New CLXes!

[beek]

Maybe a bit off topic
Agree completely Gordon everybodys egos & tastes must have something to do with it.
I would believe Us here love music which grew into a hobby that blossomed with maturity and financial ability.
It aches my brain when I meet someone who is as old as say I am & still only listens to rock and knows no other music.
Like the guy that said your brain is like a parachute it must be open to work...

 

[Jeff]

Liking the thread direction! First, thanks again for all the great feedback! It has been both helpful and enlightening.

On the old music lover vs. audiophile argument, I love both! The equipment fascinates me. I love reading about it, talking about, and most of all listening to it. The engineering and construction aspects of it fascinate me. (I'm also a devout car nut and in the car business.) I equally love music. I have about 2,300 CD's in my collection, all in FLAC on a NAS server. I listen to all types of music. I enjoy classic rock, fusion jazz, 70's pop, 80's new wave and punk, and all kinds of other music. I am a devout Zappa fan (that should explain a lot!) The beauty of this hobby is that it is the perfect intersection of my passions for both the hardware and the software. When they intersect just right, they make beautiful music together! (Wow, I need to write that one down!)

That brings us to the enigma of the CLX. They are so good with certain tracks that they come as close to that mystical Absolute Sound as I certainly have heard in my room and that I have also ever listened to in various demonstrations of some of the worlds finest (and priciest) gear. That alone makes them worth it. For my concerns about the bad recordings, I do not have any regrets about this purchase -I LOVE these speakers. The sacrifice of the occasional album or track that does not make the cut for the CLX experience, well that's the price I have to pay for near perfection on the recordings that make the cut. I need to live with them and futz with them for a while and these opinions will further mature.

I still owe you guys my good and bad track list. Funny story tonight. Much of my CT town lost power from Irene, but not us. Tonight I was tweaking the f113 sub. I was running the room correction software and it was cycling through the test tones. It was getting towards the final tones which get pretty uncomfortable. As the entire house was shaking and I was literally holding on to my chair, POOF, power goes out! I thought the sub popped the circuit breaker! Then I saw the whole house and the whole street was out. I unplugged everything and waited. it came up only about a half hour later, but no listening session tonight. I'm leaving it all unplugged until tomorrow. So more to come in the ongoing CLX saga...

 

[tsv_1]

Like the guy that said your brain is like a parachute it must be open to work...

Like that quote!

 

[beek]

Its a Frank Zappa term.................

 

[Bernard]

I dont own CLX but I too gave up on recordings that sound bad.

I don't own CLX's either, but have far from given up on recordings that sound bad. I once heard a song I really liked on my sister's cassette deck, and every time I visited her I revelled in the song despite the sound. Then I found an LP that had the song on it. Still a bad recording, and the LP was not in great shape. Still listen to the song and love it.

It aches my brain when I meet someone who is as old as say I am & still only listens to rock and knows no other music.

Me too. I abandoned rock decades ago.

 

[User211]

Me too. I abandoned rock decades ago.

It aches my brain when I meet someone who is as old as say I am & doesn't listen to rock anymore - knowing only other music.

Touche!

 

[beek]

ouch

I still listen to rock jus not like I did in 67 in fact people call me weirdo because of my music collection....
Sometimes I wonder who is the weird one................

 

[FoxMulder]

It aches my brain when I meet someone who is as old as say I am & doesn't listen to rock anymore - knowing only other music.

Touche!

You're preachin' to the choir...AMEN!

 

[beek]

Great now we have a Choir, all rock and rollers will be escorted to the door!

 

[Gordon Gray]

I agree with Jeff, that being the importance on enjoying music and the journey thereof.

Although I have yet to hear the CLX's, I do look forward to the experience.

A couple of miscellaneous thoughts.

Years ago, Polk Audio made a unit the size of a shoebox with a tuner and CD player. The current unit has eliminated the CD player and provides for an "I doc". That discontinued unit, despite its small size, was enormously musical in the mid - band and not too bad at the extremes. And all for 600$. I was shocked on how good it sounded for its size and price.

After having the MBL's for six months or so, I'm convinced they are somewhat voiced towards the more forgiving side of the equation than ML's so the warts et al that some recordings contain are less aggravating and more musical than what other transducers present. Could be the "omni" pattern in the highs and mids. Whatever the reason I, for one, like that character. That's not to say they don't convey all the usual attributes of a good speaker. They certainly do (especially in the soundstage category) although I do miss certain aspects of the ML's performance that are superior to the 116's.

GG

PS: Even at my age, I still enjoy the rock and roll genre. Probably a product of growing up in the 60's.

 

[roberto]

Hola. Just got the latest album from Cold Blood. Great rock here. Happy listening,
R.

 

[Necrosuit]

Even though there are many LP's and CD's in my collection that are poorly recorded, I still do listen to them on the CLX system. just last night I played Slayers - Reign in Blood, great all time metal album IMO, but it just sounded so thin and sharp, played Patricia Barber right after and it was amazing bliss. the CLX do not stop me from listening to bad recordings but since i got the Duevel Venus omni speakers in another room I tend to play the more poorly recorded music there, seems to just not be as painful.....

 

[Bernard]

It aches my brain when I meet someone who is as old as say I am & doesn't listen to rock anymore - knowing only other music.

Touche!

So Justin, I am to understand that you bought a fine bit of kit, for which you paid a pretty penny, to reproduce brilliantly the distortions that are deliberately introduced in electric guitars playing rock?

"It aches my brain"? Sigh! My British English teachers must be turning in their graves (the ones who are dead, that is) !

 

[Bernard]

Hola. Just got the latest album from Cold Blood. Great rock here. Happy listening,
R.

Well, I'm in a time warp here - older than Justin and younger than Roberto. They both like rock while I hate it with a passion.

Many years ago my boss (several years younger than me) was looking for speakers, so I took him to my ML dealer, and he took along a couple of his CD's. While he was listening to Guns N' Roses the dealer (about my age) said to me, "I'm glad I'm too old for this stuff". So I'm not alone.

 

[Jeff]

Gordon, I am fascinated by MBL speakers. I only heard them once at a show and they were not set up right and sounded terrible. The guy sitting next to me had heard other MBL's and confirmed that something was very wrong, so I disregard that experience. I would love to listen to them again if i could ever find a pair! The technology is incredible and i have read so many great things.

What's with the rock bashing? I love rock and roll!

Beek, I missed the Zappa quote. I am so embarrased! What kind of Zappa fan am I?

Necro, where in CT are you? We should get together and compare notes. I would love to hear your system some time.

I think the speakers are just about dialed in. I think I get the subwoofer synched up nicely too. But then again if I just try a litttttle more toe-in...

Thanks all again for the feedback!

 

[beek]

Thanx Bernard
I need backup with these young wipper snappers.
I hate people that listen to Great music recorded beautifully
On crummy stereos

 

[roberto]

Also had a rock band in the 60s... played electric bass. At that time, we did play most latin boleros up to Santana's, Beatles and Jim Morrison/Jose Feliciano version of Light My Fire... I think that if the music and players are good, I enjoy any type of music, starting from Bach to why not, Cold Blood. There are tons of great musicians out there, no matter the type or style of music they play... I just enjoy "music". There are music that it is noise to my ears, like Metal or some kind of kids music, but rock, the old rock, like Jeff Beck or Clapton, Dire Straits, the one that there is melody and good harmonic structure, that's the one I do like, My favorite style is Jazz and classical. I wish to all, no matter what type of music you like most, a very happy listening.

 

[User211]

So Justin, I am to understand that you bought a fine bit of kit, for which you paid a pretty penny, to reproduce brilliantly the distortions that are deliberately introduced in electric guitars playing rock?

"It aches my brain"? Sigh! My British English teachers must be turning in their graves (the ones who are dead, that is) !

Distortion sounds great - it really does. People love it. It just needs to be the right kind of distortion - and reproducing it accurately does no harm.

As I play leccy geetar, I use a tubed guitar amp to do so. Much time is spent dialling that in to get the right type of distortion for the track being played. A distorting tube amp is the sound of rock'n'roll - as I have said here many times.

TBH I use rock as a generic term to cover all sorts of music. I'm not keen on a lot of major US rock acts, but I do like a lot of punk and indie stuff.

With regards to poor recordings - I had a chap round a while back and we spent an entire evening listening to all sorts. His comment was that he was surprised just how well the system coped with all manner of different music styles/recordings - and that he hadn't heard anything sound bad the entire evening. He was making selections probably more than I was.

Was thinking the other day - The Kinks - Sunny Afternoon - is a pretty poor recording. But it was still pretty listenable/enjoyable. There's worse out there though - for sure.

I keep wondering how the Apogees manage to pull it off - when they produce surreal levels of resolution especially with Graz's latest KLM5 ribbons. These were a big upgrade over KLM2 - which I can only assume were a significant improvement over the original Apogee efforts. The x-overs and bass panels will be significantly better than the originals too - and the magnet alignment is spot on - not the case with a lot of the original factory output - which Graz assures me suffered from imprecision - time and time again.

Intriguing stuff.

Since Apogee is largely irrelevant these days I figure it is safe enough to make these statements without fear of too much rebuke! However, I do believe I am being as honest as I can be. But after all - it is just my opinion. Don't take me too seriously

 

[tsv_1]

This is a fascinating thread IMO... I can relate in one way or another to most everyone's position.

- While I like a very broad range of music, there are some genres I don't always care for. Being any more specific than that doesn't matter since to-each-his-own.
- I love music, but I love the record/playback technology behind it as well... and as that technology advances, so does my fascination. Of course nothing beats live! (unless something's gone wrong).
- CLX is a superior transducer to Apogee DS Graz mod (this is what Justin is really trying to say... I'm just paraphrasing)

 

[Bernard]

Jeff, there is no "rock bashing" going on here. I'm just expressing my dislike of it. If I called it crap (but I didn't!) that would be rock bashing. What do you get as a result of rock bashing? Stones !

Gordon, I grew up in the 60's too, and I liked rock at the time, but after discovering Beethoven in my early 20's, there was no going back. I do realize, of course, that they are not mutually exclusive. I could not imagine myself listening today to the Stones' "Satisfaction". Aren't those guys today older than Moses ?

Justin, we never take you seriously, except when you talk about Port ! But seriously, given a bad recording that your Apogees make listenable while the CLX's make it sound like crap, I would probably go for the Apogees even though the CLX's make better recordings sound better than the Apogees do. Keep in mind that I prefer the sound of the Koetsu to the sound of the Benz; no Mercedes, we're not talking cars ! Also, my priorities took a 90-degree turn when my health took the same turn a few years ago; now it's the music more than the equipment that matters. That said, I'm still lusting after the ARC Anniversary Preamp that's on sale on Audiogon, and it's in Toronto, a mere 5-hour drive away!

Beek, honorable choirmaster, glad to be of assistance.