A better audiophile

I want to get this off my chest, I'm a player, not a politician. Neither do I affiliate with any audio dealers nor any interest group. My main and only concern is pushing the limit of my system, doing my favourite things, that's all.

I'm going to tell you that audiophile top topics don't get much away from the reproduction of sound and the value proposition. We are spoil for choice and yes we do. Because we don't have a deep pocket, we can't have all but right down to make our choice that best serve us. For the rich, no time wasted and go straight after SOTA equipment. End of the story. But for the most of us, a high value is coveted and struggles to absorb high diminishing value. There are, some of us, in pursuit of pleasing sound that altogether a different topic. I'd like to make myself clear that I'm not an advocator of high priced audio that built on marketing perception.

Not resting on my laurel, I put up the sound up against live performance. It's the best reference I know, you can't go wrong with it. With a caveat, I'm well aware of the sound during the recording session differs from live performance but the premise is to produce the natural and believable sound. I simply cannot get past a fake sound or to expect an accurate sound from the playback. How could you know the discrepancy? Just how could you? Not many have the privilege of being presence during the recording session. I'm biting a bullet to admit the idea of accurate sound is flawed and unsubstantiated, a belief I once hold steadfast to. OK, shoot me!

The end justifies the means is the key to unlocking the sound/value of the system in most of the occasions. For instance, a high-end amp and a set of cheapo cables don't serve each other that well. At the end of the day, we must ask how real does it get. Similarly, take-home pay that undermines our spending power and the freedom where you want to spend it on. Furthermore, I don't see how you can allocate equal budget on audio component, one-third budget to the source, amp and speaker respectively.

If the measure of success is peace of mind, then, the measure of sound is how it moves you. A system evokes your emotions is a better system? Not so fast, partially correct. If only you know the truth of timbre, a struggle to convince myself of the sound is not a good sounding system. It isn't what it is! A luscious sound, sweeter and smoother than thou is liken to portrait over-editing, presents an unnatural hue of sound. It isn't what it is!

Not having my chip on my shoulder, my system responds to my tweaking fascinates me. Therein lies an opportunity that I could kind of reconcile my sound to a realistic sound, that's something to get excited about; a sound artisan. I feel great in self-realization. It drives me crazy hours of fine tuning and listening. My inspirations come from everywhere, it has become a world of my own. Keeping the worldliness of troubles and worries out, just me and my sound.

I found great joy in fine tuning, realizing the truth value of the audio components. Every cloud has a silver lining, wrong turns are inevitable. Time and time again, I found myself ditching the sound detrimental tweaks, reset and settle on a new matrix of tweaking. Am I going on a wild goose chase, I hope I'm not. Time will tell. Right at this moment, I'm at a place in my life right now feeling contented. Sound first before music, I confessed with reluctance but the distinction becomes blurred at times when the magic of music prevails, the sound takes the backseat. It has become less of the bother, draws no attention to itself.

Let's not be fooled by our conscious, all audiophiles are sound first. By that I mean they're critical with how the sound. And when an audiophile has done his time, he will appreciate the truth of timbre a little more. Being caught up with "the next big thing" has been a thing of the past. The promise of technology to radically raise the bar of sound is behind me. Audio advancement is progressive. Plug and play? Weighing specs than listening is a plain ignorance. Your mental block undermining the essence of fine-tuning.

Constraints, welcome to the world if you're not in the top 5%. Not only with a limited budget, a small room to boot, these are what I have to contend with. I shouldn't complain too much knowing some don't even have room to play. On the other side of the fence, I know some build their room to a golden ratio from the ground up. Sweet. Does it negate the need for room treatment? I guess not.

Small room renders a small soundstage, compromised bass extension and loudness limitation, that's the hard fact. No electronics can reverse these shortcomings, don't count on DSP. To some, DSP is cancerous. Notwithstanding, small room rewards you differently. Interestingly, near-field listening is a natural choice (in a small room). You capture the most direct sound, words, pure, detail and intimate.

Nonetheless, the inseparable time delay of direct and reflected sound in a small room takes a toll on the clarity of the sound. Standing waves masks clarity. To get good sound, combating standing waves becomes a primary vocation. Your sound reflects your approach with your acoustics. On the other hand, big boys with big room confront a different type of problems, yearning for bigger amps, bigger speakers and subwoofers to room filled with sound. Standing waves are not deluded either. For the sake of room-shaking sound, think big, they couldn't energise the room as effortless as do small room could. Big speakers are lazy by nature, they need volume to wake up from sleeping mode, particularly the bass drivers. To resolve this issue, an active bass driver gets the unanimous nod of approval.

However, loudness could be a nuisance because some music doesn't require to play loud. Space constraint in a small room is definitely adding insult to injury. Excessive loudness invites distortions and promotes tinnitus, the ringing in the ears potentially induces hearing loss over a period of time. Multidriver speakers better tasked to coupe with high SPL and minimise distortions because the workload is well distributed. It is all well and good but the design invites another problem; coherency. The talent of the designer is determined by his work on the crossover design. I believe that every system performs optimally at a magic volume where all drivers sing in perfect harmony. Beyond the volume, you know that the sound begins to go bizarre, namely the harden highs and incoherency. To cut the chase, I opined that a flawless 40Hz to 10kHz frequency range makes or breaks music integrity. Do not mess around with it.

Small room enjoys two clear advantages, power by leveraging on the room reinforcement, a 6dB gain and lesser distortions from playing softer. The sound receives a smidge thickening, courtesy of room colouration. Serious attention is required to counter this ill effect via a compensation order.

Presence, texture and intimacy. Presence is the "tangible-ability" of sound while the texture is the conveyance of the truth of timbre. Intimacy is the agent of emotional evocation. Small room did it a little better than a big room in regard to "reach out and touch" devoid of distanced sound as with big room. Intimacy develops a sound that speaks to the heart. For most of the audiophiles, they are sold on a system that does well on intimacy, they care less about the accuracy of sound reproduction.

Apart from intimacy, the dire enveloping effect is on every audiophile wish list. Small room does this in spades. Imagine submerged in a musical capsule at a greater scale. Intoxicating! You will be misled to into a larger room though the physical room accord an otherwise cognitive dissonance. In a vast musical landscape, you are treated with a sanctuary of musical realm. Picture this, an Atmos Dolby effect from a 2 channel system, cool. If there's anything big room couldn't produce, big room produces scale. If that doesn't excite you, I can't see any reasons you want a big system in a big room. Money talks, to hit fortissimo effortlessly serving rock and classical music without compression.

In reality, a system is judged by the court of public opinion. Even black can be ruled as white if the public thinks so, that's the tyranny of the majority. Live with it or isolate yourself from the audio society. In sound reproduction, our heart must be won over first. Room acoustics may prove to be the most difficult aspect of audio, not so. You will get the hang of it as time goes by. Start working on first reflection points, you'll be ended up a better audiophile. Cheers.