What is the closest to real live sound that you have heard from a system "&", what was it?

My own systems, when fully optimised and firing well. A variety of tweaked gear, all the way from conventional audio components to much cheaper stuff - the latter doesn't get it all right, but enough of the flavour of what I'm chasing to satisfy me at the time, :).

The last conventional, fancy system that hit the right buttons used the current Bryston 1000W monoblocks, and 2nd from the top Dynaudio, from music server - capable of 100% clean high level PA sound levels, and did a drum kit at live levels to fool anyone, no problems.

I believe in system optimisation to get "real live", rather than acquiring expensive kit - and this works pretty well ... ;)

Frank
 
What does a Apogee Prism Pro station do and replace in a system?? Ripping, player? streamer?? storage?
thnx Nick
wisnon said:
Some of it yes. My Boston buddy with the 2.7s has changed his drivers from Beyma to the new Clayton ones, ripped his CD collection professional wiith the Clayton guy in Chicago on a pro machine and upgraded to full Spatial, selling his beloved Lampi Dac in favour of the Apogee Prism Pro station. He says the end result is now several levels above stock EP and he is in ecstasy after decades in thsi hobbie. He is a dynamics junkie and had it in sopdes before, but now the entire package is complete. Clayton did the installation personally when he visited Boston. My pal says that Clayton is sooo right…FULL Spatial EQ is not to be believed!!! If I can find the email, I will PM it to you.

Wally = superb
Clayton = Mind blowing paradigm shift

Keep in mind my buddy is/was a vinyl freak.
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I thought I heard it one day in 2010 at a friends home where he had JBL KS9900 driven by Krell 600 mono's and connected to a Audio Reseach pre, all I know is wow in every respect. But it's way out of my price range.
 
veindoc said:
Brodman r the best and most realistic at producing classical piano I have ever heard. However at all other genre they r extremely limited in terms of dynamics and soundstage. I think they r also very beautiful in terms of the woodwork which seems to resonate like a cello
Nick
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Nick,

If you ever get a chance, try to listen to a pair of open baffle dipole Heil speakers for Piano. Open and airy with the speed to deliver the piano in a realistic manner, due to the air velocity transformers which output air at 5 times the intake speed.

I have heard the Brodmanns and largely agree except for the piano part.
 
The best I ever heard was the system I installed at the Tyson's lake ranch, as in Tyson foods. With this system, they entertained celebrities like Bill Clinton, Willie Nelson, Robbie Robertson of Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, and BB King, just to name a few.

The system consisted of Levinson electronics, Stax CD player, and Duntech Sovereigns. The speakers sat up on a 3 foot high stage, thet was the dining area. The actual listening room was 27x32 foot with a 17 foot high vaulted ceiling. It was a perfect room for the system to breathe and show it's stuff. It was very close to sounding live.
 
Re: What is the closest to real live sound that you have heard from a system "&",...

Mike said:
1. MBL 101 Xtremes.

View attachment 6765

2. Wilson XLF, Thors Hammer demo at RMAF 2013.

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I agree with Mike. A properly set up full blown MBL xTreme rig presents a soundstage that is the closest to live as I have heard. As I have stated before, it was a audio epiphany. As good as the Wilson demo was at RMAF it presents a very different soundstage, accurate but not a wide or deep.
 
^^ Probably because they are recorded with a crappy camcorder perhaps... ^^^ 1080 res is the only acceptable or +
 
fas42 - Since you asked, the truth is that Youtube is a horrible way to 'audition' hi-fi equipment. Why?

First, let's look at the recording process itself. Most of the people who upload clips of their system playing music use their phones, cameras, or cheap field recorders with cheap mics to capture the sound. To be painfully blunt, this is about the worst method one could use to showcase the sound of a hi-fi system. What you end up with is a recording that's only a notch or two beyond what you'd get if you were to use a styrofoam cup and a string.

So, what if you were to use better microphones?

Sure, you could do that. But it's going to cost you. Those $400-500 mics aren't going to cut it. Nor will those $400-500 pre/amps, recorders. If you want to give people a true window into what a hi-fi system sounds like via a recording sample, then prepare to drop at least 5k on some good hardware.

Now once you get that hardware, you will then need to make sure that every recording is ultra precise and consistent. I'm talking about a tolerance level of around 0.2 - 0.3 db per sample. Since most people tune their system to sound its best from the perspective of the listening chair, the logistics of doing this could become a pain in the rear.

But here's the real kicker....

Even if you were to do all of that, there are variables that you'll never be able to control. First, Youtube is going to compress the hell outta your video. Secondly, you'll never be able to control how people listen to your recordings. The funny (and slightly ironic) thing is that most of the people who listen to these clips tend to do so with their laptop speakers or a set of cheap headphones. Oy Vey..

Anyway, I'm not trying to pee in your Wheaties. I get it. It can be fun to check out various sound clips of peoples hi-fi gear on Youtube. I do it all the time. Heck, I'll even upload a clip or two myself just for kicks. But at the end of the day, this is no way to judge the sound of any hi-fi system or component. Just take it for what it is: Entertainment fodder and an opportunity to hear new music.
 
Just recently heard the Magico q7 playing this hi-res file, very impressive;

magicoq7mkiijbxc_rxhd.jpg
 
Zero, there's a little bit more to than that ... give you a typical example: someone records live musicians, purely acoustic sound, with a half decent microphone - and puts it up on YouTube. Man, that sounds special - all the life, verve and bite of "real" music is easy to hear happening - then you go to a similar recording of a typical hifi trying to imitate such; it sounds like a plodding, compressed mess ...

IOW, in spite of YouTube "degrading" the audio content, it does allow one to compare - the AVshowreports channel uses a particular recording chain for each of its clips at a show, and, lo and behold, the setup that gets the Best Sound rating actually does sound significantly better than the others - the quality has not been subsumed into a uniform sludge.

The encoding of the audio, if one is intelligent about it, can be set at 192Kbps AAC, which according to the "experts" is mighty close to transparent - I've done experiments downloading that audio content, and, the quality is remarkably good.

It's a game of relativity - listen to a "real" piano in a YouTube clip, on your laptop; then to one of an audio system trying to mimic one, from a recording - normally, the latter sounds so ludricrously chopped off at the knees, with tonality way, way off the mark - pretty easy to pick it from where I'm sitting ...
 
fas42,

Believe it or not, I know where you're coming from. Still, I'd caution anybody to judge the sound of a component based off of what they hear on Youtube. But that's just me....

Meanwhile, here's a fun little clip that features a recording of a live-band and a hi-fi system replaying their performance all in one video. It's about as close of a reference point as one can get while using the Youtube format. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lmXi1y1fzs
 
Zero said:
fas42,

Believe it or not, I know where you're coming from. Still, I'd caution anybody to judge the sound of a component based off of what they hear on Youtube. But that's just me....

Meanwhile, here's a fun little clip that features a recording of a live-band and a hi-fi system replaying their performance all in one video. It's about as close of a reference point as one can get while using the Youtube format. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lmXi1y1fzs
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I would say they are delusional to put it politely.
 
Yes, I know the one, well! In fact, a year or two ago I pulled the audio off that clip and did some cursory analysis of the track, looking at the waveform at key places. And, guess what, where the two sound discouragingly different the waveforms are correspondingly very, very different! It's all about the treble, and dynamics, of the two versions - the playback through the big fellas makes quite a mess of the more testing percussion transients, visually the waveform at those points are chalk and cheese.
 
bzr said:
I would say they are delusional to put it politely.
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What they can judge is how close the sound is to being "realistic", by comparing the natural sounds that have been captured in the making of the video - things like the person announcing the clip, idle chatter and discussion from listeners, etc, while the music is playing, chairs and such being moved - these form a backdrop to the sound of the actual speakers working. In the good stuff, the playback quality of the system being recorded aligns with the "real" sounds "accidentally" included; in the crap hifi ones, the audio system sound is jarringly at odds with all the incidental sounds.
 
As an example of what I'm talking about, here's something I prepared earlier: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfhJII7PNRM, :D. So, this is a recording of a complete, "decent" playback chain, from CD source through to bookshelf speakers - near the very end you can hear some slight scratching noises, this is me fiddling with the laptop, preparing to end the recording.
 
Paul said:
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This is very interesting, but something doesn't quite make sense. It's likely the weak link in the reproduction chain is the video/audio recording and YouTube, yet there is clearly an audible and visceral difference between the live and recorded versions. This makes me suspect the weak link was actually the mics and set up recording the band, i.e. I wonder if reproduction would be closer to real if two mics were placed differently?
 
Mike said:
I would like to add:

ed78e253cf26af508bb3cf2793095634.jpg



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Yeah I was wondering about that set up. The few times I've listened to Avant Gardes they've delivered reality for the right material, and your versions seem to be an interesting hybrid that I suspect make the approach work across a much wider range of material.
 
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