Tone is king! (aka The Delicious Sound)

[Alberto]

Chatting with entdoc ... I mean 2uberoller ... no wait, it's 1KW now ... I realized that the reason I am sooo, SOOOOO, happy with my system these days has nothing to do with soundstage, detail, speed, accuracy, etc. I believe that my system easily meets the minimum audiophile standards for those terms, but I would not say it excels at any of them.

What I have finally achieved with my system and many years of tweaking is great tone - tone to die for (at least for my taste.)

What exactly is tone? Most musicians know what I am talking about. Guitar players spend years tweaking their guitars, pick-ups, amps in search of their tone. Tone is what separates a great sax, and/or a great sax player, from another. Tone is what allows us to immediately recognize some singers from the first note.

Tone is not about neutrality, it's not about reproducing the absolute sound. I would argue that it's actually the opposite. A system with a distinct tone has a recognizable character - and that character invariably adds (or subtracts) something from the neutral sound that is the goal of many people/systems/manufacturers. Tone is not achieve by "straight wire with gain" but with "straight wire with gain and gusto!"

It's easy to argue that, in order to preserve the original tone of the recording, the system itself should have no tone of its own. It sounds logical; I believed it and aimed for this for a long time but, somehow, most of those accurate, realistic, etc., system always left me cold and fatigued - or just plain bored.

In retrospective, I am pretty sure that it was tone that drew me to McIntosh and Sonus Faber. Room treatments helped with soundstage and detail but, in retrospective, the biggest benefit was to warm-up the room and shape the tone more to my liking.

When I took the C220 pre out of my system and drove the MC501s directly from the MDA1000, I had a cleaner and more neutral sound, but I lost some tone. I respected the sound the system made, but when I put the C220 back in, I LOVED the sound.

Adding the second sub has been all about tone. The second sub (a cheap $300 sub I had around from a spare system, BTW) shaped and balanced the bottom 3 octaves just right for my taste. This is after trying at least half-a-dozen other subs including some $3K ones. Tone and $ are not as strongly correlated as neutral sounding and $ often are.

So, what does my system sound like? What's the tone I've been speaking of?

It's not easy to describe, but if I had to use analogies, the tone of my system is like the tone of George Benson's guitar - warm, fat with a relatively soft attack - delicious. Or, perhaps, Stan Getz's saxophone - again, warm, round, smooth, a little breathy - sexy and voluptuous. In terms of female vocals it's more like Billie Holiday than, say, Diana Krall - there's a definite vintage aspect to it.

We are all different, and there are many paths to audio nirvana. Having a system with a strong tone or sonic character might not be your thing. And, as I mentioned, aiming for neutrality does seem like the most logical goal.

But I wrote this post because I believe that the issue of tone, as a distinctive characteristic or deviations form neutrality, seem to elicit an almost automatic negative reaction from most audiophiles; but some of them might actually discover that they would be much happier with less neutrality and more color. I know I am.

Alberto

P.S. I wrote this after a nice dinner and some great grappa while listening to Led Zeppelin. I hope it makes some sense when I re-read it tomorrow morning . But, as they say, In Vino Veritas .

[PHC1]

Great post Alberto. I understand what you mean. I've been assembling and disassembling systems for the past 20 years and have probably hit every point between the two extremes of a very warm, laid back sound to very resolving and hyper detailed. Having bought, sold, traded gear for the past 20 years or so, I have learned a few things along the way.

Systems that were very high on the "wow" scale tend to get fatiguing in the long run since so many recordings are far from perfect. Of course the great recordings were superb on those systems but for some reason I still tended to "analyze" the sound instead of listening to music. After a while, I found that I listened to "music" much more with headphones and tubes and I tried duplicating that warm and forgiving sonic signature in one of my systems and after a few attempts at matching low powered tube amps with high efficiency speakers, I succeeded. I actually liked that system a lot but after a while, I started to miss the resolution and the dynamics my previous systems allowed me to enjoy.

A few years later, I enjoyed another system that I built that had BAT components which was a pretty good compromise of not sounding hyper detailed but enough resolution and having some "weight" to the sound, although it did sound a bit dark overall. That was when I came across McIntosh and realized that McIntosh could offer a bit more neutral presentation with a sense of smoothness and a more warmer but more natural sounding bass and softer, gentler highs without the recessed midrange.

McIntosh lasted 3 years in my system and probably would have gone on much longer, except that I just couldn't get the Lamm sound out of my mind. I've heard them before, there was something so "right" about their sound. It was rich but not dark, sparkling highs without the etching, grain or glassiness, big, bold bass that sounds more real without the artificial dryness of so many SS amps. There was a sense of openness and air but no hint of tipped up presentation that tends to lean things out. It was simply "right" and "musical". But it was the "naturalness" of the instruments and the human voice that captivated me, the richness of the presentation that was equally superb on attack and decay of notes, the right amount of bite without over aggressiveness. Then I understood, it was the rich harmonical content that the Lamm amps nailed precisely, making recorded music sound closer to real life.

The combination of Lamm and Sonus Faber was probably the best match for my taste up to that point but yet, I wondered what a more neutral speaker would bring to the table. Enter Sophia 2. From that point on, I think I nailed what is a truly great match for my taste. Enough of everything without any penalties. Now I have a "rich" presentation that has enough weight, scale, impact, dynamics, resolution while sounding more natural than ever to make me happy for a very long time. For me, the "delicious" sound is the Lamm and Wilson combo.

It takes many years to fully understand what it is you want out of your system and some trial and error along the way. I am happy for you that you found your musically satisfying combination, that is the most important aspect of this hobby. The gear is great but it only serves one purpose, to let us get closer to music!

[US Blues]

Beautiful posts gentlemen, when I read them I hear the words "emotional satisfaction." Realism up to a point, but no addiction to the boxes that make the sound, and the experience of being drawn into the music for hours at a time. Thank you all for putting such articulate words onto the real purpose of our quest- the enjoyment of music!

PS- David- may we refer to you as DOCTOR Kilowatt?

[JSCC]

Alberto,

Apparently, your post hit a nail on my head! Hope someone remembered me writing that the MA6600+TM2, though 300 watts lower than the MC501's BUT somehow sounded "more right" than the MCD500 driving the MC501's direct.

And I was wondering all along what the difference was all about. An integrated amp (with same source) vs a much loved amp that puts out 500 watts per channel. TONE!

But this drove me to really wonder IF it was the "preamp" in the integrated amp that somehow made the sound that much crisp, 3D and right size of the performers image! I never would know for sure if a C500P/T of C500P/S would bring forth the SAME or better performance I heard from the MA6600 integrated.

However, this brings back to the short time when I had the ultimate SET tube amp combo playing and they DO sounded SO right! Of courser, they would cost way much more than a C500P/S + MC500 combo!

I will never know for sure cause at no one single time could I have BOTH these combos available for me to test in order to find out which is the one I like better. All I did at best was having the Wavac Pre/Power combo compared to the MC500+MC501 combo!

Oh well .... life is such, hunting but never really could complete the ultimate hunt!