Re: My NVA Amp Returns
Posted: Wed Jan 31, 2018 5:56 pm
Totally agree about not being able to approach the sound of live music with a hifi system, someone with a guitar in a pub gives me more musical "joy"/buzz than a system can.SteveTheShadow wrote: ↑Wed Jan 31, 2018 5:03 pm I've been attacked from all directions for my own hi-fi adage that there are no lousy recordings, only lousy systems.
I still hold that view because no-one has ever been able to prove otherwise, and this philosophy was one of the reasons I ended up banned from AoS after clashing repeatedly with Arkwright among others, who took umbrage at being told that their "revealing" systems were actually piles of shite
A top music system should be able to get the best out of any recording. NVA amps seem to be some of the most capable in that respect.
Here's a secret: achieving this magical state of affairs is to do with adequate headroom from all parts of the system and some of the biggest tests of headroom are historical recordings on 78s and not so called audiophile recordings. Get your historical recordings sounding good and the audiophile stuff will blow you away. If your historical recordings sound unpleasant, you will never know how good your audiophile records can sound.
The headroom bottleneck is IMO why no hi-fi, no matter how good, will ever approach the sound of live music. We can however make a damned fine smaller facsimile with the right attitude to what actually matters, when trying to put a good system together.
Without turning this in to too much of an NVA loveliest, I would like to add that I was very dissatisfied with CD playback until I got my NVA. It also seems to get the best out of the CD format.
However, I am not convinced that you will be able to just "give up" putting together valve amps - when you write about them there seems to be a certain amount of love involved!