I have been really enjoying listening to my system but have always played only rock and pop cd's on it. Today I bought my first classical cd - what is meant to be a very good recent recording of Vaughan Williams' "Fantasia on a Theme". I've got to say I'm really dissapointed with the way it sounds. :mad: I have to turn the volume right up on the amp to play it a decent level - if I put my rock cd's at this level it would blow the speakers. It's almost like the speakers aren't quite coping with it, it feels forced and ever so slightly distorted. Am I finding out the limitations of my small but nicely formed Chario speakers or is something else afoot?

You're possibly experiencing one of the fundamental aspects of high fidelity called dynamic range. I see three choices--enjoy the cd played back at a level the system can cope with, replace the system with one that can actually reproduce a normally recorded disk, or limit your music to whatever recordings will work (horrible option.)

best,

dave

So what is limiting the dynamic range - is it the speakers or the amp?
Thanks for your help on this.

You're possibly experiencing one of the fundamental aspects of high fidelity called dynamic range. I see three choices--enjoy the cd played back at a level the system can cope with, replace the system with one that can actually reproduce a normally recorded disk, or limit your music to whatever recordings will work (horrible option.)

best,

dave

One possibility is that most of the rock/pop you listen to has been remastered at too high a level - do a search for "loudness wars" if you aren't familiar with this. If the classical cd you bought has not been subject to this it could explain the different volume settings required.

Really, however, you need to get hold of a few more classical cds to try in case the one you've bought is a duffer after all.

So what is limiting the dynamic range - is it the speakers or the amp?
Thanks for your help on this.

It's the whole system. The problem could be anywhere in the chain and it is, frankly, likely to be EVERYWHERE in the chain.

Let's start with your CD player. I bought a 2nd-hand Arcam Alpha 9, a few years ago, and liked it quite a lot, compared to what I had before - the critics described it as the best sub-£3000 player when it came out. But frankly, compared with my turntable system, it stank! I replaced its low-jitter clock with a truly low-jitter clock and now it is a lot better (but it still pales compared to my turntable system). CD just isn't that great a medium! Still, find yourself a highly recommended musical CD player and you are already quite far down the track to listening pleasure. You don't need to spend that much. The newish Harman Kardon CD player, for instance has been getting really great reviews and is not expensive.

Your amplifier has a simple job to do: take the output of your CD player, magnify it, and send it to your speakers. So why would some amplifiers cost £100 and others cost £100,000? I guess it is not such a simple job after all. Do you need to spend megabucks on an amp? Hell, no. But you need to buy an amplifier which meets the needs of your speakers. Some speakers are hellishly difficult to drive. Some speakers are very easy to drive. You need to be guided by the audio salesman (or the web) to find out what amps work well with what speakers.

I don't know your speakers, but I do know this: all loudspeakers are severely compromised in their stated task of reproducing music - how could they not be, when they are supposed to produce the illusion of the original performance in your living room! The most obvious differences in your system will happen when you change your speakers, because the way that different manufacturers address the limitations of their speakers are more varied and more dramatic than for other parts of the system.

But some of the most compelling improvements to your system will come from the source and from the amplification.

Sorry if this all sounds daunting, but I assure you that you will get great joy from a well balanced system, which has been carefully chosen rather than thrown together.

Regards
Warren in Sydney, Oz

Jules,

Worth repeating:

"The problem could be anywhere in the chain and it is, frankly, likely to be EVERYWHERE in the chain...

...I assure you that you will get great joy from a well balanced system, which has been carefully chosen rather than thrown together."

I'd suggest a visit to several hifi shops for solutions myself. It's impossible to sort something like this on the Internet. Unless, you have one glaring flaw in a perfect system this is best handled by someone experienced in the field with the opportunity to hear your system and make suggestions.

regards,

dave

As someone who listens to classical music 70% of the time, I have found that small speakers, with very few honourable exceptions, really struggle to do large scale accoustic music any kind of justice. They may sound great with pop & rock, but to hear large-scale accoustic music you need to shift air. And that means bigger boxes.

Your Fantasia on a T of T is quiet string music, not exactly Siegfried's Funeral Music in terms of dynamic range-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AIE1vz90B0

PS. Ignore the Verdi over the opening titles.

Perhaps you have become accustomed to loud compressed music? or your noise floor is up to your armpits with the existing source and amp.

Isn't it just that you're just not used to music which is mostly quiet?

Re small speakers not being great with classical music, most of my collection is classical and the Linn Axis>Exposure amp>Linn Kans does very well indeed thankyou very much.

I think the idea a system is "good with classical" is a little over-egged to be honest. What terms of comparison there are between a Wagner vorspiel, a Schubert Leider, a string quartet, a harpsichord solo piece and Stockhausen playing music from three airborne helicopters is beyond me.

To the original OP, try and get a cd of Simon Rattle conducting Mahler's Second. I used to use that as a reference because its a brilliant recording.

Wow - isn't it amazing how this game throws up such diverse opinions! :o

I think there is something to be said for me not being used to listening to quiet music but I'm convinced the cd's levels are also very low. Surely that is why I am having to crank up the volume to something beyond what I have ever done before. I'm tempted to buy a different recording of the track to see if it fairs any better. The speakers are rated at 88db - my 50W NVA amp should drive these with ease ...

I appreciate that my system has been put together second-hand and that I have not been able to spend time in dealers building the system - finances don't permit. However, I don't think my system can suddenly be crap overnight when I have been very happy with it so far, despite the limitations of small speakers.

Why did you start with the Vaughan-Williams?

Anyway, give it some time and see what happens.

Paul

Why did you start with the Vaughan-Williams?

Anyway, give it some time and see what happens.

Paul

hi Paul

It's simply one of my favourite pieces of music and have wanted a cd of it for a long time ...

Julian

Wow - isn't it amazing how this game throws up such diverse opinions! :o

I think there is something to be said for me not being used to listening to quiet music but I'm convinced the cd's levels are also very low. Surely that is why I am having to crank up the volume to something beyond what I have ever done before. I'm tempted to buy a different recording of the track to see if it fairs any better. The speakers are rated at 88db - my 50W NVA amp should drive these with ease ...

I appreciate that my system has been put together second-hand and that I have not been able to spend time in dealers building the system - finances don't permit. However, I don't think my system can suddenly be crap overnight when I have been very happy with it so far, despite the limitations of small speakers.

I'm not knocking 2nd-hand equipment - the vast majority of my hi-fi system is 2nd-hand. And I'm not saying your system is crap (I've never heard it).

But rock music tends to be pretty compressed, so it makes far fewer demands on the ability of the system to reproduce subtleties. You don't need to go all the way to trying to reproduce a symphony orchestra in your living room, to discover it, but that is a pretty good way to test. Solo piano and solo classical or acoustic guitar are also very effective at showing up deficiencies in systems.

As for the mastering level on the CD, you would be absolutely correct in assuming that it has been mastered at a lower level than your rock CDs. The reason is fairly simple. Most classical recordings are completely uncompressed. Some have a small amount of limiting at the highest energy levels, but are otherwise uncapped. This is good, because it gives you the capability to recreate much of the original performance. But it means that the master needs to be cut at a low enough level that the loudest point in the recording remains within the reproduction capacity of the digital medium. If the dynamic range from 0 to the loudest point is 1 dB greater than the capacity of the recording medium, that 1dB gets clipped, which is VERY VERY ugly. So the master is created with the loudest point inside the limits of the digital medium, and the average volume is a product of that.

In stark contrast, by compressing rock music, the difference in volume between the loudest and softest passage is relatively small, so the mastering can be set at a much higher average level and still not clip the loudest passages.

Regards
Warren in Sydney, Oz

So what is limiting the dynamic range - is it the speakers or the amp?
Thanks for your help on this.

Mostly the speakers. If you listen to Ravel's Bolero for example it is unlikely that you will not lower the volume by the end of the song if you dont have very efficient loudspeakers.

I'm not knocking 2nd-hand equipment - the vast majority of my hi-fi system is 2nd-hand. And I'm not saying your system is crap (I've never heard it).

But rock music tends to be pretty compressed, so it makes far fewer demands on the ability of the system to reproduce subtleties. You don't need to go all the way to trying to reproduce a symphony orchestra in your living room, to discover it, but that is a pretty good way to test. Solo piano and solo classical or acoustic guitar are also very effective at showing up deficiencies in systems.

As for the mastering level on the CD, you would be absolutely correct in assuming that it has been mastered at a lower level than your rock CDs. The reason is fairly simple. Most classical recordings are completely uncompressed. Some have a small amount of limiting at the highest energy levels, but are otherwise uncapped. This is good, because it gives you the capability to recreate much of the original performance. But it means that the master needs to be cut at a low enough level that the loudest point in the recording remains within the reproduction capacity of the digital medium. If the dynamic range from 0 to the loudest point is 1 dB greater than the capacity of the recording medium, that 1dB gets clipped, which is VERY VERY ugly. So the master is created with the loudest point inside the limits of the digital medium, and the average volume is a product of that.

In stark contrast, by compressing rock music, the difference in volume between the loudest and softest passage is relatively small, so the mastering can be set at a much higher average level and still not clip the loudest passages.

Regards
Warren in Sydney, Oz

Thanks Warren, you have explained that very well. So to enjoy a really full spectrum of music, is this an argument for having big powerful amps and big efficient speakers?

Thanks Warren, you have explained that very well. So to enjoy a really full spectrum of music, is this an argument for having big powerful amps and big efficient speakers?

Not necessarily both. A quick (and simplistic) lesson in relative volumes:
A pair of speakers with an SPL of 84dBA (fairly inefficient) requires 1 watt to produce 84dB at 1 meter. For every 3dB, you need to double the power. So, to get 105db at 1 meter, requires 128 watts output from the amplifier. So your inefficient speakers require a big beefy amplifier. A pair of speakers with an SPL of 93dBA (very efficient) requires 16 watts from the amplifier for the same volume out of the speakers!

In other words, all things being equal, the more efficient the speakers, the less power you need from the amplifier. If only all things were equal - they aren't!

Let's look at speaker loads for a minute. As I mentioned, some speakers are difficult to drive while others are easy to drive. That has nothing to do with efficiency. In fact, electrostatic speakers, usually very efficient, will stop many amplifiers dead in their tracks! A speaker is described as an 8 Ohm or 4 Ohm or 16 Ohm speaker. Ohms law states that V = IR (voltage equals current times resistance). If voltage remains constant, a lower resistance means a higher current flows through the circuits. So a 4 Ohm speaker would double the current requirement of an amp, compared to an 8 Ohm speaker. A 2 Ohm speaker would double it again! A 1 Ohm speaker - double again. But no one makes a 1 Ohm speaker do they? Actually many electrostatic speakers present 1 Ohm loads to their amplifiers at various frequencies. "At various frequencies" is the key here. Your speakers may be described as 8 Ohm speakers, but, if you look at a graph of frequency vs resistance, the speaker actually may go as low as 5 Ohms for some frequencies and as high as 20 Ohms or more for others. When reproducing real music (rather than a single sine wave sweep between 20Hz and 20Khz), the speaker's lowest resistance may in fact be lower again!

What does all this mean? It means that your amplifier needs to be able to cope with the current load which is imposed on it by the speakers you are using, as well as providing enough power to drive them as loud as you need them.

There are many speakers which DO NOT NEED a high current amplifier, as they do not impose major stress on the amplifier's current capacity. These speakers often really shine, using high power Japanese amplifier designs of the 1970s, or purpose-built (often speaker-specific and expensive) modern-design low-current amps. On the other hand, there are many speakers which work best with high current amps, and sound really ordinary (or worse) when teamed up with an amplifier of that type of 1970s design.

Most English-designed amplifiers (e.g. Arcam, Quad, etc) are fairly high current amplifiers, as are many others such as NAD. Most Japanese amplifiers have much more limited current capability.

Getting back to your question, the answer lies not in the choice of efficient or inefficient, big amp or modest amp, but in an amplifier/speaker combination which works effectively together and sounds good.

Regards
Warren in Sydney, oz

To the original OP, try and get a cd of Simon Rattle conducting Mahler's Second. I used to use that as a reference because its a brilliant recording.

Catcher - there is a remaster now. Do you mean this or the original disc from the late 80's/early 90's?

Getting back to your question, the answer lies not in the choice of efficient or inefficient, big amp or modest amp, but in an amplifier/speaker combination which works effectively together and sounds good.

Regards
Warren in Sydney, oz

Warren, even with amplifier/speaker combination which work well together, dynamic range will be limited if you dont use highly efficient speakers.

Regards

Warren, even with amplifier/speaker combination which work well together, dynamic range will be limited if you dont use highly efficient speakers.

Regards

Not my experience - moderately efficient speakers through a powerful amplifier does it for me (Totem Arros, biamped, plus Mordant Short MS308W sub through Arcam Alpha 9 integrated amp + Alpha 9P power amp).

Don't worry about turning the volume up. Just put it where it sounds best. And just listen to some classical cds on your system to get used to the different recording quality and sonic spectrum provided. In a couple of weeks, see how you feel about it.