Croftie

MH ? LSA?

Mike, your money, your ears, buy what you enjoy listening to.
I'm willing to bet there are a good number of people on ASR that don't really enjoy their own systems, but are happy in the knowledge that is 'measures correctly'.

I imagine, given the context Croftie writes about, Mental Health and Learning Support Assistant. 


Welcome croftie, interesting eclectic mixture of kit you have, esp. the speakers. 

I found Amir reply to me although still a bit condescending better than some of the others on the site 🙂

They are def marmite for most . Well marmite in sound maybe less marmite in looks other than me .

This point about how the speakers measure in the room is the keystone to the entire 'measurements' argument.

As Martin eludes to it is easier to get small scale acoustic stuff to sound pretty good without that many elements of the equation having to 'play nice' with each other.

I've fallen victim to this in the past.


Having said that I don't think there is anything wrong with tailoring your system to your musical preferences, Antonio's point about your money and your ears is also spot on.

I've had some absolutely soul touching moments with horn speakers/Quad 57's with various examples of valve based amplification, some of which I still hadn't bettered with some genres until recently.

well in days gone by the '57' ESL was often used as a reference by speaker designers, every lab had at least one. Off the pace now but not by that much. 

IME the best valve amps tend to measure pretty well, certainly to the extent that they will not be audibly problematic - Radford being a good example.

Horn speakers on the other hand...multi-ways can be very good if you don't have an issue with giant size instruments and vocalists (I don't but I now people who do). Any single driver back or front loaded thing - for me, anyway,  forget it. Rock music always sounds bad through them and that's most of my listening. I'll grant that for a limited selection of music they do things that nothing else can.



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I never said accuracy is what the artist intended, as for most recordings being good, many would argue but I would prefer the term listenable. Why would having knowledge on such things give me greater satisfaction when listening to music. I have probably changed equipment less than most on here, enjoying the systems that I have owned, never worrying or concerned whether it measures well, what greater enjoyment could I ask for.

well fair enough then. Just saying that measurements are about accuracy to the recording not to the artist's intent as that's nebulous at best.

For recordings I suppose good is too vague and personally subjective. Let's just say the vast majority of recordings are 'competent.' That is to say they will have none of the issues that are often complained about 'Too bright, harsh, over-sibilant, distorted' all of which will be problems with the replay system.

For me I have always been able to enjoy music on any system that does not have sins of commission. That could be the standard car stereo in my mate's 1998 Honda Civic or a 1970s Fergusson transistor radio. 

But if the system is doing something wrong, and doing it a lot, or all the time (Too bright, harsh, over-sibilant, distorted') then I won't enjoy it at all.

The problems start when we want to upgrade from the Fergusson to something better but that also does nothing wrong. If you don't understand how it works how can you do that?

Yes you can listen - so you go to a dealer with your test tracks and they all sound good so you buy it. But than as time goes on and you listen to your whole music collection you start to realise that there are problems with the sound that did not show up at the dealers. 

How to fix that? Again if you don't understand how the thing works, how can you know where the problem lies and how to fix it? More listening? More just taking pot luck? Ask the salesman? Ask a reviewer (who are mostly just a salesman in disguise)?

Maybe I've been lucky in the fact I haven't really owned systems that I've not enjoyed when the recording has been adequate, I can think of a few recordings that no matter what system they were played on they would still not be enjoyable. Most recently, speakers I found were not up to scratch were the JBL Control 1's, that was until I had an amp that would make them work, also my LP12, it sounded great with a limited number of recordings, but not so much so with many more, although never unlistenable.

lol -    some systems would defo benefit from a little rounding off of 'edges' to address an extremely explicit of revealing of material. That's where your balancing comes in. 

I wouldnt go as far as to say 'most such comments' as most is a damn lot - some, maybe. 

Yeah there are some good points here macca.

When you do have/hear a well balanced system which reaches the frequency extremes (or there abouts) but doesn't topple over at those extremes, everything starts to make a bit more sense as to why some recordings might not sound so great in certain environments, rooms play a big part here too