Experiencing a £100k sound system

I seem to recall a story about an event held in a theater in China somewhere, and they had two giant Mac monoblocks and a pair of speakers playing music from an unknown source and they sold tickets for the lucky few to get seats in the place. Always cracked me up hearing that. OTOH, if the amps are 1200 watts apiece then hearing them play in a large venue almost makes more sense than in a 13x 16’ living room FFS.

 

As promised, for the OP and those precious few who weren't threatened or overly challenged by this thread - Sonic Youth circa 1987 (sometime between EVOL and Daydream Nation). I took this pic at the Living Room in Providence, RI. Thurston is wearing a Big Stick t-shirt for bonus style points!

 

Many years ago at an early Stereophile show I heard the Infinity IRS lodspeakers (forget which ver.), well set-up. At that time the speakers cost $50K. The most memorable and remarkable aspect of the sound was that the stereo image seemed almost like a bas-relief sculpture - very solid and stable. The solidity of the sound image was so fascinating, you couldn't really relax when listening. If I had a ton of money, I would buy great, expensive loudspeakers, but not anything like the giant monstrosities so popular at the highest end.

 

People on this forum hate £100K systems, so don't mention them. It's about the music and not the equipment surely? Just a means to an end.

 

Monster speakers should overwhelm the average listening room. Conversely Fremer uses them in his listening Den. Go figure that conundrum. Actually the thinking behind Audio Note designs makes more sense but the prices asked for relatively simple (Snell based) designs with some exotic components thrown in is hard to fathom.

 

Cool pic!

 

volume level doesn't help. i just like to do my listening in a smaller section of the room setting up "nearfield" and relatively close. using my entire room that a big mega system would require loses something to me. I like to be close, especially when spinning vinyl.
a full room system is fine (our home theater room is like that) but it is for just that- home theater and digital via remote control. not for serious vinyl 2-channel listening (for me).

 

exactly. it is more like being at a live concert. a very rich experience best enjoyed on occasion.

 

I grew up in an audiophile world, so the idea of a big bucks system was no novelty. Many of those can be impressive, but long term, are they something you could live with, musically? (Leave aside cost for the moment, it's a distraction and churns up all kinds of issues that are unrelated to sound quality). I'm not interested in hyper-detail, or huge db (dynamics are good) and I quickly shut down if I can hear the machinery playing- the midrange to me is the 'tell.' Get that wrong, and it doesn't matter to me how full range or deep bass capable the system is.
My experience has been that all these big systems do sound different-- different takes on musical "truth" (if there is any truth to be had), given that we are trying to create a convincing illusion.
I'm glad the OP had a "eureka" moment-- that realization that a reproduction system can almost fool you, or pull you in so you don't hear the artifice of "reproducing" sound-- is an important one. The trick, in my estimation, is being able to accomplish this without mortgaging your soul. Vintage, electrostats, horns, SET, tubes, a good source (I've become increasingly accepting of digital on that front) all can help without being in oligarch territory. Source material plays a huge factor, as does set up.
I can almost always find the seams or see the 'man behind the curtain' if I listen to a system for sufficient time on various material. I have yet to hear a totally seamless system that will fool you on all kinds of material (especially if you aren't feeding it sonic wonder type recordings). I have found this to be true no matter the price. So, it's pick and choose priorities, even in the stratosphere. Is there some underlying principle to all of this?
I think much of it has to do with correct system matching of components and set up in the room as well as source material. There are so many variables, it's amazing that --left to our own devices-- we can, as civilians, get it right. Spending money, alone, won't do it in my estimation. I do think it is a good exercise to hear what a great system, properly set up in a room, is capable of doing. But if it is system component matching, voicing and room, those are all factors that are price agnostic. Yes, I probably will get more out of a kilobucks phono cartridge, at a price, than a modest cartridge, though there are those who swear by MM and modest cartridges, including vintage ones, in a good arm.
I'm always a little skeptical of the "WOW" factor, including what you hear at shows (which is why I don't really go to many shows any more). It's kind of unfair and misleading to generalize-- I've heard fabulous systems using big, solid state amps and power hungry dynamic speakers-- exactly the opposite of what I use in my main system. So, too, I think the notion of the price, as a benchmark, tells you almost nothing. And I have nothing against big bucks systems.

 

Excellent post! Very insightful. Couldn't agree more.

 

When was the last time you attended a concert? Every concert I've been to for a LONG time, as in mostly forever, used standard PA equipment to blast the sound out into the audience. I can't stop laughing at the audio-fetishistas who use mega-bucks equipment to catch every nuance in a what was generated by a standard bank of Marshall, or Fender, amps that the musicians, who were probably high while they played, couldn't care less about.

Of course, for studio recordings the engineers master on run-of-the-mill small monitors, and yet the fetishists believe that they are somehow making "extra" magic with their systems, apparently all the better to set the stage for sniffing their own farts and contemplating their specialness.

 

So you are saying we should all listen to concert recordings using PA system at home?

 

Many grown up artists who’ve been around for a long time like Paul Simon, the Greatful Dead, Joe Jackson as well as many classical artists and jazz artists care about how their recordings sound. A tiny bit of research on the net will clearly show this, as will listening to their recordings on a good system. If all you listen to are artists who make lousy-sounding recordings (lots do), you’re lucky. You can save your money.

And many really great artists also play better, not worse, when they’re high!

 

Concerts do the best they can with what they have to work with. Which to my mind is working around the very unconducive and marginal acoustics in the venue of the event. Carnegie Hall or Lincoln Center type venues are the exception and not the rule.

For example: I attended Radiohead at Madison Square Garden and the sound was as as good as they could make it for a hockey arena - which wasn’t great but, hey, it was Radiohead. Also recently saw Tedeschi-Trucks Band at the Beacon Theatre and the sound was better but not by much. Live shows have all the impact & energy but they rarely have the sonic purity we can get from recorded music on a good system. The exceptions being the Carnegie and Lincoln type of experiences. Live opera to me is an ethereal experience.

Bringing up the point about live music is valid and relevant to this discussion. The 100k GBP system was never gonna make it like listening at home. It was meant as a sampler of what high end audio was like and to convey it to some degree to an audience in a venue. A small system won’t have the reach to do the job for a room that size anyway, so ya gotta go big. The price tag placard was useful to get attention and for those unaccustomed to high end sound it can hint at something out of the ordinary because of what it costs.

Some of the responses in this thread made appropriate for a Rorschach rather than an audio discussion.

 

Part of it is the performer too. I heard Susan Tedeschi open for Etta James at Carnegie Hall. She overloaded the room- a blur of sound, vocals unintelligible. Etta's band came on-- old style big band, understood how to play the room. Etta was past her prime but man, big difference in sound quality. No change in acoustics or PA system (perhaps personnel behind the board changed but I doubt it), simply a band and performer knowing how to play the room at lower db, given the material.
I used to love going to hear David Lindley do his one man shows-- great acoustic playing- though he relied on the PA (no Dumble amps that I could see).
Crimson last year at Bass Hall here in Austin was fabulous. Whoever was doing sound really knew what they were doing- great deep bass, lots of clarity on the upper registers, nothing lost in the vocal parts- pretty loud, but great live sound.
MSG is horrible. Best sound I heard there was in a private box for Winwood-Clapton. Somehow, the walls of the box helped shape the sound so it wasn't a giant blob of sound.
I prefer smaller venues, but the sound is all over the place. I usually wear ear protection-- most rock bands are simply too loud, much as I love hard rock.

 

The requirements of a concert PA are completely different from producing sound in your living room. People who try to emulate PA systems in their living room are misguided (and probably deaf). Studios don't use run of the mill speakers to monitor - at least the major ones. Very expensive pro models from ATC, PMC, B&W etc tend to be used though often not large.

 

For me anyway, great sound does NOT involve reproducing the concert experience of a live, amplified, and non-acoustic performance. The experience is exciting for the totality--the musicians on stage, the excitement of the crowd, etc.--but sound quality is never the reason to be at a show. If my system sounded like a live show, I would junk it immediately. My system has to sound a lot better--less shrill, less muddled and incoherent, and it must deliver a thrill with FAR LESS volume. You want it loud and don't care about your hearing?; get a pair of headphones and save a bunch as compared to a mega system.

 

You reminded me of my first live rock concert which was ZZtop at the Houston, TX Summit auditorium back in '80. It was packed and the audience was rowdy and loud. ZZtop sounded like crap with all the amps and speakers on stage.

I said to myself it was to be my last live rock concert mainly because it turned out to be not as fun as I'ld anticipated and the sound to be far worse than I could ever imagine. I'ld rather listen to ZZtop studio performances.

 

The petty BS on this site has begun to reach staggering proportions IMO. Much more so than in the past it seems to me. Sad.

 

Wise, wise man.

 

Do you really think that needed to be said?

All you've done is contribute to the very same petty one liner complaints and BS.

 

I dunno, a sound blob mess I often view it as the responsibility, and the blame, to the guy that sits at the mixing console for the front of the house.



This linked photo was from one of the Tedeschi-Trucks Beacon shows - there was a lotta people on stage and a lot goin' on which drives the PA system into mush. So it may even not be totally the fault of the FOH mix guy - modern PA won't keep up with the churning fury of a band in full swing. During the show, Susan Tedeschi performed a haunting rendition of "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright" with just her vocal, fingerpicking a Stratocaster and it come through crystal clear.

I envy you - most of the reason for my affinity for Jackson Browne's music is half, if not more, David Lindley.

MSG has indeed served up horrible sound for 50 years. But if there's gonna be an big event, it'll be at the Garden. I like loud too, but I think we live in a different time now where I'd guess most venues place restrictions on the volume of the shows.

In truth, the presentation of music on a high-end system is IMO a somewhat artificial contrivance of music hyper-reality. The scale, the resolution, the delineations, the spatial cues...all constructs of music performance rarely experienced in live musical performance. Certainly not heard in anything at the Garden and not heard through any PA amplified show in any venue. But considering, for example, how Sir George Martin labored over the Sgt. Pepper mix and Pink Floyd's DSOTM was assembled from many pieces, hyper-reality in a sound system is perfectly fine with me if that's how I get to hear it. It is it's own thing, just as live at the Garden might be.

 

Yes! But thats OK. In fact, its great because the impossibility of realistically reproducing full dynamic range in our home as well as perfect transient accuracy has resulted in the reproduction of music at home becoming a kind of technological artform in itself that complements and enhances the artistry of the musician and skills of the engineers. But its not the same as the real thing. So instead of reacting viscerally to the actualy presence of the musicians nearby in a live venue, and the fantastic transient impact snd dynamic range of a live bamd in front of us, we react viscerally to the (obvious) *illusion* that a "phantom" musician is playing in our living room. The technological limitations of music recording and reproduction are overcome by distracting us with a convincing, but nevertheless obvious, illusion.

BTW, don't miss the live album from Jackson Brown and David Lindley, "Love is Strange En Vivo Con Tino." Great versions, great sound!

 

There will be multiple $100k systems at the DC area Capital Audiofest. I heard the speakers in one system that will be at the show. It was under final assembly when I got to the shop so I heard it fired up for the first time. It sounded quite good even though it had not yet been tuned. The sound was clear, vibrant and detailed, yet extremely smooth.

It is an open baffle system with an 18" field coil woofer from G.I.P. Laboratories, a G.I.P. field coil 597 replica tweeter and a Western Electric 713-b compression driver and Western Electric 32A horn for the midrange. The crossover utilizes some vintage Western Electric and Sprague capacitors and vintage resistors and modern inductors. The power supply for the field coils is a tube-based unit. I heard it with a sort-of replica of a Western Electric 124 amp--western electric based circuit, vintage, but not Western Electric transformers, and 6L6 tubes. At the show, I think the amp will be an ultra-refined version of the Western Electric d-spec 300b amp utilizing real, vintage, engraved-base 300b tubes.

This ultra expensive system will be an interesting contrast to some of the other ultra-expensive systems that will be at the show. This is an opportunity to hear just how different systems can sound; this goes against the notion that, at the high end, the sound tends to converge as some mythical ideal is approached.

 

And the real irony is that the old pre-war WE was meant for "PA" use, i.e., motion picture sound. Go figure, as they used to say in NY.