Re: Reggae music and high fidelity
Posted: Thu Oct 11, 2007 6:07 pm
I agree with Rob, I think some bass is felt rather than heard and this is a real reggae thing.
And dubunion is absolutely right. No point in buying unless you can be sure it works in your room. That is why I chose the shop I have bought from. The first one gave me a poor demo in the shop, not even in a listening room. So I left and walked down the road. The second shop (there's only two proper hi-fi shops in my city, the rest are Sony centres etc) he brought the speakers to my house (which is in a rough end of town so I was pleasantly surprised at his good faith!) and I was able to hear them with my own hi-fi and my records. This was crucial as as soon as he heard my reggae vinyl he understood what I needed from a system - which he admitted was quite different to what the rest of his customers needed.
My room is around 30 sq metres, which is fairly big by English standards, so I am lucky enough to be able to use powerful speakers. And the amount of vinyl in the room acts as a dampener and stops the sound from being over-bright which is not nice for reggae.
When I think that I first got into reggae by listening to Leggo Dub on a tiny (and tinny) one-inch speaker in an old ITT portable tape machine it makes me smile!
That's one of the things I love about reggae music, it still moves you even when played in a poor man stylee! But it DOES sound so much better when played through carefully selected hi-fi systems.
And dubunion is absolutely right. No point in buying unless you can be sure it works in your room. That is why I chose the shop I have bought from. The first one gave me a poor demo in the shop, not even in a listening room. So I left and walked down the road. The second shop (there's only two proper hi-fi shops in my city, the rest are Sony centres etc) he brought the speakers to my house (which is in a rough end of town so I was pleasantly surprised at his good faith!) and I was able to hear them with my own hi-fi and my records. This was crucial as as soon as he heard my reggae vinyl he understood what I needed from a system - which he admitted was quite different to what the rest of his customers needed.
My room is around 30 sq metres, which is fairly big by English standards, so I am lucky enough to be able to use powerful speakers. And the amount of vinyl in the room acts as a dampener and stops the sound from being over-bright which is not nice for reggae.
When I think that I first got into reggae by listening to Leggo Dub on a tiny (and tinny) one-inch speaker in an old ITT portable tape machine it makes me smile!
That's one of the things I love about reggae music, it still moves you even when played in a poor man stylee! But it DOES sound so much better when played through carefully selected hi-fi systems.