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RE: It became very tedious

"I admitted the main problem might be that it was too good revealing 2nd rate recordings"

That can be a legitimate concern or that the recordings are in some way pronounced like an X-Ray.

Back in the very early 1990s, I was auditioning B&W and some sort of SS amplifier with great measurements (Naim or Adcom or some such). I brought a CD and it was awful - quite good on my home stereo and other systems I used. It was Amanda Marshall. It's a pop recording so nothing uber special or anything but it was so SOOOO bad on the system.

The dealer gives the same line - "our system is so accurate it shows you how bad the recordings are." Therein lies a fundamental problem. You are "safer" in this regard listening mostly 99%? to classical but for most people - they like to enjoy other kinds of music - other kinds of music that are not particularly well recorded.

So where is the subjective line? The point of a stereo system is to be able to listen to your music collection and enjoy said music collection. I would argue that this is the ONLY thing that counts at the end of the day otherwise your system is just a conversation point to win arguments on audio forums - so is it about enjoying music or is it about internet forums accuracy wars?

So for a time, I was on the side of the dealer - but the problem was that the "spectacular" recordings that the magazines were touting - the classical Reference Recordings, Opus 3, Patricia Barber "Cafe Blue" etc - those ALSO sounded better on my system and by no small margin. So the best recordings sounded the best and the supposed lousy Amanda Marshal album sounded quite good as well. I mean not great but certainly not shut it off poor either.

In either case, if the accuracy is so accurate that it ruins the sound of what you enjoy OR it is adding some sort of grain to make it sound "off" then who cares really WHY it's bad - it's bad!

That was my issue ultimately with Parasound and ATC and ATC with Bricasti. I am sure the measurements are bombproof. I was initially very impressed but on my subsequent extended auditions and with a variety of recordings it just didn't really work. Maybe it is so accurate it is pulling the recordings apart. It was a $50,000US set-up including the amps, source, speakers, cables. And it does some pretty cool things - it seems to pull out each part of the soundstage and the imaging was great, etc. But with Loreena or Eva Cassidy, it just sounded fatiguing. The Parasound seems to soften it a bit - the Bricasti was just an order of magnitude brighter and fatiguing.

I wrote something similar listening to very expensive speakers from Vivid Audio and Dan D'agostino Momentum amplifiers - again it's probably all measures great but after 15 minutes (in my case 3 minutes) I was already looking at my watch thinking how long should I sit here so as to not insult the dealer. But we're talking about a system that is 6 digits and the first number probably isn't a 1. It's probably all product of the year in Stereophile - bah humbug.

Amanda Marshal - even on youtube it's not "terrible" in terms of recording quality - or should not be rendered completely unplayable by a stereo system.



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