ProAcs

First, I am new to this forum. I am glad to have found it.

I live abroad and have been curious to learn more about how things are back home.

I am curious to know what you thought of the bryston quality/sound wise.

Being an owner of the Bryston 5b-st, I find it interesting that you weren't happy with the quality of the Amp. I am biased, of course.;) Bryston's are built like tanks and have a 20 year warranty and the best customer service in the business. They are also used in major recording studios like lucasfilms, dreamworks, chesky records, dolby labs, dts labs to mix, track and master music and movies.

I would just like to know your opinions on the Bryston.

Arun

OK

I just aggree with you ARUN and well said. I ve seen during my last visit to Europe and was amazed to find the Bristons beeing used with great enthu. I heard them and was thrilled by the delivery offcourse.

Sound spy

prithvi has got lots of experience and also he has experience listening to tons of brands and different kinds of music with different. If you could make permutations and combinations that what systems he have listened till now then you will understand. well very few people can identify that problem and prithvi did it. Now you can understand how precisely his ears are..

We know that music is subjective but no matter what they are ultimately it must have true fidelity.

Remember one thing that In the audio world we should trust our ears not the Brands.

Going by ur last post Sonic_master, u seem to contradict urself.
So why are u vouching for someone else's ears and then say trust ur own ears?
i fail to understand ur posts. Please exercise some restraint before making ur posts.

but ben why do we call trained ears? what about that?

well let me tell u something....this is only a my observation and i have no intention to aggravate anyone but most of the CDs that i have seen Prithvi use for his listening pleasure are not to my taste at all. i would really like to see the Linns or the Proacs belt out Pantera, Megadeath or any other hard rock and heavy metal band.
anybody can train their ears as long as they have the patience and the resources(both of which Prithvi has). but then again it depends as to what type of music u train ur ears to and it is definitely this tyope of music u will use to judge any kind of audio equipment.
there are too mny permutations in this alone. so when u bring in the factor of the number of brands available it is impossible to be an 'expert' in these things.

ofcourse ben what you have said is right. Even that counts alot. Hmm like i said one can give different explanations in different angles, its ok ben.

No body can be perfect...you just arrive at some good combinations accidentally or by chance or reviews or suggestions by fellow philes suiting your taste.....can't make my system sound good for you or your taste of music....eh all you have to do is seek suggestions and start hunting. I listen to pop, rock and metal....so if I evaluaute a system by listening to country or classical I'm the liar of land.....No body is an expert....it's just been there done that..thats it...you've heard more than me out of that 50% is overpriced crap..30% is pesudo product image...10% is just VFM...5% suits your taste..and 5% suits my taste which you would never ever make a mention of as you feel my music is crap.I found many expert suggestions to be useless for my taste....and If I had to regard them as experts then I had to change my genre of music which is impossible...can't start listening to classical and stop metal n rock coz classical sounded good on an expensive--hi end system. My motto is to look for a system with loads of punch....good detailing....loud....heheheheh many hi-end I have heard will not meet my expectations or otherwise coz i didn't use my music there......why didn't i use my music for a listen...coz i have no intention of buying hifi priced crazily high above my budget.....there are loads of good deals too to tempt.

VERY TRUE sales guys always try to push you into a product by playing music what sounds good on the system. If your music sounds bad then it's your choice of music which is bad.

i think u meant that the music system is bad or maybe the choice of music to play on that system was bad and not the person's taste in music. right??

No wonder you are told to get your own music when you come for a demo. Better to hear what you personally like, then what a dealer demos.

thats true..there are very very few people who allow you to demo with your music.... and here's Prithvi alone who belong to that clan......

Ture...but not everyone has the superb quality material that u have Prithvi. My collection is huge(60 Gb of select english and western songs)but entirely in digital format on my comp.
so not many are as fortunate as u are when it comes to quality recordings.
some dealers do entertain us in bringing our own burnt Cds but i remember u say that the Linn won't play any of that kind of stuff which is understandable.. but for 'poor' souls like me it is unreasonable to spend hundreds to thousands of rupees on a single Cd with just a hnadful of numbers that are good.
i find my mp3 music quite satisfying for the audio enthusiast in me and i disregard the criticalities which most of the so called audiophiles go in search of fruitlessly and if i might add foolishly .
Cheers,
Ben

Sonic master hope now this list of posts make some sense to you....if it makes then I'm glad

benks wrote :

Ture...but not everyone has the superb quality material that u have Prithvi. My collection is huge(60 Gb of select english and western songs)but entirely in digital format on my comp. so not many are as fortunate as u are when it comes to quality recordings. some dealers do entertain us in bringing our own burnt Cds but i remember u say that the Linn won't play any of that kind of stuff which is understandable.

yup can't drive merc with kerosene..needs high octane fuel..so buying expensive car n you are forced to fill high quality fuel..ditto to ditto in Hifi...Prithvi just makes justice to Linn's by playin those XRCD's.

hmmm subboss ... I dont know why its getting deviating somewhere. I think its gettin hotter.

for music sake please stop this..

things have to get hot bro.Sub is right there.

Ben,
I never said that the LINN CLASSIK does not play CD-R's, it does play CD-R & CD-RWs but it will never play a MP3 CD.

Remember music is music & it comes first, then the hardware and formats. Man ur talking to an ex-drummer! I have heard some old 78rpm LPs which sound awesome. If there was no music there would be no formats.

A quote on a XRCD catalogue:
"THe entire XRCD series of products can be heard by all, on every CD Player without the need for any add-on converter, additional equipment, no proprietary chips or special compact disc players are required to enjoy the sonic benefits"

A customer of mine in Ahemdabad has a SONY Boombox and he still buys XRCDS from me & enjoys his XRCDS on it & does not need to buy a better system. I am happy as he is happy.

Its just that an XRCD will sound much superior on better players.

Take for example your spks that your are building: With VIFA drivers they are going to sound better than say the local indian make BOLTON. Now why did you opt for VIFA???????

If you want quality then you have to pay. Period.
Rgds

PRithvi

Hey Prithvi,
yeah i think u said that abt the Meridain..
i agree that the quality of the recordings is very important but i fail to see ur comparison abt the Vifas and the boltons.
there are some very valid reasons for my choices.
firstly, they were very closely priced(just 2k more) but am getting a much better quality product for sure.
secondly, u don't get the t/s parameters for the boltons.
thirdly, well, am paying 6k for my speakers which can play my entire music collection but if i go out and look for a couple of XRCDs i will end up spending 5-6k for some 10 songs of the 40 odd songs on the couple of Cds.
u tell me which is a better buy???
so the comparison u are making is not entirely valid.
but yes, u get what u pay for.
Cheers,
Ben

The comparision that prithvi did is not valid so when you compare mercedes with maruti? there will be atlest some limit for comparision

like you may atleast compare merc with atleast min skodas octavia

why do u compare vifas with boltons?

vifas are far better than boltons

benkenobi schrieb:

Ture...but not everyone has the superb quality material that u have Prithvi. My collection is huge(60 Gb of select english and western songs)but entirely in digital format on my comp.

Very valid point Ben.

Regarding digital, its really not as bad as it is made out to be. I have ripped most of my CDs into Apple lossless format ono my iPOD and the sound quality is really very very good..in fact i find it very difficult to differentiate it from my cdp ! hence am seriously thinking in terms of an airport express and a external DAC as my source in my still to be setup system.

I think a good hard drive based "Transport" with a digital out and a value for money DAC like the Bencmark DAC1 may well be my benchmark source

regarding XRCDs, i felt the difference in terms of detail was felt in high end systems but in most entry mlevel audiophile systems I really could not make out the difference biut then I am blessed with tin ears

And ben, you seem to have come a long way on the Audiophile way in the past few months Great going I must admit

if you want to use the true potential of your speakers then use cds if not use mp3s but cds are cds.

Like one more thing for the people who want to encode their mp3s then they have an outstanding almost lossless encoder from www.codingtechnologies.com I have read this 5 years ago and thank god i can still remember its name.. this is because I cant forget the quality that it provided...

I think EAC using LAME is better these days.
http://www.cd-rw.org...exact_audio_copy.cfm

Anyways I use iTunes and Apple Lossless also its direct link to CDDB is a boon for clqssificqtion.

EAC uses freedb.org and you do have the option of dowloading the entire database to your pc if u want

Hey Arjun,
thank you for the kind words...but everyday as i surf the net i am reminded how much i don't know and am humbled by the efforts and knowledge of some people that it makes me try even harder to learn more and more......a never ending journey...but a fun one noentheless.



hey can u guys suggest any software for cleaning the noise in the Mp3 files....something that will filter it out?
one other thing....am presently using Nero to burn the songs on to the CDs....is there any other software that does it better???

cheers,
Ben

well if you want to remove that high frequency noise in your audio files then you have a right solution.... go for the software called as the goldwave.. and you can remove the high freq noise in ur file..

its very easy software for sound editing. It has got very broad options.. you can try that..

best regards,
Sandeep

Dear Benks,

I found http://cdexos.sourceforge.net/ + Musicmatch to be the closest one could get to CD in an MP3 format.

The difference is there on the Test instruments but not to the ear....at least not to mine.

If interested i can send you the setting for cdex & music match to further tweak your outputs.

Regards,

Junia.

I am sorry that this ended up in another flamefest. I just wanted to know what prithvi did or did not like about the Bryston.

One thing is I have also listened to more systems and speaker combinations than I care to remember. I know I will never in my life time be able to hear all of them together.

But I like my Bryston/PMC setup afer everything I have heard. I have heard systems that cost $100,000+ in gear. Wilson X1 Grand slamm, to B&W natulius 800 signature ($35,000) driven by levinson gear. Meadowlarks driven by tubes and even with vinyl as the souce. I have heard rougue audio tubes, cary audio tubes, levnsion, krell, classe, creek, Wadia CD players..... too many to iterate.

The combination that blew me away was a cheap $150 denon dvd player connected to a Bryston SP 1.7 and Bryston 9B-SST with 12 Gauge zip cord with PMC speakers. The sound stage, imaging and reaslism of a live concert was never ever so enthralling.

Even though my preamp is a denon reciever the Bryston/PMC combo absolutely rocks. Everything I have thrown at it has sounded marvelous. Everything from Jazz, Indian film and other music, Hip-hop, electronic music, Classical etc. etc. Have me going WOW!

From what I have read and heard the Bryston SP 1.7 is an excellent preamp and well revered in the audiophile and pro circles.

For the first time in a long time I have stopped worrying about what upgrade to buy and actually bought about 25 CDs. All I want to do now is buy and try more music.

I got this disc called planet drum (ryko) it has percussionists from all over the world (Zakhir Hussein is invloved in most tracks). This is just a phenomenal album, check it out if possible.

The PMCs make you swear they were playing in your living room. They disappear and leave only music.

Hey guys,
have tried both the soundforge and the goldwave. seems the same to me...what do u recommend for burning directly from mp3 to audio cds.
actually, the CDex is prety good. thanx for that Junia. was quick and easy....also the difference is nill.

let me ask this( iknow it is stupid and the question in itself is non-existent) but is there a chance of the SQ to improve over the original Mp3 file or can i only hope that the integirty of the file is maintained and not anyhing more.
cheers,
Ben

p.s:hey Arj,the software u recommended looks promising.

benkenobi schrieb:

well let me tell u something....this is only a my observation and i have no intention to aggravate anyone but most of the CDs that i have seen Prithvi use for his listening pleasure are not to my taste at all. i would really like to see the Linns or the Proacs belt out Pantera, Megadeath or any other hard rock and heavy metal band. anybody can train their ears as long as they have the patience and the resources(both of which Prithvi has). but then again it depends as to what type of music u train ur ears to and it is definitely this tyope of music u will use to judge any kind of audio equipment. there are too mny permutations in this alone. so when u bring in the factor of the number of brands available it is impossible to be an 'expert' in these things.

All recordings including Pantera, megadeth etc.. are recorded using very neutral sounding studio monitors. If you ask a studio engineer to recommend a speaker for you to listen to heavy metal, he will probably recommend a reasonably neutral speaker depending on your budget. Designing very low distortion, neutral sounding – full range speakers capable of very high spls needed for heavy metal (or any music for that matter) is a very expensive affair. A good example is the original klipsch-horn. So the market has been flooded with very colored high-spl producing speakers with lot of design compromises to bring down the costs. But majority of heavy metal lovers are used to this sound. What actually happens when you play a typical heavy metal album on a Proac ? You hear all the faults in the recording and on top of that, the proac won’t boost or dip any frequencies so you may not like it ! Speakers designed for Natural and balanced sound will reproduce any music genre easily. But you get what is in the recording. Nothing more, nothing less. So, it is a choice you have to make.

The PMC may be a good match for the brystons. They have actually tied up as partners. PMC uses bryston power blocks in their active speakers. Match made in heaven, I guess! This Sunday I was at Prithvi’s place listening to the studio 140’s with the bryston monoblocks. They sounded good and we decided to switch to the MF power. The studio 140 definitely sounded much better with the MF. More warmth and musical sounding. I would definitely prefer the MF over the bryston any day. The bonus is that the MF was rated at a much lower power and still it was driving the studio with aplomb! I am not saying the brystons are bad but for the power rating / price, they should have performed much better. Maybe it is a mis-match with the proacs.


Audiophiles go for XRCD’s because most recordings suck big time these days. Even if the master recording is good, the duplication process kills the recording. There is a reason why “mobile fidelity” spend almost 2 years cleaning up the original pink floyd “wall” recording. If you heard the mobile fidelity version of “wall”, you will know the difference!

square_wave schrieb:

All recordings including Pantera, megadeth etc.. are recorded using very neutral sounding studio monitors. If you ask a studio engineer to recommend a speaker for you to listen to heavy metal, he will probably recommend a reasonably neutral speaker depending on your budget. Designing very low distortion, neutral sounding – full range speakers capable of very high spls needed for heavy metal (or any music for that matter) is a very expensive affair. A good example is the original klipsch-horn. So the market has been flooded with very colored high-spl producing speakers with lot of design compromises to bring down the costs. But majority of heavy metal lovers are used to this sound. What actually happens when you play a typical heavy metal album on a Proac ? You hear all the faults in the recording and on top of that, the proac won’t boost or dip any frequencies so you may not like it ! Speakers designed for Natural and balanced sound will reproduce any music genre easily. But you get what is in the recording. Nothing more, nothing less. So, it is a choice you have to make.

i'm sorry, i just don't buy the argument that the Proac will show up bad recordings.
i do agree that only full range monitors(better still, active monitors) reproduce metal very well.
Proacs are anything but naturall. i find the Proacs to be very coloured while reproducing the music.
If u must know the symphony music actually need for spl than metal. they use instruments that go a lot deeper and demand a lot more air movement.
what u need for metal is transient response coupled with a decent amount of SPL.

square_wave schrieb:

This Sunday I was at Prithvi’s place listening to the studio 140’s with the bryston monoblocks. They sounded good and we decided to switch to the MF power. The studio 140 definitely sounded much better with the MF. More warmth and musical sounding. I would definitely prefer the MF over the bryston any day. The bonus is that the MF was rated at a much lower power and still it was driving the studio with aplomb! I am not saying the brystons are bad but for the power rating / price, they should have performed much better. Maybe it is a mis-match with the proacs.

why don't u just apply ur earlier views to this as well.
maybe the Proacs are not neutral and maybe the MF are not neutral.
maybe they are reproducing those frequencies better which ur ears want to hear. anything else will seem out of place to u. Actuallly i feel if u really heard neutral speakers u would not like them. have u any idea what it takes to get a smooth response curve over the entire frequency range? a neutral speaker will have absoulteyl no SPL losses and will have a flat response across the entire range.

square_wave schrieb:

Audiophiles go for XRCD’s because most recordings suck big time these days. Even if the master recording is good, the duplication process kills the recording. There is a reason why “mobile fidelity” spend almost 2 years cleaning up the original pink floyd “wall” recording. If you heard the mobile fidelity version of “wall”, you will know the difference!

i agree. but we enthusiasts can't afford to buy such recordings . if i want to the CDs of say 5 artists...i will have to sell my amplifier and buy them. now i don't see that this qualifies as audiophile.
Yes it will be great if we can get that kind of material for the prevalent price of CDs. Till then its just an advancement in technology which is of no use to the most of us. which in my eyes is a waste of time and money.
Cheers,
Ben

I agree that totally neutral speakers do not exist. So we are talking about relatively neutral. I find speakers like dynaudio, proacs, Acoustic Portrait to be very neutral compared to most other speakers I have heard. I agree that all these have been slightly voiced to appeal to a certain target customer base. But then, voicing is an integral part of speaker design. A vifa driver does not sound like a scanspeak or a dynaudio driver. But the distortions in these speakers are way lesser than your typical rock’n’roll JBL or Cervin Vega. The better your speakers and related electronics are, more recording faults you will hear.

My ears liked the MF better. I found the sound to be more natural than the brystons which sounded slightly shrill to me.

I was basically telling you why audiophiles like XRCD. I didn’t ask you to go and buy them. I agree the prices are way too high for a middle class Indian. I don’t even have a single XRCD. I am planning to buy a couple of them at least because the dynamic range and natural sound just mesmerizes me. I only wish they were more cheaper.
Cheers !

square_wave schrieb:

I didn’t ask you to go and buy them. Cheers !

Never implied that u did!.
Cheers to you too.
Ben

i agree with u on al the other counts....regarding Acoustic Portriat...i have not heard them for more than 5 minutes so am going to.

some points to ponder as those who nread readers digest will remember

1. Every component imparts a colour to sound, even the so called neutral sounds
2 Every person hears sound differently as the ears freq response is different
3 Every one has his own likes when it comes to the "colour" of sound.

so neutral to one might be colour to another. and just because a speaker is neutral sounding does not mean you will like it!

So discussion on whether a speaker is neutral or not might not take us anywhere !

BTW proac is definitely not "neutral" by any standards..it has a very clear house sound which is why it has its range of fans

square_wave schrieb:

The PMC may be a good match for the brystons. They have actually tied up as partners. PMC uses bryston power blocks in their active speakers. Match made in heaven, I guess! This Sunday I was at Prithvi’s place listening to the studio 140’s with the bryston monoblocks. They sounded good and we decided to switch to the MF power. The studio 140 definitely sounded much better with the MF. More warmth and musical sounding. I would definitely prefer the MF over the bryston any day. The bonus is that the MF was rated at a much lower power and still it was driving the studio with aplomb! I am not saying the brystons are bad but for the power rating / price, they should have performed much better. Maybe it is a mis-match with the proacs.

Bryston is a very accurate amp with no coloration. I am not a least bit surprised that you found th MF to be a better match. I have heard the MF paired with a Joseph Audio and Revels. Brystons perform extremely well for price, that is why studios use them.

I have heard the ProAcs before purchasing the PMC. The ProAC responce D15 driven by a Mcintosh setup. I wasn't to impressed by much of anything it did. It could have been the room the dealer had. I have evaluated ProAcs twice and come away with the same impressions. It was just a lifeless speaker and not very involving. If you need electronics to inject coloration to bring a speaker to life, that's fine by me. But a good speaker should not need cloured electronics to sound good. The PMCs sounded phenomenal, with the same qualitlies driven by my Bryston as well as my friends NAD.

May be your just don't like neurtal sounding speakers. You are used to coloured sound and anything neutral doesn't sound good to you or Prithvi.
I have come to dislike the term warm and musical. The minute an audiophile says warm and musical, I know they like things with a extra dash of colour.

The PMCs play anything you throw at them, that's why studios uses them. The Bryston/PMC setup is extremely revealing of recordings. The dealer was telling me that he had a customer who kept listening to a CD he had again and again only to discover that the CD he had for ten years and was intimately familiar with had a sound that only the PMCs revealed. He realised after a few interations that the guitar players wedding band struck the wood by and created a snapping sound!!!

Your definition of performance is what the difference is. If you consider performance to be coloured sound that will make a speaker warm and fuzzy event though it is not that's a different kind of performance.

I started questing for uncloured sound after 5 years of researching audio and comming to a conclusion that most audiohphiles want neutral sound with different approaches and degrees of nuetrality.

They say you must pair a bright speaker with a warm amp or tube to mellow the sound and make it warm and fuzzy. Why? Bright is cancelled by warm. end result neutral. No?

All this and when you throw Cables and cd players in the mix makes for a wonderfully self sustaining industry that tells people they need x with y with z to get a good sounding system. What's more a dealer will suggest a cable that will make you speakers sound less harsh. I fell for that trap once. A cable shouldn't do anything to change the sound, what so ever.

The reason so many permutations exist is that each vendor has to get thier signature sound to differentiate them from the others. If all speakers were neurtal soon there won't be much to distinguish them from the others.

Read the article below from J. Gordon Holt the founder of stereophile::
http://www.westlakea...sound-lc81_81sw.html

Onemore thing in terms of performance, Brystons are conservatively rated. My 120W 5b-st actually puts out 152-153 watts before clipping. The handwritten spec sheet that specifically was meant for my amp says so.

The 7b-st, which was made in 1997-98, might be defective or need some tuning. Send it into Bryston. I have heard many a stories that people have sent thier amps in for repair or tuning and bryston has not only fixed them free of charge( warranty) but also improved them. A person sent is 24 year old amp in when they did that, that too 4 years out of warranty!! When he bought the amp it came with only 5 years but bryston somewhere along the line retroactively made all thier products have 20 years warranty. Then they fixed and improved it long after that warrantly expired. Now that's service.

I agree that all speakers have a house sound whether it is high end or low end. But that is due to the voicing of the speakers of to a certain customer base and belief/taste of the chief designer. But high-end speakers, although voiced, do not impart too much distortion to the sound. I do not know how they actually voice them. I have heard high-end speakers with slightly rolled off high frequencies and some with slightly bumped up mid-band/mid-bass etc…Voicing generally makes all the speakers in the family sound similar. But when it comes to distortion in sound, they are far better than your typical rock n’ roll JBL, bose or Cervin Vegas. This can make these speakers very unforgiving to bad recordings.
I have cousin who owns the Bose 601 and I have previously owned the bose 401. They will play all recordings, irrespective of their quality in a typical “hi-fi” sound. There is not much difference between an audiophile grade version and a normal indipop recording. It is only when you own relatively neutral speakers these differences become very apparent.

square_wave schrieb:

I have cousin who owns the Bose 601 and I have previously owned the bose 401. They will play all recordings, irrespective of their quality in a typical “hi-fi” sound. There is not much difference between an audiophile grade version and a normal indipop recording. It is only when you own relatively neutral speakers these differences become very apparent.

squarewave,
I want to add to your post that the difference in very good recordings and the standard run-of-the-mill recordings can be heard very easily with higher resolution speaker systems and partnering electronics. The equipment/speakers may or may not be coloured but one needs high resolution equipment to hear the subtle differences and details.

manek

My vote to manek.
Recently with my speakers I have found in many Indian Recordings thw quality is worse. But most of the english songs sound smooth. Even few irritating sounds that ive experienced with taal sonds jeans, etc...

I dont know whats the equipment AR Rehman uses but i found lots of his songs were not recorded properly.

Isnt it?

dont know AR rehman's recordings as i dont hear his music.

maybe they are recorded well, maybe they are recorded just like other indian cd's which are noisy and recessed in the midrange, a lot of boom and tizz and very little in between.

manek.

Most Indian recordings are recorded to sound good in boom boxes. It also needs the extra "TIZZ" and "BOOM" factor to sell. You can't blame AR Rehman. The market demands it and therefore he is forced to do it. It is the same story with most Indian recordings and most international pop recordings also.

AR Rehman is one of those few music directors who have given good and different music to the people.
Cant say anything about him but yes recording.....has to be condemned if required....

I think there are a few decent recordings of AR Rehaman's comopsitions. A lot of recent ones seem to be a lot better than the older recordings. I have a few tamil songs on vairous CD labels and it appears the master itself is badly mastered and mixed, often sounding shrill and bright.

Kananthil muthamital seems to be a decent recording.

well, no need to blame poor AR rehman.. it is the sound recording eng and studio who record it into a master (

Quality Equipment costs money and doing so will only increase the cost of CDs and that is a deterrent for people who actually make albums a Top grosser to buy them ie the Non Audiophiles
Since audiophiles actually represent a miniscule % of cd customers do not expect it to improve too much !

If you like that Genre, it makes more sense to setup a forgiving setup and be happy with the sound than put an accurate system and gripe about it

No no im not blaming AR Rehman... but what i have observed is that there is lots of shrilling and hurting treble in his recordings..

Yes this may be because of demand on boom boxes...

I never blame on artists...I give lots of value to them...

Just to go back to prithvi's setup. Is the Music Fidelity an integrated amp or a power amp?

What is the Preamp used with the Bryston and or MF? What is the source?

an interesting quote on Bryston amps and recording of sound by the respected REG of TAS (The Absolute sound)

. In actual practice I think Bryston amplifiers are the most commonly used amplifiers by pros in the US. One thing to notice here also is that for recording as opposed to monitoring(where people are presumably looking for maximum accuracy) many even most pros are looking for certain types of sound. For example, they do not aim for a single neutal microphone but have different mikes that they feel work well for particular instruments or voices and so on. Recording from their viewpoint is an art. Tube sound can be part of this. But this is a far cry from wanting to get your own system to soundtube-y. We presumably are trying to hear their work of art neutrally, not create a work of art of our own, REG

Arj schrieb:

an interesting quote on Bryston amps and recording of sound by the respected REG of TAS (The Absolute sound)

Most interesting indeed...... this should have been in the tubes vs ss thread.

But this is a far cry from wanting to get your own system to soundtube-y. We presumably are trying to hear their work of art neutrally, not create a work of art of our own, REG

The key point here is " But this is a far cry from wanting to get your own system to soundtube-y. We presumably are trying to hear their work of art neutrally, not create a work of art of our own"

So he says we should aim for neutral systems.;) My point and pursuit exactly.