Disturbing "Sonic Trend" showing up on SOTA audio

@Bdp24 - your comments are not surprising at all to me. Your priority as a musician is to get as "real" a sound as possible. This is simply not the priority of the vast majority of recording engineers. Also, you were using just a couple of mikes with analog tape. Engineers never do this with digital recording nowadays, even if they know better- they would be fired by people who don't know any better, unfortunately.

@ Newbee - I must admit that I am very confused about where you are calling "ear-bleeding" seats?? This is not a term I have ever encountered before - usually the term "nose-bleed" is used for the highest balcony, but I don't think that is what you are referring to here. Are you referring to the closest seats? Davies Hall in SF never sounded particularly good, and I have heard that the last remodel didn't help much either. MTT definitely loves his louds, that is for sure, LOL!

@Schubert - my understanding of the audiophile term "imaging" is to pinpoint exactly where instruments are located in the "soundstage." Contrary to what you seem to be implying, unless I am misunderstanding you, it should be much easier to do this listening to live music in a concert hall, and I don't mean because you can see the instruments - you should be able to tell, if you close your eyes, where individual sections are on the stage even in a very large orchestra - if not, you would have no hope to ever do so on a recording, assuming it was a recording where this would be audible. With modern digital recording and mixing, though, this is almost impossible to tell anymore - everything is blandly washed together, usually with absolutely no attempt to recreate what the hall actually sounds like. Perhaps I am misunderstanding the way audiophiles use the term "imaging" though - correct me if I am wrong, guys. But here is an example of how I interpret that term. There is an Oscar Peterson record put out by Pablo entitled Peterson 6 at Montreux. This is a very well recorded album, with fantastic "imaging" - you can indeed pinpoint exactly where each individual performer is on the stage, and the "soundstage" of the recording replicates very faithfully the actual live sound - to me, you can't have "imaging" if you don't have a decent "soundstage" in the first place - which, again, is almost non-existent in current recording. This is my understanding, anyway, of what audiophiles mean by these terms. Please correct me if you guys think my use of these terms is different from how most audiophiles use them.

The purpose of your playback equipment is to accurately convey what the recording engineer hears from his studio monitors. Modern equipment is far superior in this regard. The distortions of old equipment lend live classical recordings an added sense of ambiance, which is why some listeners prefer the older equipment.

Having just got rid of one such DAC, the PS Audio Directstream, I now have a lot of contempt for snake oil, I mean boutique audio shops.

Mass market audio/pro audio are far more natural sounding than Sterophile magazine recommendations. I now suspect the magazine to be a collection of paid reviews.

I think both schools of sound are represented. Some state of the art is still lush and convincing sounding, such as my Tannoy's with set amplification. But I guess I agree most mainstream is as you described. Someone above had a good comment that gave me a chuckle and although I find it has a lot of truth. Something about you needing to stop listening to solid-state.

Hi Learsfool, sorry for the confusion. Ear bleeding can be the result of a ruptured eardrum which can be caused by sound, albeit nothing you are ever likely to hear in a symphony hall. Other hearing problems can be caused by heights such as the changing of the air pressure on the eardrum that you experience when flying. Your ear pops as the pressure in your inner ear equalizes with the exterior air pressure. I may be the only person who uses this term, and inappropriately so perhaps. I most often I use it to describe the uppermost seating in large stadiums at sporting events where you may almost have to use binoculars to see the game. So yes, I was referring to the most remote/highest seats in a hall. A location that maximizes the affect of reflected sound, and can unduly emphasize/minimize parts of the frequency response, unfavorably.

When in my post I referred to 'imaging' for audiophiles, I was only trying to find a seat location where hall sounds had the least influence and direct sounds had the most and might create an affect that audiophiles might consider great imaging, i.e. location/specificity of instruments. Balance, not so much perhaps.