are offered today. They make so many 'mistakes' that even with great recordings and great speakers your Paco will sound grainy in the highs, harsh in the mids and boomy in the bass.

I would recommend for audio at home to go for >15 liter two way speakers with 7" woofer and a wooden cab (or one that feels that way). Also, a 2x5W single ended tube amp will be fine for rooms of less than 30m2, the midrange lucidity will get Paco through as if he's sitting next to you.

When in need of reference Keira, you can always drop by for reference purposes, play the stuff on my system and enjoy some goose bumps. I did not pay as much as Sean for his car (designed & built the speakers myself, fetched the amp and CD from China) but I will not sell for less than a house ?

Norman86

my reason for Focal speakers. the most natural sounding speakers to me...

i wish i could afford the home audio though...
would love a set of Beryllium 3's myself!
through a nice krell amp... hmmmm... would work for me!

Gearhead

Sean wrote: his hi-fi has these huge bulbous bottles sticking out the top of it

Those bulbous bottles are going to set me back a few bob when they need replacement... http://www.tubedepot.com/eat-300b-pair.html