I can’t speak to Mike’s or ddk’s or rockitman’s systems, having never heard them, so I won’t. I can only speak to the systems I’ve heard that have most appealed to me.
Rather than conceptualise them with problematic definitions open to subjective interpretation (i.e. “natural”, “neutral”, “refined”, “liquid”, “sterile”, “accurate” et al. - though I do understand why those terms are used and can themselves be useful), I find it more helpful to define them in regard to interdependence. That is, the best I’ve heard are not systems in which compromises are negated through the averaging of judicious compensation in order to move a system toward a particular definition. Given that all systems must transform one type of energy into another, they’re systems that understand the nature of electro-mechanical and electro-acoustic interdependence, and maximise that potential.
I.e., in cases where the owner has preferred low compliance carts, they’ve matched them with heavier arms. In cases where the cart is a LOMC design they’ve ensured the interactivity of the resonance of the cartridge and the resonance of the transformer were taken into consideration when deciding upon values for both the primary and secondary loading of the SUT. In cases where they’ve preferred compression drivers of high impedance, they’ve matched them with SETs of low damping factor and zero global and local feedback. In cases where they’ve preferred multi-driver, multi-way cones with massive crossover components and complex impedance curves, they’ve matched them with solid state amplifiers capable of providing a extremely low output impedance. In the cases where they’re preferred transformer-driven stats or planars, they’ve matched them with amplification that acts as a current source rather than voltage source. In cases where they preferred a speaker with a large variance between on-axis and off-axis dispersion relative to the amount of acoustical energy at particular frequencies, they matched them to the a room of appropriate size, volume and acoustical treatment.
I’m guessing this is probably obvious to most here. But it personally took me a long time to acknowledge that system building was not about understanding which individual components were the “best” and then “balancing” them against one another to ameliorate their inherent shortcomings - it was about understanding which interdependencies were crucial to prioritize and then seek to maximise those interdependencies via superior implementation, even in cases in which their inherent shortcomings (i.e. “character”) were still discernible.
In other words, the best systems I’ve heard been very different in the way they portray music, but have done so in a way that in which implementation trumps topology, and topology trumps the constituent parts.
Best,
853guy
