Quote Originally Posted by Brian K View Post
If both systems were properly set up and in a typical room
then I rather doubt it.....
Well...I didn't talk retail...I suppose I can put a price more like 8K for the system. 5K for the speakers...rest for equipment including my PC audio system that has the most elaborate room correction/digital crossovers I know of on the market, period. DEQX/TACT/MULTEQ (Auddysey) are all exellent "standalone" boxes, but are not progressive like the people doing the intensified/obsessed really, study of the best possible software for this very critical part of a system

But here it boils down to taste rather than which is best as my dipole based speakers cannot produce the sound of horns, nor can they produce the sound of a Maggie Ribbon or an ML Electrosplat. But as a best of all worlds kind of speaker, I have absolutely no problem putting my system up against "anything"...period...

Then again, I've also been to many shows, have listened on hours to many different very elaborate systems in home and in shops...I also have friends that listen objectively regardless of the system. And we can spot things others cannot, we can also disagree at first, but then come to learn that our disagreements become a conclusive agreement (i.e. we put two and two together to form one). The kind of people that I am referring to have 20K speaker testing devices, know every single bit of the latest technology on every driver produced, and have every objective fact that can relate to a speaker, along with the subjective proof which is sometimes surprising in the sense that it should not be sounding as good or bad as it shows on the science side of things. Hearing bad transformers in an amplifier with music blasting...know of anyone that can hear that? No one at the show seemed to notice but my friend that told the rep the amp needed to have the tranny fixed and the reps response was, "but it sure sounds good hey?"...

I think one needs 5 different properly treated rooms, all with the unique sound that that particular speaker "type" has, combined with the optimum equipment for that specific speaker, and then full blown room correction and perfect linear response....well...linear enough that one has to nitpick the life out of it to find flaws...and in the end, most importantly isn't how "exacting" the sound is from each of these speaker's limitations (every speaker has limitations or we'd have one perfect speaker and not 5-10...gotta go through a "big" list of the many different types), but how it touches the soul.

In the end, when you have something that sounds "so good", you simply let off of the objective elements involved and let the music treat you to tears that come out unconsciously. I had never had this experience with anything but the system I have now. Usually an emotional response can occur due to sensations that lead up to tears. But this one time, a tear just came flat out of my eye...totally unexplainable and random.

Just to let you know...I in no way feel my system is perfect, is the best in the world, etc. etc...I have no intention to boast about my system nor compete with it. At the same time, I know it cannot be embarrassed by anything, but rather, just be subjectively the "equivalent" of anything out there...and for me, that's good enough since my redundancy never stops, every system, every speaker, everything in life has compromises, and that's the beauty of life...learning to live with the compromises while striving to perfect them...though we never can and never will since something else will always surpass what we thought was pefect. Hence, why nature is so perfect=she's balanced and she's unpredictable...just ask the earthquake people....

Now if only I can see these beautiful scans alongside the budget scans in prints on the walls and in my hands to see just what is possible...that would be a real treat not just for myself, but I'm sure for any photographer in general.