The Overall Audio Experience.

The Overall Audio Experience and Component 'Synergy'.

Since my first audio CD burning experience the other day, I've been giving interesting and wide ranging thought to the whole notion of how things actually 'sound', component 'synergy' and all that! It is actually very interesting. Although coming from a 'straight down the line' technical background, I've always known that sometimes things 'sound' different for reasons that can't really be readily explained from a purely technical viewpoint. More often than not I refer to the sonic 'character' in an overall sense rather than other specific things. I've always known that room acoustics are a very big factor here yet that is (apparently) not the whole reason. The Beatles recordings throughout their long career are one example of what I mean. I've always felt that the early albums (both on vinyl and CD, but less so), sound nicer and somehow more 'musical' than the later albums. For example the albums from around 1965 and 1966 have to me anyway, a sense of sonic 'hardness' that make them difficult to enjoy. The apparent frequency response, even if narrow, does not seem to detract from 'nice sounding' recordings! I used to equate valve sound with this sonic 'niceness', but that's also not always true based on personal listening experience over the years.

Back to the task that prompted this latest analysis, the audio CD compilation (my first). It was done here is this radio shack/ home studio and monitoring was done over a second set of bookshelf Richter 'Merlin' speakers driven though a small DIY LM1875 chip stereo amplifier with my Akai AP004 turntable with my Ortofon 2M Red cartridge used for recording along with the excellent RED Circuits DIY MM phono stage. As I recently mentioned on a forum post on the VE on this subject, after a day of recording I started to find the 2M Red a little too 'bright' sounding and in comparison with my Shure M97xE, I was amazed at how more balanced, smoother and 'musical' the M97xE sounded as heard through this radio shack/ home studio system, as good as if not better than my main system with similar driving electronics and speakers except for the inclusion of a powered active subwoofer.

In the days following, I've been spending quite a lot of time listening to vinyl in this room and I'm rapidly coming to the opinion that this is my best vinyl playing system and environment. I was listening to some Alfred Brendel playing some Beethoven piano sonata's on a Philips vinyl disc from around 1976 this morning, and it sounded very nice and very enjoyable with that wonderful sense of 'musicality'. The cartridge used was the M97xE, of course! What is even more interesting is that whilst the music was playing I was watching the spectrum analyser on the home studio electronics, and I was amazed to note the most of the piano music existed within an audio bandwidth envelope of about 240 Hz and 4 KHz, not a particularly wide audio bandwidth!

Listening to the same record on my spare room system never sounded as good as the playback on this radio shack system this morning despite having large three way speakers and essentially using the same equipment 'front end'. Why is it so?, as a famous professor would once say! Room acoustics are definitely a major factor, but as I commented earlier, it's probably not the full story. Very likely there are lots of 'little' things all having an influence, the basic recording quality of the vinyl record and the recording environment and technique, the phono cartridge and turntable, the phono stage, the speakers and the room acoustics in this room, and probably many others that I may not be aware of. Oh, the gloriously complex and endearing world of analog. Isn't it wonderful? Yes.

Perhaps there are even psychological/ human/ emotional aspects to all this perception as well. I, like I suspect everyone else has favourite places where it seems everything is 'right', almost like a real nirvana right here on Planet Earth! The complexities of human perception are indeed that, if nothing else and perception can be a highly individual thing. Oh the joys (and pitfalls) of being human. Perhaps I'd better stop right there or perhaps I might end up writing a book. More to come! Felix.