I am aware of what you say and have stated that many times myself. But you know what I mean. Also I am fortunate my living room is 20m by 15m.
Some, perhaps, but not all. I have a live recording of Kathleen Ferrier singing Mahler made long ago and the sound is execrable. Poor recording quality, coughs in the audience etc. Nevertheless, listening to it on my main system sends more intense shivers down my spine than any of my lesser systems, let alone the car. Perhaps the better setup allows me to concentrate on Ferrier’s voice and tune out the distractions.
Roger
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They came under a “Living Presence” title folder.
Not sure I can redistribute.
In terms of the vinyl, I presume it was “Amy at the BBC” 3 LP 180g pressing.j
But I don’t believe this includes the “Other Voices” recordings
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I don’t have €900k to splash on a HiFi system, but if someone does, why not? And why is that crazy? Many of us on the forum have systems worth £10k or more, which many would consider “crazy”. After all they can listen happily to loads of music with earbuds and a phone. It’s all a matter of perspective.
Roger
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We can agree that finally we can’t generalise. Bad albums can be more enjoyable in a car but the opposite too.
The strangest thing is the quality of the floor. The 900 k system is exposed in a squatter.
This was the best system I have heard anywhere. Yes, immediately impressive , but still so delightfully musical.
I did try a dCS Bartock at home but could not get it convey the music. The NDS is so much more musical. The NDS lacks some details but overall is musical.
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I guess my system adds up to a pathetic €10,000, and I know I am crazy having spent so much on HiFi gear.
I presume it’s “crazy” in the vein of “the world’s gone mad” and to be honest £900,000 for Hifi to me is definitely in this category.
Are there even luxury cars that cost that much?
.sjb
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If the hi-fi components you have purchased make you want to narrow your music selection rather than have you listening to more of it then it has absolutely, fundamentally and catastrophically failed in its role.
Hi-fi serves one function and one function only: to make us enjoy our music, no matter what it is, to the best of its abilities. Yes, the higher up the ladder you go the more scrutiny will be placed on a piece of music to inform you just how well recorded it is. Sometimes what you thought was a 10/10 recording (not performance, recording) is actually a 8/10 but a good system will ensure those recordings that are truly 10/10 will knock your socks off in ways you couldn’t imagine.
Furthermore, and here we get to brass tacks, poor recordings on a high end system shouldn’t be “unlistenable” and avoided, rather said system should make said recordings more enjoyable to throw on because it’s ekeing out every last skerrick of musicality so that no matter what you play you can find some measure of joy.
The only reason I have spent my hard earned cash over the years on upgrading my system is so that I can hear my favorite music, no matter how good or bad it may be recorded, sound better than it has prior and feel like I’m re-discovering my library.
Thankfully that’s exactly what I get out of my hi-fi and with my recent upgrades it genuinely sounds like my music collection has been remastered, so profound is the transformation wrought.
If you’re spending big $$$$ and are listening to less music and not more then you have completely wasted your money and the manufacturer should hang their head in shame.
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For me it is great to have people who will spend this type of money on hi-fi. Eventually some of the technology will trickle down and everyone will be the better for it!
For me I have not spent fortunes on my system. A little every few years and I like it a lot.
However most of my friends think I am crazy!
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What I want to know is…
If I spend 900,00 Euro on a hifi, how much will I need to spend on my network infrastructure to prevent it sounding awful. 
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Curious what is the role of the Antipodes Oladra given that DCS already has a streamer in the chain ?
Yes, and a lot more on top. (Bugatti Veyron)
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It was acting as the Music Server, holding the local files. It may have been running the Roon Server, as Roon was being used to select and monitor playback.
I believe the connection was USB to the dCS Varese core, but this could have been a networked output, not sure if I looked hard enough.
But this would be fitting for a ‘off-line’ demo setup - you want to be relying on the provision of a hotel’s WiFi or Mobile WiFi to demo this level of kit.
So I would say it was a USB Audio connection out of the Antipodes Oladra into the dCS Varese core.
It was using Balanced Analogue outputs into the Dan D’agostino Relentless preamplifier (it wasn’t even the flagship Momentum C2 Pre-amp, maybe they were keeping that back as a potential upgrade opportunity!)
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It would have been aes out or ethernet to a switch; but aes will not be as good as ethernet, then the dCS also connected to the same switch. Roon and streaming would have been done by the core in the dCS varese and not the Oladra. So any stored files would have go down the ethernet to switch and then to dCS. This is how I also connect my mine up
dCS recommend if you use this server that you use ethernet between them. You use the dCS tor streaming still and the Oladra just for playing stored files.
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I’ve never been able to wrap my head around this, but it depends on what “dealing with it” really means. Most interpret this notion as “the badly recorded elements don’t sound as bad on a better system.” I submit that’s wrong.
In my experience, when hearing a classically badly recorded track on a very high end hi fi . . . I certainly hear the elements that classify it as “badly recorded.” Maybe I hear them more prominently than on a lesser system. But would I prefer to hear this track on a $800,000 system or an $80,000 system (assuming the “goodness” of these 2 hypothetical systems tracks their cost)? The answer is usually “yes” because other aspects of what I hear on the $800,000 system would be preferable. Whilst a track may be poorly recorded or engineered by hi fi standards, there is (was, at the time, in the studio) still music being made. And usually by talented musicians.
So I submit that one can certainly appreciate the musicality of a performance and hear it past the ‘badly recorded or engineered’ aspects. That doesn’t mean that the badly recorded aspects sound better on the more expensive system. It means I can more easily focus on other things – other enjoyable parts of the track.
E.g. the over-cooked peas at that fancy dinner we re disappointing, but the rest of the food was quite good and the wine was fabulous and the people I had dinner with were fun. This didn’t make those peas any better, but it was easy to look past them. The peas were exactly as bad as they’d have been if served at the local greasy-spoon diner.
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Not really the same as peas as in your quote the peas being cooked would have been cooked better as the dac will do a better job and not the same as ever other dac.
But certainly classic music when things get busy and demanding a better dac will 100% do a much better job in dealing with it as the lesser dac will just go to mush.
As said no dac can turn a bad recording into a fantastic one and that’s not what I am saying. But it will give you a better understanding of what’s going on and hopefully this will make it slightly better to listen too over the other.
Reading through this thread, the phrase: “a hammer to crack a nut” comes to mind.
Is this extreme Hi End stuff a case of using music to listen to a system, rather than using a HiFi system to enjoy music?
The music we listen to is not usually recorded using esoteric equipment. Quite a bit these days is even recorded in somebody’s bedroom (check out the Guardians how tracks were made series).
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These are “luxury goods.” Maybe ‘good hi fi’ always was a luxury, even in the 1970’s and 80’s etc., but the high end and ultra-high-end hi fi today is absolutely “luxury” and in a different world. And with that comes all the aspects of the luxury goods market.
I know a fair bit about this as in my almost-fully-retired state I spend time with a friend who owns a luxury clothing boutique here in Boston (I spend some time in the shop and we travel together to do his buying in New York and Italy). He sells many $1100 Kiton custom shirts and $20,000+ Kiton custom suits. And Im very integrated into the luxury wristwatch world. Where $12,000 Rolexes are baseline / pretty pedestrian.
Anyway, in this world of luxury goods, “value for money” is just not a relevant conversation. Why do we “need that” is not a relevant question. What is relevant? People of means who enjoy owning “the best.” (Which is subjective - there is no single best brand or model; they want to own something of that class. That speaks to them for some reason or another. ) They enjoy owning high end “things.” $100,000 wristwatches. Ferraris and Aston Martins and Bentleys and AMGs and BMW Ms (see, there is a range). Kiton suits. Or Saville Row bespoke suits. No one “needs” any of this but the market is good for it.
And a word or three about pricing. We see it in all of these classes of luxury goods. Price increases increase the exclusivity, and that actually drives sales. There’s been SIGNIFICANT price inflation in the wristwatch and fashion worlds for sure. I dont know cars. Average price per unit sold across brands has skyrocketed. And that serves the brands just fine – to sell fewer, much-higher-margin items. Because not just prices, but margins, have skyrocketed.
I have to imagine that the margins on this dCS stuff are HUGE. Good for them.
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