GoodSoundClub - Romy the Cat's Audio Site

In the Forum: Playback Listening
In the Thread: Basic guide to advanced audio

Post Subject: Tone and girlsPosted by Jorge on: 8/1/2011

The other night I listened to a Girl with Guitar master tape. A friend has a home recording studio that would make most comercial studios not only jelaous, but also broke. A highly modded ATR 102 in 1/4" half track and a vintage stereo microphone; this same master we listened to in a horn system that is slighly different than mine. The power and dynamics of the voice made the singer herself come to tears, she said she had trouble in every studio she had recorded in because the sound always got compressed, this was the first time she had been able to listen to her real singing voice with all her nuances, I think she would know about it.

And yes even the slightest subtle chords were properly, softly, played...

I personally could not believe how powerfull and how much of sentiment a voice and a guitar can have right out of the studio. I take back all the times I said most systems can play girl with guitar music properly! .

Romy said

"I think importance is not in sequencing but in relationship between listening practice and sound presentational geometry. The presentational geometry is very important but only for audio not for listening to the message."

We have been talking about this "mechanical" or Geometrical audio effects, but have not looked at the transmision of the feeling put into the music by the artist, and this is what music is all about. Now without the electronic gear and all this careful measurements we would not be able to bring the magic in; but lets not forget about the magic!

As I said earlier even within these stepped effects I so bluntly described there are still levels of reproduction depending on gear and set up: Both of the parts have to be looked at. I would say tone and texture some of the most important aspects of an organic playback.

As an example I would remind how silver cabling sounds, it helps to bring out a pérfect resolution in the mechanical sense, most instrument will come out and be more delineated, but tone ussually suffers from this. I played for a few months with a wonderful solid state amp: Chord, it would bring out each and every detail in the recording with perfect size and pin point it perfectly in the sound stage. After a few months I came to call it the "cold bitch". She was like one of this great looking girls I dated, perfect all around, slim, red long hair, perfect sized breasts long legs high heels, funny, beautiful face, really shocking to look at, and that belly button piercing that drived me crazy: but she was terrible in bed! I am sure she made some other guy very happy and this is where the most complicated tuning of a system comes in, and it is again a matter of preferences, but also access: If wasnt so funny and good looking I would have never been able to go out with a girl like that only to realize, well... I have never been able to quad amplify my system with 4 Ongaku amplifiers, looks can only get you to a certain point! Wink

But maybe even all Ongakus wont be the best solution in order to bring magic for a given system in a given room. In this regard we are on our own.

I guess we could talk about some basic layouts; Ussually horns sound better with SET amps, Most direct radiators with SS. but then again, I like my upper bass horn with SS sometimes, copper ribbon cabling, Power conditioning, Alnico drivers with SET amps and Push pull with ferrite magnets, room acosutics, it is all about the tone and how we like our girls.

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