Amir, let me first thank you for the taking the time to continue these exchanges, there's always something to learn and I specially enjoy the banter and sarcasm!
I agree with you 100% regarding the impact of the room and the sound. I'll even go as far as saying that in a way its probably the most important. Maybe our disagreement is partly communication and some because we don't enough about the other's experience and starting point. In all my 30+ years of high end audio I've come across only two rooms with really good acoustics and the experience was transformative. Visually there was nothing special them, they were just a room in a house. One was a basement den in a modern home, the other was the living room in an old house out in Long Island. System in Missouri was the Trio, some CJ phono, Lamm L2, Lamm ML2 and some tt which I don't recall, the room was more or less dampened with furniture, carpeting and very solid construction, I only spent maybe an hour moving the speakers and fine tuning the table. The Long Island house was completely different, I went there to buy some LPs, I think it was around 2002 - 2003. His system was a Garrard 301 from the 60's in one of those sprung period plinths, a SME 3012 and a mono Ortofon type A or type C and an early McIntosh mono pre. The rest of the system was in the adjacent living room, a pair of solid state Bozak amps from early 70's which I'd never seen before. He had DIY tweeter and midrange array, all Bozak and 12 what I think were 8" inch woofers in piece of plywood stuck in front of his fireplace. Talk about preconceptions, I only wanted to hear a couple of the records that I didn't recognize. Through the archway between the rooms I'm looking at this old gentleman in his late 70's, record in hand, waddle over to his rickety system followed by a loud thump as he dropped the needle and a few seconds later came the MUSIC! I tried to focus on the system to understand what was going on but physically and emotionally I couldn't get past the music. I spent another couple hours there and from time to time he'd stand up in the middle the room, pick up his clarinet and play along with the music. That's when the penny dropped for me and realized what I wanted out of music system. There was nothing in common between the two but the musical experience was exactly the same. Both spaces also had a very natural, smooth and expansive low frequency response where everything else built upon, specially the scale and sense of realism. Most of the time I have to fight the rooms and pick my compromise to achieve the final goal, which is experiencing and connection to the music in a natural way beyond a system which can be very impressive. I'm already familiar with the gear and know its can do but its the room and mainly the low frequency response that poses the challenge to achieving the end goal. A couple of times the rooms where so bad that I had to actively biamp and EQ (not digital
!) the speakers to get closer to target. I'm telling you all this so you know that I get what mean about the importance of getting the bass right. What I don't know is if you experienced it in a space naturally?
Part two is my reservation regarding digital. It has nothing to do with any kind of unjustified bias or prejudgement. I jumped in from day 1, only never gave up on analog. I was in the loop from early digital. I lived in London in the early 80's and visited Meridian several times with my friends from Graham hifi when they were doing all their A/B testing with digital. I got the first Philips & Merdian CD players, messed around with tube ones from CAL, then onto the Barclay transport and the STAX X1t. Then added the Levinson 31 & 30 DAC & transport. Had the Burmeister and DCS stuff, messed around with all the clock and up sampling nonsense. Same time I came across CEC and Weiss, became their US distributor for several years until I decided to wind down my audio interests. Along the way I have experimented with all types of digital cables from many, many companies. I'm friendly with David Chesky, been to his recording sessions, later to the mastering of that session in his studio, heard the final hi-res mix and got the down sampled CD. My other mentor and friend, George Walker, pulitzer winning composer and concert pianist. I was in his house many times, know his piano, room and playing very well. I was there when he recorded himself on his digital Nagra tape recorder, listened to the recording through the same electronics that I own and Kharma speakers that I was distributing at the time. I heard the mixes that came back for his approval and again have the final CD. On top of that George is an avid audiophile we spent many days listening to our systems and fine tuning them. There are important nuances that the listener is totally unaware of until pointed out by someone like George and what he knows is in his recordings. I'm not new to digital, my feelings about it come from deep understanding and lots or direct experience. More or less my system is exactly the same as it was in 2001, same brand. I own it as well as sell and install it, the only change is when I moved up the food chain when Lamm came out with their statement products. So I have my long term reference system as a constant. I'm still in the loop, heard many of the latest and greatest. My turntables were chosen the same way, hands on with many different ones and most of them high end and very expensive. I kept these not because they look pretty or cost a lot, I know exactly what they're capable of and what they can do that others can't. I don't know anyone else who can claim the same amount of long term direct experience on both sides of the fence and at the ultra high end of it. I have a brain, can analyze and come to my own independent conclusions. There's no point in badgering me and insisting that something is good and I should get that, when I do. The delta between the best digital I heard and own vs my turntables is just too wide. People who've been here ecstatic with my digital and its musicality until they hear one of the tables, then they get it! An no, with digital recordings there's no advantage to the vinyl over the CD, if anything its often the other way around.
You ask for substantive support, you offer graphs, mathematical theories and writings of others. My substance is my experience and knowledge in the field and look at those graphs, models and articles differently from someone with other skill sets.
Beyond that video I know nothing else about Dr. Toole. I have no admiration or disrespect for the man and my marketing comment wasn't derogatory, I was actually impressed how well he did it but not the content of the speech. Neither the speech or the excerpts of the book that you posted are contradictory or complimentary to what I'm saying here. He talked about a product that he was involved in designing, probably excellent for its intended purpose and I read some bits from his book online. He talks and writes about ways to deal with things, I never said that he's lying, wrong or opposed to what he does in theory or at commercial level. Only that what he's focused on isn't for me, that's my crime? Beyond that I don't know what he really does at Harman or if he built anything in his life that I care about. So for now my interest in the man and his ideas remain very limited, sorry. But I do know about JBL speakers and someone else there. I have/had almost all their original top speakers since the 50's, long before Harman. I own/owned another 9 pairs of JBL speakers since Harman mostly top end 43xx series, their Everest and the K2. A few years I had to call the company about refurbishing the woofers in my M9500 and was passed on to Greg Timbers. Up to that point I had no idea who he was, only after our conversation I found out that he actually designed the M9500 and every other JBL speaker that I had. He's been there since 1972 and has designed and built all of their best known studio monitors along their best at the time K2 series. He does something very different than Dr. Toole and has other ideas of his own for the perfect speaker, and a long history of excellence to back it up. I happen to know more about Timbers and enjoy is work, that's all.
Here's a short video of JBL history, enjoy!
david
PS
Who should we believe instead? Come on, tell us. I am all ears.
Digital tech can do many things but you should believe me when I say that I don't care for and have little use for digital EQ
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