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If much commercial music is mastered with Bluetooth speakers, cars and cheap headphones in mind - is a disappointing listening experience inevitable with a neutral, performant HiFi ?

Just why, when and who? And if you were naming them now what words would you use instead in the 21st century (and why) This is a right side of brain activity so may not suit everyone ;)

Recently downsized to a Denon 4800 AVR, Revel F206 speakers and have calibrated with Dirac DLBC. I’m now a very happy listener. My room is the constraint - nothing else. Context - An asymmetric crappy 12x12’ room and 53 year old ears. Please - before you believe you are gifted and have...

I’ve decided to take a break from the online world for a while. Before taking a sabbatical I wanted to say a big thank you to our host and to all the experts on ASR who, had they been in my purview many years ago would have saved me a significant amount of time, money and stress in this hobby...

Post here if you are getting the (seemingly) inevitable urge to upgrade something that you are happy with for no logical reason. You’ve got a bee in your bonnet and started googling and checking prices, posting questions on forums - you know the drill right ?!! Please limit this to just single...

Trying to lose a few pounds and need some new training footwear to pound the streets. I was all set to go to the local sports shop when I thought - what if expensive trainers are like HiFi - just a lot of marketing foo foo and branding ! When I read about the latest shoe tech it certainly...

I picked up some of these PET based absorbers from Thomann recently to use at first reflection points In the past I’ve used wooden framed, rock wool filled units. My wife hated them and it wasn’t practical to move them in and out of position as they are bulky. Also impractical to store for...

I’m very aware of the tape that often plays in my head with distracting thoughts and chatter. I guess it is also there when I should be in the moment listening to my music. It can be difficult to tune it out, but I’ve found that regular meditation is very helpful. I wondered how others would...

I have a small room ( 4x4m ) and for practical reasons my sofa ibacks onto the rear wall so my head is around 0.7m from the wall. Room is carpeted, lightly furnished with two sofas, there is a 1.8 x 1.2m ceiling cloud in place . We just swapped leather for fabric sofas. Subjectively there...

Do you ever have those times when listening just seems right? Nothing different in the room, same music, but some how it all just gels and it’s wonderful. Some days the opposite is true also! Maybe it’s about my mental state, fatigue, sinuses! I often find early mornings most enjoyable on a...

My newish 4800 does the usual relay clicking on startup but also randomly when playing movies (via eArc and Blu-Ray) and music (RPi Roon endpoint via toslink). The click is maybe once every half hour or so and happens when the unit is running in steady -state - ie not charging source, formats...

I watch most of my movies through Amazon Prime, Netflix and Disney + but decided to treat myself to the 4K blu-ray of Oppenheimer along with fairly basic 4K player. I was staggered by the improvement in the audio of the DTS-HD soundtrack compared to DD+ which I appreciate is pretty compressed...

£140,000 a pair - lots of info on construction and materials but precious little on actual measured performance. So if you had to speculate on how it might measure - is it a speaker worthy of that price tag? https://wilson-benesch.com/eminence_floorstanding_loudspeaker/

For those in the UK BBC 4 (TV) have a night of TV dedicated to Bernstein as captured by many BBC documentaries of the 60s,70s and 80s. It’s really fantastic - just watched Jose Carreras get roasted by LB for failing to sing in time during the DG recording of West Side Story which the Beeb...

I wonder if this awful tool might be even more detrimental to musical enjoyment than the overuse of dynamic compression. Once you’ve heard that synthetic, robotic twang on a singer’s voice there’s no going back. Even in moderation you can hear it - what’s the point of loosing the natural voice...

If Expectation Bias EB = f(P,R,A,E) where P is Price R is number of positive subjective reviews A is Aesthetics (which may include weight, exotic materials, design) E is Emotional status of purchaser 1. Which variables are missing in f( ) 2. What scaling should be assigned to each 3. Is this...

I saw a recent post from @restorer-john on some great service he received and figured perhaps we needed a place to acknowledge good deeds from manufacturers and dealers. My shout out goes to the service department of Monitor Audio UK who just repaired a centre speaker for me. Communication...

Would this work - more focussed on music, but movies important also. Currently have Monitor Audio Radius 225 - it’s ok and sits on the wall under the TV, but I know I could do better .

It’s absolute hell in the UK right now if you happen to be a nervous dog, cat or other animal. We had Halloween last week and bonfire night this weekend - it’s like The Somme out side right now. Our greyhound won’t go outside and either circles round the lounge or tries to find a place to...

I disabled DEQ on my Denon 4800 today for some Sunday morning listening and was really surprised at how much improvement I heard. The mid and top sounded cleaner and brighter , but not in any way harsh. Weird how more bottom end can make the top end sound more dull! Had to turn the wick up a...