What is the weakest link to reproduce complex passages?

caesar

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May 30, 2010
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Which part of the audio chain causes most harm/ smearing? Transport? DAC? Preamp? Amps?

Or is it the Speaker? The drivers in the speaker? crossovers?

(Ok, if you got big cojones, say cables, but back it up!)
 

MylesBAstor

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Which part of the audio chain causes most harm/ smearing? Transport? DAC? Preamp? Amps?

Or is it the Speaker? The drivers in the speaker? crossovers?

(Ok, if you got big cojones, say cables, but back it up!)

The question should be reversed and what part of the chain doens't do harm? :) Or which piece has the most potential to do harm, which is slightly different than which does the most harm. That said, I'm a firm believer (no surprise here) that everything begins with the front end. If you don't get the information off the software and then correctly, then you might as well throw in the towel. I don't care if you have the best speakers, amps, etc in the world; crap in, crap out.
 

Robh3606

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Aug 24, 2010
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How about looking at it from a source perspective. I would think it would be very difficult to record cleanly and without compression.

Rob
 

Phelonious Ponk

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Recording/room/speakers/source/amp/pre. It's hard to argue with the theory of garbage in/garbage out, it's just that garbage sources have become very easy and inexpensive to avoid in the digital age.

Tim
 
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flez007

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Room treatment and speaker placement plays a major role here, considering everything else is in balance and synergistic.
 

RogerD

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Source,source,and then source again. I would dare to say cables also, as smearing can be eliminated to some degree with a well designed cable that mitigates EMI/RFI energy.
 

MylesBAstor

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How about looking at it from a source perspective. I would think it would be very difficult to record cleanly and without compression.

Rob

True but the question asked restricted the topic to the playback end :)
 

Phelonious Ponk

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Room treatment and speaker placement plays a major role here, considering everything else is in balance and synergistic.

Right you are. I just added the room to my list.

Tim
 

Johnny Vinyl

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My ears.....
 

fas42

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Since the question is specific to the ability to "reproduce complex passages" then the answer is straighforward: the power amplifier. Take any system, and insert an amplifier of far greater capability and finesse, and the result will be devastatingly superior than what was before. The reasons are twofold: a lesser amp has less competent power supply engineering, meaning that the sound collapses when the amp needs to deliver, and secondly, in its attempts to suck enough power out of the mains to get the job done lots of electrical interference is effectively injected into the rest of the system ...

Frank
 

LL21

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Dec 26, 2010
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in my own travels along this road, i would probably say speakers. Until i owned X1/Grand Slamms i always gravitated towards acoustic, quartets, concertos (where the balance was clearly on solo instrument) or hip hop where i am less critical...than orchestral where the delineation of the 70-100 instruments is important, as is the dynamic scale, sense of space...no matter what i did on my SF Strads, i just could never get total satisfaction on orchestral and thus tended not to listen to it.

...to be fair even then, i only really started listening in equal measures to my orchestral music once i put the new amp in which drives the speakers much, much better.

in the end, it ALL matters...but personally, i never understood the complexity of some of my music until the speakers were able to effortlessly delineate all the mutliple instruments, dynamics, microdynamic shadings, volume, power, etc without creating a a fuss. then, i began to understand...which partly led me to a more powerful amp that drove them better (that, and the fact that the other amp was in for repair so often).

just one man's experience.
 

fas42

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in the end, it ALL matters...but personally, i never understood the complexity of some of my music until the speakers were able to effortlessly delineate all the mutliple instruments, dynamics, microdynamic shadings, volume, power, etc without creating a a fuss. then, i began to understand...which partly led me to a more powerful amp that drove them better (that, and the fact that the other amp was in for repair so often).

just one man's experience.
And another's, also ...

<dWRd> Until a system is completely sorted out, all its myriad weaknesses addressed, then the full measure of what is on offer in recorded music can never be truly appreciated </dWRd>.

Frank

<dWRd> danger, Will Robinson, danger!! -- all within should be considered as being mildly discomforting, to the rantings of a madman, depending upon your POV. Newbies and lurkers, you have been warned!!! ... </dWRd>
 

microstrip

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Mark Seaton

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Obviously I'm biased, but without proper capabilities in the speaker, no amount of power will get the job done. Good amps do rather well when kept well within their limits, and much of what we hear as amplifier differences lie in how they sound as peaks start tickling their limits or push into the overload characteristics. An 82dB @1W/1m, power sponge of a speaker makes it very easy to explore those differences.

Focusing on the speaker realm, of course the sum is even more important than the parts, but the range from 300Hz past 2-3kHz is some of the most complex frequency ranges. This also happens to be a common range for speaker deficiencies of one form or another, especially as greater peak levels are required. Remember those peaks can easily be 20dB louder than the average, so I'm less referring to simple loudness as I am to tracking of dynamics.
 

LenWhite

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Feb 11, 2011
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Without a solid "system foundation" any audio equipment will never reach optimum:
- Symmetrical listening room positioning minimizing equipment between and around primary speakers, front speakers positioned away from room boundaries with proper toe-in; equi-distance from listening position.
- Room acoustics to control sound reflections that "smear" audio and create spikes and nulls in the frequency response.
- Dedicated audio circuits with power conditioning to minimize electrical line noise that reduces dynamics and resolution.
- Synergistic cabling (power cords, IC's, speaker cable) to ensure design continuity throughout the electrical path.
- Resonance control to isolate audio equipment electrical noise and vibration that smears the audio.
 

flez007

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I know I said above that room acoustics and speaker placement is key to reproduce "complex passages", but I have also found that it is hard for a one or two way speaker design to handle different instruments at a same time (my take for another possible definition of complex music Amir)....:)

A three way (or more) speaker design leaves the midrange free to rake care of that frequency range without sacrifying the rest of the musical passage, as much as I like (and previously lived) with two-way speakers, this is also IMO an important aspect to consider.

Two pesos worth....
 
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