Audio Sucks - I have two great systems in two locations and I can't enjoy them .. *

Discussion in 'Audio Hardware' started by audiorocks, Jul 23, 2014.

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  1. Robin L

    Robin L Musical Omnivore

    Location:
    Fresno, California
    Not just the amp, the whole kit and, though not cheap, amazing sounding, really. He's been posting about here. I haven't heard his dedicated system[would like to] but I heard one over a Decade ago at a Stereophile show in San Francisco. "Palpable Presence" like nobody's business.
     
  2. OnTheRoad

    OnTheRoad Not of this world

    Are you on The North Shore and subject to the rumble and roar of large wintertime surf ?

    I was RIGHT ON the shore at Sunset Beach for a winter and I couldn't turn the stereo UP enough to drown out the constant noise.

    But hey...that was OK. I devoted less time to dedicated listening out there as there were other, more localized interests for me. Same, for me, with California. I read another's response about only being able to listen at night or somesuch. I'm in that camp. I DO listen when I get up, before I get out...and I'm OUT all day enjoying 'nature'..and wouldn't be content inside.

    I like my 'stuff'...but really, it can be an albatross...a real monkey on my back. I'd like to have music 'out in nature'...but headphones are too boxy. I like the open air. Fr'instance at the beach...I'd like to have massive, great sounding speakers, cranking my tunes while I bodysurf. I'd put up with the extraneous sounds of waves etc...for that.

    Honestly though...if I were in Hawaii right now...I'd not be content staying at home with ANY system..much of the time. I MUST be out in the environment...even the manmade one's there...as I love the place. Areas of Cali are the same for me.

    Maybe piped in music out of thin air is the answer...and no 'stuff'...just sounds from the heavens.
     
    George Blair likes this.
  3. kevintomb

    kevintomb Forum Resident

    Great sound, An expensive system, something that is nearly perfection and so on, are not automatic "Happy Makers".

    I have had "Dry" times with audio also, and often it was when being too focused or worried about gear or "sound quality", or trying to sort out issues with sound, and finally realizing it was that mild obsession to tweak and listen, instead of simply enjoying the music.

    I cured that by simply ditching most stuff I liked, and finding a couple dozen new artists or bands, that I had no previous connection to, nor had thoughts about how it should "Sound".

    Instead, it was all new, no preconceived notions about upper bass being a bit too boomy, or how the image was, but simply my mind was focused on "New music"

    I was then able to go back to previous stuff, and my mind was mostly cleared.
     
    sfaxa, Robin L and utahusker like this.
  4. gloomrider

    gloomrider Well-Known Member

    Location:
    Hollywood, CA, USA
    I go through periods where I say to myself, "there has to be more to audiophilia than listening to the same titles over and over for most of my adult life".

    For me, the hobby is best when I'm hearing something from the 70s/80s for the first time today. But that well is getting dry...
     
    Alan2 likes this.
  5. JL6161

    JL6161 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Michigan, USA
    Yes, I read the board. The Audio Note stuff, Thorens vinylnirvana table, and Classic 2 sound like lots of fun. I'm glad it's amazing because if a $200k, 300k system didn't sound like the freaking seraphic host, I'd be pretty cheesed off, personally.
     
    Robin L likes this.
  6. ggergm

    ggergm another spring another baseball season

    Location:
    Minnesota
    ggking7, I sure hope you're serious about this thread. I'm one of those who have my doubts, especially because of the "sarcastic and deriding comments are welcome" remark in the opening post. It totally puts your motives in question.

    I need to know you aren't putting us on because I experienced exactly the situation you describe when I was your age. I had an identical crisis over the enjoyment of my stereo. I ended up hating my system and the whole hobby. My solution was to back away from high end audio for almost 30 years until I was mature enough to once more own an audiophile system.
    It gives you hope and a way out.

    And yes, it's all in your head although I find the "just enjoy music" answers upthread, which is an obvious and easy solution to those posters, was hard for me to achieve. I had to radically change my whole stereo system to be able to enjoy music again.

    In the mid 1980s I had a phenomenal system for its day, with a Mark Levinson ML-7a preamp, full range Acoustat 2+2 electrostatic speakers that reached from the floor to the ceiling, a succession of turntables with the best being a Luxman PD-441 platter/Signet tone arm/Signet TK-9e cartridge combo, and a laundry list of great amplifiers including ones from Threshold, Bryston and a pair of wonderful sounding 100 watt pure Class A beasts from Yamaha. I also had all the add-ons like a Nakamichi Dragon cassette, room treatment, more great cables than I could use, a super flexible equipment rack, and the ultimate listening chair. At any given time, my hi-fi retailed for between $15K and $20K, a lot for that era.

    People would come over and go gaga over my stereo. I had to admit at times it sounded out of this world. But there were other, much darker moments. I'd say to my friends, "But can't you hear that slightly butterscotchy midrange that slurs the vocal?" Often all I could hear was what my stereo did wrong. At the worst, I'd literally grate my teeth, the sound got so annoying. Unless I was drunk, I couldn't enjoy my system, and that's not a solution.

    I got to the point where I couldn't stand to listen to my stereo. I hated the way it sounded and there wasn't a tweak or an equipment swap that would solve the problem anymore. Those only worked for progressively shorter and shorter periods of time. Listening to my stereo just made me angry. It was awful.

    In 1986, when I was 33, I either sold all the gear or boxed it up. I still own a few of the pieces, including the Levinson, which I rarely use. The stereo store where I worked (I sold hi-fi for 30 years, owning my own store for 21 of those) was a Bang & Olufsen dealer and in '86 they came out the first practical multi-room system. I installed it in my house. I knew it wouldn't hold a candle sonically to what I had going before but that didn't matter. I changed what was important. Instead, important became sitting on the toilet, listening to my a/d/s/ bathroom speakers, using the B&O's remote to change radio stations. I spent time on my deck, cranking tunes. I had small box speakers on top of the kitchen cabinets and a second, or was it a third, remote for that room. The B&O system was incredibly programmable, allowing me to use it as an alarm clock, having it come on only in my bedroom, waking up to the turntable, and, after finishing the album side, having it switch automatically first to the CD player, and then when that ended, over to the cassette deck.

    I owned the B&O stereo for 25 years until too many of its pieces broke down because of old age. The B&O never sounded awesome, only good enough, and sometimes not even that great. Its phono stage left much to be desired. But when all you have to eat is cereal and ramen noodles, cereal and ramen noodles taste pretty good. I enjoyed my B&O stereo. I had a side trip into home theater, owning the first decent Dolby Surround decoder, the Shure HTS-5000, and the last great analog Dolby Pro Logic processor, the Fosgate Model 3. I never stopped collecting record albums, fortunately. My audio life became quite good. I once more enjoyed playing with my hi-fi, becoming a trader of bootleg tapes by bands which allowed concert taping, like the Grateful Dead and Phish. String Cheese Incident for years even offered us fans soundboard patches. I already owned the microphones for live taping so I bought both home and portable DAT recorders and built up a significant library of digital concert tapes, which I still own and listen to. Sonically, few things in audio are as iffy as a live audience recording. The room reverberations or a fan clapping off-beat can become very annoying. But I loved them.

    In 2011, with the rebirth of LPs and a whole new generation of gear out there, I decided to make the plunge again and build an audiophile system. I didn't know if it would work, being completely unsure whether I was now mature enough to own one. Could I listen past the errors in my system or would I focus on them once again? I'd used an imperfect stereo for so long, what would happen when I tried to go back once again to making a near-perfect one?

    Life has a way of making you view perfection differently when you are 58 as opposed to 33. You see perfection in your kids while also thinking they are perfect snots. Your wife, who you love, remains perfectly beautiful as everything starts to wrinkle and sag. Doing a perfect job at work means managing to get through another week without having your boss yell at you. Perfect heath becomes not dying of a terminal disease. I've had my share of these issues over the years. For me, perfection now means being completely real and accepting in the moment. Perfection is the first ding in a new car. Perfect is a blemish on your wife's forehead. Perfection is the employee who is always 15 minutes late but sells like a mother the moment he walks in the door. Perfection simply is what is. I know this is all pop psychology, about as deep as a kid's wading pool, but the most meaningful lessons from life are often the simplest ones. When I was 33, I tied myself in knots, trying to make everything perfect. Now, at 61, I realize life is always perfect all the time. Who would have thought that one of the greatest, most perfect experiences of my life would come at the age of 48 when, after waking up from a nap, I was suddenly paralyzed from the waist down? I need multiple surgeries on my back, after which I had to learn how to walk again. In the middle of the process I found out I had a form of cancer that is 99% fatal. I was lucky or blessed, take your choice, that I was in the 1% who lived. Actually, what almost killed me was a deep wound infection from my operations that required infusion therapy. Antibiotics were pumped through my back while I was in the hospital for 25 days. I remained on heavy doses of antibiotics, along with morphine for my back, for nearly a year.

    Almost dying was perfect for me. As we said in the '60s, grok that one.

    So now when I listen to my hi-fi and it doesn't sound quite right, I just accept it. Lately I'm starting to easily hear a fault in the crossovers of my B&W 804s. There is a discontinuity between the midrange and the tweeter, a problem that was solved in the later, Diamond, version of the speakers. So maybe, sometime, I'll step up to the 804Ds. But those would cost me many thousands of dollars, money I don't want to spend. I can live just fine, thank you, with the way my speakers sound right now. Their occasional edginess in the crossover simply makes them even more perfect. I wouldn't change a thing. You should hear how good my stereo sounds.

    Good luck with your journey, ggking7. I wish you acceptance, satisfaction, happiness and joy.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jul 25, 2014
  7. T'mershi Duween

    T'mershi Duween Forum Resident

    Location:
    Y'allywood
    What model of Tekton speaker do you have? I've got the Pendragons.

    You
    must be doing something wrong if the Tektons aren't rocking your world!

    :)
     
  8. Robin L

    Robin L Musical Omnivore

    Location:
    Fresno, California
    I heard one of those at the Stereophile Show as well. It's amazing what a silly millimeter can do to the sound of a turntable.
     
    JL6161 likes this.
  9. Robin L

    Robin L Musical Omnivore

    Location:
    Fresno, California
    Wow! I understand, my life derailed and I very nearly died just as I was approaching sonic nirvana as a recording engineer specializing in Classical music nearly 20 years ago. Like Yogi Berra sez, when there's a fork in the road take it. This sort of experience shakes up one's priorities no end.
     
    Last edited: Jul 25, 2014
    ggergm likes this.
  10. Shak Cohen

    Shak Cohen Forum Resident

    Location:
    United Kingdom
    I would get a good graphic or parametric equalizer personally.

    And I would use a natural sounding, high quality recording of something like a piano piece or string quartet, made by a label like Windham Hill or Deutsche Gramophon to dial in the settings.
     
  11. gregorya

    gregorya I approve of this message

    I wonder if part of the problem, just based on the thread title, is thinking of it as "audio" and not as "music"... I'm serious.

    I know that I have had times when I'm listening to the system and not the music. Sure, at times when perhaps you need to evaluate a piece of equipment, it makes sense to listen to the system critically, but then that's a totally different brain process than enjoying music.

    Is there currently a piece of music, album, song, artist, etc. that you're in love with? Something you just can't wait to hear? If not, that could be part of the issue.
     
    JeffMo likes this.
  12. beowulf

    beowulf Forum Resident

    Location:
    Chula Vista, CA
    Go surfing and then get drunk!
     
    Colin M likes this.
  13. triple

    triple Senior Member

    Location:
    Zagreb, Croatia
    I would try other wires. I have heard bad sounding systems that used Nordost wiring.
     
    Tim 2 likes this.
  14. rbp

    rbp Forum Resident

    And would not look out of place in Hawaii.
     
  15. reeler

    reeler Forum Resident

    I never reached a walk away point, but I know some who have. The true music lover will find their way back to digging stuff just like they used to, despite grappling with gear. I feel confident I will not change my core rig eventhough I know it is not necessarily the best sound I ever got. Tubes were good but not consistent as you say- the sound changed upon each retube (some people like this aspect of tubes, I didnt). Class A solid state was good, but thought one day I'm a slave to this stuff as I sat there sweating, listening to the juice eating, stove burning amp, with the AC coming on frequently (aside from energy waste also a listening distraction). It is not mainly about the gear, never was for me, but I did get side tracked for a period, during the late 90's early 2000's.
     
    Last edited: Jul 25, 2014
  16. Tullman

    Tullman Senior Member

    Location:
    Boston MA
    You need some Maui Waui before listening.:cool:
     
  17. Tullman

    Tullman Senior Member

    Location:
    Boston MA
    Yes it is.:laugh:
     
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  18. Colin M

    Colin M Forum Resident

    Not if it were dropped on you from 50'
     
  19. Colin M

    Colin M Forum Resident

    Now that's putting the preamp before the power amp.
     
    beowulf likes this.
  20. Neta

    Neta Forum Resident

    Location:
    VT
    If you can't stand to listen to them then they are not 'great'
     
  21. JeffMo

    JeffMo Format Agnostic

    Location:
    New England
    One word: PONO
     
  22. Bolero

    Bolero Senior Member

    Location:
    North America
    sell all that crap, get an old Sansui, some bigass JBL's from the '70's, and spend the rest on good wine
     
  23. In all seriousness, I'd be happy to live in either of your homes while you're in the other. I doubt I'll be able to fix your issues, but I'm happy to provide a second set of ears to validate that it's not all in your head. I'm serious. :)
     
  24. One other thing... I haven't read thru all of this thread yet and might not have time to, but have you considered that you might have an emerging case of Tinnitus? I've often wondered if I might have a bit of this myself as I have shared some of your frustrations with inconsistency. Perhaps you can get checked out by a medical professional who specializes in this.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tinnitus
     
  25. audiorocks

    audiorocks Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    California
    Thanks to all those who take me seriously. Especially ggergm and others who I can tell know exactly where I'm coming from.

    I'm the kind of person that CAN NOT stop working on something I really care about until it's perfect in my eyes. This has worked really for my business. It can never be perfect which causes me to work on it every day which causes it to get better and better and causes me to make more and more dough. Audio on the other hand has disposed of untold amounts of time and energy with basically nothing to show for it. I didn't get into audio so I could have a hobby to work on forever. I just like listening to music. But for some reason, at least for me, it never brings lasting satisfaction and I'm constantly sucked deeper down the never-ending rabbit hole.

    I either need to a) walk away, b) find a quick fix for my current system (yeah right), or c) build some other kind of system that I can listen to forever.

    a) Walk away means selling off all my gear and not listening to recorded music any more. Weird and exciting at the same time.

    b) A Mullard 12AX7 reissue tube arrives tomorrow which I'll install into my Red Wine Audio Signature 16. It's supposed to roll off the top end a bit so maybe it will tame my brightness. Another idea is replacing my Tekton Enzo speakers with Tekon Lore or Lore-S speakers which Vinnie at RWA says don't have the brightness problem had by the Enzo. Here I find myself continuing down the rabbit hole. Even if either of these solutions work, will they still be working next month?

    c) I've always gone for accuracy and neutrality and now I find myself with a serious brightness/edginess/fatiguing problem. Is there another kind of system out there that will just allow me to listen to music merrily as I go through life? I don't want to go vintage and I want to stay off the grid as I am with RWA so I don't have to do the power conditioning thing to get consistent sound.
     
    ggergm likes this.
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