Unexpected Places

Well my friend Ben and I had another Saturday of musical wandering. We went to a few dealers around town and listened to a few things. None of what we saw was particularly interesting (well, except for the $30,000+ system we listened to a bit built around some B&W 802Ds. Those were awesome), until one of the salesmen we were working with at a store that deals primarily with home theatre/surround sound happened to mention that the store just started carrying Thiel speakers and we were a bit excited about that. I had wanted to listen to Thiel for a while, but the closest dealers I could find were at least 6 hours away by car.

So we sat down with a pair of Thiel 2.4s and gave them a listen. They are very interesting speakers. They do not want to be toed in at all, and the manufacturers in fact insist that they are not when they are on display. They had very good tone and had a very musical feel to them. The 2.4s are a bit out of my price range, but they will start carrying the 1.6s soon. So I left my information and they will call me when they have those in (and broken in of course) and I will definitely go back to give them a listen. It was nice after a day of mostly disappointing auditions to find these speakers. It just goes to show you never know what you will find in unexpected places.

It's Genetic!

Many of us... ok, I will say it, "Audiophiles" from time to time encounter someone who thinks that what we do is totally crazy. But there is hope! A friend today pointed me to this article, which proposes that music is an integral part of us as humans. I think this is something that we audio people have always known, but now we have some science to back it up! The following passage from the article stuck out to me as interesting:

[Music's] ubiquity in human cultures, and strong evidence that the brain comes preloaded with musical circuits, suggest that music is as much a product of human evolution as, say, thumbs.

The article goes on to give some examples of how music developed with humans not just as a hobby or entertainment, but as a shared experience and necessary part of our evolution. So now when people look at us strangely when we practice our obsession, we have an explanation: it's genetic!

Last Saturday...

Recently I had been reading a fair amount about these Monitor Audio silver series speakers and I wanted to give them a listen. A store I had some experience with listed Monitor Audio stuff on their website, so I give my contact there a call. We talked a bit about Monitor and he said that they actually stopped carrying Monitor because they felt they underperformed and were overpriced. He is a sales guy tho and I figured I would take what he said with a grain of salt. He also said he felt the Paradigm Studio line was much better for about the same price. (Again, sales guy.) I said OK and that sounded interesting, and he also reminded me I could trade in my Paradigm Monitor 5's I had purchased there earlier for the price I paid for them and apply that to whatever I bought from his store. Of course, that expands my budget a bit so I figured it was worth looking into. I did some reading of reviews and such on the web of the Paradigm Studio 60 speakers and was impressed by what I read. Stereophile had a good review of them so I figured why not go in and give them a listen.

So around 11:30 or so on Saturday morning I rolled into the store with my trusty CDs. The tracks I used for all of my listening on Saturday were, as follows:
Come Away With Me and Turn Me On from Norah Jones' Come Away with Me, I Love You from Sara McLaghlan's Surfacing, Sunny Sumter and the Larry WIllis Quartet : Nick of Time from Mapleshade's Music Festival, Der Holle Rache from Mozart's Die Zauberflote from 20 Great Soprano Arias and What Would You Say from Dave Matthews Band Under the Table and Dreaming. I found my contact and he set me up in the back room with the Studio 60s with a Rotel CD player, a Rotel amplifier and a comfortable chair and let me have at it.

I would say that starting out I really liked the Studio 60s. They disappeared into the room well, had good imaging, a nice low end and good piano reproduction. However, with some of the female vocals and especially the DMB track I felt they were really bright and harsh. At times quite painful to listen to. I have to admit that disappointed me a bit after what seemed like a strong start. After that some other customers came in and I just kinda hung out while they did their thing, my contact had gone off and was working with some other people. (That was OK by me, he is a good guy, and knows to not be pushy). These 3 guys came in after a bit and were there specifically to listen to the Paradigm Signature S4 speakers. This was great because while I was listening to the Studios the Signatures were right behind me and I kept wondering how they sounded. So the guy who was thinking about purchasing them sat in the chair while his 2 friends and I settled in to see how they sounded. At first I have to admit they sounded pretty bad. This was especially disappointing as they were $2800 per pair. They had a good soundstage, and decent detail, but really really lacked any oomph. They are stand mounted (the same size and shape as my Monitor 5s) but for $2800 with a 2.5 way design I was not impressed. Fortunately, neither was the sales guy that was helping these 3 guys. He kept fussing with the electronics (Mostly Anthem gear) and complaining about the CD player (An Integra) and telling us how much he loved the Signature series and how this room did not really do them justice. And that the building was built in 1884. He finally gave up on those electronics as the 3 guys were about to leave and whisked the S4s out to the front room where he hooked them up to a simpler system (both of the systems in the back room were built to do HT as well as stereo) of Marantz gear. He talked the 3 guys into giveing the S4s one more shot and fired them up with this new system. They did sound a lot better. Unfortunately for the sales guy it was not enough to keep these 3 guys from making a hasty exit. Fortunately for me this left me with the S4s hooked up to a pretty nice system with another comfortable chair. I did not go through my whole listening set with the S4s because I had already heard a bunch of them so I just wanted to check a few things. They did have good imaging, GREAT vocals, GREAT piano reproduction, but still not a lot of low end. Way more than in the other room, but not enough to satisfy.

So I packed up my stuff and found my contact and we talked a bit before headed out.

I got in my car and headed down the road towards another audio store I like. I looked at my clock and discovered it was 3pm, and I had not had lunch. To the Potbelly Sandwich shop for a sandwich and, of course, a cookie!

After lunch I arrived at my second stop to listen again to the Vandersteen 2CE sigs and the Spendor S5es, since they were kind of my reference products. I started with the Vandersteens and right away they blew away everything that I had head that day so far. I was in a small side room and I was using a Rotel integrated amp (150wpc) and a top loading CD player, the brand of which I forget. The Vandersteens really sounded great on the first few tracks I listened to, but when I got to some of the busier stuff, the DMB in particular, they sounded a bit compressed and a bit mushy. This could be the recording, as it is not really engineered well, or it could be the small room with hard walls bouncing the sound all over the place. I really want to listen to these again in a bigger room. The Spendors were also quite good, an amazing soundstage for their size, but they felt a little thin with the Opera and some of the female vocals. I would like to hear them again with my amp.

So, the gear at the second store I really felt sounded better. Though after the electronics debacle with the S4s at first store I have to wonder a bit if the brightness of the Studio 60s was perhaps due a bit to the electronics. I would be curious to hear these again in a more controlled, less complicated setup. I do not expect it to change much, but it would be an interesting experiment.

So if I were to buy today (which I am not) I think I would go with the Vandersteens. They felt like they had a slightly richer sound than the Spendors, but I would really like to get both of them out of that small room and give them some space to breath. So at 5pm I headed out of the second store with not a whole lot of new information, but a sense that I did accomplish something. What, I am really not sure.

A bit of history...

I figured it might be a good plan for me to tell you a bit about my audio history. I find that it is helpful when discussing something as subjective as "what sounds good" it is useful to know where someone is coming from.

It really all started when I was in high school, and I was talking to a friend of a friend about audio gear. This person asked me what I thought the quality brands in audio equipment were. I said, "Oh, I dunno, Sony?" He laughed quite a bit at that. Not to disparage Sony, some of their ES stuff is great. He said I should look into Denon, and for speakers I should listen to Klipsch. I asked him how to spell that.

So I did, and a year or so later I purchased a Denon surround sound receiver and a 5.1 Klipsch setup. (Along with a Sony VCR, this was pre DVD). I was on top of the world, in audio heaven, because my speakers had horn tweeters!!

I continued that way for a while. I bought a DVD player, upgraded to a different Denon receiver a couple times, bought another DVD player (this one could play DVD-Audio discs!) and generally felt I had it pretty darn good. And I was enjoying my music, so I guess I did.

But then I went to a friends house, and he had just completed his surround sound setup. His main speakers were an older pair he had inherited from his mother (they were old, but sound quite good. He still has them.) but his center and surround speakers were made by a company I had never heard of called Paradigm. Ooooh! Something new! These speakers were small, but sounded quite good! I was intrigued! I had to learn more! I asked him where he got them, and he told me, and I went to investigate.

I then took my first trip to a specialty audio store, instead of the big box retailers. It was a whole new world! Not only did they have stuff that sounded much better than what was at the big box stores, the staff was very knowledgeable and loved to just talk about audio. I ordered a set of Paradigm titans on the spot. I got them home and hooked them up and I was blown away. These little speakers had presence! And bass! And a great soundstage! Again, I was in audio heaven.

Then, last year, another friend of mine told me he had purchased a pair of Anthony Gallo Reference 3s, and that they were fantastic. I had to hear them. I did. Wow. These speakers have been reviewed up and down the Internet, so I will not spend much time on them here, suffice it to say they were the best speakers I had heard at that point. I had to learn more! I dove into audio websites and searched my town for higher end audio dealers. I found names like Vandersteen, Wilson Audio, Von Schweikert, Spendor, Meadowlark, and many many others. I felt like my eyes and ears had been opened to another whole new world.

And my exploration of that world continues today, hence this blog. I have found that one of the best parts of the high-end audio world is just talking about it with other like minded individuals, and I hope to continue this discussion online in order to include as many people as possible. I hope I can share what I find and learn from my audience at the same time. I do not claim to know what is best, or what is better, and can only give my opinion. And in the world of "what sounds good" that is all we can really do.

Hello!

Hello there! My name is Erik, and I want to welcome you to my Hi Fi Odyssey. I have recently become very interested in Hi Fi audio gear, and I have found that the few people I have met while pursuing this interest love to talk about audio equipment. Based on that, I have decided to create this blog to chronicle my adventures in the world of Hi Fi. I hope you enjoy it!