Horn Videos Playing Jizz šŸ’©

Ideally videos should be used as accompaniment to other comments and experience. They do show some things and some not. Like Ruprecht said, you read forum comments on component A vs B from some online guy. Unless you know that guy’s listening and preferences pretty well, many such comments can be misleading. That’s how people end up with dCS and Wilson and Krell like stuff, based on reading words. And listening to club house music.

People are short listing without listening. Videos are a better tool than this to evaluate and shortlist - not buy, but shortlist. Also, if you go to hifi shows you will mostly get equipment not properly set up, and a lot of equipment that is good will not be at the show. On videos you might come across some proper set up. Neither of these approaches is going to replace listening to a well set up stuff yourself, but it is the best of the above alternatives.

The reason I prefer to stick to phones to record is it keeps a consistency across people. Adding in good recorders will add another complication. Everyone has a smart phone, just point and shoot, and upload. very good lead. The ā€œlow quality digitisationā€ is a good facsimile. You cannot know otherwise until you have tried. I first did them at Munich 2019 and was surprised by how many friends I whatsapped them to judged the room quality correctly. It also made many appreciate the western electrics, they would otherwise have no exposure to it and would not have believed that a 100 year old system could be the best at show. The videos got them thinking.

The Cessaro Gamma owner has now moved to Klangfilm Eurodyn, based on videos he heard. Of course he had trusted comments to go with the videos,t. You can study videos of a system over time so while the first video might sound random, over time and across tracks it gives a very good picture.

We have been doing videos for 4 years on whats best forum. It shifted a few guys to SETs horns, and Wilson and Magico type systems sounded the worst. Digital was worse than analog, so most of the videos ended up being SETs horns analog. what I assume from that is the Wilson Magico owners were recording their own video, playing it back, realized it was too sh*t to post.

At the end, the only way to convince non-believers is they should shoot and play back some systems, and also if they hear a video of a system they can visit, they should do so. Only feedback of checking video vs real will tell them if I am the crazy one or if they are incorrect (easy choice there)

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Expectation bias.

Why not do it without the video. Can people still then get a sense of the room?

If we have to do expectation bias, subjectivity and objectivity discussions, I would like Keith of Purite in ;). He has done them for over a decade now. Veteran.

I will leave you with that then.

Can you gain a ā€˜sense’ of:

If a horn is shouty
Nasal
Distorted
large scale
It’s transient response
Integration
Fullness of mid bass

From a YouTube film? I think you can get a clue.

Can you feel the pressure in room?
Layering
Clarity
Timbre
Atmosphere
Physical LF
Effortlessness

… NO.

Does the affirmative set offer any instruction? Perhaps, which is better than no picture at all. In the same way a cheap digital repress offers a sense of the sound the same really nice condition analogue pressing can offer

These videos all sound like my pixel 7’s DAC

Just do it without a the video. Do it. Go on. Do it. Or get Keith. :slight_smile:

And less than something useful!

Okay I have no wish to derail the sequential posting of videos playing horns for other peoples enjoyment (any further at least). I still don’t see how anything meaningful can be inferred but if others do then fill your boots.

Edit: One last note on something that both Matt & Kedar mentioned above about the relative strength of reference between videos and words (strangers were noted) - I’d agree that I don’t tend to take too much notice of reviews because of the variables involved, but there are a crowd of people on here who I think have similar tastes in musical presentation etc. If they posted that they had heard speaker x and it was better than speaker y which we’d all heard, then I’d be inclined to take more notice of their opinions than any video that they might send me as I have some reference to their tastes and listening preferences with which to form an outline opinion.

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I don’t want to get into semantics. I just find 1% more ā€˜useful’ than 0

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I find this whole discussion fascinating. Quite a lot of the descriptors used in a lot of hifi reviews are utterly meaningless (no offence intended to @Tons_of_fun there, he is a rare exception). The minute anyone describes kit as ā€œmusicalā€ for example, I lose all interest. Best definition I can find for that in a hifi reviewing context is ā€œsuits my earsā€, which is not terribly helpful. I recall having an interesting discussion with Ed as well about room treatments. He deliberately doesn’t have any, so that his listening environment more closely resembles the most likely listening environment of your average Brit. Smart move imho. I recall seeing photos of other reviewer’s rooms that are wall to wall with treatment. Absolutely the way to go for better sound, but it’s also going to give an unrealistic impression of the gear compared to its most likely environments.

I also don’t think those videos are as meaningless as some claim. Sure, my laptop could not reproduce that sound in a full room, but then I’m not asking it to do that. First off my ears are normally only 2 feet from the laptop, not across the room. And as @Ruprecht noted, things like a pronounced honk from a horn system are still likely to come across. Ditto some of the tonal balance that the system has. Sure there are limits to that information. There are going to be room acoustics that you will never replicate in your own system that interfere. But as long as you realise the limitations, and don’t extrapolate from incomplete data, you can still draw meaningful information from the footage.

The other thought I have is that at least with a youtube video, there’s some connection between the sound actually being produced, and my ears. With a written review, there’s nothing at all. And everything has to be taken with a pinch of salt with a written review simply because people’s preferences are not universal. I’ve an acquaintance near here with a pretty expensive system. To me it sounds like god-awful shite. Way too intense and harsh. But I want something that I can have on 8 hours a day without it being fatiguing. He wants his socks to be blown off for 30 minutes and then to go and do something else. Horses, very much, for courses.

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Agree.

I just find 1% useful to be not very useful.

However if you said you had heard a pair of fabulous new horns then I’d take note and find that useful as I have some idea/ reference for your tastes and how it aligns with mine.

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Personally I like hearing music clips through various systems.

When you think millions tune in to watch top gear,is watching systems that dissimilar?

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A trusted referral will always be strong pull, I agree.

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Like food reviews, skill and precision in description is quite often an indicator of general ability to discern (Marcus Wareing is far better at that then John Torode or the bald muppet Greg).

Greg Wallace is fucking awful, and is about 95% of the reason I haven’t watched the UK Masterchef for many, many years now.

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I can’t help thinking of him as John Toroid. Every time I see his name.

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He is a fucking doughnut, after all.

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There is a definite lack of external magnetism on display.

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsVJj5Yy3TA

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Got any house music?

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