Can an audio system be too good?
Subscribe to Ask Paul Ask a QuestionThe better and more revealing an audio system becomes, the chances of it revealing all the good as well as the bad increases with resolution.
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Shouldn’t one ask if there is a loudspeaker which is more revealing than the super-headphones used by sound engineers when checking the mix? And have headphones really made such huge improvements over the last decades concerning the resolution of finest details??? And never forget what the room acoustics is adding to the sound perceived in your own listening room!
> have headphones really made such huge improvements over the last decades…?
Actually, no. I recently scored the new Stax L700mk2. Comparing them today with my first Lambdas, version late 1970s… For most of us on wages, save your money. How many times better would the new ones need to be to be worth that factor, pricewise.
…In my opinion,
(see, I took your recent nudge Paul)
realising that price / value is always personal.
That’s like criticizing for telling the truth. Tone controls?
Funny that you use the visual analogy regarding this film short….. about 15 yrs ago, blu ray was the big deal. We had a Christmas gift exchange and we were asked what we wanted at our work party….I asked for The wizard of Oz…… i specified blu ray . this was a favorite movie that was aired each year that as a kid I looked forward to…..
I got the Blu-Ray disc….. as i played the disc it was so clear, so vivid , so refined that I NOW could see that the flowers , the movie set, and the buildings and back drops looked so plastic and phony that it took the enjoyment out of watching the film…. The TV broadcast was always at such a low resolution that the movie looked just right…. so, Yup, too resolving does come with its disadvantages.
Wow, have I felt this exact same way with the difference between even going from HD (or 720p) to FHD (1080p), but especially when watching at 4K. I notice so much more of the movie magic trickery than I did at lower resolution, so I almost tend to prefer no more than 1080p unless I know it’s a home-made video or documentary streaming from youtube or the like where the “magic” is at a minimum. I can’t say my audio system is this resolving yet, or that my ears know the difference, but so far I’ve only been happy with higher-resolution audio streams.
Many years ago I introduced my then 3 year old son to a re-run of Fireball XL5 (early 60’s kids tv show featuring puppets). I was in the kitchen when after a minute or two he called out, “Hey, they’ve got strings”.
Never noticed them when I watched it on a 525 line black and white tv……….
It’s for this reason I tend to listen to my better recorded material. I won’t go as far as listen to music that I dislike just because it’s been recorded really good though some dealers will do that to show off the potential of a system, but when it comes to the bands that I love I tend to listen to their better recorded stuff more often.
Nope!