What is Best High End HI FI?

[Diamond Joe]

aliEnRIK:Diamond Joe:

I still think it looks like something from a 50's sci-fi movie. I can't imagine you'd accommodate one of those in your front room chebby.

I would SO have that in my front room. I love the look of it

Have you seen the price of it????

 

[aliEnRIK]

Id have expected it to be pricey

First price ive seen is $12800

 

[Thaiman]

aliEnRIK:

Id have expected it to be pricey

First price ive seen is $12800

I wish! again, US price is cheaper than UK even if the product is (hand

) build in EU.

Still - there is, at least, one person who sold his (very costly) Kondo Ongaku and bought one of the Mastersound model instead. I can post my (already written but in broken English

) review here if some might be interest to read it.

 

[Anonymous]

Thaiman:

Including home demo, over 2 months

Honestly, this is it....really!.

The Mastersound 845 must be seriously good if you've had it that long. I'll have to get a listen to one at some point.

 

[Babur72]

Yura84:Verity Parsifal

Hi Yura84,

Completely agree with your sentiments about Verity 'speakers mate.

Never previously had the opportunity to hear Verity's 'speakers.That was,until yesterday,when i heard the Verity Sarastro's.Which were sublime.Despite the demo. room sounding less than ideal.

The first time i've been really bowled-over by ribbon-tweetered 'speakers.Giving the upper registers an airy & lucid quality.With natural separation of instruments or voices within a holographic,life-like acoustic image.Near-seamless integration from high-to-mid-to-low frequencies.And some of the best articulation & coherency to bass replay i've heard in a passive 'speaker.

Most of the ribbon-tweetered designs i'd heard before felt a little cool in tone,distant or uninvolving in presentation & sometimes betrayed a slightly metallic character to higher frequencies.

Using a Solution 740 CD player with external power-supply,Lamm LL2.1/Lamm hybrid power-amp's firstly,then seperately - connecting the Solution CD player to the high-level inputs of a FM - Acoustics 411 mkII(i think) power-amp to drive the Sarastro's.

I'm deliberating whether or not i should stretch my budget to accommodate the Verity's,or go for the ART Deco 15's or 20's.A little unsure whether the Verity 'speakers have any synergy with Mac. amp's.So,i plan to hear them again in a few weeks with a pair of Luxman pre. & power-amp's & some Mac. solid-state amp's to compare.

Only one potential drawback with the Verity's though.That rear-firing 11inch & rear-ported woofer necessitates that the Sarastro's placement is,at the very least,3ft away from the rear wall & the same from either side-wall.

I'll have some tough(though enjoyable) choices to make over the next few months.

Regards.

BABUR.

 

[Ultima893]

The best of the best? McIntosh powered & driven Snell THX Music & Cinema Reference Towers

Those beauties were chosen for the Kipnis Studio Standard Cinema Beta, $6 million home cinema featuring the greatest picture quality and highest sound fidelity in the world.

The KSS uses 13 of those Snell THX speakers!! :beer:

 

[CnoEvil]

The best of the best? McIntosh powered & driven Snell THX Music & Cinema Reference Towers

Those beauties were chosen for the Kipnis Studio Standard Cinema Beta, $6 million home cinema featuring the greatest picture quality and highest sound fidelity in the world.

The KSS uses 13 of those Snell THX speakers!! :beer:

With WAF so high on its list of attributes, how could one refuse. 😉

 

[Ultima893]

Not sure what you mean, but the sound those Snell THX's has to be so mindblowing! :cheers:

 

[Anonymous]

What is the best sounding, clear, good for melodies, hearing instruments, different voices, tones, subtleties etc, high end hi fi, not the most powerfully loud one. Thanks

Not one you'll find at any hifi store.

If you mean digital - you need a good upsampling DAC.

If you mean Vinyl - you need a good phono stage.

In my view the best of both of these comes from the DIY world - where all the design expertise is now.

For an amp, you need DHTs (Directly heated triodes) all the way through, with transformer coupling, driving light and sensitive speakers. Single ended would be preferable.

Speakers - bit of a choice here - the clearest most natural sound will be from electrostatics, planars or open baffles. Again DIY really has it. You need a top design, and then carefully selected drive units, with high-linearity poles and magnets.

A real 'someone's in the room' quality will never be achieved by hifi store kit, there simply isn't the technical or marketing drive for it. Incidentally the most realistic voice I have _ever_ heard came from an old stereo table-top radio. It may have looked old, but with tube tuner stages, single ended tube amp, alnico speakers with paper cones and open back the realism was breathtaking for voice, I was literally looking around for the person.

This midrage vocal nirvana is the furthest thing from being achievable by the 'hifi' of today, lessons learnt in the 1950s and 1960s have been replaced by a harsh coloured facsimilie of what things should really sound like.

 

[SteveR750]

To the OP, why do you want to know?

 

[CnoEvil]

Not sure what you mean, but the sound those Snell THX's has to be so mindblowing! :cheers:

If I moved these in, Mrs Cno would move out......worth bearing in mind I suppose. They make ATC look aesthetically pleasing). 🙂

 

[CnoEvil]

To the OP, why do you want to know?

This thread is nearly a year old. :read: 🙂

 

[SteveR750]

To the OP, why do you want to know?

This thread is nearly a year old. :read: 🙂

Aah. Well prves that some things shold just be left to perish naturally.... :doh:

 

[MUSICRAFT]

I would rank the great Pioneer A-400 amongst the finest

Thanks

Rick @ Musicraft

 

[lindsayt]

What is the best sounding, clear, good for melodies, hearing instruments, different voices, tones, subtleties etc, high end hi fi, not the most powerfully loud one. Thanks

I don't know about "best" as there's too much stuff I've not heard yet. But the following should get you very firmly into a genuinely high-end sounding system - as in vaguely like a live band playing in your room:

Studer (or similar) reel to reel tape machine with some master tape copies

Pioneer Exclusive P3a or EMT 927/930/948/950 or souped-up Lenco turntables

NVA TFS (or similar) PC based digital streaming solution

Resistor based passive pre-amp - when used with a source with a healthy output and suitable (high input impedance) power amplification.

45/2a3/300b/211 SET power amplification

Quad ESL or EV Patrician speakers (or something similar to these to suit your personal taste)

 

[CnoEvil]

Year Old Thread. :read:

 

[Ultima893]

Well the topic still stands even though its a year old. Its a debate that'll never end as no one's been able to hear every high end speaker :rofl:

I'd still say the B&W Diamond 800 (chosen for Abbey Road Studios should say something) and of course the Snell THX reference system (chosen by KSS, Skywalker and Stereophile)

 

[the record spot]

High end hifi to my understanding is something more than just an audio piece. It gets into design statement for the more esoteric designs, not all of it as brilliant as the price might suggest. It depends on what the consumer wants, the designer was seeking to build and the technology employed. Consequently, the best high end hifi needn't necessarily be that bearing the highest value amount on the ticket.

 

[hortensio]

Guys we can learn from each other sxperiences on this Forum...so don't keep repeating the philosophy "trust your own ears".EVERYONE ALREADY KNOWS THAT!!

 

[ID.]

Guys we can learn from each other sxperiences on this Forum...so don't keep repeating the philosophy "trust your own ears".EVERYONE ALREADY KNOWS THAT!!

You'd think/hope so, but it seems that the point that things are subjective and that there is not definitive "best" isn't so immediately obvious to everyone, particularly when they first get into audio, etc.

 

[lindsayt]

Also, when it comes to achieving high-end sound, less is more.

That is, less is more where you can get away with less.

So, for example with pre-amplifiers if you have a system where you don't need the gain of a linestage, a £300 new resistor based passive pre-amp (essentially just a volume control) will sound just as good - if not better - than even the most expensive and highly rated active pre-amps such as the top end Naim or Kondo ones. This is because active pre-amps must include a passive pre-amp section as well as all the active circuitry through which the signal passes. If you have a system where you need the gain of a linestage, then a passive pre-amp won't work well at all as it will sound flat and undynamic.

In speakers, if you're listening to music without a lot of mid to lower bass nor higher treble information, or if your taste in hi-fi is such that the mid-range is all important to you, then single driver speakers such as Lowthers can deliver a high-end sound.

In power amplifiers, if you don't need the power or the drive of a high power amplifier then a well executed simple SET valve amplifier (£1500 in parts if you DIY it or £3500 new for one commercially available) will sound more detailed, natural and dynamic than the best high powered solid state amplifiers. One of the questions here is what has a higher end sound as a speaker / power amplifier combination? High powered amp with low efficiency speakers or low powered amp with high efficiency speakers? Of the examples I've heard so far, I'd say that high efficiency speakers offer dynamics that make low efficiency speakers sound compressed and shut-in.

 

[Anonymous]

So, for example with pre-amplifiers if you have a system where you don't need the gain of a linestage, a £300 new resistor based passive pre-amp (essentially just a volume control) will sound just as good - if not better - than even the most expensive and highly rated active pre-amps such as the top end Naim or Kondo ones. This is because active pre-amps must include a passive pre-amp section as well as all the active circuitry through which the signal passes.

This just doesn't seem to work out in practice though does it?

Passive pre-amps always sound rather lacking in drive for some reason, possibly because the driving device can't really handle the load of the amplifier input (+passive level control).

The best passive system seems to be transformer/auto-transformer based - possibly because the impedance change is in favour - rather than out of favour as with the resistor network.

There are some good circuits with beam deflection tubes that don't use an attenuator at all, as the grid voltage controls the level and the beam deflection gives you a balanced output - this approach has far more mileage than resistor networks. For this and other reasons the best sound will always come from DIY 🙂

 

[lindsayt]

In practise it can.

If, for example, you have a source with up to 4.4 volts output then a resistor based passive pre-amp will have all the drive of an active or TVC (Transformer Volume Control) pre-amp. Whilst being more transparent than the active and having better bass and treble than the TVC.

And of course, if you had a system with just the right amount of amplification gain, you could do away with the pre-amp / volume control altogether for another less is more approach to high-end sound.

 

[Anonymous]

In practise it can.

If, for example, you have a source with up to 4.4 volts output then a resistor based passive pre-amp will have all the drive of an active or TVC (Transformer Volume Control) pre-amp. Whilst being more transparent than the active and having better bass and treble than the TVC.

Voltage alone does not make a circuit, you need current too!

 

[CnoEvil]

Guys we can learn from each other sxperiences on this Forum...so don't keep repeating the philosophy "trust your own ears".EVERYONE ALREADY KNOWS THAT!!

You'd think/hope so, but it seems that the point that things are subjective and that there is not definitive "best" isn't so immediately obvious to everyone, particularly when they first get into audio, etc.

I agree with ID's point. Very often, when someone is new to hifi, they think there is some "mystical art" in understanding what a decent system should sound like. The number of times I've heard a friend say, "but I wouldn't be able to tell a good sound if I heard one".

This lack of confidence causes them to come on a forum like this one, to get an "expert" to tell them what to buy, so as to prevent them making a mistake; or even just buying a 5* product without audition. On many occasions, this actually has the opposide effect, and they are back on here looking to sort out why they don't like it.

So, surprising as it may seem, people don't always trust their ears, and can let a robustly put view point steer them in a direction which turns out to be wrong for them.