What audio brands are you not attracted to?

[Doc Sage]

I am of the opinion that reproduction equipments are to be totally transparent and should let all the music be experience without adding or substrating from it. That said, any equipment that leaves it's stamp on the music is to be avoided.

Speakers are usually the most offending. JBL and the West Coast Sound proponents were always too bright. Most of these hyper efficient speakers are not respectful of the music, it's about making noise not music. They are hard on my ears after a short listening. You can add Klipsch to this group.

With the New England sound, many speakers brands became much more enjoyable. Today we have Boston Speakers to thank for this and many Canadian are from the same thinking. Paradign, Energy, Axion are all wonderful speakers that are doing great sound waves at a lower price point. Totem is reaching up to a higher level, they get my nod.

The Japanese electronic trade done great stuff at the lower budget end, who can fault a $300.- receiver that turn most of us to the joy of music. But in our quest to higher fidelity most have been by-past. A few I still look at for what they offer, Denon, Onkyo and Luxman comes to mind. NAD was responsable of showing what was missing at a certain price point but I do not know how well they are doing these days.

Mckintosh is the fore father of all that is audiophile. With their attention to the various parts that makes up an amplifier, they showed us what can be done with repoduction music. I think of them as the Rolls Royce of our fetishes. They got all my respect but I turn to Ferrari for my thrills these days. Sorry.

Someone above said that B&W and the likes left him unimpress. Why? Is it because colouration is not added to the music? Is it because he was not able to hear the intrinsic sound of these speakers? As I listen to David + David this morning, it the quality of David's voice, the sound of the electic guitars and the impact of the drum that I listen to, not the distortion added by my equipment. When I look at Picasso, I like to see the true colour shades used by the artist and not what I see through my rose colour glasses.

Doc Sage

[Ajani]

I am of the opinion that reproduction equipments are to be totally transparent and should let all the music be experience without adding or substrating from it. That said, any equipment that leaves it's stamp on the music is to be avoided.

Speakers are usually the most offending. JBL and the West Coast Sound proponents were always too bright. Most of these hyper efficient speakers are not respectful of the music, it's about making noise not music. They are hard on my ears after a short listening. You can add Klipsch to this group.

With the New England sound, many speakers brands became much more enjoyable. Today we have Boston Speakers to thank for this and many Canadian are from the same thinking. Paradign, Energy, Axion are all wonderful speakers that are doing great sound waves at a lower price point. Totem is reaching up to a higher level, they get my nod.

The Japanese electronic trade done great stuff at the lower budget end, who can fault a $300.- receiver that turn most of us to the joy of music. But in our quest to higher fidelity most have been by-past. A few I still look at for what they offer, Denon, Onkyo and Luxman comes to mind. NAD was responsable of showing what was missing at a certain price point but I do not know how well they are doing these days.

Mckintosh is the fore father of all that is audiophile. With their attention to the various parts that makes up an amplifier, they showed us what can be done with repoduction music. I think of them as the Rolls Royce of our fetishes. They got all my respect but I turn to Ferrari for my thrills these days. Sorry.

Someone above said that B&W and the likes left him unimpress. Why? Is it because colouration is not added to the music? Is it because he was not able to hear the intrinsic sound of these speakers? As I listen to David + David this morning, it the quality of David's voice, the sound of the electic guitars and the impact of the drum that I listen to, not the distortion added by my equipment. When I look at Picasso, I like to see the true colour shades used by the artist and not what I see through my rose colour glasses.

Doc Sage

This extract from Benchmark (in a letter that comes standard with the DAC1) best expresses how I fee about neutrality and coloration:

If you plan to use effects to achieve specific coloration with your music, that's just fine. As an artist with his palate, choose processing equipment, microphones, preamplifiers, instruments and recording locations that have the particular sounds that you wish to incorporate into your audio canvass. The two places where coloration is unwise, is with A-to-D and D-to-A converters. Without the cleanest recording and playback, you will never able to accurately judge and control how the final product sounds to the end user. You need total accuracy.

For me, source needs to be as clean as possible... but if you want to tailor amplification (pre or power) & speakers to get a specific sound, that's OK... Why should the producer/band be the only artists in your HiFi? If you want to be one as well, then have fun with it!!!