Vacceo
Major Contributor
- Joined
- Mar 9, 2022
- Messages
- 2,705
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- 2,864
Hello all!
I´m a new member on these outstanding forums after lurking on them for a bit more than a year. I thought I might as well pull the trigger and at the very least, thank people like Amir or Erin (yeah, I know both of you because I see your videos...) for their massive work, educational content and also, consumer information provided to all of us.
I´m relatively new to the use of audio gear beyond the super basic pc speakers and mini jack cheap headphones for portable devices. I say relatively because I spent my childhood listening to tons and tons of music thanks to my dad on a classic stereo (turntable, amp, two big, boxy speakers, cassette deck and eventually, cd). I jumped at the big leagues around three years ago when I bought a bargain set of seven KEF IQ speakers (a pair of 3´s, another of 7´s, a 6C and a couple 8ds) along with a PSW 2500 subwoofer. To move all that heavy amount of wood and metal, I got a Denon AVR 2808.
The first months I though a new world had opened. My old bargain headphones could not compete with how much better everything sounded. Plugging a PC on the HDMI made everything a million times better: from the massive collection of CD´s (and my dad´s old vynils) I have accumulated over the years to PC gaming (turns out spatial audio is a thing in games!).
I also started listening to guys who supposedly know what they talk about and something was not right. Why did they always played music I loathed and called themselves "lovers of music". No dude, you don´t love music, you love expensive toys where you play a very limited amount of stuff. No beef againt Diana Krall or Karajan´s rendition of Wagner (Solti is far better, IMHO), but that´s not even close to what I typically listen: adjusting a subwoofer to the sound of Napalm Death anyone? Vynil reproduction to the sound of Blasphemy´s Fallen Angel of Doom? How am I even supposed to know what I should be looking for if all you listen to is a galaxy away from what I do?
And then you realize that the answers were always there, in that lovely discourse called science. Is that weird cranky noise you hear part of the components or that the recording quality of the chaos and mess... eeeer music I like the guilty part? Turns out it is both, but probably the second is the bigger culprit. So my next step was looking for someone with one of those absolutely transparent systems to allow me to listen to my cd´s. I discovered, thanks to graphs and instruments, that most of the music I love (Scandinavian Black Metal from the 90´s anyone?) is produced and recorded with very rudimentary means yet... I loved it even more! Yes, it´s low fi; yes, the sound is noisy as hell (wink wink); but once you have realized all the flowery language from the hardware fetishists is just a cover for not knowing what is really going on, you cannot get back to the cave. I´d rather get sunburnt!
Don´t get me wrong, I also have a fetish for some gear. My dad always talked about a mythical name in sound reproduction called McIntosh. He listened to one of those way back when he did his military service next to an American base. The man always wanted to get one of their amps, sadly he passed away before being able to do so. There are more awe stories like those, but perhaps for another day.
That was my second lesson: you can actually get it and even better for similar or lower prices. And that is my plan now that I am here: upgrade my current system and perhaps learn a thing or two along the way on how to keep that smile when Archgoat blasts throw my current or future gear.
I guess my next purchases at some point will point towards something Class D (less electricity and heat, same fun!) along the lines of hypex or purifi and eventually move up to Atmos reproduction switching to as flat as possible speakers (purifi too, perhaps, I really don´t know). And no, I´m not getting krypoton cables (regular thick copper is perfectly fine), algorithmic AI DAC´s or 10k furniture that keeps the internal equilibrium of electrons on transistors (Ikea is perfectly fine and also stacks books).
So once again, thank you all for allowing me to understand a bit more and escape from the shadows of the cave!
I´m a new member on these outstanding forums after lurking on them for a bit more than a year. I thought I might as well pull the trigger and at the very least, thank people like Amir or Erin (yeah, I know both of you because I see your videos...) for their massive work, educational content and also, consumer information provided to all of us.
I´m relatively new to the use of audio gear beyond the super basic pc speakers and mini jack cheap headphones for portable devices. I say relatively because I spent my childhood listening to tons and tons of music thanks to my dad on a classic stereo (turntable, amp, two big, boxy speakers, cassette deck and eventually, cd). I jumped at the big leagues around three years ago when I bought a bargain set of seven KEF IQ speakers (a pair of 3´s, another of 7´s, a 6C and a couple 8ds) along with a PSW 2500 subwoofer. To move all that heavy amount of wood and metal, I got a Denon AVR 2808.
The first months I though a new world had opened. My old bargain headphones could not compete with how much better everything sounded. Plugging a PC on the HDMI made everything a million times better: from the massive collection of CD´s (and my dad´s old vynils) I have accumulated over the years to PC gaming (turns out spatial audio is a thing in games!).
I also started listening to guys who supposedly know what they talk about and something was not right. Why did they always played music I loathed and called themselves "lovers of music". No dude, you don´t love music, you love expensive toys where you play a very limited amount of stuff. No beef againt Diana Krall or Karajan´s rendition of Wagner (Solti is far better, IMHO), but that´s not even close to what I typically listen: adjusting a subwoofer to the sound of Napalm Death anyone? Vynil reproduction to the sound of Blasphemy´s Fallen Angel of Doom? How am I even supposed to know what I should be looking for if all you listen to is a galaxy away from what I do?
And then you realize that the answers were always there, in that lovely discourse called science. Is that weird cranky noise you hear part of the components or that the recording quality of the chaos and mess... eeeer music I like the guilty part? Turns out it is both, but probably the second is the bigger culprit. So my next step was looking for someone with one of those absolutely transparent systems to allow me to listen to my cd´s. I discovered, thanks to graphs and instruments, that most of the music I love (Scandinavian Black Metal from the 90´s anyone?) is produced and recorded with very rudimentary means yet... I loved it even more! Yes, it´s low fi; yes, the sound is noisy as hell (wink wink); but once you have realized all the flowery language from the hardware fetishists is just a cover for not knowing what is really going on, you cannot get back to the cave. I´d rather get sunburnt!
Don´t get me wrong, I also have a fetish for some gear. My dad always talked about a mythical name in sound reproduction called McIntosh. He listened to one of those way back when he did his military service next to an American base. The man always wanted to get one of their amps, sadly he passed away before being able to do so. There are more awe stories like those, but perhaps for another day.
That was my second lesson: you can actually get it and even better for similar or lower prices. And that is my plan now that I am here: upgrade my current system and perhaps learn a thing or two along the way on how to keep that smile when Archgoat blasts throw my current or future gear.
I guess my next purchases at some point will point towards something Class D (less electricity and heat, same fun!) along the lines of hypex or purifi and eventually move up to Atmos reproduction switching to as flat as possible speakers (purifi too, perhaps, I really don´t know). And no, I´m not getting krypoton cables (regular thick copper is perfectly fine), algorithmic AI DAC´s or 10k furniture that keeps the internal equilibrium of electrons on transistors (Ikea is perfectly fine and also stacks books).
So once again, thank you all for allowing me to understand a bit more and escape from the shadows of the cave!