I worked on someone’s house carrying out home improvements and he had ASR amplification and a La Source CD player. Battery power supplies that kept the system at permanent voltage and some very special speakers.
It sounded holographic and could hear sound coming from different heights of the room. Very impressive soundstage and the boxes were huge and weighed a tonne.
Although he had no Naim gear it inspired me to take my system further and further.
He has since moved the system on and upgraded. Very interesting gear. Probably has a £200k system. He is a musician and has worked in the hifi supply and installation world.
Thanks,
I took a look at the first post and quit it. There is no such thing as ’ sound waves’ to begin with. But let’s leave each to his/her own convictions. Luckily, science has not been banned yet.
Somewhere on that thread there were some posts talking about what sound is including an observation along the lines of yours above. This was my contribution to that aspect (post currently numbered 108):
My understanding is that sound is vibration (within the audible frequency range) reaching cells that convert it to electrical impulses in the auditory nerve. In the mammalian ear that normally arrives as vibrations in a fluid medium, air or water, causing the eardrum to vibrate, transmitted mechanically to hairs protruding from cells that convert It to electrical impulses.
From which I went into a discussion of the propagation of the vibrations as pressure.
Whilst indeed it may not be “sound” as we know it without ears, the vibrations in the form of rapid compressive/expansive pressure changes in the air would still exist, and we could for example feel as our clothes vibrate, and might even produce a visible effect by exciting vibrations at resonant frequencies in objects that we might observe - an extreme being an ‘exploding’ wineglass. But it wouldn’t be music!
If there was no such thing as sound waves there would be no constructive and destructive interference, no room modes etc… The waves are longitudinal compression and rarefaction waves, not transverse waves like in water.
What that has to do with the best system one has heard is rather puzzling.
I’m sorry, but scarce as it is my wish to dive into an interminable discussion, as I said science is science: sound in itself, independent of a perceiving organ, doesn’t exist. What you call interferences and room modes can - and actually do - take place among periodic air waves, that will excite our perceiving organs - cochleae and cortex - to transform them in the uniquely biological, cognitive experience we call sound. Vibrating air is silent. Sure, it can reach material stuff that, vibrating by the laws of frequency sympathy, can transmit to the tactile organs of a living being the sensation of ‘something’ which will eventually reach the cortex by way of bone transmission instead of electrical one: the Edison cylinder.
On the other hand, not only everyone knows that dogs can’t see colors: but that also in inexact, because if dogs lack the color sensitive organs, color for them DOESN’T EXIST. And, since we know that it’s light the exciting agent that reacts to chemical properties of stuff, making it appear of this or that color, it is also true that in darkness COLOUR DOESN’T EXIST.
Ah, yes, right. I tend to forget it sometimes. Earth was created 20,000 years ago and God is an old man with a beard who will punish the Communists.
On the other hand, Hitler strongly believed in the theories of a contemporary ‘scientist’ who stated that the universe is actually an infinite solid block, and our ‘world’ is a planet suspended in a spherical hole in this solid block. Stars are much nearer and smaller lights hanging from the inner wall of this hole.
For others, Earth is truly flat.
It is still being debated, to end the matter, if the wall between USA and Mexico is actually favoring Americans or Mexicans.
Not really true for the dogs perception of colors. They can perceive colors, but not red or orange.
But however it’s not the reason they are strucked ( strucken?) by cars in town
Then apologies for my imprecision. What I said about sound, though, is open to debate. I challenge anyone who has high school knowledge of physics to contradict me.
Too bad it won’t interest nobody.
For me, the best sounding system was a professional system based at the BBC in one of the Maida Vale studios. In my opinion it has shadowed all consumer Hi-Fi systems I have heard since.
I can’t tell you what is was made up of, but the impression it left after having using it was remarkable.
I think that has set the reference that I have compared to ever since.
I do suspect, the room size, and professional acoustic treatment were a key consideration too.
I have found some high end headphones and high end headphone amps do get close to that reality feel.
