Frames of Reference

[RBFC]

In the Magico subwoofer thread, Frantz made this comment that caused me to reflect on my personal audio journey. I believe that all of us have had parallel experiences, although not ending at the same destination, yet sprinkled with similar "revelations".

There is an absence of what I call "noise" for the lack of a better term

This, to me, is the essence of what the audio upgrade path is all about. We hold certain references as our Holy Grail, and these references are constructed through our personal exposures to various systems and recordings. The limitations that are imposed by this situation are quite obvious. Yet, we witness many discussions that comment upon unheard equipment, etc. I believe it would be in all our best interests to keep an open mind about such issues, since we truly have no experience with them (but huge egos and purchase validation to protect).

This old nugget came to mind:

YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU DON'T KNOW.

What I mean here is that we've all had audio experiences where we hear a system do something that we've never heard before, and we intuitively know that "this is right". Of course, the downside is that we are forever spoiled by these exposures, and remember them even when our bank account wishes our memory was less intact.

The point here is: What "moments" have made the most impact upon your personal audio journey, where you heard a system do something that you hadn't known possible? My personal system, modest by WBF standards, sounds very good, but I occasionally wonder what wrongs it's committing (that I just don't hear at this point) and what the most effective improvement might be. I'm not so interested in the usual recommendations for gear or room treatments here, I'm more interested in the experiences we've all had that made us understand what better sound reproduction is all about.

After selling my Apogee full-range ribbons, I bought a set of Unity Audio PARM speakers. While more linear in the bass region, I immediately noticed the lack of extreme clarity in the midrange and highs that the ribbons had. While the new speakers were more room-friendly and amp-friendly, I learned what superb and merely very-good reproduction was in those frequency ranges. Of course, a quarter century has passed and I'm sure that there are new levels of performance that I don't know yet!

What experiences have caused you to set your references, and why?

Thanks,

Lee

 

[RogerD]

The nuvistor and not just one or two in a preamp...18 and it is a mind blower.

 

[JackD201]

My eureka moment was hearing modest monitors in a properly built control room. I'd heard the same monitors before but that time was different. Due to circumstance, I had always had to make do or was limited in terms of treating past spaces. Limitations were both family use related/aesthetic as well as limitations in space and configuration. When I finally got to build the room I had planned for almost twenty years, things got really interesting. I could just hear so much more, both good and bad. Since then, the approach has been that of reduction and by that I mean stripping away the little irritants that really all add up. Power, grounding, vibration control, gain matching, basically just trying to get pure undamaged signal on the electronic end into the already satisfactory acoustic end.

My philosophy is a little weird in that my goal is simple but difficult to accomplish. I'm not after strict accuracy, I'm not about taking too many liberties either. I'm after balance. I want to hear everything or at least as much as I can without having to play loud. If I can't go up, all I can do is try my best to bring the noisefloor down. My entire system is put together with this in mind. I avoid carts with very low output, I like digital that has output over 3v. My pre has input sensitivity selection control and circuitry and my amps have the flexibility of two different operating points. Cables are all low capacitance. The only concession maybe is my love for tubes. At any rate, this dictates that the tubes used are always the quietest variants and I have a stash of spares that should outlast the gear's stay which is typically over 5 years, at least. All my tube equipment in use are hybrids to some degree but this more for practical purposes than anything.

So after all that, I was able to get to a point where the only thing missing was better scale and the ease that that brings relative to my room size. Then the water damage hit......

I'm in the process of rebuilding the room and all equipment will remain the same for the foreseeable future save a scaling up to the loudspeakers the room was really built for and the coming of my favorite DAC the new variant of which has DSD capability.

When I get too comfy, I punish myself by going to my brother's where he has a room and system of which mine is a kiddie version of. That place remains my frame of reference in both software and playback. It helps that we apparently have tastes that are genetically encoded the only difference being a preference on my part for sound that is just a bit "wetter" and microscopically more loose. Sadly Tape isn't in my future because of storage and maintenance issues but at least I get to hear it practically whenever I want.