"Garbage in, garbage out."
Whether or not they agree with this adage, there's no self-respecting audiophile who hasn't come across this line at one time or another. Ivor Tiefenbrun probably made it famous but sure he wasn't the first to ever express this sentiment.
So I got to thinking while listening to Nick Doshi's new tape stage and the new Technics 1506 with its John French modded headblock last night. Do we really know or appreciate just how good our electronics and speakers really are? Are the flaws we hear and attribute to the components in the signal path really traceable to and a reflection of issues in the front-end? And whatever else we are doing is just compensating for the front-end. (conversely, if we don't hear much of an improvement after changing out front-end components, have we reached the ceiling of something else downstream?)
Part of the reason for this exercise is that I'm hearing among other things with the new tape setup, upper octaves on my system like I've never heard before. Not on analog, certainly not even close on digital. And a sense of openness and space like never before on the best tapes out there. And just a resolution and lack of smearing like never before. Take something like Jonathan Horwich's Jason Roebke recording. Now when you listen to the vibes, the striking of each bar (s) is clearly separated as well as their decay. Before, things were just slightly smeared together and fuzzy. There wasn't nearly as much of that sense of ringing. There was more of a heaviness rather than lightness to the sound.
Whether or not they agree with this adage, there's no self-respecting audiophile who hasn't come across this line at one time or another. Ivor Tiefenbrun probably made it famous but sure he wasn't the first to ever express this sentiment.
So I got to thinking while listening to Nick Doshi's new tape stage and the new Technics 1506 with its John French modded headblock last night. Do we really know or appreciate just how good our electronics and speakers really are? Are the flaws we hear and attribute to the components in the signal path really traceable to and a reflection of issues in the front-end? And whatever else we are doing is just compensating for the front-end. (conversely, if we don't hear much of an improvement after changing out front-end components, have we reached the ceiling of something else downstream?)
Part of the reason for this exercise is that I'm hearing among other things with the new tape setup, upper octaves on my system like I've never heard before. Not on analog, certainly not even close on digital. And a sense of openness and space like never before on the best tapes out there. And just a resolution and lack of smearing like never before. Take something like Jonathan Horwich's Jason Roebke recording. Now when you listen to the vibes, the striking of each bar (s) is clearly separated as well as their decay. Before, things were just slightly smeared together and fuzzy. There wasn't nearly as much of that sense of ringing. There was more of a heaviness rather than lightness to the sound.
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