I had a few hours to kill tonight so I thought I'd reply.
I know we don't agree on hardly anything Helicon but like you I have no fear of challenging you on what I perceive to be misguided. I'm not going to turn this into a flamewar but I'm not going to let some of these broad statements without at least some balance.
I've come into this one late (nothing new there), but felt i had to reply to a few things.......
Me too! See we do have something in common.
Forget subs, it's a bloody good test of how low your speakers can go. And if you want to hear that album at it's best, get it on vinyl - that track is nothing short of awesome, the bass is phenomenal, and way deeper than you'll get on any CD.
Sorry? Redbook CD's reproduce down to 20hz so unless theres a different mastering been applied to the CD over the vinyl this starts to get into the realms of inaudible sound. Even if you assume that the <20Hz sounds make a difference, which I'll indulge you, you are also saying forget a sub. Show me any speakers that are going to give you meaningful bass under 20Hz without a sub. So where are you getting this assertion from? I'm not saying it's not a fantastic recording but your statement just doesn't stand up to close scrutiny. Oh no hang on, you can hear the <20Hz stuff from your speakers
And this causes a problem for people asking advice on here. Somebody asks how good these speakers are for £500, then someone slags them off and says they're crap. Chances are that person's only heard them on an AV amp, or their mates Av amp and has never heard them perform as they should do. And then there's those who're buying £1,500/2,000 speakers and using them on £400/500 AV amps - either they shop at an unscrupulous dealer, or they're taking the advice from the wrong forum members.
Or they don't necessarily agree with your somewhat narrow approach and have looked elsewhere for other opinions and, dare I say, proof that what you're saying is anything more than placebo?
I know only too well you refuse to read, accept or even acknowledge any of the testing or scientific research thats been done on all sorts of equipment from "av amps" to high end boutique audiophile gear. You're convinced you've heard a difference and any talk of placebo or psychological colouration is ignored and vilified. Thats fine, I'll keep repeating this for the benefit of those people who are prepared to do their own research on the matter. I'm not going to claim anything either way but I'll be sure, when it's appropriate, to make people aware that there are other (and in my opinion FAR more convincing from a scientific viewpoint) opinions on the matter than yours.
There has been extensive testing done on all manner of equipment at all different levels and currently almost all the scientific evidence points to there being no human audible difference between amplifiers (caveating that with provided that theres no defects with the amp or that there is radically different technology involved - then again thats only as I've not seen testing done to prove it). There has also been testing proving how strong the placebo effect can be and how people can be convinced they've heard something that doesn't exist (exist in the scientifically provable sense of course). You're happy to ignore all that but I do urge anyone with an interest to do the research before they accept either of our opinions. People can then make up their own minds rather than blindly accepting either of our opinions.
CD's already sound bad enough as it is compared to most of their vinyl counterparts, so i agree, more care should be taken in their mixing and mastering! CD's can sound amazing, and i don't think there's any excuse for them to sound lifeless.
I agree, but this has absolutely nothing to do with the format and everything to do with the mixing and recording.
More information can be stored in the groove of a record than in a 16 bit pit, so CD's not quite there yet......
We really do need SACD and DTS CD's to make a big push and get popular, as these do sound much better than CD's. The DTS CD's i've heard so far have been amazing - some scary bass on offer!
You're right about one thing, you can store more information on a record. Thats great until you take into account everything else that it has going against it like wow and flutter, rumble, dust, warping and so on. I'm not going to enter into an evangelist war with you over it. You like vinyl, good luck to you.
Again you're back with the bass comment. I'll not repeat what I said above but it still applies. I can accept the mastering between formats can be different, as the following study showed, but if you're listening on a "normal" set of speakers, CD will carry all the frequency variation you'll ever be able to distinguish with human ears.
Very recently a study was conducted comparing SACD/DVDA with CDA and the conclusion was very clear.
ripped from Wikipedia said:
An article published in the Journal of the Audio Engineering Society Vol. 55 Number 9, September 2007, entitled "Audibility of a CD-Standard ADA Loop Inserted Into High-Resolution Audio Playback" by E. Brad Meyer and David Moran reported the results of their study, which concluded that listeners could not hear the difference between a high-resolution two-channel recording and a CD-quality downsampling of the same recording except when "unpleasantly (often unbearably) loud." The article concluded that many high-resolution releases sounded better than their CD counterparts, but attributes this to mastering differences.
So, there is rightly a difference between SACD and CD encoding formats but you need to make yourself deaf in order to hear it. Nice one
I tell you what heres a radical thought. I'm happy to put my neck on the line here. If anyone here lives near NW London and wants to lug their amps around to my place we'll hook them up to my pair of MA GR20's and compare with my cheap and nasty
605 Onkyo AV amp. I have an SPL meter so we can set it up to the same levels and I'm happy to be proven wrong. I WANT to be proven wrong. I'm open and I'll even try and figure out how we could blind test them. I've read enough scientific based opinion to be confident there will be no difference, anyone else want to find out?
As for the OP's question, yes I wholeheartedly agree 100% that CD mastering quality is the root of the problem. Hifisponge has been making this point repeatedly to those claiming the MA speakers are bright. The measurements say not but because some recordings assume a response dip between 5000-11000 which a number of speakers have a response dip at some recordings can sound bright. In my ignorance, my MA GR's sound fantastic and I hear no hint of brightness or sibilance, and I really have listened hard to hear it. I think a lot of the problems people find are recording issues and it just goes to prove you should listen thoroughly to the speakers you're after with the material you're likely to listen to.
G