prof166 posts06-24-2017 4:45amjonandfamily,
"My own subjective impressions, especially of amplifiers, aren’t much use to other people I think. We all have different tastes, different hearing, different criteria; what I hear as uninvolving will be someone else’s musical nirvana.
And by "bleached" I’m talking of timbral or tonal color, nothing to do with dynamics. I tend to sort of see colors when listening to sound (and clearly so do some other people, which is why lots of audiophiles refer to colors in describing sound). When I listen to my acoustic guitar I always "hear" a golden sparkly tone. I’d take that recording around to various systems and speakers: from most of them, I don’t hear that tone. It’s more silver/gray. And that’s my main complaint with most systems: they sound "bleached" of tonal color, which is what I always perceived whenever I was able to compare Audio Research amps with, say CJ amps, over the years (and that’s only a few times, really).
That doesn’t mean someone else will hear the same thing. Although...it was interesting to see it described that way here, and I have seen the Audio Research sound described similarly over the years. Just like the CJ sound is often described as "golden."
My pal loves his Audio Research amp - had it forever, doesn’t want to part with it."
Wow! This is the single greatest posting I have ever read on any audio website. Its wonderful to know there are other people out there who feel the same way about tonal colour. I have heard cheap car stereos, portable radios, even TVs which sounded better than some (so called) high end audio with its highly detailed, wide bandwidth but timbrally washed out monochrome sound. Totally unsatisfying.
It’s a pity that Thiel didn’t have much of a presence here in the UK, but we still have Tannoy and Harbeth.
"My own subjective impressions, especially of amplifiers, aren’t much use to other people I think. We all have different tastes, different hearing, different criteria; what I hear as uninvolving will be someone else’s musical nirvana.
And by "bleached" I’m talking of timbral or tonal color, nothing to do with dynamics. I tend to sort of see colors when listening to sound (and clearly so do some other people, which is why lots of audiophiles refer to colors in describing sound). When I listen to my acoustic guitar I always "hear" a golden sparkly tone. I’d take that recording around to various systems and speakers: from most of them, I don’t hear that tone. It’s more silver/gray. And that’s my main complaint with most systems: they sound "bleached" of tonal color, which is what I always perceived whenever I was able to compare Audio Research amps with, say CJ amps, over the years (and that’s only a few times, really).
That doesn’t mean someone else will hear the same thing. Although...it was interesting to see it described that way here, and I have seen the Audio Research sound described similarly over the years. Just like the CJ sound is often described as "golden."
My pal loves his Audio Research amp - had it forever, doesn’t want to part with it."
Wow! This is the single greatest posting I have ever read on any audio website. Its wonderful to know there are other people out there who feel the same way about tonal colour. I have heard cheap car stereos, portable radios, even TVs which sounded better than some (so called) high end audio with its highly detailed, wide bandwidth but timbrally washed out monochrome sound. Totally unsatisfying.
It’s a pity that Thiel didn’t have much of a presence here in the UK, but we still have Tannoy and Harbeth.