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I have a Moonriver 404 reference and planning to buy CW IV. I read everytine that bad recordings play bad, can pls give songs examples with bad recordings and what you hear, in order to play with my Klipsch rf 35 which I have now and see the difference. 

 

For example iron maiden 2 minutes to midnight is a bad recording? (tidal 2015 remaster), are the compressed songs bad recordings?

 

Thanks a lot for your help

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I recently listened to the entire Piece of Mind Album on my Cornwall IVs and found it to be quite good. I use an old Harman Kardon 730 with a WIIM Pro plus. I eq the bass up a little and the mids down a tad. If leaving everything flat it sounds a little thin and mid forward for my taste. I just tried ‘2 Minutes’ and I’d estimate it to be of similar quality. I do encounter some pretty bad recordings but find the Cornwalls are kinder to them than my KLF20s. The Cornwalls are considered to be pretty acurate so if the bass is light in the recording it will be light. If it’s there in the recording the Cornwalls will do it justice. I’m WAY less sophisticated than a lot of folks on here so take this from a layman’s perspective. I found an app called ‘House Curve’ that can measure your set up with your phone mic. I used this and set my Cornwalls up to where I’m plus or minus 3 db from the house curve using my WIIM eq. It didn’t take a lot of eq at all but I had to bump the mid bass up a tad and it has made most of my music sound better than with no eq. The Cornwalls can be hard on some bad recordings but gaining higher transparency will reveal this. I tried some JBL L100 classics and though they were a little easier on bad recordings but the Cornwalls still won easily overall with more instrument separation and more realistic and lively drums and guitars. More transparency will also reveal some warts. If you just keep this in mind and are not afraid to use the eq when needed these speakers are awesome. I listen to everything from classic rock, metal, EDM, rap, 80s pop, grunge, punk…. You get the idea. The Cornwalls play all genres well. The differences are more in the recording quality and all genres have good and bad. Save for maybe jazz where most of them are good to great. lol. I’m just rambling after waking up from a nap but as I listen this week I’ll post a list of what I consider good and bad recordings. 

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Perusing my playlist here are some recordings I consider good and can enjoy with no eq. Flat tone controls. 
Bob Marley ‘Turn Your Lights Down Low’

Warren Zevon ‘Werewolves of London’

Metallica’s original Garage Days ep

Weezer’s blue album

Fleetwood Mac ‘The Chain’

Led Zepplin.s first album

Chon ‘Ghost’

Most music from Delta Sleep

Usher ‘Burn’

Actually most hip hop and EDM sounds great with no eq whatsoever. 
Primis ‘Tales from the Punchbowl’ album

Boz Skaggs ‘Thanks to You’ excellent sound

 

As for bad:

The Melvin’s ‘We are Doomed’

 

REO Speedwagon ‘Take it on the Run’ recorded in a barrel?


Electric Light Ortchestra ‘Showdown’ is thin and lacks body. 
 

Sinead O’Connor ‘Drink Before the War’ sounded pretty bad on my KLFs but decent on my Cornwalls. 
 

 

I could go on and on with good to great sounding stuff. Skim through some of these if you like. I’ll be back with some bad ones. 

 

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Many many thanks for your help, you are very informative, I have  eversolo a6 and now with new firmware there is eq, peq, fir etc so this would be helpful 

 

What cables do you use, did you see changing cables big sound variations? 

 

I'll try your bad recordings to see how they sound to my system now 

 

Unfortunately I have android so can't use house curve, but I'll found a friend with iPhone.... 😊

 

Thanks again 😍

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9 hours ago, Fotis1972 said:

Many many thanks for your help, you are very informative, I have  eversolo a6 and now with new firmware there is eq, peq, fir etc so this would be helpful 

 

What cables do you use, did you see changing cables big sound variations? 

 

I'll try your bad recordings to see how they sound to my system now 

 

Unfortunately I have android so can't use house curve, but I'll found a friend with iPhone.... 😊

 

Thanks again 😍

 

About the speaker cables, I used Kimber 8TC for over 20 years and never thought about it again. For a year now, our daughter and her husband have had a nice little stereo system, a Bluesound Power Node together with Stirling Broadcast LS3/5a speakers that fit perfectly acoustically into their smaller living room (I also have such Stirling speakers in addition to my Klipsch speakers and I like them very much for what they are). 
Then there was the question of the speaker cable. Having been out of the market for 20 years, I rummaged through some hifi forums. I noticed that cables from very professional studio equipment companies were mentioned very positively more often. So I took it sporty and built Japanese Canare 4S11 Star Quad cables (not as bi-wiring item, but two wires each for plus and minus together) as bulk cables at 6.50€ per running meter. I used Deltron banana plugs for €1.15 each. In the end I was very surprised that I liked it even better than the Kimber 8TC (nowadays 140€! a mono meter in my country). Less "hifi", so a bit less spacious but without the slight presence boost of the Kimber, which can be a bit too much with some music) but more musical flow of the Canare. This is a very subjective topic and it is never possible to give a general recommendation or make an "objective" statement. But I can say that with the price difference between the Kimber 8TC and the Canare 4S11, my heart beats for the Canare in any case. For a fair comparison, I even cut off the 20-year-old banana plugs of the Kimber cable (possible oxidation) and replaced them with newly soldered Deltron plugs.

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On 2/12/2024 at 10:19 AM, KT88 said:

 

About the speaker cables, I used Kimber 8TC for over 20 years and never thought about it again. For a year now, our daughter and her husband have had a nice little stereo system, a Bluesound Power Node together with Stirling Broadcast LS3/5a speakers that fit perfectly acoustically into their smaller living room (I also have such Stirling speakers in addition to my Klipsch speakers and I like them very much for what they are). 
Then there was the question of the speaker cable. Having been out of the market for 20 years, I rummaged through some hifi forums. I noticed that cables from very professional studio equipment companies were mentioned very positively more often. So I took it sporty and built Japanese Canare 4S11 Star Quad cables (not as bi-wiring item, but two wires each for plus and minus together) as bulk cables at 6.50€ per running meter. I used Deltron banana plugs for €1.15 each. In the end I was very surprised that I liked it even better than the Kimber 8TC (nowadays 140€! a mono meter in my country). Less "hifi", so a bit less spacious but without the slight presence boost of the Kimber, which can be a bit too much with some music) but more musical flow of the Canare. This is a very subjective topic and it is never possible to give a general recommendation or make an "objective" statement. But I can say that with the price difference between the Kimber 8TC and the Canare 4S11, my heart beats for the Canare in any case. For a fair comparison, I even cut off the 20-year-old banana plugs of the Kimber cable (possible oxidation) and replaced them with newly soldered Deltron plugs.

I also use the Canare 4S11.  They took awhile to burn in but once they did, I found them to be better in my system than the any of the other more expensive speaker cables I have tried.  These include the Sword Supras, Audience AU24,  JP Labs.  

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1 hour ago, Capitalcityguy said:

I also use the Canare 4S11.  They took awhile to burn in but once they did, I found them to be better in my system than the any of the other more expensive speaker cables I have tried.  These include the Sword Supras, Audience AU24,  JP Labs.  

See also the „extended version“ in the other thread. Meanwhile I also think that the 4S11 becomes more and more 3D

 

 

 

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On 2/11/2024 at 10:40 AM, Fotis1972 said:

I have a Moonriver 404 reference and planning to buy CW IV. I read everytine that bad recordings play bad, can pls give songs examples with bad recordings and what you hear, in order to play with my Klipsch rf 35 which I have now and see the difference. 

 

For example iron maiden 2 minutes to midnight is a bad recording? (tidal 2015 remaster), are the compressed songs bad recordings?

 

Thanks a lot for your help

 

Yup that's a crappy *** remaster. Either get the original CD or vinyl. Those sound wonderful. All the original 7 Iron Maiden CD's except Piece of Mind sound very good. Original vinyl is excellent but the cds will do for less price. Get the CD's before they shoot up in price. The 1995 Castle 2 cd versions contain the original excellent masterings. All other cd masterings of Maiden are pretty bad. This is mostly true of all classic metal, Judas Priest and Metallica for example.

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On 2/24/2024 at 3:30 AM, KT88 said:

And not only re metal…Mostly to my ears the original mixes sound the best, also with rock, pop and jazz.

 

Well most of these aren't re-mixes but are remasters. And yes a majority of popular music that was remastered from 1995 on sound worse. Exceptions abound however. Recently for Rock I've found the hi-rez streams of Rush (2015 Sean McGee remasters), The Who 2014 and the 2015 Van Halen remasters are all excellent quality. At least on par with the original CD releases, and some of them are superior.

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