well... I thought that's what you were talking about ski bum! sorry I too have some "high sensitivity" 3-ways with xovers.. i.e vintage Klipsch... and these also sound way better(to my ears) with my Decware Torii than they do with my Krell, Emotiva, Ashly or my ClassDaudio amps.... I'm just sayin'.... synergy is key.
I have heard world-class sound at RMAF in several rooms.. but that it is not the norm I'm sad to say. What I find a bit ironic is that some of the best and in some cases "most expensive" equipment available and that has the potential to produce great sound, many times could rate as "worst sound" at the show. Sometimes it's easy to see the problem - sometimes not. But the real WTF is going on thought for me, is that the person in charge of the display/room/system doesn't seem to realize just how bad their setup sounds... at least to most people visiting the room. I just want to ask these folks, "have you been to any other rooms here to check-out the sound"?
I don't buy-in to boutique, eye-candy hi-fi just for that sake either. A majority of the time, the most expensive part of a component is in the chassis, heat sinks, face-plate, finish. Anybody "in the biz" that you can get to be honest with you, will admit that to you. But I do know by a statistically significant margin, that amps can, and in may cases do, sound different. More times than I can enumerate over my years in this hobby, I have had 4, 5, 6 or more amps on-hand for audition. In fact, I never buy a new component of any kind without being able to compare it directly to the one I currently own. I have a few audio buddies and we conduct A/B/X volume-matched(voltage measured at the speaker binding posts) listening tests on each other. Each of us has a set of "reference" music that we use for these tests. Not all the time, but the majority of the time we discover that all of us can not only hear differences, but can also reliably define what the differences are. And even be in agreement as to how a given component sounds. What we have also found, that at first was somewhat surprising, was that even though we each can hear the differences, and even agree on "what" the differences are - we almost never all "like" the same component.
I think this just reinforces my belief that hearing is an "individual perception". And this "perception" is different for everybody. If you think you hear it - you do. If you think you Do Not hear it - you don't - period, end of argument. Nobody can tell anybody else what they hear or do not hear... try though they may. The best we can do is to share what we think we hear. We will find that there will be some that hear the same or similar as each of us - and some that don't.
This is really another topic, but related... if you follow professional reviewers. I'm talking about reviewers that have been reviewing for decades and in a multitude of magazines and media. You will come to learn what "kind" of sound the given reviewer likes. And then if you audition some of the same equipment that reviewer favors for yourself, you can establish a pretty good frame of reference for whether or not you are likely to prefer a component the given reviewer likes.
One thing's for certain, it's a good thing there is such a variety of equipment out there... cause we all have different sonic tastes and priorities... and this is also one of the things that makes this hobby so interesting and so much fun. This is a journey to which there is no definitive "end"... there is only, "what I like today"... but tomorrow brings a new dawn of audio discovery...
rock on dudes.. and dudettes....
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Transistor Amp Mentioned here in the forums? (Read 19414 times)
