When listening, is the system important to you?

[rdclark]

Good points about setting and distractions. Recreating soundstage, I'm not sure about how that works, or fails to work with earbuds & cans. The way I understand this is that soundstage (or the illusion of it) is a result of panning (in a multi track recording) and reflections. The brain can locate the source of a sound by the information that it gets from two ears as well as any reflections from the surroundings. In a system which can deliver that detail, you'll have a soundstage. Will it work with cans and not earbuds? I think it depends on their quality.

What's a good 5.1 mix? I don't hear many as I would rather allocate my budget between 2 better channels rather than 5 or more OK ones. That said, 5.1 is closer to having discreet tracks than 2 channel (unless the 5.1 has L-C-R in front and only reverb in the back two).

I should be more clear about the soundstage thing, and how it differs from "imaging." Often conflated (as I did) imaging is what's contained in the recording; soundstage is what's created by the speakers/headphones. Earbuds/plugs have difficulty creating a soundstage that seems larger than the inside of your head, or that's in front of you and not to the sides. Good on-ear or over-ear phones can have a more open sound with a more natural soundstage, more speaker-like (at least more than buds).

I built my 5.1 (now 7.1) system for movies, but with multichannel audio as an important secondary mission, so the four surround speakers are timbre-matched with the main towers and center (all Definitive Technology), and the system includes two subs. For a list of well-regarded surround discs, look here: https://www.quadraphonicquad.com/TabbedPollChart.htm.

My own favorite is not on that list: Chick Corea's Rendezvous in New York, which is a 2-disc highlights compilation on SACD of his three-week run of career-retrospective shows at the Blue Note in 2003, featuring many of the artists with whom he's collaborated over the years. It turns your listening room into a completely convicing aural replica of the club: Close your eyes and you're there, in ideal seats, in one of the world's finest jazz rooms.

Usually I prefer multi-track recordings remixed into five discrete channels (such as Wilson's mixes of Yes, Tull, XTC, or his own music) which really leverage the close-listening process -- even sometimes letting you walk right up to one speaker for literal close listening to a particular player. The link above is good for finding the best of these.

[Trane]

What's a good 5.1 mix? I don't hear many as I would rather allocate my budget between 2 better channels rather than 5 or more OK ones. That said, 5.1 is closer to having discreet tracks than 2 channel (unless the 5.1 has L-C-R in front and only reverb in the back two).

Here, I will show my audiophile limits by saying that while I own a bunch of 5.1, discs, it's mostly because they were acquired as part of a package. This means that I haven't transformed one of my system into a 5.1 or surround yet (I'm not saying I will someday, but right now, I don't feel the need to). BTW, I never acquired those quadrophonic vinyls either.

[rdclark]

BTW, I never acquired those quadrophonic vinyls either.

You missed nothing but heartache and misery. I struggled with all that vinyl surround crapdoodle for years in the 70s before giving up, because something in me has yearned for truly immersive audio since I was a teen in the 60s. The modern era of discrete surround, and particularly high-resolution lossless surround, is like a paradise that arrived just in time, while my hearing is still intact. (I do wonder sometimes if one reason so many older fans are indifferent to hi-rez surround is because of hearing loss, acknowledged or not.)

[jkelman]

While I've got a kickass system in my living room, with an OPPO UDP-205 player/DAC, Leema Tucana II integrated amp (both aforementioned devices supporting balanced XLR, which was a major factor for me) and my Tetra 333 stack, and I must admit that it's absolutely my first go-to place to listen to anything, the music still comes first. I spent decades with an at-best average system until we renovated and I was able to build this system into the budget.

I've got a set of Pardigm 2.1 Millennium Reference Speakers (cost about $1,200) hanging off my Mac in the office (usually passed through an OPPO HA-2 portable headphone amp that has a better DAC, so significantly improves the sound (as the HA-2 also does when listening to music on my iPad/iPhone).

I've got an OPUS #1S DAP that, at a reasonable price of under $500, uses the same pair of DACs found in Astell Kern DAPS four times the price and is a recent acquisition that I'm very happy with (especially with Dapper software, which makes it possible to synch the DAP to my iTunes library), and use either OPPO PM-3 planar magnetic over the-ear headphones or Westone UM 30 PRO IEMs, so I'm well covered when out of the house.

I no longer listen to compressed music unless there!s absolutely no choice, so my iTunes library, which doesn't have my entire collection (but I'm getting there slowly!) but, at 5Tb, has a significant chunk of it. The music is stored as ALAC (Apple's equivalent to FLAC), but comes from CD rips or higher res downloads. I also have a significant collection of SACD, DVD-A and Blu Fay Pure Audio releases. And I use Apple TV 4K to stream music from my iTunes library through to my living room system, going through the OPPO so as to take advantage of that box's great DAC.

So, in an out of the house o a, well covered. That said, as much as I continue to love listening to music more than ever because my objective of having setups that don't colour the sound but, rather, truthfully deliver whatever is sent their way, I've always been of the opinion that sonics are somewhat secondary. I'd rather hear a great Robert Johnson album, not particularly well-recorded (or, to relate to this board, Soft Machine Third, which, as wonderful an album as it is, sounds pretty much like shite on any system!) than an album of substandard music incredibly well-recorded and mastered.

The music, for me, always comes first. But that said, I'm tremendously grateful that, now in my seventh decade on planet earth, I'm finally able to hear music the way it really sounds, with all the detail, nuance and dynamics that make it so much of a joy to experience.

So yeah, I think music should be played through the best possible gear you can afford...and I also believe that it's possible to get pretty solid sonics without spending a total fortune. But I do think the objective should be to find, whatever your budget, a system that most truthfully delivers the music that you send to it. Just my opinion, of course, but it's why I am not a fan of Bose, no matter how popular they are. They colour the sound with their "signature" far too much...and while they produce a pleasing warmth to just about everything sent to them, they're not telling the truth.

That said, everybody's ears are different, so whatever sounds best to you is what you should aim for, within whatever your budget is and anyone else's opinion be damned...mine included!!

Cheers!
John

[Jerjo]

but, at 5Tb, has a significant chunk of it.

I was just feeling proud at crowding out my 2TB external drive. Damn you Kelman, damn you!

[progmatist]

You missed nothing but heartache and misery. I struggled with all that vinyl surround crapdoodle for years in the 70s before giving up, because something in me has yearned for truly immersive audio since I was a teen in the 60s. The modern era of discrete surround, and particularly high-resolution lossless surround, is like a paradise that arrived just in time, while my hearing is still intact. (I do wonder sometimes if one reason so many older fans are indifferent to hi-rez surround is because of hearing loss, acknowledged or not.)

Quadraphonic in the '70s was a conundrum. It worked well for classical because it put one in the concert hall, but most rock albums put one right in the middle of the stage surrounded by the band. Most people didn't care for the latter.

[Buddhabreath]

The music, for me, always comes first. But that said, I'm tremendously grateful that, now in my seventh decade on planet earth, I'm finally able to hear music the way it really sounds, with all the detail, nuance and dynamics that make it so much of a joy to experience.

That is doubtless a superb system John congrats! Never heard the tetras, there's a rare beast! I agree with your commentary and I've acquired the best system I can reasonably afford and would go further BUT I don't have a good listening room which is one of the most vital parts of a system IMO. If I had anything more upscale it would be like buying a Koenigsegga to drive in traffic or putting racing wheels and a spoiler on a Pirus. Maybe someday I'll have a space (and the money) for a true audiophile system.

The other limiting factor is that unfortunately we elderly people can no longer hear the high-frequencies (just a fact of life). I'm a B&W guy right now (a wannabe Anglophile Audiophile), but why would I need the diamonds that go up to 35k Hz when I can't even hear half that range? - in fact that is way beyond any human hearing. I guess there's a reason for all that "headroom" other than torturing dogs or maybe bats. Anyway, sorry for rambling, but hell, somebody's got to take up the slack since rcarlburg is on self-imposed PE vacation damn it.

I apparently can hear quite well for my age even above 14k Hz! At least according to this online test I have the ears of a 40 year old woo hoo!
How about you?
https://www.echalk.co.uk/Science/bio.../resource.html

C'mon folks - tell us how old your ears are!

[Jerjo]

my hearing age is 49 - not bad for a 61-year-old who has been front row for too many concerts back in the day

[rdclark]

Quadraphonic in the '70s was a conundrum. It worked well for classical because it put one in the concert hall, but most rock albums put one right in the middle of the stage surrounded by the band. Most people didn't care for the latter.

Not sure I would agree with "most," then or now. The rankings at https://www.quadraphonicquad.com/TabbedPollChart.htm overwhelmingly favor recordings that place the listener amidst the musicians, but that may not be a classical crowd.

IMO the problem with quad in the 70s was the unreliability of the technology, the incompatibility of competing systems, the challenges of getting a system up and running, and the poor audio quality inherent in the LP-based formats.

Classical music did have one advantage in that using the surround channels only for room ambiance presented less of a challenge to the systems' ability to reproduce them full-range.