OFF: What hi-fi equipment do you use to listen to Hawkwind?

[Nick Medford]

On Thu, 30 Dec 2004 13:19:03 -0500, Alastair Sumner
<alastair_sumner at HOTMAIL.COM> wrote:

>I just got back from my local hi-fi shop where I auditioned Rega P2 and P3
>turntables in their listening room. I bought a Rega P3 with a decent
>cartridge in the end.

Good choice, I'd say. It's worth paying a bit more for a better cartridge
with Rega decks.

As reference vinyl I took the Charisma LPs -
>Astounding Sounds, 25 Years On, Quark, PXR5 and Levitation on Bronze. These
>LPs seem to be among the best produced of all Hawkwind albums to me.

Agreed, the live material on PXR5 sounds fantastic, it has amazing clarity
and detail without loss of raw power. The production on 25 Years On also
stands up exceptionally well today.

>By holding the
>cassette player in front of my face I discovered a stereo soundstage for
>the first time. The illusion of space that you can get when speakers are
>placed correctly still fascinates me and I sometimes think that alot of
>people aren't really aware of what proper stereo is.

One of the things that always intrigues me is why some music sounds great
on headphones but some doesn't, often because it seems to need that space
you refer to, to "breathe" somehow...

Talking of headphones, I recently bought a pair of Bang + Olufsen A8
phones, these are superb, I'd recommend them to anyone looking for a
lightweight pair of phones for an MP3 player or walkman.

And while I'm here:


>On Wed, 29 Dec 2004 15:44:41 -0500, Doug Pearson <jasret at MINDSPRING.COM>
>wrote:
>>
>>Subjectively, I find that no CD beats the sound of *well-pressed* (this is
>>the key!) vinyl.  The German pressing of 'Warrior' that I have sounds
>>astounding.  On the other hand, playing any 80s Flicknife pressing on a
>>decent turntable & system is a waste; those records will never sound
>>great, and get noisy after just a couple plays.  (The original London
>>pressings of the early ZZ Top albums [not the Warner Bros reissues!] are
>>also great examples of well-pressed records, check out "Beer Drinkers and
>>Hell Raisers" [as later covered by Motorhead] from 'Tres Hombres'.)
>>
>>And while it's true that CD's theoretically have a greater dynamic range
>>than vinyl, the sad fact is that most modern mastering/remastering jobs
>>squash everything into just a few dB's of variation in pathetic attempts
>>to win the "loudness" wars, with the result being distorted transients,
>>ear fatigue, and zero dynamics.

Agree with all of this- and sad to say I think some recent Hawkwind
releases suffer from over-compression- the White Zone album has a
particularly weak and lifeless drum sound throughout, and Alien 4 has the
same problem to a lesser extent. In terms of sound (not necessarily
material) I much prefer the rawer sound of Distant Horizons, and have
sometimes wondered if that album's early release, supposedly before final
mix and production, might have been a blessing in disguise.

Nick