The focus and air lie


There always have been some kind of fashion in the way a system sounds and since a few years it seems that more and more people are looking for details, air and pinpoint focus / soundstaging.
There's a lot of components, accessories and speakers designed to fill full that demand... Halcro, dCS, Esoteric, Nordost, BW, GamuT are some examples.

This sound does NOT exist in real life, when you're at a concert the sound is full not airy, the soundstage exist of course but it's definitely not as focused as many of the systems you can hear in the hifi shops, it just fill the room.

To get that focus and air hifi components cheats, it's all in the meds and high meds, a bit less meds, a bit more high meds and you get the details, the air, the focus BUT you loose timbral accuracy, fullness.
It's evident for someone accustomed to unamplified concert that a lot of systems are lean and far from sounding real.

Those systems are also very picky about recordings : good recordings will be ok but everything else will be more difficult...
That's a shame because a hifi system should be able to trasmit music soul even on bad recording.
In 2008 this is a very rare quality.

So why does this happened ?

Did audiophiles stopped to listen unamplified music and lost contact with the real thing ?

Is it easier for shops to sell components that sounds so "detailled and impressive" during their 30mins or 1 hour demo ?
ndeslions
Undertow,

The audiophile curse***

I agree about the Armani purse.

Basically many like to say "we all hear differently"

Agreed. Many like to stay with anjou pear, definitely

The actual truth is we have varying degree's of deafness :-)

And of course, most are wearing dungarees of denim! What else are dunagrees made from these days!

BTW - What happened to the Economy and Hi-fi thread - did it get zapped? - the silence on that front is deafening!
Shad, I was wondering about that too...looks like there was some inside scoop and the powers that be, well, beed.
Too bad as that was one of the better exchanges we've seen in some time.
Mr. Tennis and Jaybo - both Nilthepill and myself posted descriptions of what is referred to as "air" in descriptions of sound by audiophiles earlier in the thread. And yes, you do hear it - only in an airless vacuum does no sound exist.
i can listen to music on a radio and get what ever the composer intended as i would on a "high end" stereo system.

What? You can't be serious. Do you just listen to melodies then? What about the musicians and conductor and arrangement? I mean bass guitar riffs not hidden behind the drums on rock. I mean to be able to follow precisely the contribution of each instrument throughout an entire complex piece with 11 or more band members or a whole orchestra?

Sorry but I don't agree at all. You need both a good recording and a good system to really hear deep into the music. Of course, if you only concentrate on lead guitar and the lead singer and pretty much ignore the rest as mere backing instruments then I do agree.