I pondered on Teo's post last night for a while. What he is saying is absolutely correct. If you start with a compromise to what live music sounds like, it will never be correct. The problem is that equipment manufacturers don't typically advertise their products as being colored so you have to know what live music sounds like to start with in order to recognize the condition. Very good post from Teo which boils down to (IMO); cut your losses if there is an issue instead of trying to mask them with another product.
Problem of compensating with cable a component tone problem?
This thread was actually from a kind of rant by teo_audio in another thread. That post was really the start of a whole other thread. and so here it is.
The notion is that some folks err when they buy cables to compensate for tonally odd equipment. Say your preamp is dark sounding. So to may it ll good you buy a 'bright' IC cable. Later you buy a different preamp, and now your system sounds bright, so you buy a dark sounding speaker cable.. On it goes. all messed up.
So what is you 'defense' against this kind of error upon error?
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To add fuel to the fire. here is a large part of teo_audio original post:
""" It’s a careful balancing act of understanding the gear and the cable.
Eg, dark system so you get a cable which exaggerates highs in an edgy fashion and then you thinly you’ve got clarity and balance...but no....
What you’ve really got is two wrongs eq’d out against one another... and the perceived clarity is not signal, it’s actually signal based hash, distortion, and noise.
First the signal is gone missing with the dark gear and then what’s left is distorted into false highs and transients that are bloated and dirty, via the screechy cable. It’s a grotesquery.
Figuring this sort of thing out can take a bit of time.
In the example above, it would be best to start with more neutral gear and then more neutral cables, instead something that plays out like two cars tied together with a rope and each doing burnouts trying to pull each the other way.
When you do it right, then... more music of various quality becomes listenable and you get to train your ears and brain is what is RIGHT, instead of flavored distortion. You have to have the correct signal representation there in order to recognize it, so it’s a catch 22 of a sort. It will take time to lean to hear it.
It’s a big deal, a very big deal, it’s the whole freaking enchilada.
We need more people recognizing these issues in this way. """
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The notion is that some folks err when they buy cables to compensate for tonally odd equipment. Say your preamp is dark sounding. So to may it ll good you buy a 'bright' IC cable. Later you buy a different preamp, and now your system sounds bright, so you buy a dark sounding speaker cable.. On it goes. all messed up.
So what is you 'defense' against this kind of error upon error?
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
To add fuel to the fire. here is a large part of teo_audio original post:
""" It’s a careful balancing act of understanding the gear and the cable.
Eg, dark system so you get a cable which exaggerates highs in an edgy fashion and then you thinly you’ve got clarity and balance...but no....
What you’ve really got is two wrongs eq’d out against one another... and the perceived clarity is not signal, it’s actually signal based hash, distortion, and noise.
First the signal is gone missing with the dark gear and then what’s left is distorted into false highs and transients that are bloated and dirty, via the screechy cable. It’s a grotesquery.
Figuring this sort of thing out can take a bit of time.
In the example above, it would be best to start with more neutral gear and then more neutral cables, instead something that plays out like two cars tied together with a rope and each doing burnouts trying to pull each the other way.
When you do it right, then... more music of various quality becomes listenable and you get to train your ears and brain is what is RIGHT, instead of flavored distortion. You have to have the correct signal representation there in order to recognize it, so it’s a catch 22 of a sort. It will take time to lean to hear it.
It’s a big deal, a very big deal, it’s the whole freaking enchilada.
We need more people recognizing these issues in this way. """
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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