Does your system dictate your choice of music, or your choice of music dictate your system ?

TJ, Neither.

Best, C.

Haim Ronen posted:

I never liked dictatorships.. My music preference of small jazz and classical ensembles played at moderate volume gives me plenty of freedom to choose a sound system to my liking.

Hi H.,

I find this an extremely elegant way of answering 'the latter'. I, as I have written, serenely admit that 'the former' is more active in my choice of CDs to replay: some are objectively poor or annoying to listen to sound wise, so the gear (including the recordings, of course) dictates the choice. I also have no difficulty in admitting that a universal system not only has no chance to exist, but no right to. Any system will always predilige a type of recording or of repertoire; if we enjoy everything the same way is our luck, chance and some merit – but it requires some work of adaptation. I won't ever believe, in my life, that a person with a good music ear is happy with whatever decent gear replaying whatever decent music. This was true for me at twenty, but now I am much more selective and, most of all, I am sitting at a Mac writing on an HiFi forum instead of at some friend's playing the guitar. Which should answer too, in part, the question.

Best

Max 

While I listen to music I like, regardless of my system.  I (and I think everyone) would be lying if the system wasn’t chosen partly based on the music I like to listen to if only for the simple reason that we demo’d and chose based on music we already liked.

When I sit down in front of my Naim system I listen to more or less the same music as I always do - in other words everything but classical music and Eminem-style/rap.

I do listen to radio though, but mostly when I do other things like mowing the lawn, brewing beer etc. and then I favour Jazz.

So it's not so much what system I listen to but rather what I do.

Eloise posted:

While I listen to music I like, regardless of my system.  I (and I think everyone) would be lying if the system wasn’t chosen partly based on the music I like to listen to if only for the simple reason that we demo’d and chose based on music we already liked.

 

Lying implies deliberate falsehood! I deny that at least in my own case, although I do understand the logic of your argument: Indeed I have only auditioned with music that  I know and like, I try to ensure that the system plays everything well - which, yes, does mean everything I am likely to ever want to play on it so auditions havent included, for example, jazz or rap or soul: but I would be disappointed if I were to find a new style of music that I like and discover my system doesn’t play it well.

Christopher_M posted:

TJ, Neither.

Best, C.

Think twice...

M.

Max_B posted:

Haim Ronen posted:

I never liked dictatorships.. My music preference of small jazz and classical ensembles played at moderate volume gives me plenty of freedom to choose a sound system to my liking.

Hi H.,

I find this an extremely elegant way of answering 'the latter'. I, as I have written, serenely admit that 'the former' is more active in my choice of CDs to replay: some are objectively poor or annoying to listen to sound wise, so the gear (including the recordings, of course) dictates the choice. I also have no difficulty in admitting that a universal system not only has no chance to exist, but no right to. Any system will always predilige a type of recording or of repertoire; if we enjoy everything the same way is our luck, chance and some merit – but it requires some work of adaptation. I won't ever believe, in my life, that a person with a good music ear is happy with whatever decent gear replaying whatever decent music. This was true for me at twenty, but now I am much more selective and, most of all, I am sitting at a Mac writing on an HiFi forum instead of at some friend's playing the guitar. Which should answer too, in part, the question.

Best

Max 

Interesting views, Max.

However, I’m  not sure I agree with the statement that a universal system has no chance to exist. Perfect fidelity to the original recording might never be achievable in the real world, and various compromises will exist, but why can’t those compromises be balanced so that it plays everything equally well, to a high standard of fidelity if not perfection? Yes, the reality may be that the compromises people choose, deliberately or sub-consciously, minimise detriment to the types of music to which they listen, but are all compromises inevitably mutually exclusive, which is what your assertion suggests?

As for people witn a good ear formusic, what I took from a thread exploring this a while back was  that a surprising number of musicians seemed quite content to listen with rather basic, systems that many hifi enthusiasts would rubbish as poor sounding, the assumption being that they were listening to music differently from other people. Maybe what you mean is people with an ear for critical evaluation of the sound quality they are hearing, rather than people with a good ear for music?

IB,

perhaps naively, my first statement was meant to signify that a difference between real, live music and the most perfect reproduction conceivable has to exist, still has to.

About the second part, I too am aware since many years that a number of musicians (not surprising at all to me, on the contrary) are happy to listen to music on very basic setups; the key is in differently from other people: I too think it's so, and I have seen it for decades with many fellow musicians and colleagues in my almost 40 years of teaching and going out with performers. So-called classical musicians very rarely have a real interest in high quality audio gear, because of their daily, lifelong acquaintance with music. They don't listen differently from other people, they listen to music. That is the difference. If I didn't spend such a long time posting here, probably someone would remember that I myself am a musician, much more than I am an audiophile, and this probably explains my perennial difficulty in being satisfied with what I have at home. When you spend 16 to 20 hours per week in a classroom sitting at a piano, reading students' homework which is music, the sound of the piano you're playing in your ears and, perhaps, a singer or saxophone players more in the distant, and sometimes the wonderful voice of the students' orchestra rehearsing in the large hall, its sound crossing walls and corridors and faintly reaching to you while you work on some student's counterpoint or harmony exercise – well, whatever you have at home cannot take its place.

Those who play or compose electrically produced or amplified music are another case: for them, audio quality is essential. But I am more sensitive (and interested, actually) to the degree my classroom's piano is in tune, or more brilliant on a dry and sunny day and duller under humidity or simply bad mood. So yes, I was meaning people with a good ear for music. There are people with inborn sense of colour or flavour combinations, people who can draw and people who can't. When I attend a friend's class of, say, chamber music or quartet or any type of ensemble playing, I know that he is critically evaluating the sound quality of what he's hearing, as you wrote, but in a completely different way from what any of us would intend the phrase in the context of this place and hobby. I am sorry if this makes me sound like – how did that guy call me here some time ago? Blah blah bragging, or so – a s*itting snob, but this is it: I meant an ear for music, which is not necessarily an ear for sound in itself: otherwise, piano tuners would be piano players instead, and record producers would be that side of the recording hall, conducting the orchestra instead of deciding, along with a sound engineer, how and where to place the microphones.

Last – and I apologize for this recurrent, interminable rant: while typing, I am listening to Mahler's Second Symphony in mp3, from an iPhone 4 plugged into the dock of the Marantz Consolette, two rooms away; I haven't lost a note, I have followed the structure and the pathos, I enjoy it and am waiting, impatient like a child the day before Christmas, for the triumphant Finale, which will lack power, dynamics, imaging, everything; but I'll be ecstatic just the same.

Friendly

Max

In my experience, almost all of the "real" musicians I have known (to differentiate from hack musicians such as myself), and particularly "classical" musicians, care very little, if at all, about audio gear and that sort of sound quality, which as Max correctly indicates, is a different kind of sound quality from that which they seek.

Another observation I have made is that "audiophiles" who are not musicians really tend to downplay (sometimes to the point of outright denigration) the impact being a musician can have on music appreciation. The oft-referenced Alan Parsons quote comes to mind.

The system doesn’t dictate but just enables me to also appreciate music I wouldn’t choose on a lesser system.

To add balance, I know professional musicians as well as gifted and less gifted amateur ones... all valid musicians in my eyes, just differeing abilities... and I would say there is a random distribution of appreciation of quality audio gear over less capable gear... not dissimilar to non musicians.

Innocent Bystander posted:

Lying implies deliberate falsehood! I deny that at least in my own case, although I do understand the logic of your argument: 

“Lying” was perhaps a bad choice of words.  More “lying to yourself” in that the kind of music you like to listen to will dictate the system you buy because that’s how you will have demo’d it.

Eloise posted:

Innocent Bystander posted:

Lying implies deliberate falsehood! I deny that at least in my own case, although I do understand the logic of your argument: 

“Lying” was perhaps a bad choice of words.  More “lying to yourself” in that the kind of music you like to listen to will dictate the system you buy because that’s how you will have demo’d it.

And I disagree with that, too, because that implies knowledge either probable or that should have been recognised.

You might believe that everyone will have, or at least should have, recognised that they have selected/auditioned with a limited range of music that will slant the sound of the system in a certain way, but I believe it is far more likely that most people will not have thought that through, and indeed there has been no real impetus for them to do so.

In my own case, I typically audition with chamber, symphony, opera, heavy rock, prog rock, solo piano and dominant vocal (singing). I  have had no reason to believe that my omission of jazz, rap, soul, pop, gregorian chant, C&W, electro, house, dance etc in any way makes any difference to my conclusions on any audition, nor that including them would make me think to audition equipment other than that I have auditioned.

Interesting that some do acknowledge the influences of both and some don't.

At the beginning I did have some idea of what a system should sound like, or do, that I think I've gravitated towards.

As much as I like my present floorstanders, and the scope of options to upgrade. I've been looking at what options out there that can be wall mounted. The thought of having something off the floor and on the wall is appealing aesthetically for me.   It seems that I can go with a standmount fixed on a bracket or go with a home cinema/ dedicated hifi crossover speaker that have been brought out recently.

looking to demo ATCs new HTS line of wall mounted versions of the 7, 11 and 40, and Totems Tribe,  but concerned - as I've got accustomed to the whole having speakers out in the room thing - and the aspect of having them attached to a wall that has a neighbour the other side, having to put up with me when I want to listen to the more raucous side of my music collection.

The diminishing law of compromise perhaps ?

I suppose it's possible, though I believe somewhat unlikely, that I've built a system that excels at everything bar modern improvisational jazz. If I have then it cannot be considered any sort of a crime as every other system I've heard exhibits similar characteristics.

My system enables me to engage with a broad range of musical genres (excepting the above mentioned) without any constraint, however, following recent changes i.e. the DBLs, I find myself listening to more Opera and Choral music. Still listening to everything else, just a change in the mix.

Willy.

Over the years I have accumulated some of the usual hifi show favorits, many of them would probably not be in the collection had it not been for demos or hifi shows. I do not see this as a bad thing. I would be more worried if I had to stop listening to bad recordings because the bad sound would spoil the enjoyment of the music. I think this is a common reason for  buying Naim and holding on to the brand.

Claus