rather that hijack the "novice" thread -- i thought perhaps better to start another more specific thread.
alex s: i think you have something in "The P in Prat, for Pace, to my mind equates to a hi-fi's ability to deal with Transients satisfactorily - Naim is v. good in this respect with little overhang or distortion which, if audible, would give the impression of slowing the music down. I suspect that the feeling of Pace or Speed is closely related to Tempo, Dynamics, Timing - these thing we look for, and find, in a Naim system. "
what i have difficulty with is understand what we mean when we say "slowing the system down". is "slow" synonymous with "out of time"? i know when i play my trumpet out of time, i will not finish the piece when i am supposed to.
steven toy: Leading edges to notes and transients.
It's all about climbing that mountain as high as you can, and taking the most vertical path.
It's also about making those drive units stop as well as start, i.e: damping and control.
i guess i was interested in nailing down how a slow system would sound (other than "slow" of coure!!) -- i suspect your description would require the use of an oscilloscope or similar instrument, yes? i guess i was interested in knowing how a "slow" system might be perceived.
when i listened to b&w, i didnt "perceive" them as slow, they were just boring, till we change from 250 to 135, at which they really boogied.
bob edwards: yeah, i bet if we each listened to what you offer as an example of a "slow" system -- we would probably come up with different workds to describe why we didnt like the sound -- and that "slow" MAY not turn up at all!!! but i get the point -- avoid describing one -- hear one..
many thanks guys...
enjoy
ken
Posted on: 12 August 2001 by ken c
here is another one. first time i went active, i was aware of having gained "tunefulness" but lost some "slam". an example of slam is the percussion in Ricky Lee Jones "under the board walk" or Je Morello in Dave Bribeck's "Take Five".
for slam, i need to drums to startingly "kick ass".
i can tell you that i have slam aplenty in my system -- and so i suspect that the perceived lack of slam was a warmup effect. cant be the supercap for snaxo, as right now i am using hicap for snaxo and still have plenty of slam.
so, is it the case, that "slam" is a consequence of "speed" and that this is one of the sonic effects that i should look for in a "fast" system?
i have one or two other questions, but this posting is getting too long already, so ...
enjoy
ken
Posted on: 12 August 2001 by Martin Payne
Ken,
I reckon slam starts with the ability to play low bass notes quickly.
More importantly, though, I think it's the ability to play all of the frequencies including treble in time with each other - i.e. preserve the shape of the whole transient.
cheers, Martin
Posted on: 12 August 2001 by ken c
More importantly, though, I think it's the ability to play all of the frequencies including treble in time with each other - i.e. preserve the shape of the whole transient.this makes sense. so, its the ability to preserve correct phase relationships in the frequency domain, and temporal relationships in the time domain.
its interesting you mention bass as determinant of slam. is what we describe as bass "overhang" the same thing as "slowness" or is it that overhang caused loss of speed (i.e one is a cause and the other, the effect).
many thanks for your thoughts...
enjoy
ken
Posted on: 12 August 2001 by Martin Payne
Ken,
I don't think it's anything as easily measurable as a phase relationship.
I would guess it basically needs a 'fast' sound throughout the frequency range, with a benign room which doesn't smear any part of the sound, including the upper ranges.
cheers, Martin
