Messy Music

[EarsEarsEars]

Hi Folks!

First post, and I haven't yet had time with this hobby to possess a decent descriptive vocabulary, but I'll do my best - please be gentle!

I've only recently decided on a foray into the world of Hi-Fi, and I must say, so far it's going swimmingly. I didn't realise quite how quickly upgrade-itis would come a-knocking, but I have largely ignored it to this point, and think that I will try to keep ignoring it until I feel I have a better idea of what my system is doing and why it sounds like it does.

From my exploits and trials so far it seems that my system as it stands does pretty well with a fair range of music, from classical to classic rock, to pop to R&B to whatever, but I have noticed on several occasions that things get a bit messy and indistinct if the pace of the music picks up too much. Tracks like Muse's Assassin from Black Holes and Revelations - a pretty high tempo sort of affair, admittedly, but this even happens on very poppy tracks like Adele's Tired. This all music which is really clear and well-spaced when I play it through headphones on the ipod, but gets pretty confused. messy and loses a lot of the individual instrumentation when I play either the CD through the blu-ray player, or from the ipod through a dock direct into the amp.

In short, it just sounds pretty awful, really, and I was wondering if it was limitations of my system, i.e. the amp or speakers, or the peripherals - the source, the blu-ray player/ipod dock or some cabling issue. I'm currently running symphony 200 as my starter cable.

I guess I'm just a bit confused as to how some music can sound so damned good on the system, and others, often from the same album, just end up as an annoying hash of sound.

Any thoughts appreciated.

Cheers

Ears.

 

[Anonymous]

Sounds like a room interaction to me. Sound waves reflected off hard surfaces interfering destructively with the ones coming out of the speakers, which can certainly mess up complex rhythms.

If your room is very bare, try adding some sound absorbing materials such as soft furnishings, carpets, heavy curtains, bookcases. You could also play around with speaker placement; try moving them closer to or further away from room boundaries and see if it helps.

 

[John Duncan]

Combination of things, I expect - iPod dock and BluRay player may not be the best at conveying the timing of the music, and the 640 amp can be a bit harsh to my ears with the wrong material.

Few things you can do - amp would be my first port of call, whilst adding a DAC to the BD player - and thence a streamer - is an option. Depends on whether you have any money to spend......

 

[idc]

EarsEarsEars:

From my exploits and trials so far it seems that my system as it stands does pretty well with a fair range of music, from classical to classic rock, to pop to R&B to whatever, but I have noticed on several occasions that things get a bit messy and indistinct if the pace of the music picks up too much. Tracks like Muse's Assassin from Black Holes and Revelations - a pretty high tempo sort of affair, admittedly, but this even happens on very poppy tracks like Adele's Tired. This all music which is really clear and well-spaced when I play it through headphones on the ipod, but gets pretty confused. messy and loses a lot of the individual instrumentation when I play either the CD through the blu-ray player, or from the ipod through a dock direct into the amp.

My experience is that the further up the hifi tree you go, the more revealing the hifi becomes of badly recorded music. Hence the headphones out the ipod can sound great because it makes the least demands of the recording. That is what it was designed to do, appeal to the mass market by making everything sound at least OK. Your CDs and even the ipod into the dock makes more demands of the recording and you are noticing those faults.

Along with the two above posters comments about room accoustics and system matching you have different things to try to improve the sound and find the best balance.

Some recordings will always sound poor on anything above a bog standard hifi, though it is probably down to the well recorded music now sounding better than the poorly recorded stuff sounding worse.