A good word you used earlier was resolution. I was careful not to use detail aswell, preferring to describe the KillerPre allowing us to see deeper into the music. Like it's amplifying everything it's being fed, without relying on volume. What I heard, was all of the goodness of the front end shining through.
Now, I can certainly steer my Dac to the clean and detailed side, or I can steer it towards being syrupy. I've done it, with the choice of output tubes, dac chip and chokes. I have settled on a combination that doesnt stray too far either way. The overall system is now just ever so slightly leaning towards "clean", which is no mean feat, when we are working with Tannoys, vintage Radford, and Killer front end. There is no silver anywhere. The M3 pre is starting to work in nicely now, with the combination of cables at my disposal. Is it perfect, no, but I reckon I'm further down the road than I have ever been. But to get deeper into the music, I need to crank it, and if I go too far, things start coming undone.
That’s is a very clear and useful description,
…….preferring to describe the KillerPre allowing us to see deeper into the music. Like it's amplifying everything it's being fed, without relying on volume. What I heard, was all of the goodness of the front end shining through.
Good that you have experienced the differences in leanness and syrup and have shaped the sound in the direction you want it to go.
Our approach more towards to lean or syrup can be influenced by suggestion, or group think. If one system is marked as coloured, vintage, all the metaphors because it sounds different to most, is that it is thought to be incorrect come from a perceived strength in holding a majority view. A study of history tells us there are many times where the majority are actually incorrect and it’s the one and the few that are correct. In the end Ill let emotional conveyance be the ultimate judge, all systems will have some limitations, though if you go to extremes you can eliminate many of them. If one way or another the system gets your toe tapping more than before and your getting the emotional connection, I doubt you’ll have gone down a dead end.
I think also Steven’s point that he has tried to make a number of times it’s the end game that really matters hasn’t always been considered.
We have heard the phrase I just want what’s on the CD and we want more accurate recording equipment. Sounds logical, even common sense. Yet in the end the music has got be reproduced. Feeding the speakers (if they are good ones) what they need to so a cello sounds like a cello is quite some feat, if it wasn’t we could just go down and buy what we need and job done. If whats fed to the speaker isn’t actually correct its over flavored, but in the limitations of the speakers reproduction converting what its fed so it ends up sounding like a cello, that’s the end game. I understand some will never ever accept such an idea, for them its just hocus pokus.
I wonder about some theoretical blind testing. Where people had to stand out side a room and couldn’t see in it, and were asked was person inside playing for example the trumpet or was it just a sound system playing. This test would be done with people who had no interest in hi fi. I wonder if they were ever fooled, what system would it be that fooled them?