Came across an interesting article by Jeff Day. The premise is that a good Hifi should have a wide listening window of being able to play all types of recording quality as well as music itself well rather than good recordings.
Also brought out another fact that some of the older equipment, at a time when music was a popular in a different way since people got a chance to attend Live music so much more and very often the unamplified kind, audio equipment were also designed to make the recordings sound like the live event itself .
Currently the vast majority of us listen to music only from recordings or even if we hear live its the amplified variety. Today perhaps only classical/Jazz music fall into that earlier category
The article is here. An extract
Was also reading up on a lot of the "Older " design philosophies like Klipsch, Altec Lansing, JBL, Tannoy etc and all of them had designers who loved and understood music and perhaps got a chance to attend so many live performances . At the same time the serious buyers were also of a similar thinking and hence perhaps systems which tried to reproduce that event along with the feeling for that event.
Is that why some of the older equipment which are praised so much today have a magic about them such that owners like to think of them as end state ?
Not saying that all current equipment do not have magic and that all old ones have it. just that some who have it survived while the others did not. Wonder which of the new ones will become classics in the future.
Also brought out another fact that some of the older equipment, at a time when music was a popular in a different way since people got a chance to attend Live music so much more and very often the unamplified kind, audio equipment were also designed to make the recordings sound like the live event itself .
Currently the vast majority of us listen to music only from recordings or even if we hear live its the amplified variety. Today perhaps only classical/Jazz music fall into that earlier category
The article is here. An extract
The ability of a hifi system - or the individual components it is composed of - to be able to play a wide variety of recorded music from different periods, of different styles, and of varied recording quality, I refer to as the listening window.
The listening window is a subjective measure of how wide a variety of recorded music one can listen to through a high-performance audio system and still have it sound and feel believably like a live music experience.
My parents console televisions stereos from the 1950s and 1960s had a wide listening window that allowed for enjoyable listening of pretty much anything of any recording quality. How was that accomplished?
Yet many contemporary audio systems fail miserably at having a wide listening window, and can only accommodate a very narrow listening window of superb recordings, or risk sounding decidedly amusical on average recordings of great music.
A narrow listening window results in their owners buying the same audiophile recordings over and over again with each new remaster of the same old recording, because that's the only thing that sounds good on their stereo systems.
Was also reading up on a lot of the "Older " design philosophies like Klipsch, Altec Lansing, JBL, Tannoy etc and all of them had designers who loved and understood music and perhaps got a chance to attend so many live performances . At the same time the serious buyers were also of a similar thinking and hence perhaps systems which tried to reproduce that event along with the feeling for that event.
Is that why some of the older equipment which are praised so much today have a magic about them such that owners like to think of them as end state ?
Not saying that all current equipment do not have magic and that all old ones have it. just that some who have it survived while the others did not. Wonder which of the new ones will become classics in the future.
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