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Post by MartinT on Oct 23, 2015 20:38:51 GMT
When I am really involved in and entranced by the music I am often absolutely rock-steady still, so as to hear every nuance of the playing. Yes, I agree with that especially with classical music.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 24, 2015 1:40:23 GMT
Some gentle music such as Suzanne Vega, Courage of Lassie, Johnny Cash's American recordings and Springsteen's acoustic albums can have me sat still and entranced. Lots of the time though, if I'm not physically moved, there is something missing. Perhaps it's the same vivid portrayal that transfixes and moves me according to the mood created by the music.
As much as I loved the flat earth products and sound (and I still do) there are other ways of getting PRaT. A Voyd/Audio Innovations/Snell system will deliver this in spades. So will a KSA50 with Apogees, albeit with a different flavour. NVA is also great rhythmically whilst still giving a more "3D" presentation.
For me, the Flat Earth put me in touch with elements of musicality that are important to my enjoyment. I dont want to be controversial, but I have to say it educated me and showed me a vitality and passion that I hadn't heard from hifi before. It gave me a frame of refence that allowed me to search for the same properties in other equipment. In short, without the flat earth, I wouldn't have had a life filled with love for hifi reproduction.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 24, 2015 2:02:52 GMT
Flat earth a concept invented by naim and to some extent linn as a tool to capitalise on each other equipment's sonic traits at the time to produce more sales by deviising an ethos to which middle class and Freemasons could aspire to owning their equipment The infamous tune dem is farcial at best. Rhythmic nature of music is just that produced by the artist with timing both in a rock / pop manner and a classical manner is a system cannot produce this it is not flawed but merely has a different take and would be ridiculed by the above dealer network for not having do. Rather than an artificially created one. Conversely if it showed that rat a tat in yer face eventuated upper mid bass bias to induce toe tapping it was considered God like music making Even at the expense of preserving your hearing thr musical truth is somewhere between the two flat at earth marketing concept from a bygone earth that has stuck with many a person until there mid forties when they realise there is more to music than manufactured pace rhythm and timing imho Yep that's about how I see it. Often very coloured gear with unnatural emphasis of certain parts of the frequency range to try and give "better than real life" "attack" and "dynamics" that were not there in the original but could, in a domestically acceptable volume context, sometimes give the impression of what would be there if played at a realistic level on genuinely better equipment. As an aside to this, IMHO a genuinely accurate system will often sound less than "impressive" until it reaches a volume somewhat near reality.. or at least what the mixing engineer on some albums considered reality! Fletcher & Munson/Rice & Kellogg's (yes really! Hi fi's "cereal killers". They also invented the loudspeaker as we know it) work predicted this by showing that the human ear will only find the bass and treble levels to be high enough when the volume is at the original level (if it's recorded flat and uncompressed anyway). Often systems which sound reasonably impressive at low volumes, nice and "full" , "warm" but also plenty of "sparkle" and detail, will fall apart if any attempt is made to use them at genuinely realistic volumes.... Really overblown and boomy, often audibly distorted and with a treble that could cut glass from ten paces! This is not a universal truth but I have heard few systems and situations where this did not largely apply. Room acoustics and speaker placement can of course be added to this can of worms to make it madder than a box of frogs
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Post by Deleted on Oct 25, 2015 22:00:46 GMT
I spent years working for JVC at the end of the 70s early 80s battling the flat Earthers in the Hi-Fi press. We had far superior product in terms of TTs and amps, and don't get me started on the speakers that are now considered classics, that we could not give away because they were said by sid Flat earthers to have a "Jap sound". By Jap sound, they meant fast, dynamic and open as oposed to ploddy and pedestrian like the British heavy bextrene coned monsters, they thought were great. Sorry rant over
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Post by ChrisB on Oct 25, 2015 22:11:51 GMT
What were you favourite top of the range items from JVC during your time there Paul?
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Post by Deleted on Oct 25, 2015 22:55:30 GMT
Zero 5 ribbon speakers, ( worked on those TBH). The SuperA amps especially the AX-9 (wish I still had mine) We had sp much esoterica that never reached the UK market EX66 dual concentric studio monitors etc. The QL -7 the 8 and the 10 transcription motors were among the best TTs I have ever used as was the MC1 MC cartridge. The P3030, T3030, M3030 Pre Tuner and Power amp, would kick the backside of most things on the market today and the humble JAS 11G, the student bedroom fav budget amp and then the KDA-8 self biasing cassette deck, that was the first to use metal tape on the planet. Chris the list goes on and on, all great kit from the golden age. Mind you, I never gave up my valve amps
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Post by ChrisB on Oct 25, 2015 23:55:20 GMT
Interesting, thanks. I'll do a little Googling to learn some more.
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Post by Slinger on Oct 26, 2015 2:28:45 GMT
I'm happy to say that I totally avoided the flat earth/oblate-spheroid earth arguments due to the fact that I was listening to the music rather than the arcane methods that it may or may not have be delivered to me by. I still am. Technology works for me, not vice-versa.
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Post by Firebottle on Oct 26, 2015 9:16:02 GMT
I am probably lucky that the flat earth era completely passed me by. Other life expenditure was draining the (limited) funds available so I was content to plod on with a very average sound reproduction system. Once circumstances changed I endeavoured to achieve a flat response rather than flat earth system by starting with the purchase of some ESL57 speakers.
Although agreeing with the source needing to be to as good a standard as budget allows, it has surprised me a little to find greater enjoyment from all sources now that I have my own design pre and power amp in the system. I put this down to lowering distortions in the chain, particularly IM, as a consequence of using the most linear designs i can muster.
Put simply in my mind everything matters, including how individual kit responds together, or in one (overused?) word: synergy.
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Post by MartinT on Oct 26, 2015 9:49:14 GMT
I remember watching the Flat Earth movement with interest and scorn in about equal measure, with Hi-Fi Answers and Chris Frankland being the arch exponents. The fact that turntable-first was taken to such extremes (big Linn/Ittok setup, poxy Nait and shitty small speakers) just kept me the hell away from it all. Dealerships like Grahams Hi-Fi didn't help with their incredibly patronising we-know-best attitude. No, they certainly didn't.
I found The Cornflake Shop more enlightened but made a mistake in buying a Roksan Xerxes deck from them, which sounded good but suffered from top plate sag, a shoddy piece of Roksan design that they refused to cover under warranty. Wish I had kept my Michell Syncro.
For me, the source-first concept is flawed. I prefer a minimise-bottleneck approach, where all system components work at a similar level to give you the best possible sound quality at a given price point.
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ynwan
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Post by ynwan on Oct 26, 2015 10:30:12 GMT
The Syncro looked nice but was a very average (if that) sounding turntable.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 26, 2015 10:33:11 GMT
JAS 11G, the student bedroom fav budget amp I had a rare Black 'JA-S11' many years ago..
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Post by Deleted on Oct 26, 2015 10:35:04 GMT
The Syncro looked nice but was a very average (if that) sounding turntable. O i dunno Mark. Probably cos everyone same arm to them
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Post by Deleted on Oct 26, 2015 10:57:50 GMT
JAS 11G, the student bedroom fav budget amp I had a rare Black 'JA-S11' many years ago.. I had one of those too, they were never meant for the UK market they were for Germany and had 220v transformers. We got 500 from the German distributors when we ran out, 150 were black We got Modtronics to change the plugs and figured they should be OK. I changed the transformer on mine. If yours had a Euro type plug, it was a grey import.
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Post by MartinT on Oct 26, 2015 13:06:55 GMT
The Syncro looked nice but was a very average (if that) sounding turntable. The problem with mine was the crap arm I bought with it (a Helius Aureus, utter cack). It would have been great with a good inexpensive arm like the Acos Lustre.
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ynwan
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Post by ynwan on Oct 26, 2015 13:16:29 GMT
Probably cos everyone same arm to them ? Did you mean "probably because everyone had the same arm fitted to them"?
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