HiFi Subjectivist ¦ Audio Forum ¦ NVA User Group

True.

Yeah....I tend not to listen to Dire Straits; funny that. However I do like Mark Knopfler's solo work, It's good stuff and for me doesn't come tainted with all that flat earth bullshit.

At a recent DIY meet up north, I demmed my own system using one track of plinky-plonk female vocal jazz, then moved on to "Lazy" by Deep Purple, followed by "Talking Loud and Clear" by OMD. Comments afterwards were along the lines of "man I could listen to that system all day"

What I would love to see is manufacturers demming at shows with the kind of music ordinary punters would listen to. Audiophile recordings should be banned from shows and the makers made to show that their systems are able to play and do justice to everything from George Formby to Georg Solti, and everything in between.

Try to put on a show like that and nobody would turn up. Sad really.

Here I am demming my system.

Note the well organised seating arrangements and the specialist supports my amp and source equipment is carefully placed on

Oh and just look at that esoteric mains block peeking out from behind the telly.
That's my AoS credibility right out the window.

I really don't think the Oasis producers were as esoteric as to want to give a 'live feel' to their productions. I think that as with Northern Soul, T-Rex et al, the idea was for the music to sound sort-of fine on a car 'stereo', radio, or a cheap low-fi system. All the emphasis was on the mid-rage to low-treble. So when you play that through a decent analytical or straightforward (NVA) truthful system.... it plays back what there is.... Very little bass, a huge amount of mid-range/low treble. The result? It shouts at you, pins your ears to the wall and has you (me) running for the stop switch.

As a teenager (1970's) I think that's why I liked ELO so much. I had T-Rex, Arthur Conley, Status Quo etc etc etc in my album and singles collection. But it was ELO that shone through with the depth of their recordings. Latterly I got into Telarc classical recordings. Simply miked. Not over-produced so you got what there was was. Some CD's even came with a warning as the top-end wasn't filtered out.

I stand by what I say. It's the recording that makes the music, not the system.

Sadly they are still the brainwashed masses at shows. I did the Whittlebury Hall one a couple of years ago and swore "never again".

Here's my lad demming his own DIY builds via my speakers at the same meet.


And a mate from darn sarf demming with my speakers.


I didn't try to sell the idea of a neutral well-balanced set of speaks as a means of showing how good your records can sound, these guys just came up and asked to use them for their dems. Must be doing something right.

I realise DIY hi-fi is a bit left field, but it sure is a lot of fun

Oh I dunno... Solti Mahler 8 I know about because my mate did one of the several digital masterings on it, working from the analogue master tapes! The 'Decca Tree' mike technique added loads of phase distortion, which you hear at the very end of the symphony (it goes into a sort of nice phasey blur and it's NOT the vinyl cut, the digital transfer or tape overload. It's phase distortion in the original mike setup of the sessions ) Lovely music though. By the way and usually unbeknown to us, Decca used to re-visit some of their better known recordings and 'beauty-shop' them, adding genuine venue ambiance in between movements (instead of digital silence) and fine-tuning intro and outro's of analogue tape hiss where necessary. A fascinating chap to talk to and he'd give me chapter and verse on so many early Decca analogue recordings (mainly the cheap CD ones) he'd usually transferred 'flat' with no eq or compression, merely dealing with edits, splices etc and in one case on a hissy tape, expanding by gain-riding the quiet intro to a particular piece and gently aiding a fade-out of Holt's Neptune (I think it was), as the score calls for a gradual fade into silence.


[edit]

kimangelis wrote:I really don't think the Oasis producers were as esoteric as to want to give a 'live feel' to their productions. I think that as with Northern Soul, T-Rex et al, the idea was for the music to sound sort-of fine on a car 'stereo', radio, or a cheap low-fi system. .

Actually they did. There were three attempts made to record the first album in order to get the sound how they wanted it. The first attempt was rejected for sounding too polished.

Actually, in some defence of the last few shows I've attended, I've never had a problem having any of my own records or CD's played.

Macca wrote:

kimangelis wrote:I really don't think the Oasis producers were as esoteric as to want to give a 'live feel' to their productions. I think that as with Northern Soul, T-Rex et al, the idea was for the music to sound sort-of fine on a car 'stereo', radio, or a cheap low-fi system. .

Actually they did. There were three attempts made to record the first album in order to get the sound how they wanted it. The first attempt was rejected for sounding too polished.

Oh, maybe I was wrong then, you obviously CAN polish a turd.

I thought that Oasis CD's sound the way they do because they were engineered by clowns who didn't have a clue what they were doing.