Hi-Fi Honesty

[CN211276]

There is no way you can make meaningful comparisons by means of needledrops posted on the Internet.

Fascinating to be filled in on things I missed out on when I had lost interest in hifi.

[Lindsayt]

Here's what Lejonklou said on the Lekonklou forum:
OK, I’ll give it a go.

I think the most likely thing going on is that we listen for different things. And therefore we mean different things when we claim that one reproduction is more tuneful than another.

Sometimes the only way to find out for sure whether this is the case is to listen together, in the same room, and compare our favourite machines. Judging clips works up to a point, but I find it benefits greatly from prior common in-room experiences. Then we know what the other person is listening for.

Another possibility, one that I find less likely, is that I haven’t listened properly to the turntables you do find the best. And one or several of them actually are better than an LP12. Now that would be fantastic, as I would immediately sell the very expensive turntable I have at home and get a better one for (I hope) far less money. I would absolutely LOVE this!

EDIT:
On that bake-off on the PFM forum, what did others think? Was there consensus around your findings or did some think the opposite? Which were the winners and what did the majority think?

Tpetsch said:
In a nutshell many of us define & hear the tune differently.

There are sounds and effects & then there's the tune.

The tune is the thing that transports us, draws us into the music and grabs our attention, resulting in the gear itself somewhat disappearing, if I find my mind wandering and thinking about other things other than the music playing right in front of me somethings gone wrong tune wise.

If attention turns away from the tune and onto to other things like soundstage, space around the instruments or how in my latest A/B I now notice cowbell etc. in the background I didn't notice before, things can start to go down the rabbit hole.

Thing is, all we can really surmise about any master tape/master is that some very talented and professional singers and musicians came together and spent a lot of time and effort to create a musical experience, the final product should move us in an emotional way, it should be tuneful/musical -because their pros and do this for a living- and we should be able to make sense of the artists creative intentions and more tuneful gear helps us to further & more deeply make even more sense of it all.

What we can't surmise is how much space around the instruments there was in the recording studio the day the music was recorded or how big the soundstage was or if there even was a soundstage, ..or a studio? Or how much cowbell, etc. the band wanted mixed down to the master, did they mix in the cowbell as an overall balanced accent or intend to make it stand out as an obvious presence to the listener? We simply can't know how the performance intends to portray these sounds & effects or in what direction we should attempt to adjust for them in our systems because we have no way of knowing how much or little of these things actually exist on the master. ...But what we do know is how Miles Davis can make the hairs on your arm stand up when he plays the trumpet.

One could argue that the more an end user or manufacturer focus's on attempting to "improve" upon these unknowable sound & effects quantities the more they may find their gear moving away from the core fundamental tune / musical performance itself.

Happy holidays all..

markiteight added:
That's a really excellent summary of the reasons behind the Tune Method, tpetsch. Thanks for that. I would add that while the degree to which a listener is drawn into the music can be an indicator of issues with a system's ability to play the tune, it is itself not a reliable method of evaluating the tune. Attention to the music can be affected by other factors that are difficult or impossible to control in an A-B comparison, leading to an inconsistent outcome. But if an evaluator finds their attention drifting more during one phase of a comparison, it is entirely reasonable to confirm whether or not that is caused by a poor musical performance using more consistent and reliable methods.

I think it's entirely possible the methods of evaluations are where differences of opinion occur. I feel like we are all in general agreement about what the tune means, it's how we get there where our roads diverge. Technique can be personal, too. What works for one person might not work for another. I myself have struggled a bit over the years finding the evaluation method that works best for me.

Fredrik's suggestion that listening together resonated with me too. I learned a lot about his methods, and what he's listening for, while playing music alongside Fredrik. I also discovered some fun, new music.

For me
I think that none of this explains the widely different reported experiences of the Rega Planar 3 with an AT95E.
IE they say it was the best sounding vinyl source of its' era, apart from the Linn.
I say that - for example - a fully working Trio L07D with an Ortofon SPU would beg to differ.

[CN211276]

A lot is being made of the tune. I can hear the tune on my DAB radio. I expect this and a lot more from the hifi.

[CN211276]

My speculation is that it's Ivor T marketing bollocks that has gotten out of hand.

LP12 wins a bake-off = confirmation that the LP12 is the greatest ever.
LP12 loses a bake-off=LP12 wasn't set up properly
Properly set up LP12 loses a bake-off=listeners weren't using the correct evaluation method.
Properly set up LP12 loses a bake-off with listeners evaluating against Linn's tunedem method=how the listeners were using tunedem wasn't correct
Properly set up LP12 loses a bake-off with listeners reportedly using tunedem in the correct orthodox way=listeners have an (emotionally biased) axe to grind

[Vinyl-ant]

I had a discussion along similar lines on the at forum recently.
As you know i rebuilt several turntables this year, compared them to each other as i can connect 5 up at once. I had the lenco, the jbe, the jvc y5, the roksan, the oracle delphi, and a td124 all at the same time.

Out of all of them, the one i didnt like was the oracle. I was rather disappointed, because it was a bucket list deck for me.

The thing with it was that it was absolutely brilliant with certain music. But rubbish with other music.
Put 70s rock or 80s stuff like simple minds, and it had me grinning like an idiot. Put pat metheney on, or something that required precision, transparency and subtlety and it was smeared and coloured.
But my god, simple minds alive and kicking sounded utterly.
utterly.
fabulous.
Pat metheney still life (talking) was crap.

The lenco and jbe have almost all of that life and bounce that it had with the simple minds, (not quite to the level of the oracle) but all the transparency and subtlety and precision to make the pat metheney album sound just as wonderful too.
The y5 jvc is a little hazy compared to the lenco and jbe, but a very sweet unfatiguing listen all day to anything you want to sound. Not the nth degree anywhere, a jack of all trades master of none deck. That 99.9% would use and love and be happy.

The roksan is close to the lenco and jbe, similar to the jvc with its xps7 power supply, but it also has a liquid gold top end which is, with the dv20 cart, astonishingly good. And it does this with anything you want to play.
Which is why i keep it.

The thorens was a little bloated at the bottom, a bit coloured but enjoyable.

Thinking about this, i realised after discussing the language we use to describe sound on forums, that what i want is transparency above all else, and that the jbe is modified extensively and unconsciously to this end.
The lenco is barely a lenco any more, very extensively modified, and the arm on it which i designed and built and tore my hair out over for 5 years of iterating, tweaking, changing and redesigning because i had a sound in my head that i wanted, its also unconsciously built to be as transparent as i want it to be so it doesnt piss me off like the lp12 i had, the obscene amount of decks i have gone through and got rid of, and the oracle did.

I don't want the same as someone who wants an lp12 or an oracle, theres nothing wrong with that, but i completely understand why people do want the lp12/oracle sound.

To me the planar is 'grey', by which i mean it is flat, not dynamic, hazy, leading edges bleed into each other, separation of instruments is somewhat amorphous and it does nothing for me at all. Sticking a forward sounding cart like an at95 on it does not address the problems i have with it.

To an extent i know what people mean with the lp12, but not the rega. But there again, it is not my place to say that someone is wrong for liking the rega, and i dont get the attitude of people who feel they have the right to say that someone is wrong for doing so.

Its that attitude that i have issue with, not the fact that they proclaim that x is better than y

[karatestu]

Excellent comparison there Ant. I think I can take something useful from that. And i have no reason to believe you are not being honest. And even though I do not know you and we have never met I know enough about you to know that you are genuine and genuinely enthusiastic about what floats your boat. I cannot say that about many other people I come across on the Internet. Who knows what is the motive behind what they post or who they really are.

When you refer to transparency I guess you mean the same thing that RD implied when he said " clean the window" ? If that is the case then we both want the same thing (I think).

Does transparency or cleaning the window ultimately mean we are hearing what some people describe as "more detailed " ? Or is there more to it than that ?

Stu

[Geoff.R.G]

I had a discussion along similar lines on the at forum recently.
As you know i rebuilt several turntables this year, compared them to each other as i can connect 5 up at once. I had the lenco, the jbe, the jvc y5, the roksan, the oracle delphi, and a td124 all at the same time.

Out of all of them, the one i didn't like was the oracle. I was rather disappointed, because it was a bucket list deck for me.

The thing with it was that it was absolutely brilliant with certain music. But rubbish with other music.
Put 70s rock or 80s stuff like simple minds, and it had me grinning like an idiot. Put Pat Metheney on, or something that required precision, transparency and subtlety and it was smeared and coloured.
But my god, Simple Minds alive and kicking sounded utterly.
utterly.
fabulous.
Pat Metheney still life (talking) was crap.

The lenco and jbe have almost all of that life and bounce that it had with the simple minds, (not quite to the level of the oracle) but all the transparency and subtlety and precision to make the pat metheney album sound just as wonderful too.
The y5 jvc is a little hazy compared to the lenco and jbe, but a very sweet unfatiguing listen all day to anything you want to sound. Not the nth degree anywhere, a jack of all trades master of none deck. That 99.9% would use and love and be happy.

The roksan is close to the lenco and jbe, similar to the jvc with its xps7 power supply, but it also has a liquid gold top end which is, with the dv20 cart, astonishingly good. And it does this with anything you want to play.
Which is why I keep it.

The thorens was a little bloated at the bottom, a bit coloured but enjoyable.

Thinking about this, i realised after discussing the language we use to describe sound on forums, that what i want is transparency above all else, and that the jbe is modified extensively and unconsciously to this end.
The lenco is barely a lenco any more, very extensively modified, and the arm on it which I designed and built and tore my hair out over for 5 years of iterating, tweaking, changing and redesigning because I had a sound in my head that I wanted, its also unconsciously built to be as transparent as I want it to be so it doesn't piss me off like the lp12 I had, the obscene amount of decks I have gone through and got rid of, and the oracle did.

I don't want the same as someone who wants an lp12 or an oracle, there's nothing wrong with that, but I completely understand why people do want the lp12/oracle sound.

To me the planar is 'grey', by which I mean it is flat, not dynamic, hazy, leading edges bleed into each other, separation of instruments is somewhat amorphous and it does nothing for me at all. Sticking a forward sounding cart like an at95 on it does not address the problems i have with it.

To an extent i know what people mean with the lp12, but not the rega. But there again, it is not my place to say that someone is wrong for liking the rega, and I don't get the attitude of people who feel they have the right to say that someone is wrong for doing so.

Its that attitude that I have issue with, not the fact that they proclaim that x is better than y

That is very interesting. I can imply from what you say that any turntable will have its highs and lows each suiting different recordings and genres of music. Thus, whilst the LP12 may well sound great with some recordings it may well fall short with others. I know my TD160 is better with some types of music than others, why should any other turntable (turntable/arm/cartridge combination) not similarly favour a particular musical genre?

It is no surprise that each and every combination of three components will sound different, finding the optimal combination is going to be a very personal choice. Coupling that choice with a selection of recordings is likely to result in some dissatisfaction because, regrettably, recordings differ too. I think we have to accept that each recording is a performance in its own right and enjoy it, or not, for what it is. If a particular turntable/arm/cartridge combination enhances that enjoyment, go for it.

Over the years I have read many reviews but I do recall that the first reviews of the Linn weren't good, that was 1973ish. I bought my TD160 in the late 70s and never considered the Linn, based on that early review. What concerns me about the Linn is that, from what I have read, it needs to be set-up just so, one needs to listen in a particular way and for particular things, if you don't do that you won't get the "genuine" experience. To get to the point, I listen to music to hear the instruments/voices and the way they merge into the whole. When I have a mixing desk in front of me I listen harder than when I sit down to listen to a recording, I also listen differently. Don't ask me to explain, I can't.

[karatestu]

Below Is a quote from somebody on this forum from 2014. Brutally to the point and probably as honest as I could have imagined somebody to be (I have never heard the gear in question though.)

Quote

"I couldn't believe it when I first heard the original ADM9's. They are without doubt the most boring flat unmusical pile of shite I have ever listened to, and believe me I have heard some serious piles of shite."

10 honesty points for guessing who posted that.

[Vinyl-ant]

I do t tend to comment too much on sound quality because is is alway open for interpretation and the words i use to describe something might mean a different thing to another person.
But you may have read me describe things as 'clean'.

Discussing this with nick, mark, and others on audio talk, my 'clean' meant transparent to nick.

What i mean by this is that all parts of a song, the voice, the kickdrum, the piano, whatever, are all there in their own space, they are all where they should be. they dont bleed into each other, they start and stop clearly and easily.
If the detail is there its there
That you can lock on to any individual part of a performance easily and follow it. That you can lock onto different parts one after the other without having to strain, and they are all clearly defined.
That you can pick out things that are deeper in the mix just as easily as things that are front and centre.
That harmonics from say a plucked double bass string dont get swamped by other things going on, the decay on one cymbal isnt swamped by hits on other cymbals.

And that it is easy to hear these things without concentrating really hard to.

I find personally that when i have this, something clicks and i get lost in what im listening to, its all one piece, but if i dont, it starts to get on my nerves because i feel that someting fundamental is missing and it is disjointed

I dont know if that makes sense.

And yes, i think that its always horses for courses. Why one tt arm cart combination should be more suited to a genre is all in the tiny subtleties that one person lokks for that so.ekne else doesnt because they are looking for something else.
Its hugely personal

[CN211276]

I recall when the JBE was briefly being touted as a LP12 beater. It was 1979 and at a blind demonstration the JBE came out on top. A comparison in Popular HiFi followed in which the JBE was compared to the LP12 along with other high end belt drives such as the Pink Triangle, Systemdeck and Logic, if I recall correctly. Direct and idler drives were not considered worthy. Not surprisingly the LP12 came out on top of the pile. The JBE came bottom and in a separate comparison it came out second best to the Rega 3. The JBE designer, Boyd I think he was called, was not impressed and vocal about what was going on.

This was a sign of the brain washing back hander times which would continue until the Internet, bake offs and spread of knowledge in place of