Quote Originally Posted by RGA
46 min

How can you have seamless integration of a guitar in a room that causes a peak or a dip? The best concert and opera houses on the planet will cause the perception of those instruments to differ from one seat to the next. Your room is still a room the instrument is still an instrument. Audio Note speakers I have found to "immitate" instruments far better than something like any Paradigm or B&W I have heard. The room plays a role but so does moving your head four inches - even with "good dispersing speakers like Audio Note or Paradigm."

The issue is that too many people put the entire ball game on the frequency response - which is why you get simplistic comments that attack DA converters because the differences in frequency is smaller - so what - moving to the right side of one's couch will have more of a frequency change than a DAC will (even tubed dacs). But the measurements were chosen for monetary reasons as much as anything else. Big companies would far rather sell volume crap and gear measurements to make it look excellent than actually build good sounding gear. And the only reason I came to this was simply to listen to a SET amp(which compared to SS measures badly in almost every way) Luckily my first audition was psuedo blind in that I didn't know it was a SET when I first heard it. While I could not afford it - that doesn't mean i'm going to slag them either - same for a DAC. The AN CD player surprised me because I had never heard that big of an improvement in CD sound - even in non AN systems.

At the end of the day if you were in my position you would be more open minded to believe in the guy that showed you in the results over the group that show you lots of paper but no results. And of course why AN takes a beating from non listeners all the time because if Peter is right then it means most of the rest of the industry is wrong. An uphill battle to be sure and in itself stirs up the bee hive. They post little information directly but if you dig you can find snippets here and there - like a puzzle - as to what is going on with most of the stuff they make. There is no reason to post it - since if they do they'll be like any other SET/Tube maker and get attacked by the SS measurements used.

My contention is that if the worst JVC player I ever heard is supposedly perfect in the measurements -- then it's the measurements that are missing vital pieces of information Of course if you're a billion dollar outfit you can make the speaker first and then invent the measuring tools to put in the best light)- Martin Colloms who started Monitor Audio and writes a lot of books on acoustics and speaker design obviously realizes that measurements are seriously lacking at telling us how good something sounds. The E measures very well - but so does a lot of stuff I have heard that would be better served as kindling.

The Audio Note Ongaku is widely considered (by engineer audiophiles who have heard it)the best integrated amplifier in the world - it measures worse than any competant SS amp.
People are too afraid to actually listen to stereo systems because they may conclude that they wasted a lot of money on magazines - I have about 60 that I blew my money on. Live and learn.
So when peter tells you to place the ANs in corner,is it because he feels the intergrate better there.He doesent want them placed ther for no good reason,or does he...