Hi 80B!
Gillar du Skåne Akvavit?
You Read the entire thread! Great! Thanks for kind words!
I think your thoughts and comments are splendid. I'll try to answer. It's really hard to understand what it is about a sound you really like and why? Can I/you trust my/your ears? My conclusion after years in this hobby and quite many blind tests and other tests is most often- Yes!
You Wrote:
"One interesting thought is how so many of these changes have brought improvements - how much of this is from the interaction of all the components than any particular component in isolation. That's an unanswerable question since each listening space is unique, but it boggles the mind how many combinations of sound you get."
- About interaction. - I think having the same brand can help. Cables especially. Amp and pre amp also. (looking for a Gryphon pre amp in the future). An Brinkmann Balance most certainly likes the Brinkmann 10,5 arm and Brinkmann EMT-ti. And the RIIA Einstein The turntables Choice is actually developed with the EMT pickup, so there its a synergi.
Another thing I discovered about acoustic characteristics is that different gear affect the acoustic outcome different. Since I changed from Amati Futura to The Sonus faber I'v got less bas problems!!! And the same between Krell 402 and Gryphon Antileon.
I think thats because these products produces a more controlled sound in a way that does not start the acoustic problems. But I'm not sure.
"Have you ever made a change in the presence of another person, and then disagreed about something sounding better, worse, or just a different impression?"
- Both better and worse. Often is the analysis of what happened consistent, but you can appreciate it differently.
Some more thoughts about it:
I have myself thought a lot about these kind of things. The whole chain from recording via my ear and into my head that interpret the music is very very complex and at first I mainly relied on specs and science to chose HiFi gear. More and more that does not makes my music experience better, of course you need very well developed HiFi gear, but without thoughtful listening experience you don't get the best results. Listening to a lot of music live and through different HiFi gear in different environments makes my experience better and better. Thats makes my choices more accurate to hit the sweet spot of reproduced music. I don't try bad things at home. They are already down the drain on my list due to earlier listening experience by friends, stores or HiFi shows.
Here in Gothenburg, we are a lot of music/Hifi entusiasts who are socializing a lot. The HiFi stores are very god at making interesting demos with a lot av brands and different gear and tweaks. We participate in HiFi shows both in Sweden and abroad, just for fun.
I'm traveling around the area and also abroad listening to live music and sometimes also music through HiFi systems. The music is the goal, the gear is just infrastructure to get musical nirvana.
I have good connections to some Hifi gear producers. Quit often I listen to their efforts and they sometimes want my point of view. These conversations are very fruitful I think especially for me. That is a good reproduced sound? Thats almost a filosofical question.
Not even real instruments sounds the same and not even the same instrument sounds the same in different environments. So what is a neutral sound? Is there really a neutral sound at all? So my goal is not to make a soundd thats is real because ther is no real sound! It should just sound great. And of course there is some parameters thats important for that. But the fine tuning both from producers and at home with the gear makes it all. It's not easy and takes som experience and knowledge to get good results.
All this makes me experienced with a lot of different sounds. The most important thing is that i know what I like and what sound I don't want myself. We all listen differently and likes different kind of sound.
I listen to both bad HiFi and bad HiFi tweaks and good ones. There are more things that I don't lika than that I like. Most of them I don't even try at all. I just bring home those things I already have had good experience of in other systems and think that they can suit my system.
Some things I test at home are as good as I thought they should be and some are not. I usually just write about those things that I like and that I think are good products, especially in my system.
So, the ones you read about in this thread are mostly the ones that pass my test and makes my sound better. Note those that did not.
Therefore it maybe look lika everything I'v tried were good, but that's not the hole story.
As I have a lot of friends in this hobby, both professional and entusiasts I always have a someone here to make their own comments and opinion when I test something. I also, very successfully, use my wifes ear/opinion. She is really good at listening and know nothing about different gear. It's always "blind test" with hear.
Most often we agree on what's best for my system and sometimes we argue about it. Sometimes it has to take a while, weeks, months, to come to the right conclusion.
Every system is really unik and every product improvement is not the samt in different systems. But some are similar and makes similar effekt and some ar not. Sometimes the effekt is in different level and sometimes the effekt is unwanted in some systems but not in another.
Thats was a lot of words. I hope you think its relevant.
/Apexorca
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