manicm said:Lee H said:manicm said:
John Cusack and Jack Black would agree
Probably the latter's last great movie, apart from Kung-Fu Panda - maybe he should be heard and not seen?
Last and only
tremon said:
Where did the two become mutually exclusive? More to the point, when did minimalism become the standard? Thankfully, the former has always been with us in tow with quality - plenty of decent kit out there past and present with both on tap.
Lee H said:manicm said:Lee H said:manicm said:
John Cusack and Jack Black would agree
Probably the latter's last great movie, apart from Kung-Fu Panda - maybe he should be heard and not seen?
Last and only
really didn't like high fidelity even though I love John Cussack. Think it is the book to film thing. Mr Black has done on good film since: Nacho Libre is great (but very silly).
donluca said:
I don't agree with this at all. As a child of the 60's I was raised on Miles Davis, Genesis, Floyd, Sabbath, Hawkwind, Zappa etc, together with punk, new wave and electronic stuff. Ever since I have been discovering fantastic new (and old) music by all sorts of brilliant artists and it continues to this day. Have you ever read Uncut magazine? Covers what you and I would probably describe as good music.
Currently listening to: Thin Lizzy - Jailbreak
matthewpiano
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The best sound I've heard has come from fairly minimalist seperates designs. By the far the best amps I've heard (at their various price brackets) have been the Unison Research Unico Primo, a Unison Research valve amp, the Sugden A21aSE, Sugden Mystro, Naim Nait 5i, Creek 4330R, and a couple of different Audio Note designs etc.
I've heard several AV amps and similar devices at several price points and, for music reproduction, they just don't come close. At the more affordable end I even tried the Yamaha 667 but found it left wanting considerably in comparison to something as entry-level as the Cambridge 350A when playing 2 channel music. The 667 was miles off Yamaha's own A-S500.
The all-in-one market has improved considerably and the Marantz MCR603 is a cracking piece of kit as are the more expensive units from Naim. With regard to the latter I can't agree with RS - Naim might only use a 30wpc amp stage but it has absolutely no problems performing in a normal domestic space from my experience.
As for music, there is loads of high quality music still being produced in all genres. You don't even have to look that far to find it.
I've heard several AV amps and similar devices at several price points and, for music reproduction, they just don't come close. At the more affordable end I even tried the Yamaha 667 but found it left wanting considerably in comparison to something as entry-level as the Cambridge 350A when playing 2 channel music. The 667 was miles off Yamaha's own A-S500.
The all-in-one market has improved considerably and the Marantz MCR603 is a cracking piece of kit as are the more expensive units from Naim. With regard to the latter I can't agree with RS - Naim might only use a 30wpc amp stage but it has absolutely no problems performing in a normal domestic space from my experience.
As for music, there is loads of high quality music still being produced in all genres. You don't even have to look that far to find it.
matthewpiano said:
MP
I love your list of amps, and would like to believe that the teenagers of today will be interested......companies pander to the biggest audience.
If my kids are anything to go by, they are more worried about cramming 10,000 tracks onto an ipod at a low bit rate, than getting better quality - even though they have access to decent kit. They want quantity and portability.
IMO. Class A sounds best, but won't be seen as "green" enough for the future, and like leaded petrol, will be phased out.
Cno
matthewpiano said:
Hi MP, nice to see you back again - you're not around this place enough these days!
My comment around lower powered amps stands as much for my own Sansui AU-217 (a 30w amp from 1977) which sounds fine at normal listening levels. Crank it up (beyond 10 o'clock on the dial) and it begins to struggle. By contrast, the 717 amp goes and goes. On the other hand, it's a high current 100w (in practice as opposed to the stated 85w) design, but the differences are clear.
Naim could've produced something significantly better and - albeit IMO - 30w leaves a lot to be desired for the money being asked. I'm sure it does sound good, I've heard it (or the Uniti - can't recall which, possibly the latter), but push it and it'll be found wanting I think.
matthewpiano
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Hi RS - I read the forums most days but don't always feel the need to comment these days.
Regarding the power issue, I suppose it depends what you want out of the hi-fi. I never take an amp above 9 o'clock and find that more than loud enough so lower power ratings don't bother me.
Regarding the power issue, I suppose it depends what you want out of the hi-fi. I never take an amp above 9 o'clock and find that more than loud enough so lower power ratings don't bother me.
Well, the point I was trying to make was about long-term value, not minimalism. It's fine to have all features in one box as long as all those features retain their value. But what would you pay today for an AV receiver with only HDMI 1.1 support?the record spot said:
And features and quality usually are mutually exclusive, unless you're willing to leave your pricepoint. All I'm saying is that I would much rather pay for more sound quality than for features that might (or might not) be obsolete two years from now.
Paul Hobbs said:I caught HiFi once, but thankfully I got better
Funny....some like me catch it for a life time and enjoy it throughout....
Gusboll said:
I agree. Music is a journey of discovery from childhood to old age. There is so much to listen to and appreciate - old and new. As you move along, you keep on discovering new gems...
CnoEvil said:
Following the rules of evolution - survival of the fittest, are change and innovation sounding the death knell of conventional HI-Fi as we have known it?
matthewpiano said:
I have found your comments / contribution here on this forum useful and valuable. Your keeping quiet would be a disadvantage to the forum. Please note.
Several posters have disagreed with this, but if I were to slightly rephase this to "the environments for listening to music are dying" would you still do so?donluca said:
For most of history, the world was pretty silent by modern standards: the most the Esterhazy family would have heard while their court musicians were playing Bach or Beethoven would have been the occasional lowing of cows. Making noise involved expending physical energy, so you didn't do it unless you had to.
I think once there was a universal power grid, so any moron could make as much noise as they pleased without lifting a finger, music was bound to shift to something that people used to drown out other people's noise rather than listen to for its own sake.
It's a fact http://read.bi/e1wOFx that music buying (measured in per-capita expenditure) peaked in the mid-late 70s, when people abandoned vinyl for cassette — CD didn't even exist then — to go portable and to create mix tapes. When vinyl junkies start a sermon, it's worth pointing out the public abandoned LPs for inferior analogue before digital ever appeared...
I think this was about the point that the deadly phrase "today's busy lifestyles" started to crop up in advertising. It was certainly the point that the classic album genres were replaced by forms of music (punk, hip-hop) that didn't need quality reproduction — if indeed the noise, rather than the number of TV outrages or drive-bys the performers had been involved in, was what was driving sales in the first place.
I also think this explains something else. It's fairly easy to show that a Full HD TV at normal viewing distances is effectively analogue, in the sense the eye can't distinguish individual pixels, so the picture is solid. It's equally easy to show that 16/44.1 digital sound is well below the equivalent aural threshold around 20/192kHz.
Yet HD Video is selling, while HD Audio isn't and largely isn't even being tried: people have to focus to watch a moving image, so hitting the limits of visual resolution sells, but sound is background, so the equivalent increase in resolution doesn't.
Hence to return to the topic of this thread, HiFi Sound appears to have less future than HiFi Vision.
StevenKay said:
So what if it does? Conventions change, 100 years ago it was convention to have a man walking in front of your car waving a red flag, does that mean conventional motoring as we know it is dead? So what if the CD player dies? Who cares, streaming systems will be mature in a few years and nobody will be questioning their use and they don't preclude the use of exactly the same pre-amps, amps and speakers as people are using now.
Give it thirty years you'll walk into your living room, say "Random selection - Play" and the room will be filled with music and you'll have no idea where it's coming from and you won't care because it'll sound incredible.
And that will be normal. Conventional Hi-Fi will die, in as much as having an amazing sounding system will no longer be a matter of choice or cost, it'll just be normal, storage will be dirt cheap, so lossless, high bitrate files (better than CD) will be standard, materials advances will mean flat, invisible speakers (in wall, in ceiling, whatever) will be so faithful there won't be any point in having floorstanders or any other "conventional" speaker as there'll be no improvement in sound quality from them, amplification will be hidden, the living room will become somewhere to sit again, rather than an equipment store.
You could do all this now, but there will be an impact on sound quality. Given time, there won't be.
StevenKay said:
Couldn't agree more. I started off listening to my mother's music as a kid, people like Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald. I still listen to them. As a teenager I discovered the Beatles, Stones, Creedence etc. , and on to Mahavishnu Orchestra, Genesis, Santana. I still listen to them all. Forty years on from that lot and I'm still finding new stuff to enjoy, so music is very much alive and kicking, thank goodness. When I bought my first, what then was regarded as hi-fi, system, there wasn't a lot of what I'd label "middle-fi" systems. Things like Japanese mass produced stuff, reliable, good quality and has an acceptable sound to most people's ears, and nowadays dominates the market. So I don't think there is a need for a large "hi-fi" market as the mainstream market is very strong. It always has been and always will be a slightly left of centre niche area. I've moved slightly with the times over the decades, ditching the vinyl and now CD, in favour of Flac/wav. I still buy CD's but only to rip them to a server, and what worries me in the future is getting access to high quality recordings to enjoy the music I listen to. With the market heavily weighted towards the convenience of the mp3 format, which personally I don't like, where will the source material come from for high quality listening if the CD dies ?
StevenKay said:
Couldn't agree more. I started off listening to my mother's music as a kid, people like Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald. I still listen to them. As a teenager I discovered the Beatles, Stones, Creedence etc. , and on to Mahavishnu Orchestra, Genesis, Santana. I still listen to them all. Forty years on from that lot and I'm still finding new stuff to enjoy, so music is very much alive and kicking, thank goodness. When I bought my first, what then was regarded as hi-fi, system, there wasn't a lot of what I'd label "middle-fi" systems. Things like Japanese mass produced stuff, reliable, good quality and has an acceptable sound to most people's ears, and nowadays dominates the market. So I don't think there is a need for a large "hi-fi" market as the mainstream market is very strong. It always has been and always will be a slightly left of centre niche area. I've moved slightly with the times over the decades, ditching the vinyl and now CD, in favour of Flac/wav. I still buy CD's but only to rip them to a server, and what worries me in the future is getting access to high quality recordings to enjoy the music I listen to. With the market heavily weighted towards the convenience of the mp3 format, which personally I don't like, where will the source material come from for high quality listening if the CD dies ?
daveloc said:
Ah, snobbery, you can't beat it! Funny how the idea that "good music is dying" is always determined by what the individual determines is "good" or even "music". A lot of people would regard those early punk or hip-hop albums that you put down, as being classic in their own right. Indeed you could argue (well, not could, I AM arguing it) that hip-hop can be a lot more demanding of a system than many of the "classic album genre" (whatever that means).
Music changes, technology changes, nothing changes.
The_Lhc said:Andrew Everard said:The_Lhc said:
Nearly, the image I had in my mind when I wrote that was preceded by a bald man saying "Tea, Earl Grey, hot".
And yes, I am a massive geek...
Thumbs up! Although of course the tea order is very specific, far from a random selection. I also pictured the heavenly music from the red dwarf episode "angels and demons".
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