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(With apologies to my genetics professors)
Frame shift mutations in genetics occur when an altered nucleotide results in misreading of the DNA’s three nucleotide codon sequence and the synthesis of a normal or altered protein.
What’s that have to do with audio? Well this started with reading online comments that all we [reviewers] need are five minutes to tell whether or not a product is good or not. Certainly there is an ounce of truth to the fact that some colorations just don’t go away with time. They may diminish in magnitude but never completely disappear. We have all experienced equipment (or even parts like capacitors) that initially sounded great but with time wore out their welcome.
But that’s hardly the whole picture. And that brings us our system’s spectral balance. We own many recordings that should hopefully sound very different. They might run the gamut from being on dark side to correct to being bright. This balance will frameshift one way or the other (or hopefully stay the same) any time we switch equipment, cables or accessories. A darker recording might now have the proper openness but then the brighter recording might be unlistenable. And vice Versa where the brighter recording has a better spectral balance but now the darker sounding recording is like a moonless midnight. Which is correct?
In the end, it’s extremely important to audition equipment with recordings with different balances just to ensure that whatever spectral changes have occurred won’t affect the enjoyability of your music collection. That alone takes more than five minutes.
Frame shift mutations in genetics occur when an altered nucleotide results in misreading of the DNA’s three nucleotide codon sequence and the synthesis of a normal or altered protein.
What’s that have to do with audio? Well this started with reading online comments that all we [reviewers] need are five minutes to tell whether or not a product is good or not. Certainly there is an ounce of truth to the fact that some colorations just don’t go away with time. They may diminish in magnitude but never completely disappear. We have all experienced equipment (or even parts like capacitors) that initially sounded great but with time wore out their welcome.
But that’s hardly the whole picture. And that brings us our system’s spectral balance. We own many recordings that should hopefully sound very different. They might run the gamut from being on dark side to correct to being bright. This balance will frameshift one way or the other (or hopefully stay the same) any time we switch equipment, cables or accessories. A darker recording might now have the proper openness but then the brighter recording might be unlistenable. And vice Versa where the brighter recording has a better spectral balance but now the darker sounding recording is like a moonless midnight. Which is correct?
In the end, it’s extremely important to audition equipment with recordings with different balances just to ensure that whatever spectral changes have occurred won’t affect the enjoyability of your music collection. That alone takes more than five minutes.
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