Karl Rand
Senior Member
- Nov 20, 2018
- 946
- 80
I could prattle on about this forever and we’d probably never convince each other of much.
Plus I’m mindful a lot of what we are saying here is going to come across as voodoo to anyone attracted to a thread titled "Atheists don't believe in God or gods but they have no alternative theories that make sense...” not that forms of voodoo aren’t involved is such a discussion anyway what with all the weird totally unscientific drivel out their on the high-end audio market. So I’ll have my final say on audio. You say "Odd you think me a thermionic nut while buying high end pricey tube amps that go the full purple koolaid extent of believing the grain orientation of the xformer cores matters. I bet you have a ton of money invested in greatly overpriced interconnect and speaker cables as well. Me, I make most of my own. I'm sure your gear sounds really fantastic, but I eschew the term "hi-fi" as it usually implies buying "a sound" that is somehow imbued over everything one plays; my goal is to get as close as possible to the sound of the original live performance rather than the sound of Mark Levinson, which means that if the source is bad, so is the playback.” I certainly don’t think of you as a thermionic nut given my main system’s pre-amp and power amps are thermionic. I simply don’t barrack for either solid state or any other means of getting the sound of real instruments to happen at home. I’ve never pursued audio/hi-fi or whatever you want to call it to achieve ‘a sound’. My aim has always been to get as close as possible to the sound of acoustic instruments played in real space. I have no particular interest in trying to get digitally manipulated studio ‘magic’ to be anything in particular because I have no idea what any of it was supposed to sound like anyway My perspective however may be warped by having studied the pipe organ for 11 years in my youth and associating with choral and acoustic instrument students at the Conservatorium I’ve little time for silly money interconnects either having knitted most of my own from microphone cable and solid core silver coated wire mostly terminated with minimalist plugs containing as little metal as practical I have however put a huge amount of effort into the problems of room acoustics. In my previous house the Raidho Acoustics TD-4.8s I still run sounded superb. In my present situation the bottom end was very nasty. I learnt eventually, after a lot of fiddling around, if they were in a position where soundstage held together ( don’t know about you but to me that’s important) the bass was disgusting. Move them anywhere the bottom end didn’t boom and the stereo perspective was a real mess. In the end I found the only solution was to run two subs in optimum locations and cut off the TD-4-8s below 70 hz running these where the soundstage didn’t disintigrate.
I’m intrigued you have somehow managed to run a cartridge with no magnets. I can’t imagine how that’s possible - - ceramics? Strain gauge? Anyhow, enough of this,
Plus I’m mindful a lot of what we are saying here is going to come across as voodoo to anyone attracted to a thread titled "Atheists don't believe in God or gods but they have no alternative theories that make sense...” not that forms of voodoo aren’t involved is such a discussion anyway what with all the weird totally unscientific drivel out their on the high-end audio market. So I’ll have my final say on audio. You say "Odd you think me a thermionic nut while buying high end pricey tube amps that go the full purple koolaid extent of believing the grain orientation of the xformer cores matters. I bet you have a ton of money invested in greatly overpriced interconnect and speaker cables as well. Me, I make most of my own. I'm sure your gear sounds really fantastic, but I eschew the term "hi-fi" as it usually implies buying "a sound" that is somehow imbued over everything one plays; my goal is to get as close as possible to the sound of the original live performance rather than the sound of Mark Levinson, which means that if the source is bad, so is the playback.” I certainly don’t think of you as a thermionic nut given my main system’s pre-amp and power amps are thermionic. I simply don’t barrack for either solid state or any other means of getting the sound of real instruments to happen at home. I’ve never pursued audio/hi-fi or whatever you want to call it to achieve ‘a sound’. My aim has always been to get as close as possible to the sound of acoustic instruments played in real space. I have no particular interest in trying to get digitally manipulated studio ‘magic’ to be anything in particular because I have no idea what any of it was supposed to sound like anyway My perspective however may be warped by having studied the pipe organ for 11 years in my youth and associating with choral and acoustic instrument students at the Conservatorium I’ve little time for silly money interconnects either having knitted most of my own from microphone cable and solid core silver coated wire mostly terminated with minimalist plugs containing as little metal as practical I have however put a huge amount of effort into the problems of room acoustics. In my previous house the Raidho Acoustics TD-4.8s I still run sounded superb. In my present situation the bottom end was very nasty. I learnt eventually, after a lot of fiddling around, if they were in a position where soundstage held together ( don’t know about you but to me that’s important) the bass was disgusting. Move them anywhere the bottom end didn’t boom and the stereo perspective was a real mess. In the end I found the only solution was to run two subs in optimum locations and cut off the TD-4-8s below 70 hz running these where the soundstage didn’t disintigrate.
I’m intrigued you have somehow managed to run a cartridge with no magnets. I can’t imagine how that’s possible - - ceramics? Strain gauge? Anyhow, enough of this,