My Musical Mistake

Copyright Jack F. Lansing/2002

What we do is we read advertisements placed by manufacturers and dealers for the hifi equipment.  We go to shops and make questions to the sales people.  We get some prints from the manufacturers with nice photos and a long table of technical specifications.  We read hifi-magazines.

We might - but not too many of us - read some books on this topic.  There is actually not so many books written on hifi.  Some books there are but most books seem to be on building loudspeakers or just showing out the models of existing devices in certain year (Buyers' Guides) etc.

My mistake

I was once adding up my knowledge this way, too.  And I was thinking as most of the people are.  The manufacturers' way.  The dealers' way.  The way they wanted me to think.  The way they saw things being.  I bet 98 % of the music consumers are thinking their way.

But this was'nt really a good thing to me.  It had an effect on me to become a consumer who was never satisfied long enough.  Does this sound familiar to you?

I had a great desire to buy new amplifier.  Or I had a great desire to by new loudspeakers.  New cartridge for my record player.  New cassette deck. etc. etc. 

But isn't this natural?  To improve my music system?  Well, yes it is very natural.  If you want to live for the dealers.  But it makes your life to be exhaustive consumer life. 

What is a life without constantly satisfactory state? Where is the music?  The records come to be just a references for the continually ongoing evaluation process of amps, speakers, etc.

It took decades of my life to go on this phenomena.  And I know how many of us are in the same process.  This is just for taking your money out.

The point here is that the information you get from the dealers will nearly never put you in the position to stop or slow down.  To reach such a satisfactory level of reproduction that you could stay happy for years.

You are not getting much relevant knowledge.  The knowledge for basic understanding which could help you to stabilaze your state in this merry-go-around.

Instead you are given mixing and small specific pieces of information.  This will seldom really gain knowledge but more like fragmented information which keeps on the mysteries and keeps us on to make bad choices one by one and thus, buy more and more.

My world changed

One thing which opened my eyes thru my ears was when a was happy enough to have some proper guidance in music reproduction by being an agent for a really good manufacturer who knew what was doing and why.

I learned that really good dealers are not working this way.  They are interested in the customers' good more than just the money in short term.

It is concerning the hierarchy of the music system.  Which part is most important in the system and which is second important etc. 

This is one very important piece of knowledge to understand and it will give us some REAL guidance on how to improve our system in the best order.  So it is also helping us to get the most out from the investments we make.

This all is very common sense.  But we are so easy to be tricked here as we do not have the main picture of it all.   The dealers can lead us to believe nearly anything they want just to sell us better.

Start thinking qualitative way. 

Not quantitative which is another common fraught in the mainstream hifi.  The times through we have been misled by showing us quantitative specs on prints.  Noise, hiss, rumble, distortions, hum, flutter, wow, frequency range, tracking ability, transient curves, etc. etc. 

Please make the important note here that none of those values are part of the music!!

The most important thing in reproducing music is after all the music itself.  The electric signal carrying the music through the system from the source -  record or tape or tuner, to the loudspeakers.  And finally, to our ears and brains.

With the musical signal we can start talking in QUALITATIVE way.  How good the signal is?  Is it really musical?  Is the result working as music?  Is it emotionally envolving?  Does it transmit the rythm into our body and soul?  Does it give some MESSAGE to us?

Technically speaking this means that the musical signal is in coherence and not broke to parts or altered in the phase etc.  The quality of the recordings vary quite much but we have to assume that we do have a lot of good, coherent information on the record.  And that is true as there is masses of very good records existing.  Especially analogue records but more and more digital, too.  Well, lets not argue on this but just make the assumption that we start with good, coherent, genuinely musical signal.

Then our problem with the system will be MAINTAINING the high quality of the music signal through the whole system of ours.  This is a real problem, not just an irrelevant cliché. 

The truth is that every single piece of equipment, connector and lead will degrade our signal more or less.  Sometimes very much indeed!

Now we do come to very clear and easy enlightenment here, are'nt we?

If the record player cannot take the information from the record properly and degrades the music signal severely, can our amplifiers make the signal better?

No they cannot.  Or the loudspeakers then, can they solve the ruined music signal and like magic make it again correct and genuine music if our record player sent it dull and dead to our amps? 

No my dear friend, our loudspeakers cannot make the signal at all the better.  Only thing they can do is to try their best in transferring the signal they get from the amp for air movements.

I bet you got my point!  Now you see straight away what is the real hierarchy in music system, do you?  It cannot be anything else but starting from the very start of the signal path.

Every day you can read advertisements and articles claiming that the loudspeakers they are the most important part of you music system.  This is total nonsense.  I admit that we are easy to goof as the loudspeakers are the sounding part of the system and we may get to this trap to think they must thus be very important thing.

The very simple truth is, however, that they are the LEAST important piece of equipment for the music. 

The ruling principle is GARBAGE IN - GARBAGE OUT.  If you feed bad musical signal into your system in the start, you cannot improve it on the way.  So the most important part is the SOURCE.  The record player or the tape deck or the tuner.  If not even your mains power...

Then comes your connections and the amplifier.  Then the connections again plus the speaker stands and then, finally the loudspeakers.

This is the order best for you to obey when improving your hifi.  Start investing to the source and then make it better on the line piece by piece.  This way you are getting the best music out all the time by minimum of the cost. 

All this is easy to demonstrate by a competent person.  This is the main job a good dealer should do along with proper help in setting up the system at customer's home.  A bad signal with the best speakers gives clearly less music than a good signal through old plastic car stereo loudspeakers. 

In the common home situation you can enjoy very good music by quite small system if your source is one of high quality.  If I am not however proposing you to use those old car stereo speakers but small, proper, bookshelf speakers set-up on a pair of rigid steel stands.

Make your world changed

If you are really interested in how to make your music most involving and best sounding at home or on stage, you can have much better music by conducting some quite small and easy tweaks.  You can really unleash your music.  Please visit my new web-site at www.music.in-your-mind.com

Yours,

Jack Lansing

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