Life is short. One must live life fuller. By that, we must not live beyond my means. Going places, enjoy food, enjoy good music, quality time with friends and family, most importantly maintain a healthy lifestyle. You stand to lose everything, your quality of life will go down the drain if you lost your health.
I enjoy truthful sound just as much as I enjoy durian, the king of fruit, many may not like it over the hard to describe the smell, an acquired taste. What do you know? Many foreigners are increasingly loving the taste of it, they drive the prices up which is a sad thing. For the durian gluttons, they wouldn't want others. "Take my money and go!". Musang King is the world's best durian Malaysia has to offer, Black Thorn is challenging the top spot. Perhaps the Thais will dispute that with their breeds. Sound is like too, there are too many sound profiles that declaring the clear winner is close to impossible. Make thing worst, our taste in sound changes over time. One thing is certain though, you simply cannot settle for less after you have gotten betterment. Up is the only way. If you choose not to hop on the upgrade bandwagon and keep money in your pocket, time will work its magic, it fades your sonic memory. As long as you still listen to music, you will have little resistance to good sound. Good sound is addictive. Be mindful, audio passion is not to be understood by non-audiophiles, just as men don't get it with handbags and gems.
Audioing is a lonely journey, absolutely. It's down to you and your sound, your fulfilment of personal actualization. Achieving your high goal gives a sensational feeling. In the pursuit of good sound, I try as much as I can to reason how and why the tweak works the way it works. Look, Einstein's Theory of General Relativity took nearly ten decades to be verified. No, I don't know everything. What I'm trying to say is time will reveal things.
To avoid subjectivity trap, I avoid voices. Voices will tend to veer you off course to your preference, for instance, some prefer younger voices while others prefer more mature voices. We will come to a dilemma of which is right, a hotbed for a heated debate that ends without a conclusion but one party feeling sour. Audiophiles are combative, while some parties are happily fanning the fire, they are the bad apple of audiophiles. Stay far away from these audiophiles because they will not build you up.
Instead, the violin and the piano are my preferred reference. There are certain qualities I look for in these reproductions. Hard to describe but you go listen to the real thing, you know what I mean. Once these are reproduced well, voices will fall into place. A sound in the rawest form, not overly smooth to remove the essential spikes. The rawness or the toothing could be in the form of tone and dynamic or both. A reverberant sound and rich timbre are the holy grail alongside with compression-free, though brassy, harsh and ear-piercing it will always sound pristine. It is paramount for me a system to distinguish the colour of the musical instrument.
If you think the description of sound is a little complicated, think of it as a picture. Good sound moves emotion so does a picture with a story. You feel connected or resonated looking at one. Of course, subjectivity and past experiences evoke our emotional response. While you may owe the best photography equipment, it doesn't make you a good photographer. A good shoot requires a lot of preparations and shooting techniques, National Geographic photographers might have to wait for days to get the right shot, mind you. Likewise, a Chinese has a proverb that says three minutes on stage, three years in preparation. To shine, you need to do your homework, you must offer something extraordinary especially in sound, audiophiles are not the easiest people to impress. If you buy high-end equipment to post, put on the facebook to attract fanboys and don't have the promised sound, don't bother about receiving guests.
Among others, a nervous sound is not fine. This is especially true with volatile speaker impedance, you can have many things going wrong. Power is always a good thing. Tell you what, I once had a fella told me that a magical sound takes place when the amp is on the brink of running out of juice, I raised my eyebrows and disbelief.
Good sound has that expressiveness, the fulfilment of the musical intent and fluidity. I'm working my system toward an in-room free-flowing sound for years, my belief that it serves the music well. My sound may not exhibit the high-end bells and whistles but instinctively (for me), it ticks all the right boxes. That's my take. I worked hard to get to this quality. I'm especially happy with my piano reproduction. I know, I know, most audiophiles presume neutral sound is the holy grail. What is neutral sound? Let's face it, miking has a big influence on the sound, right where the distortion begins. By itself, every recording studio has its sound, so does the work of mixing engineers. Not convinced? Only a few attended the recording session, they're the few who can tell what it was like then. How do we the outsider gauge neutrality? We just can't. We have got nothing to fall upon to make an assessment but assumptions, assumptions based on our acumen of sound. How close to right we get is a question mark.
When an upgrade didn't deliver the result, it can only mean that you have made the wrong upgrade at the wrong place. You just miss the target. Quite truly, we unlock the value of our system with system synergy, careful setup, power management and room acoustics. You have only you to blame. Take it to heart, don't take that the manufacturers know everything, they are not the player. In most cases, users know better. Once you make a purchase, you're on your own, buddy. The best education you could have received is by visiting your fellow audiophiles' system and learn from your visitation. Ask questions, you got everything to gain. Pick up and start from there. Personally, I build my walls against outsiders because I'm a private person. To my delight, this blog doesn't attract a lot of interests which is a good thing. I feel free to speak my mind.
I can't help feeling audiophiles making far too many presumptions based on logic, engineering, past experiences or whatnot. It's easy to be consumed by intellectual presumptions, we presume speaker placement, we presume cable sounding, we presume system matching, we presume resonance, in short, we presume everything under the sun. An outright sin of commission. Let me illustrate, isolation devices are not merely isolation, they introduce colour. Bearing isolation brings a different sound, wooden spike brings a different sound, Sorbothane brings a different sound, copper cone brings a different sound, crystal cone brings a different sound and so on, the big question is how do you handle this? I make a point that I don't use one type of isolation throughout all the equipment. Doing that you will introduce a strong sound character. I like to mix things up, just how to produce a harmonious marriage with different isolations is an art. When a sound is more than a sound, it captures the essence of music. Just like the luthiers in the 18th century, each make carries a different sound. Let your ears work, not your mouth. Making unjust comments make you an audio fool. We don't need another hero. Your instinct will tell if the sound is right.
No shit, I'm a sick audiophile. The years have not slowed me down. I thirst for sonic improvements and every improvement makes me happy for a week or two, I start exploring the next month. Don't ask me where I got my energy, I don't know. My mind is focused on improving sound quality and enjoy the labour of love.
