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Old 23rd Mar 2019, 6:09 pm   #535
wd40addict
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Join Date: May 2009
Location: Stevenage, Herts. UK.
Posts: 1,515
Default Re: Audiophoolery?

I once was at an exhibition where a cost-no-object, but apparently DIY system had been set up for punters to listen to with rows of seats in front of the open baffle speakers. These were driven by ginormous shiny valve amplifiers, source was probably CD as this was long before the recent vinyl revival.

And the sound was...

Terrible!

Yet all these people were seated nodding away in time to the music and apparently thinking it was great.

The other extreme was at one of the London Hi-Fi shows held in a hotel in the 90s. The small rooms weren't ideal and the sound most people were getting was harsh and unforgiving. I then wandered into another small room which had a pair of enormous horn loudspeakers squashed into it. The speakers looked such a mismatch to the room I thought 'this is going to be awful'. Then the music started playing: valve amp fed by a turntable. It sounded great and I could have sat there all day, my ears went ahhh after all the harshness.

The moral of the story: Don't judge by appearances, technology or price tag, only by what it sounds like!
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