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Evaluating a system - what do you listen for?

I have been in this hobby a long time and my opinion of what I want to hear in reproduced music continues to evolve. Having owned many systems - and critically listened to many, many more - I am now looking for an overall sound that as accurately as possible captures the tone and tempo of the music with enough of a bass foundation to convincingly portray an orchestra at full tilt or club beats while still nailing the timbre of an upright bass. Decent portrayal of leading and trailing edges is nice, and a high end that’s fully present and balanced without stridency is a big plus. Detail’s good, but hyper detail without musical flow can be distracting. Airy treble and pinpoint or large soundstage are also nice to have, but if what’s coming out of the speakers doesn’t make me want to tap my toe or cry a little bit when a vocalist holds a note just so, then what’s the point? That’s what I’m looking for these days - what about you?
knownothing
bigkidz
1,784 posts
 
randy-11  First, get the mids right...

Agree, I list to the piano first.  It has to sound right to me and it seems that it is the hardest for digital to reproduce.  After that violin, I have to know if I am listening to Sastradivarius violin.  Then space between instruments, vocals, placement and then TONE, TONE, TONE.  Front to back layering, left to right layering.  Decay of notes especially the piano.  Stand up bass has to have that wood sound.  I never found the sound I was looking for with what I could buy so I finally built my own DAC, preamp, phono and now amp.  Not to say there is nothing out there because I have not heard it all but I was swapping out components and cables, etc., and never found the overall improvement I was looking for (actually I never knew that something could be so different because I never heard it before in a system).  Even with people I know who also build or modify their own components, I heard better sound but not to where I am today.  What I found when building my own components was I learned what parts made a difference and how they made a difference.  So I can use that information to modify other peoples components as I do repair/modification work also.  It was a extremely great learning experience for me at least.  I was looking for my digital to sound analog.  Now I finally have that although the phono stage I build is also something special also.

Happy Listening.

 
bojack
539 posts
 
In this order:
1] Driver integration (if that's not dead-on right, nothing else matters)
2] Total lack of treble fatigue
3] Tonal saturation (aka timbral accuracy)
3] Sufficient 'weight' across every frequency
4] PRAT
5] Dynamics
6] Soundstaging

...and the magic ingredient? If the system does not want to make me sing, tap my foot, or bob my head, it's a no go for me. Because why else listen, right?






paladin's avatar
paladin
211 posts
 
I always listen for this first:
1) Vocals - Both male & female
2) Piano
3) Stringed instruments - Guitar, violin, harp etc.
4) Bass
If all this sounds right - then, depth of sound stage - dynamics & most important = Make sure to your ears that it all sounds real!
Do this as many times as necessary & then start all over again until you get it all 100% right!
Remember one thing: This is a uncureable disease!


infection's avatar
infection
593 posts
 
That for me is the main failing of music reproduction systems



It's always going to fail because it's a reproduction...
bdp24's avatar
bdp24
4,908 posts
 

All good comments---everything matters! Reproduced music still, after all this time and effort, sounds very different from live, and undoubtedly will for the remainder of even the youngest of Audiogoners lives. But it can already sound close enough to allow the suspension of disbelief, and for the music to have an emotional impact on the listener. I can be brought to tears by Iris Dements singing even on my computer monitors speakers.

The thing about elements of music and it’s reproduction such as timing, is that we don’t necessarily know how a recording should sound in that regard---what the timing of the original music, as opposed to it’s reproduction, was like. We DO know what a voice free of vowel colorations sounds like, generally speaking. And we know what natural instrumental timbre sounds like. No, we don’t know how well any given recording has captured vocal and instrumental timbres, but ya gotta start somewhere, if that makes any sense.

Reproduced music can sound no better than the quality of it’s recording---source material is still the weakest link in the reproduction of music, in many cases by a wide margin.

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