Experiencing a £100k sound system

I went to an album listening event of Sonic Youth's seminal 1988 album Daydream Nation yesterday, and playback was through a system using components listed in the image below, totalling around £100k.

I have never experienced anything like it in my life before and it was a remarkable, memorable and blissful experience. You could really pick apart each instrument and feel it's tone and character, sense the dynamic of the band as well as the emotion and skill each player put into their instruments. My mind was truly blown and I wish I could always experience music like that.

Thurston Moore was also present and interviewed about the album, and he provided some great insights.

 

That does not look like a good sound room to operate such an experiment or provide the best this experience has to offer.

 

Well I can tell you that it was my first time experiencing a system of that caliber and I found it incredible. It wasn't an experiment either. They regularly run album listening events like these in the UK, run through expensive sound systems.

 

Hosted by Colleen Murphy? Wish I could have attended.

 

Quite a few people on the Forum have B&W 800-series/McIntosh combinations (including a few with 600 W monoblocks). As I am not a Mac fan, I use Classe monoblocks to drive my B&W 802s. I mostly reach for the Jim O'Rourke era albums when I want some Sonic Youth.

 

Clearly the room is not ideal and the sound was not the best, but hearing gear like that was probably very impressive. The question is how impressive would that system perform in an ideal room.

 

The seeds of audiophilia have been planted. Start saving for your own system now Vern! It needn't be near that expensive either to get much of the sound character you heard.

 

And the interconnects were?:

 

Glad you had this experience OP. Don't be too shocked by the negative posts. When it comes to audiophiles here there's always something wrong, no matter what it is.

 

Well, now you’re done for. You’ll be chasing this sound forever. Luckily I have yet to hear a $100 k system.

 

I think this goes over the 100K mark since there are two of the power amps.

 

Yeah, really. Can't someone express their excitement for a new audio experience and not have it picked over and found to lack perfection?

 

No.

That seems like a lot of seriously overpriced gear.

 

Doug
Depends on your income. Overpriced for me certainly, but for others not so much. I have a close friend who retired after 30 years in the business. I kid you not, he occasionally sold systems at multiples of this price. Amazing. Having heard the Macs, SME, and B&W, they certainly can sound awesome in the right system. My guess is the OP’s ears did not lie to him.

 

Sounds like a pretty cool event. Wish there was one like that near me.

 

How bizarre to listen to noise rock on a $100K system.

 

Why?

 

Two good things about listening to mega systems:
- Experiencing paradigm shifts in sound reproduction makes you realise how relatively futile stressing over the small things or making incremental changes can be.
- Experiencing ones that sound pants makes you realise ££ is no guarantee, and how important personal taste is.

 

Vern,

It sounds like you enjoyed your time listening to that system. That's great. Logically, the better systems should sound more and more like each other as they approach a theoretical ideal. There are some magazines that make simplistic and arrogant claims that they have the measure of good sound, which is coming close to the sound of acoustic instruments played in a nice environment. But, given how many different aspects to good sound there are and different listener priorities, that is an almost useless criterion.

What you will find, if you hear more and more of these types of systems, is wildly different kinds of sounds, not a convergence on a single ideal. The choices people make are personal, and with such systems, the person building them have flexibility to make all sorts of choices.

That system you heard has amps that are described as 1.25kw X 2 monobloc amps, which I take to mean 1,250 watts per channel. That is one way to a particular sound. My own system, which is well north of $100 k, has amps that, if one is generous on measurement, puts out 5.5 watts per channel. I am betting my system and the one you heard are quite different in sound.

 

Wow...I am surprised by the negativity here....it is like even if god himself has personally assembled a hi fi system for you and your audiophile friend comes to have a listen and says....it's ok but too bass heavy...also the soundstage was kind of restricted...

 

@Vern wow that's awesome. What a cool experience. Did the audience listen to the whole album? Did Thurston talk between tracks?

 

Thank goodness the folks with the money still want to buy a nice system. I don't know any younger relatives of mine that have any interest in audio gear - they just want a set of ear pods. I have a friend that works at a local audio shop in Maryland and he said the shop sells a couple of $100-150K systems each month and its not uncommon for them to design and install HT systems costing several hundred thousand. He said the occasional 'Big Buy' is what keeps the shop open. Also, McIntosh and B&W are among the shop's best-selling big ticket gear.

 

Or maybe I was merely attempting to educate the OP who didn't seem to be aware that the room was not optimal in providing the best SQ this specific system could deliver.

One could take that as a way to understand that a better room might make a cheaper system sound just as good as what he experienced here but it appears that some are injecting their own brand of negativity by spinning my comment (and others') as simply raining on the OP's parade.

Perhaps a look in the mirror is in order.

 

Sounds to me like you had the inquisitiveness and curiosity to seek out and hear something. And you liked what you heard. Great for you. Forget the audiophile techno-babble, for now, the emotion and the experience is what mattered.

Sometimes you gotta just smell the roses. It’s not about the audiophile minutiae of interconnects but of the interconnections it creates in your brain when on music. All the audiophile techno-babble is just a means to that end.

 

As I've not been to the centre I can't possibly comment on the room but I would have liked to have had that experience.

I stayed at a friends house for two days and the hi-end system I heard, don't know the cost, was fronted by the dCS Vivaldi disappointed me, no technicolour and lean.
After returning home mine sounded coloured and 'wrong', thank God my brain could rewire itself to recognise what sounds good