Rerurn to Romy the Cat's Site
In the Forum: Audio Discussions
In the Thread: The Sakuma's Show
Post Subject: The Sakuma’s Sound is the level of his afforts.Posted by Romy the Cat on: 8/2/2007
 dazzdax wrote: |
| Sakuma San is some sort of cult figure among the tube-o-philes. I wonder why he is implementing so many transformers in his amplifiers. Using transformers can be a good thing but in my experience too many transformers give a somewhat compressed sound. I think Sakuma's designs excell in midrange forwardness and purity but at the same time they are quite dynamically compromised and bandwidth limited. As far as I know Sakuma only listen to mono, not stereo. |
|
| dazzdax wrote: |
| Sakuma San is some sort of cult figure among the tube-o-philes. I wonder why he is implementing so many transformers in his amplifiers. Using transformers can be a good thing but in my experience too many transformers give a somewhat compressed sound. I think Sakuma's designs excell in midrange forwardness and purity but at the same time they are quite dynamically compromised and bandwidth limited. As far as I know Sakuma only listen to mono, not stereo. |
|
Yes, he is a cult figure for the people who need a cult. I might assure you that there is a large difference between the elegantly written literature about Sakuma in the above-linked website, or at the video clip in that matter, and the reality is that I was able to experience in Sakuma’s restaurant.
The Sakuma’s topologies might be argued by engineers. I personally would a grievous you, Chris, and I do feel that overwhelming amount of transformers creates boundaries-restricted compressed sound, but I think there are more qualified people to make this judgment. What however I am able to judge in the Sakuma case was the Sound that Sakuma’s room demonstrated and the most important the level at which the entire installation was built.
The sound was not just midrangey it was surprisingly midrangey, and midrangey only. All those conversations about “energy” that “The Direct Heating” people love to spread about Sakuma’s sounds honestly worth very-very little. Too me the Sakuma’s installation sounded like bad Loather, griven by a brutal solid-state, severely band-pased amplification. He played and number of amps and I had the identical feeling about the results. Well, it is possible that Sakuma, being Japanese was looking for this type of Sound, which is perfectly find itself, but I did not find any inspiration for myself in what I heard.
http://www.goodsoundclub.com/GetPost.aspx?PostID=1959
However, what made to me “get” the Sakuma sound as objectively bad was certain level at which the entire sound was assembled in that room. My experience suggests that at the level at which Sakuma playback attempts took place is not of the level where interesting for me sound might occur. I can bring numerous specific illustrations but now necessary would be?
BTW, Sakuma does not “listen only mono” as it portrayed in articles about him. He stuck to mono because the restaurant room where his system is installed cannot support proper stereo. Even him mono installation was very compromised from my point of view. So, I did have feeling that Sakuma was person who strictly intentionally builds Sound with great sense of purpose at least the purpose the I was able to understand. The Sakuma audio was to me a rather made “as is” and then added good literature embellishing the after facts.
Rgs, Romy the caTRerurn to Romy the Cat's Site