KeithR's "Dream Speaker" Search

[the sound of Tao]

Yeah understood, Al. I get why it is confusing. It is a term Ked and I seem to use (possibly others although not sure) to describe the ability of a system to sound continuous musically such that one is sucked deeply into the music hypnotically - achieved by seemingly musical phrasing between passages and movements or even sections of a piece. Hope that makes sense.

Once you hear a system with great flow, you can identify the attribute easily enough.

Maybe Kedar can give you his perspective on his definition.

A sense of flow is definitely a quality I associate with better horn systems and is sometimes also present to some degree in other high efficiency single driver speakers like voxativ. It may be a quality that other topologies also have but I haven’t heard that yet.

It first gelled with me listening as being a strikingly obvious part of listening to music through both OMAs and Animas. It is also a quality the pap horns do but in a less dominantly obvious way.

My mate and I have discussed this sense of flow at length over the last couple of years.

For me it kind of comes in part in the way notes overlap and provide a seamless sense of continuousness that can be a part of great integrated music making. It may be about the relationship of the uptake of attack and the minutiae of trailing decay. If it had a shape it would be rather sinuous rather than sharp. The edges wouldn’t be absolutely sharply clean but might trail to a fineness that is more the way a honed marble reflects light in a diffused fleshy way as opposed to the clear sharpness of a polished granite.

It is more truthful for me with set amps driving horns but some ss amps can have the quality with horns still. I’d doubt it would be a quality you’d find with class d though.

So it may be about micro dynamic shading and the kind of plasticity in the trails of notes and the way they unfold that comes in real resolution and timbral nuance.

It’s a quality that I love and is one of the principal reasons I have a horn system. Once heard and appreciated it is hard to go without for any length of time.

Flow isn’t as exciting and punchy and for those needing adrenal kick it might be unsatisfying. It is a passive listening state where the music swells and washes over and through you. It takes you to a place of not thinking, not noticing anything in part but simply being within the music in it’s whole.

Sometimes after a few weeks of constant flow and immersion (amongst other things) with the horns I will get the desire to change it up a bit and that’s when I tend to swap over to the big Harbeths for a stint of that additional punch. This is usually just a short lived need and am usually wanting to get back into the horns again and go back into the flow mode within four or five days.

My buddy with the Animas also does this where he swaps over to his Harbeths for a few days every now and then but day in day out the default are his horns and the place of flow as well.

 

[Audiophile Bill]

A sense of flow is definitely a quality I associate with better horn systems and is sometimes also present to some degree in other high efficiency single driver speakers like voxativ. It may be a quality that other topologies also have but I haven’t heard that yet.

It first gelled with me listening as being a strikingly obvious part of listening to music through both OMAs and Animas. It is also a quality the pap horns do but in a less dominantly obvious way.

My mate and I have discussed this sense of flow at length over the last couple of years.

For me it kind of comes in part in the way notes overlap and provide a seamless sense of continuousness that can be a part of great integrated music making. It may be about the relationship of the uptake of attack and the minutiae of trailing decay. If it had a shape it would be rather sinuous rather than sharp. The edges wouldn’t be absolutely sharply clean but might trail to a fineness that is more like the way marble reflects light in a diffused fleshy way as opposed to the clear sharpness of granite.

It is more truthful for me with set amps driving horns but some ss can have the quality with horns still. I’d doubt it would be a quality you’d find with class d though.

So it may be about micro dynamic shading and the kind of plasticity in the trails of notes and the way they unfold that comes in real resolution and timbral nuance.

It’s a quality that I love and is one of the principal reasons I have a horn system. Once heard and appreciated it is hard to go without for any length of time.

Flow isn’t as exciting and punchy and for those needing adrenal kick it might be unsatisfying. It is a passive listening state where the music swells and washes over and through you. It takes you to a place of not thinking, not noticing anything in part but simply being within the music in it’s whole.

Sometimes after a few weeks of constant flow and immersion (amongst other things) with the horns I will get the desire to change it up a bit and that’s when I tend to swap over to the big Harbeths for a stint of that additional punch. This is usually just a short lived need and am usually wanting to get back into the horns again and go back into the flow mode within four or five days.

My buddy with the Animas also does this where he swaps over to his Harbeths for a few days every now and then but day in day out the default are his horns and the place of flow as well.

Beautifully written - far more eloquent than my attempt but exactly the same phenomenon I was attempting to describe. Glad that you relate to this sense of flow as an entity or discernible attribute.

 

[the sound of Tao]

Beautifully written - far more eloquent than my attempt but exactly the same phenomenon I was attempting to describe. Glad that you relate to this sense of flow as an entity or discernible attribute.

Thanks Bill, I do believe these are shared or archetypal experiences so when you or Ked say flow I immediately just get it because the state really just resonates completely. It is the ideal word to describe the experience.

There is for me a sense of moderation in the flow state that is more attractive to some than others. I do believe it’s more about connectivity to the state where the boundaries between the listener and the music, the performer and composer all fade just because in that perceptual state there is simply less awareness of boundaries.

It’s a quality of connection rather than of separation and that is what experiences of the whole brings over fascinations and observations of the parts.

 

[Folsom]

Keith I highly doubt it’s the AG’s that stop you from full relaxing.

 

[Al M.]

A sense of flow is definitely a quality I associate with better horn systems and is sometimes also present to some degree in other high efficiency single driver speakers like voxativ. It may be a quality that other topologies also have but I haven’t heard that yet.

It first gelled with me listening as being a strikingly obvious part of listening to music through both OMAs and Animas. It is also a quality the pap horns do but in a less dominantly obvious way.

My mate and I have discussed this sense of flow at length over the last couple of years.

For me it kind of comes in part in the way notes overlap and provide a seamless sense of continuousness that can be a part of great integrated music making. It may be about the relationship of the uptake of attack and the minutiae of trailing decay. If it had a shape it would be rather sinuous rather than sharp. The edges wouldn’t be absolutely sharply clean but might trail to a fineness that is more the way a honed marble reflects light in a diffused fleshy way as opposed to the clear sharpness of a polished granite.

It is more truthful for me with set amps driving horns but some ss amps can have the quality with horns still. I’d doubt it would be a quality you’d find with class d though.

So it may be about micro dynamic shading and the kind of plasticity in the trails of notes and the way they unfold that comes in real resolution and timbral nuance.

It’s a quality that I love and is one of the principal reasons I have a horn system. Once heard and appreciated it is hard to go without for any length of time.

Flow isn’t as exciting and punchy and for those needing adrenal kick it might be unsatisfying. It is a passive listening state where the music swells and washes over and through you. It takes you to a place of not thinking, not noticing anything in part but simply being within the music in it’s whole.

Sometimes after a few weeks of constant flow and immersion (amongst other things) with the horns I will get the desire to change it up a bit and that’s when I tend to swap over to the big Harbeths for a stint of that additional punch. This is usually just a short lived need and am usually wanting to get back into the horns again and go back into the flow mode within four or five days.

My buddy with the Animas also does this where he swaps over to his Harbeths for a few days every now and then but day in day out the default are his horns and the place of flow as well.

Thanks, Graham. Let me play devil's advocate here, and state the obvious: attack and transients in unamplified live music can be sharp. I don't want these to be diluted, such as, to quote:

"It may be about the relationship of the uptake of attack and the minutiae of trailing decay. If it had a shape it would be rather sinuous rather than sharp. The edges wouldn’t be absolutely sharply clean but might trail to a fineness that is more the way a honed marble reflects light in a diffused fleshy way as opposed to the clear sharpness of a polished granite."

But obviously not all transients are sharp. Lesser reproduction can exaggerate transients, or conversely, it can dilute their impact and energy. Differentiation is the key. Interestingly, I have found that string quartet reproduction tends to give you really good information about transient behavior of a system, from soft transients to sharp, abrupt ones, and all the many and often subtle variations on the scale in between.

And this brings me to something that had been in the back of my mind, and which resurfaced as I thought about this discussion a bit more. Whenever I hear the term "flow", it conjures up a pejorative meaning for me, associated with euphonics rather than the real thing. Depending on where I sit in a concert hall, live music is often incisive (the closer, the more, generally). I feel that this quality is diluted in a lot of reproduction, and then "flow" can mean homogenization. Homogenization of transients, homogenization through lessening of dynamic contrast and energy, homogenization of tonality, etc. Then music "flows" in a wholly unnatural way, even though sometimes pleasant way. The worst case I heard more recently was an old, bad LP pressing of a string quartet recording. The music was captivatingly "mellifluous" as it was homogenized in flow, but with the sound of a real string quartet this had little to do (even though I can imagine some might be addicted to such "vintage" sound). In fact, that "flow" destroyed the music's real structure and meaning, pleasant though as it sounded.

This also feeds into my perennial complaint about the exaggerated "politeness" of the sound of many systems. It is true that systems can err on the side of sharpness and hardness (and my system has been guilty of that as well, much more in the past than now), but I just cannot stand the exaggerated "cleanness" of sound that I often hear, a polite "cleanness" that robs the music of its raw energy.

 

[the sound of Tao]

Thanks, Graham. Let me play devil's advocate here, and state the obvious: attack and transients in unamplified live music can be sharp. I don't want these to be diluted, such as, to quote:

"It may be about the relationship of the uptake of attack and the minutiae of trailing decay. If it had a shape it would be rather sinuous rather than sharp. The edges wouldn’t be absolutely sharply clean but might trail to a fineness that is more the way a honed marble reflects light in a diffused fleshy way as opposed to the clear sharpness of a polished granite."

But obviously not all transients are sharp. Lesser reproduction can exaggerate transients, or conversely, it can dilute their impact and energy. Differentiation is the key. Interestingly, I have found that string quartet reproduction tends to give you really good information about transient behavior of a system, from soft transients to sharp, abrupt ones, and all the many and often subtle variations on the scale in between.

And this brings me to something that had been in the back of my mind, and which resurfaced as I thought about this discussion a bit more. Whenever I hear the term "flow", it conjures up a pejorative meaning for me, associated with euphonics rather than the real thing. Depending on where I sit in a concert hall, live music is often incisive (the closer, the more, generally). I feel that this quality is diluted in a lot of reproduction, and then "flow" can mean homogenization. Homogenization of transients, homogenization through lessening of dynamic contrast and energy, homogenization of tonality, etc. Then music "flows" in a wholly unnatural way, even though sometimes pleasant way. The worst case I heard more recently was an old, bad LP pressing of a string quartet recording. The music was captivatingly "mellifluous" as it was homogenized in flow, but with the sound of a real string quartet this had little to do (even though I can imagine some might be addicted to such "vintage" sound). In fact, that "flow" destroyed the music's real structure and meaning, pleasant though as it sounded.

This also feeds into my perennial complaint about the exaggerated "politeness" of the sound of many systems. It is true that systems can err on the side of sharpness and hardness (and my system has been guilty of that as well, much more in the past than now), but I just cannot stand the exaggerated "cleanness" of sound that I often hear, a polite "cleanness" that robs the music of its raw energy.

Al, yes, apologise for coming at this concept with perhaps initial broad strokes of some understanding rather than absolutely grasping it and hitting it on the head with an exactness... and I am also probably amplifying quite a bit to clarify. I’ve probably zoomed into the margins to try and describe what I feel is going on.

This flow doesn’t necessarily appear as at all euphonic, the systems that do flow can have jump and a sharpness if it is present. What they don’t tend to do is exaggerate the clarity of the edge. So this is just not because of a lack of capacity to show natural clarity or portray fineness or conversely present only soft dispersion.

To hear what is happening to play music with flow and experience it as flow isn’t an extreme highlighting of anything but rather a mix of balance of microdynamics and may just present as a slight leaning towards some kind of presentation approach... but for me the outcome is ultimately a holistic one based in moments of connection, awareness, realness and of the natural and it relates to a balance of things rather than it being in any way just an extreme pole. And yes, I’m still trying to grasp at words for something that’s always just best felt.

 

[Al M.]

Al, yes, apologise for coming at this concept with perhaps initial broad strokes of some understanding rather than absolutely grasping it and hitting it on the head with an exactness... and I am also probably amplifying quite a bit to clarify. I’ve probably zoomed into the margins to try and describe what I feel is going on.

This flow doesn’t necessarily appear as at all euphonic, the systems that do flow can have jump and a sharpness if it is present. What they don’t tend to do is exaggerate the clarity of the edge. So this is just not because of a lack of capacity to show natural clarity or portray fineness or conversely present only soft dispersion.

To hear what is happening to play music with flow and experience it as flow isn’t an extreme highlighting of anything but rather a mix of balance of microdynamics and may just present as a slight leaning towards some kind of presentation approach... but for me the outcome is ultimately a holistic one based in moments of connection, awareness, realness and of the natural and it relates to a balance of things rather than it being in any way just an extreme pole. And yes, I’m still trying to grasp at words for something that’s always just best felt.

Thanks, Graham. After we have clarified things, it seems we both think similarly. Yes, it is about finding the sweet spot between neither exaggerating the clarity of the edge nor underplaying it.

In my own system, I have found that an essential piece of the puzzle was my recent acquisition of the superb Octave HP 700 preamp. It allows to finally hear the fine differentiation of transients that the rest of the system had been capable all along: the digital source, the amp, the speakers.

 

[NorthStar]

Only Keith's pair of ears knows best.

 

[microstrip]

A sense of flow is definitely a quality I associate with better horn systems and is sometimes also present to some degree in other high efficiency single driver speakers like voxativ. It may be a quality that other topologies also have but I haven’t heard that yet.

It first gelled with me listening as being a strikingly obvious part of listening to music through both OMAs and Animas. It is also a quality the pap horns do but in a less dominantly obvious way.

My mate and I have discussed this sense of flow at length over the last couple of years.

For me it kind of comes in part in the way notes overlap and provide a seamless sense of continuousness that can be a part of great integrated music making. It may be about the relationship of the uptake of attack and the minutiae of trailing decay. If it had a shape it would be rather sinuous rather than sharp. The edges wouldn’t be absolutely sharply clean but might trail to a fineness that is more the way a honed marble reflects light in a diffused fleshy way as opposed to the clear sharpness of a polished granite.

It is more truthful for me with set amps driving horns but some ss amps can have the quality with horns still. I’d doubt it would be a quality you’d find with class d though.

So it may be about micro dynamic shading and the kind of plasticity in the trails of notes and the way they unfold that comes in real resolution and timbral nuance.

It’s a quality that I love and is one of the principal reasons I have a horn system. Once heard and appreciated it is hard to go without for any length of time.

Flow isn’t as exciting and punchy and for those needing adrenal kick it might be unsatisfying. It is a passive listening state where the music swells and washes over and through you. It takes you to a place of not thinking, not noticing anything in part but simply being within the music in it’s whole.

Sometimes after a few weeks of constant flow and immersion (amongst other things) with the horns I will get the desire to change it up a bit and that’s when I tend to swap over to the big Harbeths for a stint of that additional punch. This is usually just a short lived need and am usually wanting to get back into the horns again and go back into the flow mode within four or five days.

My buddy with the Animas also does this where he swaps over to his Harbeths for a few days every now and then but day in day out the default are his horns and the place of flow as well.

Great post, your flow definition remembers me of the Harry Pearson definition of continuousness - he wrote a full page on it in an old TAS issue. I think the essay was triggered by his review of the conrad johnson original ART preamplfier. Later cj preamplifiers such as the ACT's or the CT5 lost this quality. The GAT also shows such aspect in part - it is in part why I often return to it.

 

[Tango]

Wonder if "flow" is dependent on music plays. My system does not seem to flow with me when play Bjork or Bartok. Music with continuous shift in melody is more difficult to get flow?

 

[NorthStar]

If it flows with your heartbeat it glows.

 

[Folsom]

Wonder if "flow" is dependent on music plays. My system does not seem to flow with me when play Bjork or Bartok. Music with continuous shift in melody is more difficult to get flow?

Maybe for how some stereos sound. I have a Bartok piece that sounded... weird but then discovered my cart was off a little back then and now I think it flows as much as it can for being kinda percussive. I doubt Bartok is enjoyable with any fatigue level.

 

[Al M.]

Wonder if "flow" is dependent on music plays. My system does not seem to flow with me when play Bjork or Bartok. Music with continuous shift in melody is more difficult to get flow?

Some of Bartok's music is fluid, some other is not. I don't think you should "get flow" with Bartok or any other music. A system is the most successful when it reproduces the flow that is in the music, nothing more, nothing less. If it creates more "flow" it fails when it comes to fidelity to the music, even though perhaps the effect may be pleasant or even intoxicating.

 

[bonzo75]

Wonder if "flow" is dependent on music plays. My system does not seem to flow with me when play Bjork or Bartok. Music with continuous shift in melody is more difficult to get flow?

Don't think so because those who like flow use the same music for audition on different gear

 

[Ron Resnick]

I'm still puzzled by what exactly "flow" is supposed to mean (and no, I'm not trolling).

I don’t understand it either, Al. It is often paired with “continuousness,” another word which, in this context, is not susceptible of plain meaning.

 

[bonzo75]

A sense of flow is definitely a quality I associate with better horn systems and is sometimes also present to some degree in other high efficiency single driver speakers like voxativ. It may be a quality that other topologies also have but I haven’t heard that yet.

It first gelled with me listening as being a strikingly obvious part of listening to music through both OMAs and Animas. It is also a quality the pap horns do but in a less dominantly obvious way.

My mate and I have discussed this sense of flow at length over the last couple of years.

For me it kind of comes in part in the way notes overlap and provide a seamless sense of continuousness that can be a part of great integrated music making. It may be about the relationship of the uptake of attack and the minutiae of trailing decay. If it had a shape it would be rather sinuous rather than sharp. The edges wouldn’t be absolutely sharply clean but might trail to a fineness that is more the way a honed marble reflects light in a diffused fleshy way as opposed to the clear sharpness of a polished granite.

It is more truthful for me with set amps driving horns but some ss amps can have the quality with horns still. I’d doubt it would be a quality you’d find with class d though.

So it may be about micro dynamic shading and the kind of plasticity in the trails of notes and the way they unfold that comes in real resolution and timbral nuance.

It’s a quality that I love and is one of the principal reasons I have a horn system. Once heard and appreciated it is hard to go without for any length of time.

Flow isn’t as exciting and punchy and for those needing adrenal kick it might be unsatisfying. It is a passive listening state where the music swells and washes over and through you. It takes you to a place of not thinking, not noticing anything in part but simply being within the music in it’s whole.

Sometimes after a few weeks of constant flow and immersion (amongst other things) with the horns I will get the desire to change it up a bit and that’s when I tend to swap over to the big Harbeths for a stint of that additional punch. This is usually just a short lived need and am usually wanting to get back into the horns again and go back into the flow mode within four or five days.

My buddy with the Animas also does this where he swaps over to his Harbeths for a few days every now and then but day in day out the default are his horns and the place of flow as well.

One of the best DIY horn systems I heard with two 18 inch woofers in either speaker had excellent flow, and superb bass and punch. As the 18 inch woofers were vertical up to 5 feet and front open, the punch felt like a big apogee plus more. So a flow system can punch.

 

[bonzo75]

If it flows with your heartbeat it glows.

And some posts give me woes
As they hit new lows
Because they don't get flow from vinyl or from live shows
Particularly one of the Boston Bros

 

[spiritofmusic]

Wow Ked, QT and Michael Mann REALLY need you!

 

[microstrip]

I don’t understand it either, Al. It is often paired with “continuousness,” another word which, in this context, is not susceptible of plain meaning.

Ron,

Subjective qualifiers are usually hard to define and long texts are needed to explain them, making them sometimes incompatible with forum posting. If you google “continuousness” in our forum you will find about 100 entries on it, some much more conclusive and interesting that the current one. It is why I prefered the word “continuousness” to "flow", that has no audio history or valid debate behind it. We may sometimes dislike their findings and preferences, but people like Harry Pearson, Gordon Holt or even Martin Colloms at a different level created a vocabulary that is now a reference in subjective audio.

IMHO the main issue with many subjective findings and words is their reliability and predictability - affecting strongly what you call "plain meaning "in current debate.

 

[christensenleif@msn.com]

the second you realize that you don´t analyse your systems sound, but enjoys the flow of whatever music you play, then you´ve found the right system for you, which is all that matters
IMNSHO