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In the Forum: Horn-Loaded Speakers
In the Thread: SPUnisation of Macondo: how to catch own testicals.
Post Subject: Who? (shades of the old "musical" vs. "accurate" debate)Posted by Paul S on: 2/1/2007
I must have missed out on how you regulate gain to or from each or any of several "channels"/pass bands, Romy.  I can remember years ago trying lots of EQ things to get "Flat Frequency Response" and finally giving up on all of it, including the so-called "transparent" commercial EQ options then available.  Ironically, by the time I got it pretty flat it sounded just totally dead.  I still use (passive fixed-value/gain) notch filters for the Lowthers, however, and I did use simple  pots on the silk domes in my previous speaker system, and I pretty much tuned that slope from album to album, this to pretty good if ADDH/OCD advantage.  But I guess in the end I don't really miss the edge-of-the-seat listening that having the opiton afforded/inflicted on me.

My present (last several years) method involves nothing more than tuning the whole system to get my 50-60s jazz as correct as I can while allowing (or even encouraging) me to remain a musical omnivore.  One test of the system for me has long been that I am able to get "music" from certain rock albums, even if they are not at the pinnacle of either musical or technical excellence.  Perhaps it has been just a happy coincidences that as my system clarity and resolution have improved, many albums I though were just noise have turned out to have artistic/musical content, and some have even revealed measures of genius and "good sound" despite obvious technical problems.  By this I mean that the system now makes music from stuff that previous systems rendered as noise, and I consider this a very good thing, indeed.  Oddly enough, this has turned out to work equally well with certain Angel, Everest, and old Red Seal recordings, etc., that used to sound like dirt, not to mention straightening out certain DGGs and newer Red Seals that previously sounded like wailing banshees.  Is there anything worse than massed violins poorly rendered?

Anyway, I have to say that I am not aware of any radical change(s) I have made to the system's balance in order to effect the "omnivore" characteristic, unless it was a diminishing of system self-noise, including plain old disotrtion.  One thing that is now clear is that a good portion of the noise I was hearing before came from "hot" recordings, some of which "heat" I had taken for bad mic-ing, mistracking or poor quality vinyl, etc., but now the "heat" has been "resolved into music".  Quite a surprise, and in some cases quite a nice surprise.

Lastly, I also enjoy CD now, and I think I even have the CD tonal balance pretty well matched to LPs, at least in cases where I have both the CD and the LP version of the same session to compare.

Although we are not taliking about the same sound-shaping process, are we not both finding what is good in a recording?

Best regards,
Paul S

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