Popular Post Archimago Posted January 14, 2020 Popular Post Share Posted January 14, 2020 Continued from the "red or blue pill - Part II" discussions which started here. And last response from Frank being this one. Quote That's the general thinking in audio - but IME the better the accuracy of the sound in key areas, the more the hearing mind is able to compensate, by "filling the gaps". I was intrigued by this, and then discovered that instrument makers have known for centuries that one can trick the mind, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combination_tone, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_fundamental. Well Frank, thanks for linking to examples of psychoacoustic phenomena where combinations of tones in a series of harmonics and situations where there are missing fundamentals are "filled in" by the brain. I'm not sure why this is that important for you. If you listen to examples of the phenomena you're referring to (like here), you'll note that the effect is decidedly not "high fidelity". I'm not sure why this is important when we can just use better gear in nicer rooms where we don't have to sacrifice frequency response and then tweak to optimize. It still just sounds like you're basically saying that you've found a way to optimize a sound system that works for you and others you've come across but as far as I can tell, have not given any specifics. Quote Extreme, synthetic bass won't make the cut, but most conventional instrument bass sends out the right messages when the overtones are well reproduced ... I normally find most audiophile bass to be quite unrealistic; lacks 'tightness', is overblown. Right, of course extreme bass could never be "filled in". And I trust neither will clean treble when the high frequency extension is poor. Why compromise? Are these not examples of why frequency response is important? (If not one of the most important for high fidelity playback especially in certain very popular genres?) Quote Well, we'll try not to get silly about it, perhaps 😉 ...in any sort of reasonable room, where one is comfortable having an extended conversation with someone, then there shouldn't be an issue .. Why's it silly!? This was just a response to your unqualified comment - "Room issues are not important, the brain automatically compensates, I find." So in fact, rooms issues could be important, right? Quote If I had a dollar for every time that sort of thing has been said to me ... 😁 The method can be taught, but it takes time! Some years ago, a keen audio enthusiast, living local, turned up for a listening session, and I've remained friends ever since - steadily 'mentored' him for years, and regularly visit his place to check progress. Hardest thing was to shake him out of the normal trains of thought that audiophiles always fall back on - but he's got the bug now ... delights in using bargain basement solutions, and has a collection of "terrible" recordings to check how he's progressing, 😁. It takes time and effort, sure. But I fail to see why this cannot be systematically operationalized or be presented in a series of articles on your blog. Speaking as one blog writer to another, it's much easier and leaves a legacy of your work on your blog page if you were to do so. Furthermore, I've seen a number of your posts and many say similar things... Wouldn't it save keystrokes and time to just write this down somewhere once and leave links to refer to it during forum discussions? Wouldn't it be cool to publish example cases over the years to show examples of how this worked out? Wouldn't it help fellow audiophiles to see pictures of setups and examples of what kind of "bargain basement solutions" you're talking about?! In fact, since you don't believe the room plays a big part in the equation, wouldn't it be fantastic to just show pictures of set-ups and the components that were used so audiophiles can see examples of "real sounding" systems? That would leave a useful, searchable legacy on "Frank the Audiophile" and what he was able to accomplish in 2020 than through scattered forum posts without a unified archive of your thoughts, experiments, and suggestions. As for "If I had a dollar..." - well, turn on AdSense and if you refer to products that people might buy on Amazon, do like I do and make a few bucks on the side. In fact if the procedure gathers ongoing interest over the years, you'll continue to make money from the ads delivered every time someone clicks on those links indefinitely. Quote There have been a good handful of people I've found over the Internet, who understand almost exactly what I'm talking about. It's out there, but it's rare - each person who has come across it has a different slant on how to achieve it; what they all understand is that it is far from trivial to make happen ... The system sounds "real" in that the message it sends to your brain is never detected as being a deception - let's say I put on some intense, solo piano music at a realistic volumes - if I listen to it from outside, at a distance, through an open window, it gets a tick; if I listen, inside, at the other end of the house, it gets a tick; if I walk into the room where the speakers are, and am only inches away from one of the speakers ... it still gets a tick. An illusion is created which is never broken - because the SQ is good enough in key areas; enough for the brain to remain convinced, that it knows that it can't be a fake. I think my comment above covers this. If indeed the "real" sound can be accomplished by your work with inexpensive gear, then you should be proud to show the world what was done. Well thought out write-ups, detailed descriptions of the procedures, examples of ways to deal with these distortions that break the sense of "reality" can be discussed thoroughly and readers can take all the time they need to develop/practice the art. In fact, this would even help manufacturers analyze their equipment and hopefully offer even better advice on how to get things working. Seriously, if I had discovered some kind of special "step-by-step" technique that could truly result in changing the perspective of audiophiles, that's what I'd do. Teresa, semente and Confused 3 Archimago's Musings: A "more objective" take for the Rational Audiophile. Beyond mere fidelity, into immersion and realism. R.I.P. MQA 2014-2023: Hyped product thanks to uneducated, uncritical advocates & captured press. Link to comment
Popular Post Archimago Posted January 14, 2020 Popular Post Share Posted January 14, 2020 2 hours ago, fas42 said: Why it's important is that I knew that my ear/brain was responding in that fashion - that is, the better the SQ, the less the precision of the FR mattered - I was intrigued but didn't understand why this might occur; but then I started seeing this ability of the brain to compensate being talked about in various areas, and this meant I could then say, "Ah-hah ..." Well, I guess I just don't experience it like that at all. If I'm interested in high fidelity reproduction of what's on my record/CD/file, I literally do want to hear all the recording has to offer. And since this is sound, frequencies seem rather important. 😁 2 hours ago, fas42 said: An example can be high fidelity - or not ...it's merely demonstrating a behaviour. Of course, better gear in the best room will always be an advantage - my point is that this is not necessary to experience the SQ I'm interested in. Surely, if you're interested in sounds being perceived as "real", you would want less of the brain to be using it's compensation mechanisms (eg. because the fundamental frequency might be missing!!!). If this is the case, one might as well seek out lossy encoded music - after all, the brain's psychoacoustic mechanisms can "fill in" the missing frequencies and it still sounds great. But don't we already have higher quality lossless? As for this "SQ I'm interested in", I fear there's no way to ascertain what it is you're actually interested in since you're not describing this in detail nor showing by example what you're talking about. 2 hours ago, fas42 said: The specifics will always depend on the state of the system you're dealing with - it's like going to a doctor rather than a nutritionist/health coach - the latter will recommend a whole suite of procedures for best eating, and nominate the best exercise regime for optimum health - and people always want the latter, in audio. By contrast, my approach is that of the doctor - tell me what's wrong with the sound, or let me listen; this will guide me to do some tests using various tracks, and I might adjust things in a simple way, in order to get more information. Intuition and experience tells me to consider various causes; and I proceed from there. IOW, I diagnose, and prescribe. Like a doctor, I may be well off the mark first time; but I continue trying various 'medicines' until I get some, positive, results. Frank, if I may suggest... I see that you are not a physician and you literally have it backwards. From our discussion so far, it appears to me that you have not been able to describe the issues you "diagnose". This is literally more like the homeopath who believes that certain diagnoses exist and that numerous "special" preparations (which are difficult to describe) and successive tinctures of apparently highly diluted prescriptions result in remarkable outcomes ("sounds real!"). We can talk more of this if you really believe in your analogy... But notice that your local doctor is not afraid to use instruments, tests, and various other objective measures; even a simple stethoscope or blood pressure cuff, not to mention complex autoimmune panels, genome sequencing or MRI - to verify the diagnostic impressions, often before prescribing anything. So what are you using to verify your impressions (diagnoses)? Do any of your techniques incorporate placebo controlled trials to confirm the intended outcome? Have you conducted "multicentre" tests to achieve consensus with others? 2 hours ago, fas42 said: IME deep bass has not mattered - I have pipe organ recordings on CD, and the best I have ever heard them presented is on my own rigs, with nothing special in the bass capabilities - the 'sense' of the bass line is what matters, and on a convincing system this comes over beautifully. I would always take clean treble, over high frequency extension in itself. That this is so important is indicated because one can play historical recordings with quite dreadfully lacking HF content - and these will come over very nicely if the standard of the playback chain is high enough ... all that "extension" is completely unused, for such recordings. Again isn't this all self-referential and may have nothing to do with the reality of others or even of the real world? What "'sense' of the bass" are you talking about? "Clean" and "extension" are different dimensions and whether you have a preference towards a "clean" (distortionless) treble of course doesn't mean someone else might not prefer "extension" - as an audiophile, I prefer both and don't see why one would care to pick one over the other. 😱 2 hours ago, fas42 said: In an extreme case, yes. But in any room where one would be comfortable listening to a musician idly picking up an instrument, and playing it, there won't be. Sorry, I think you're very wrong about this. Could it be that you're personally not sensitive to the effects that a room makes? 2 hours ago, fas42 said: Much of what you say makes sense ... but I "burned out" many years ago carrying out my occupation of computer analysis, design and programming; a condition that is steadily getting worse. That is, I very quickly run out of stamina when performing a task, even something that's purely physical. To do something, now, like what you describe would be a nightmare for me - I "do what has to be done; that which is right in front of me, now" is how I currently go about things. Motivation would have to be extremely high to start it, and even then I suspect I would conk out ... Essentially all the material is already there, in all the posts I've made over the years - it just needs to be sorted through, 😜. Frank, obviously you have a great amount of endurance writing these responses and over the months and years I've seen you post here. I see you've posted >6000 times on this forum. Surely, if you even used 10% of that energy to focus on a handful of succinct articles, you would save yourself a huge amount of energy and material you can easily point audiophiles to for years to come instead of repeatedly typing similar claims and comments! As you said "essentially all the material is already there" so you've expended energy and written it all but now it's all over the place and highly unlikely anyone is going to bother with picking through to piece this together. Surely you can muster a few hours over a few weeks to gather thoughts, diagrams, pictures on the blog... You mentioned another person you check in on once awhile that you helped - maybe you can begin there and publish a Case Report (medical, right?) on what was diagnosed, what treatments were prescribed, and outcome. I'm sure your friend would be able to fill in some details if you work together. Remember, make sure to include pictures - saves >1000 words! 2 hours ago, fas42 said: See above ... 😁. Pictures would tell one nothing - it's all about tiny little, essentially invisible modifications, and adjusting how the electrical environment is organised - these are largely concepts, rather than "things". I highly doubt a picture would be useless! The way the system is laid out, maybe a close-up of where time was spent to arrange something to create dramatic differences along with written description would act synergistically I think. Living in the material world, concrete demonstrations IMO are way more powerful than intellectual ruminations. There's nothing like showing something that works and having the person experience it for themselves... To be able to teach others techniques to optimize sound quality in their set-up is important, and sorely missing in much of the audiophile press because they would have us buy stuff. If you have something to offer, then I for one would love to see it laid out in a clear fashion. 2 hours ago, fas42 said: Again, a good concept - but my brain says, right now, "I don't want to know about doing these things!" It's not hard to get AdSense up and running. I bet you can get it done in an hour if you want especially if you're in the States. I recall having to jump through a few hoops here in Canada due to international financial transactions. 2 hours ago, fas42 said: Timing ... 10 years ago, I would have been in like a shot - I started that blog, and it's 'collapsed' in the same way as what happens in other areas - the energy to keep it going evaporates, and I move to "something else", to refresh my brain ... forums are good, because you have plenty of immediate feedback when you post some minor thought; the interaction keeps my mind "stirred up" ... 😀. Like my point about "clean" and "extension" above. You can have both. The blog is a place you go to express DEPTH and your own meditations on various topics. The forums are great for INTERACTION, but like you say these are often "minor thoughts". Thoughts you really want others to know and potentially build upon should go in the blog. Have it act as your landmarks for reference. If you have something unique to say, put it there because that's likely as much of a legacy as anyone can hope for in the digital world. Teresa, Jeff_N, pkane2001 and 2 others 3 2 Archimago's Musings: A "more objective" take for the Rational Audiophile. Beyond mere fidelity, into immersion and realism. R.I.P. MQA 2014-2023: Hyped product thanks to uneducated, uncritical advocates & captured press. Link to comment
Popular Post Archimago Posted January 14, 2020 Popular Post Share Posted January 14, 2020 1 hour ago, Racerxnet said: Nice reply above. I think we are all beating a dead horse. Are we going to expect it to get up and walk??? Not going to happen. My .02 MAK Fair point @Racerxnet. I find it interesting that throughout the internet, we run into situations with people (not just audiophiles of course) with viewpoints like this which are very different with very different ways of ascertaining how that inner "knowledge" was derived. From my interaction with Frank, I really get the impression that he is a nice person, believes what he says, and I can appreciate that he appears to be well meaning; not a troll who's looking out for a fight. Perhaps there will be no change but it is an interesting opportunity to talk honestly and see where this leads. If there is the opportunity to engage and learn from each other, then that would be very cool. That is the great part about the Internet... Tools are out there to create and project one's message to the masses in ways impossible a generation or two ago. The question is whether we have the insight to express our thoughts well and insight to know when we've personally gone too far and lost the audience! pkane2001, semente and mitchco 3 Archimago's Musings: A "more objective" take for the Rational Audiophile. Beyond mere fidelity, into immersion and realism. R.I.P. MQA 2014-2023: Hyped product thanks to uneducated, uncritical advocates & captured press. Link to comment
Archimago Posted January 14, 2020 Share Posted January 14, 2020 3 hours ago, Racerxnet said: I agree that Frank is a nice guy and means well. We provide documentation as a means to achieve the end result, and it gets dismissed as though the scientific community doesn't know what its talking about. See above response.. The same occurs with the audio hobby and Frank. Room response, speaker response, etc get dismissed as though none of it matters. And we all have said that if the laptop cannot reproduce the file accurately, then that person is not hearing the complete sonic results encoded. If so, how can I judge what the material is suppose to sound like when the system is deficient to begin with? If Frank would actually engage with another and be honest during an exchange, then maybe we could move further towards our goals. Deflection of scientific concepts proven to be true don't bolster his position or his blog, and I would surmise that is part of the reason the blog has dwindled. Like you said above "talk honestly" is a key to learning. Blowing off everyone and their system as not good enough makes for a poor start. MAK Right. While I'm sure this is yet another rounds of discussions with countless others before already... Maybe Frank can take to heart the comments here and now. As much as intellectual discussions can be interesting, there comes a point where unless our beliefs / theories / faiths translates to the real world and in the realm of the internet, produces actual results by means of meaningful (and honest) sharing, it will certainly "collapse". The marketplace of ideas consists of a dust bin with countless "good ideas", beliefs, testimonies throughout the history of human existence left forgotten and devalued. That is of course as it should be. Teresa 1 Archimago's Musings: A "more objective" take for the Rational Audiophile. Beyond mere fidelity, into immersion and realism. R.I.P. MQA 2014-2023: Hyped product thanks to uneducated, uncritical advocates & captured press. Link to comment
Archimago Posted January 15, 2020 Share Posted January 15, 2020 14 hours ago, fas42 said: First noted this about 15 years ago - was using an amp with the usual treble and bass controls; when the amp was not firing, the effect of the tone controls was obvious; when I temporarily lifted its performance to a decent level, I found it almost impossible to detect that swinging of the pots from one end to the other was doing anything significant to what I was hearing. Sorry man, I can't follow this as it clearly makes no sense. You're claiming that there is a special setting at which gross frequency manipulation with treble and bass controls suddenly is no longer audible? That's an extraordinary claim and you know what they say about extraordinary claims and the level of evidence needed. Lots of stuff in this next part - I'll just respond to a few of them... Quote Sigh ... put on a recording that you find particularly objectionable to listen to - you will say, "It's a bad recording!" ... I will come in, and say, "Right, I can hear all sorts of distortion being excited, in the playback chain, by the nature of that recording". They're the symptoms of an 'unhealthy' playback system - I now have specific aches and pains to work on ... This is an important one: So in your worldview, there is no such things as bad recordings? And do you believe there is a setting for a system such that all recordings sound good and do not excite "distortions"? Quote Strangely enough, I do use a multimeter - Oh, horror!! 😜 ... but the vast majority of symptoms don't need any measurin' - if something is audible that shouldn't be there, then you have a problem. A specific example, which I have mentioned several times in posts - my original Big Mutha amplifier, 35 years ago, showed distortion appearing in the treble above a certain volume. Carefully working through it, it turned out that the unit's power supply was not good enough; this was resolved after various attempts at simple tweaking, by completely restructuring the smoothing capacitor area ... problem solved. Everything I do is based on the same principles that, say, makes you decide that a radio needs a better aerial - not good enough aerial, audio is too distorted; better aerial, the distortion goes away. Like I said, these are nice examples that you can highlight on your blog with case write-ups. Write them out in detail so people can understand what was done and consider for themselves. Vague descriptions like these will not sway anyone that your solutions are meaningful. Quote Some people like, for example, grotesque "bass" - I could call it, the "home theatre car door slam" effect - in the shot, all the people get out of the vehicle, one by one - and firmly close the door. And each time, a wrecking ball gives the walls of the room a solid whack ...well, last time I got out of a car I didn't hear anything like that happening ... 😉. Subjective judgment you're making. I agree that often the effects are overdone. But if that's what was intended by artists, movie producers, etc... I can object that it doesn't sound good but I don't expect my system to "filter out" what was on the soundtrack. Quote Lack of distortion always comes before extension, for me. Well done deep bass is expensive, so I don't worry about it. Again, very subjective judgment. Fine if you don't care for a system that extends down to 20Hz. Many audiophiles want that and they get joy out of hearing/feeling the frequencies on their organ recordings and movie explosions. If you're not worried about deep bass, that's your prerogative - some people can't hear above 12kHz and say there's no point having tweeters that hit 20kHz as well. But if you're not worried because of personal financial limitation (ie. you can't afford a system that goes that low cleanly), then please don't use that to oppose the opinion of others that low frequencies are of value to them. Quote So, you would (have, sic?) trouble listening to live music if the room wasn't "right"? Yes. I would not want to listen to a string quartet in an echoey cellar, and Diana Krall singing in my bathroom will do nothing for me. Quote The most effective add-on would be sounds ... examples of SQ in the right zone; examples in the wrong zone - I have done that on occasion, but the comments thereafter demonstrate a desire to disregard the aspect that matters, and not be intelligent about the point I'm trying to make. Sure. Include sounds. The more complete the "picture" of what you're doing the better. Quote Theory's good ... but it's always been a struggle to go back to activities where the 'novelty' has worn off - I used to be a voracious reader, until one day I stopped reading halfway through a volume, and to this day have no interest in reading, unless it's to find out information ... Fine. And I see from a previous post that you have bad fatigue. Anyhow, I hope you feel better and I don't think there's anything more to add unless there's "actionable" information to address. I hope at some point you can provide more concrete details on your blog. Like I said, pre- and post- images and sounds would be great. Case examples would be fantastic, to demonstrate your technique and results. I would have difficulty taking many of your comments seriously otherwise. semente 1 Archimago's Musings: A "more objective" take for the Rational Audiophile. Beyond mere fidelity, into immersion and realism. R.I.P. MQA 2014-2023: Hyped product thanks to uneducated, uncritical advocates & captured press. Link to comment
Archimago Posted January 18, 2020 Share Posted January 18, 2020 On 1/15/2020 at 2:36 PM, fas42 said: There is a 'setting' of SQ where the mind no longer takes notice of FR variations - of course it actually does, but subjectively you "still hear the same thing" - go back, again, to listening to live music - if there is a dip in the FR somewhere because of room effects, your brain doesn't tell you, "Uh oh, I'll have to shift my position - it doesn't sound right" ... and the same brain processing switches on if the replay quality reaches a certain standard. Hmmm. You're describing a perceptual phenomenon here. How do you know this happens to everyone? Remember, I was responding to your claim that you can find a situation where even gross treble/bass tone changes make no audible/perceptual difference! Sorry, I've never experienced such phenomenon, nor to be honest would I really want to be so insensitive to sound changes! This doesn't mean I can't enjoy the music mind you, so long as the frequency anomaly isn't extreme. Quote Yes, indeed it is. This attitude developed over many years - even when I was achieving a very high standard, I still had recordings that were "no good" - only to get a shock when enough of the integrity of the setup further snapped into shape, because of some new refinement; and the recording came good. So, the motto has been precisely that, for some years now ... "There no such thing as a bad recording". Note, it is not a "setting", for the playback chain - it's developing the awareness of when the system is adding distortion to the playback, and then doing what's needed to eliminate or reduce that unwanted artifact to the point of being inaudible. Sure. But if you're not able to define the "distortion" you're talking about, then how do you eliminate it? Again, if you use the "doctor" analogy, you have not demonstrated the "pathological etiology" of the disorder you're talking about. How do you know which treatment to prescribe? Quote Have you read through, on the blog, A More Ambitious Upgrade - Part 1, onwards? Not every word, but even that 1st "Part 1" post is lacking in background and I have no concrete context as to accept what you're claiming. How can a person continue to read the other parts without understanding what you're saying? Like I say, you should really just summarize everything in a few posts. Start from first principles. From there, build your case. And pictures do help keep readers interested plus allows the reader to better contextualize! For example, what does this cheap system with NAD CDP and amp look like? Show me this Sharp "boombox speaker" since you didn't even publish a product model in that post! Quote The point is that the effects should not be exaggerated by characteristics of the playback - the car door slamming sequence showcased that the particular rig was overcooking that area. How do you know it was exaggerated? What if this was how the soundtrack was produced and the equipment accurately replicated the intent? Quote This is where the "missing fundamental" behaviour comes in ... there is an obsessive audio enthusiast further up the road than the friend, who has massively heavy, sealed subwoofers - we ran a frequency sweep and could clearly hear extension to the bottom of the range, and, it was extremely clean. The whole ensemble was running through a DEQX, which had been repeatedly calibrated, and it was set up as an active system, amplifier per driver. So I pulled out my test, pipe organ CD - this should be good, eh ... 😉 ... Ummm, no. It wimped out, the majesty and glory of that sound, live, went missing - the notes may have been there, but it didn't work - hit Stop pretty quickly, with that one. Sure. Maybe. How do I know? Unless you tell me what pipe organ CD you used, what track sounded bad, which sub(s) this guy has, what kind of system he's using, perhaps even what the room looks like... This is "hearsay" testimony. You do realize that the value of a comment like this is limited, right? Quote Again, you are using extreme examples ... And why shouldn't I? You said rooms don't make a difference. Also, you said that it's possible to optimize a system so that tone controls no longer had an effect! I find those statements extreme and invitations to counter with obvious examples... Quote ... The biggest problem is that unless you are live in a room with a system, that can produce this subjective presentation, and can demonstrate how the illusion collapses if you "pull a small stone out from under one of the supporting pillars" - then these are all just words. There are members on this forum who understand how precarious it is achieving the necessary SQ - I've been at it a lot longer, and have learned a lot of 'tricks' on the way. Okay. As I've said above. Please clearly highlight these "pillars" which I interpreted abstractly as elements of your "first principles" in your writings so everyone is clear as to what you're saying and doing... Quote The best "doctor" is the one who can understand, almost immediately, what is wrong with you as you start talking - this only occurs when he's been "on the job" for a long time; an intuition develops, and he cuts through many testing procedures, "because he's been there before". Sorry, disagree. The idea of a doctor being able to diagnose based on first impressions and only on intuition (without digging deeper) can only go so far and with only certain conditions. Trust me on this one... Archimago's Musings: A "more objective" take for the Rational Audiophile. Beyond mere fidelity, into immersion and realism. R.I.P. MQA 2014-2023: Hyped product thanks to uneducated, uncritical advocates & captured press. Link to comment
Popular Post Archimago Posted January 18, 2020 Popular Post Share Posted January 18, 2020 49 minutes ago, fas42 said: "Only so far", yes ... but in the real world, for 90% of the time, how does a skilled general practitioner operate? For a good GP, he / she takes a history and listens first? Can't think of a situation when there's actually a significant problem and one can "understand, almost immediately, what is wrong with you as you start talking". Unless of course the person has clear physical signs like typical lesions of chicken pox, a black eye or obvious fracture - probably a good number of those should be going to the ER! As for the Sharp mini hi-fi box, as you can imagine, I would not have had any specific idea what the speakers you're referring to looked like until you showed me that picture. In fact, it appears that's not even a picture of your actual set-up but some girls room? (BTW, you don't honestly believe "200W" printed on the front is meaningful and even refers to actual power handling to make you "go with them", do you?!) Typing into Google "sharp mini hifi" yielded pages of images and while it might have been a 2 second job for you, look at it through the lens of others. In fact, perhaps this is the key point about what you're saying and why I suspect many don't get it... You need to be considerate of the perspective of what others might be thinking. Can they truly follow where you're coming from and share the same basic beliefs from which you're approaching this? As you can imagine... I don't follow and find many of your beliefs, both simple and complex are being expressed without adequate logical connection. I think that's all I can say. Teresa and tmtomh 2 Archimago's Musings: A "more objective" take for the Rational Audiophile. Beyond mere fidelity, into immersion and realism. R.I.P. MQA 2014-2023: Hyped product thanks to uneducated, uncritical advocates & captured press. Link to comment
Popular Post Archimago Posted January 19, 2020 Popular Post Share Posted January 19, 2020 There are some things I can agree with: 1 hour ago, fas42 said: The logic is remarkably simple: to goal is for a system to deliver the sense of hearing live sound; some people believe you have to spray lots of money in all directions, and have something that looks spectacular to achieve this - I've found that this has nothing to with it; Sure. It'll be nice to have "live sound" - but only if the recording is supposed to sound that way. Agree. No need to spend lots of money. 1 hour ago, fas42 said: what counts is locating the flaws in the system, not matter how expensive the individual components are, and eliminating them - unless you do this, your money is largely wasted, if your goal is as above. Get the "sorting out" right, and you will be rewarded with very special sound - that which is on the recording, rather than the playback rig's interpretation of it. Sure, it's only as good as the limiting factor in the audio chain. And if there are distortions preventing the optimal sound, should deal with it. 1 hour ago, fas42 said: The audio friend I just visited has an audiophile acquaintance who has done it the flash way - a monster Gryphon integrated amp, Audio Research DAC, the "best" music server, Magico speakers is the latest round - ummm, he reckons the friend had the best sound many years ago, when the kit cost perhaps a 1/10 of the current configuration. Sure. getting the most expensive stuff doesn't mean it sounds the best. Many things like DACs and music servers are IMO not limiting the sound. But it's this comment that still gets me with your beliefs: Quote Again, I've repeated over and over and over that the speakers aren't so important - if I post photos of what's unimportant do you think they will understand better what I'm saying? Plus this quote from the comment above: Quote I'm not particularly interested in speakers, because they're only a very small part of the story of getting good SQ ... my friend yesterday expressed it very well - cheaper speakers need more conditioning, from cold, of their suspensions to sound decent; if time matters, get better speakers. Naw man. This devaluation of speakers simply does not jive in my corner of the universe. In fact, this is such an important foundation to the overall belief system that unless this is resolved, there's no way to even begin to understand anything else! Want to try being more specific about this? Teresa and tmtomh 2 Archimago's Musings: A "more objective" take for the Rational Audiophile. Beyond mere fidelity, into immersion and realism. R.I.P. MQA 2014-2023: Hyped product thanks to uneducated, uncritical advocates & captured press. Link to comment
Archimago Posted January 19, 2020 Share Posted January 19, 2020 12 hours ago, fas42 said: ... How this started is because my first "good" rig used an expensive CDP, expensive amplifier, and cheap speakers - being a logical kind o' guy, I think!!, this said to me, "Ain't so important to use really, really good speakers!" ... it all built from there. What do you lose with down market speakers? Worst from the SQ perspective is that the suspensions of the drivers.and the crossovers, are not as refined as expensive ones - this means they have to be driven hard from cold, to "warm them up" - for many people this would be a decisive reason not to go there, and that's fine. But I'm interested in what can be achieved, if one takes into account these sorts of issues. Also what is a hindrance is that the cabinets are not "meaty" - thick, non-resonant, weigh half a ton, all help; anyone for some Wilsons? 😝 But If one takes some care you can effectively give the "flimsy" cabinet that comes with the drivers of a cheap speaker most of the characteristics that count for good sound. Without paying the manufacturers for all that meat ... this is what I did with my "beginner" setup. What you may not believe is that low cost speakers can deliver intense, powerhouse sound - bowl you over with completely clean sound energy, immerse you in the music event - but I have consistently heard this happen ... what normally lets down the side is using an amplifier that is comparably in cost to that of the speakers - which won't work. The amp wimps out, and everyone blames the speakers - most people have it back to front ... Okay. Like many areas of sound reproduction, let's say that the drivers themselves have reached a level of quality where distortion is low enough and generally the frequency reproduction and dispersion patterns are good enough that one can find adequate positioning to minimize issues. True, improving cabinets is important. Perhaps you can write a blog post summarizing what you can do with the cabinets, materials, and procedure to reinforce the cabinet? As usual, pictures I think would help and very much enhance the article for something like this! Archimago's Musings: A "more objective" take for the Rational Audiophile. Beyond mere fidelity, into immersion and realism. R.I.P. MQA 2014-2023: Hyped product thanks to uneducated, uncritical advocates & captured press. Link to comment
Archimago Posted January 19, 2020 Share Posted January 19, 2020 1 hour ago, fas42 said: It's all in posts made over the years - I'll hunt them dowm, and quote them in a post here, for now ... give me some moments ... Sounds good... But here's a perfect example - since you're taking the time to gather thoughts and pieces, why not just create a blog post with the text, maybe links, again, maybe pictures of what you're doing and what the materials and procedure looks like? Since this thread is called "step-by-step surgery", remember that surgical textbooks are very visual and need to incorporate illustrations of anatomical landmarks as well as visual aids for teaching procedures... (Exhibit A) semente 1 Archimago's Musings: A "more objective" take for the Rational Audiophile. Beyond mere fidelity, into immersion and realism. R.I.P. MQA 2014-2023: Hyped product thanks to uneducated, uncritical advocates & captured press. Link to comment
Archimago Posted January 19, 2020 Share Posted January 19, 2020 6 minutes ago, fas42 said: Thing is, I want to trigger the brain cells, not the retina cones - if I "post pictures", at least one or two will slavishly copy exactly what's shown, having missed the intent of what's going on, and get it wrong in some area. Then they will indignantly post, "Frank's all BS! I did exactly what's in the pictures, and it made things worse ,,, he hasn't a clue!!" ... I can see it coming, from miles away ... 😜. An ounce of brain processing is worth more than a lb of thick textbook, full of pretty pictures, 😉. Come on Frank, have a little faith 🤔. Surely you must consider the readers here are much more sophisticated than this! I bet you many will spend time thinking and considering if it makes sense for them. As in all things, some people may find benefit and others may not. At least it'll encourage experimentation. In the same way, I put my ideas out there on my blog recognizing that I'll catch flack at times. But if thoughts are worth sharing, then come what may... It's not like you (or I) are asking people to pay for something "guaranteed" to work. Rather, let's just talk, think, and show in a free marketplace of ideas. fas42 1 Archimago's Musings: A "more objective" take for the Rational Audiophile. Beyond mere fidelity, into immersion and realism. R.I.P. MQA 2014-2023: Hyped product thanks to uneducated, uncritical advocates & captured press. Link to comment
Archimago Posted February 7, 2020 Share Posted February 7, 2020 On 1/26/2020 at 2:41 AM, fas42 said: Surgery can be done to the source material, too - if the 'damage' is fairly straightforward ... Archimago posted that this latest Pet Shop Boys track was looking pretty yucky, so I thought I would have a look at it. Downloaded a decent audio format version from YouTube - after a couple of gos, got the settings pretty right for undoing the compression, with the result, Note the original version has been attenuated 8.5dB, to allow for the expansion of dynamic range - one major gain is clarity of the big reverb of the drum beat, which is highly squashed in the original. Good job on the restoration, Frank. I'll have to give it a try as well to "hear" if it sounds better... Archimago's Musings: A "more objective" take for the Rational Audiophile. Beyond mere fidelity, into immersion and realism. R.I.P. MQA 2014-2023: Hyped product thanks to uneducated, uncritical advocates & captured press. Link to comment
Archimago Posted January 31, 2021 Share Posted January 31, 2021 3 hours ago, fas42 said: is as good as any as an example as any of how many audiophiles approach this hobby, activity, the completely wrong way, IME. He wants to "tame the highs" - which is code for there being far too much distortion in the replay, which is particularly obvious in the treble content of the recording. And that there are 'magic' devices out there, which "solve everything!" ... by adding some specialness to part of the chain, which makes all the bad stuff go away. Well, it may work, help, but it will be a fluke if it does this decisively ... it's the lack of greater insight by most in the audio game which holds back the possibility of achieving really excellent SQ, in many cases - the thinking that one brings to the process of optimising the sound is so, so important; and one that doesn't directly tackle the underlying issues will mean that it could take a long time to get satisfying results. Sometimes, "tame the highs" is just "tame the highs" depending on the system. Maybe a little EQ would be more effective and easy to refine to taste. I agree that there's no need for any magic devices like this. But also no need to interpret the anomaly as "distortion in the replay" is there? Unless one can show actual distortion present... Archimago's Musings: A "more objective" take for the Rational Audiophile. Beyond mere fidelity, into immersion and realism. R.I.P. MQA 2014-2023: Hyped product thanks to uneducated, uncritical advocates & captured press. Link to comment
Archimago Posted February 4, 2021 Share Posted February 4, 2021 On 1/30/2021 at 8:53 PM, fas42 said: The key words there are as bolded ... if the system status is such that the high frequencies are disturbing to listen to, then the playback has a problem. A trivial example is a very ordinary car radio, which has a 'tone control' - something comes on with lots of treble, and it sounds awful! So the passengers yell at the driver to "turn it down!" - and he winds back the tone control; which is merely a treble cut circuit - ahh, nice and cuddly sound! The problem was too much distortion - simple fix, dump the HF ... well, it turns out even the most high end replay rig can suffer the same subjective issue, though it may be far more subtle in its impact. So, DSP it away - but have you really solved things? IME, no ... a recording which is unbearable on some rig, with razor sharp edges tearing at your ear drums, can be played on a competent setup at any volume, with complete ease in the listening - your brain is balancing, 'EQ'ing' what you hear; it even adjusts for the non-linear distortion within the recording itself, if not too severe ... this is where the 'magic' happens; exploiting how human hearing can compensate for deficiencies in the source, if you don't overtask its abilities to do this. But that's touching on my point (bolded). How do you know there was too much distortion? Obviously not all recordings are of good tonal quality. Some have "razor sharp edges" baked into the signal itself and an accurate reproduction of the sound would let listeners know that the recording was simply of poor quality. Has there been consistent demonstration that the situations you're alluding to actually are primarily distortion-related? Not saying it's not a possibility, rather I'm not sure I've come across this much... Archimago's Musings: A "more objective" take for the Rational Audiophile. Beyond mere fidelity, into immersion and realism. R.I.P. MQA 2014-2023: Hyped product thanks to uneducated, uncritical advocates & captured press. Link to comment
Popular Post Archimago Posted July 30, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted July 30, 2021 @fas42 - Frank, I noticed that the other thread has been locked. As I mentioned to you more than a year ago, I really think you should take some time, organize your thoughts, and build up your blog as the place to solidify your ideas, philosophies, and procedure. The nice thing is that you can edit your blog posts at will, update over time, change the publication date if you want to rearrange. You can then link to those blog posts on forum posts like here if you want interaction without repetition, while have a place of your own (the blog) to build ideas and teach the step-by-step that your speak of. You can even turn on AdSense on the blog and capture some ad revenue which you can put towards gear you might like (obviously earnings depending on the web traffic). Forum posts like these here easily get buried with no special titles or items to search for. Over time, threads also fall off the main pages, etc. and will be quickly forgotten. BTW make sure to post pictures of what was done and also practical milestones along the way. Only then I think can you get your message thoroughly across. I really don't think that claims alone such as being able to make "all" recordings (even bad ones) sound "good" or "natural" will get far with most audiophiles these days. Since anyone can say anything, a person's claim about achieving this or that counts for little on the Internet these days especially if what is claimed is supposed to be special. You need to show the practical stuff and have pictures to demonstrate, then have people try and confirm your findings (or not)... Good luck. botrytis, Teresa and EdmontonCanuck 2 1 Archimago's Musings: A "more objective" take for the Rational Audiophile. Beyond mere fidelity, into immersion and realism. R.I.P. MQA 2014-2023: Hyped product thanks to uneducated, uncritical advocates & captured press. Link to comment
Popular Post Archimago Posted July 30, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted July 30, 2021 9 hours ago, fas42 said: Yep, all good thoughts ... now, if only the mind, and body, were ready to tag along 😁 ... a bit buggered these days; I need to call on a choice Round Tuit, 🙂. Didn't have the traffic for AdSense to be interested - in the interim, the thoughts continuing on the theme of the Stereo Magic thread will go here, Maybe it's because of the content that AdSense is not interested. Like I said, if you add some pictures, there's good material, and organized, then I don't think there would be a problem. Quote Impudent interlopers, beware ... Pictures would be of a mess - tidiness freaks will have a heart attack, and also plenty to attack. The practical stuff is in what one hears - recordings of the playback would be more telling; but those who don't want to understand would always find fault, 😉 BTW, just minutes ago we had one of the Three Tenors, or similar, blasting out Nessun Dorma ... "Brilliant!", says Bev ... that's a pretty good pat on the back, in the meantime 🙂 So if it's that bad over there and that messy, then why are you complaining about GoldenSound's video and "poor system hygiene"?! Sounds like your system needs some serious hygiene to consider as well, beyond cable organization!!! Gotta walk the talk. Like I said, you can't just go around claiming special abilities at system tuning and what you supposedly hear things without a reasonable amount of demonstrating what you do and transparency around your set-up. It rings hollow and you're just inviting criticism on an open forum like this since we're not all "friends" here (even though we can be civil of course!). EdmontonCanuck, Racerxnet, ARQuint and 3 others 6 Archimago's Musings: A "more objective" take for the Rational Audiophile. Beyond mere fidelity, into immersion and realism. R.I.P. MQA 2014-2023: Hyped product thanks to uneducated, uncritical advocates & captured press. Link to comment
Popular Post Archimago Posted July 31, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted July 31, 2021 3 minutes ago, fas42 said: Note in the Stereo Magic thread, the OP concluded with What I posted disputed that "a fairly large number of audiophiles have already reached and gone beyond this milestone" - if this was the case, then I wouldn't nearly always be disappointed when coming across some ambitious rig. And, posted examples of systems with issues, and a few that got most things right. As part of that, it's inevitable I would mention what could be causing problems, and possible ways of resolving such ... you got a problem with that? ??? But lots of these examples you use are recordings from YouTube! You don't think the microphones of varying quality, ADCs of varying quality, plus lossy compression (likely of various bitrates) have a huge effect on how you're judging the sound quality?! I think the wise audiophile generally will avoid being judgmental about these videos/recordings especially if we're talking about minute tweaks which seem to be all you're doing. botrytis, Teresa and March Audio 3 Archimago's Musings: A "more objective" take for the Rational Audiophile. Beyond mere fidelity, into immersion and realism. R.I.P. MQA 2014-2023: Hyped product thanks to uneducated, uncritical advocates & captured press. Link to comment
Popular Post Archimago Posted August 8, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted August 8, 2021 1 hour ago, fas42 said: Good example of where current rigs just can't pull it off, The actual song, referenced in the comments, The quality of the drum beat alone, even on my tiny laptop speakers, tells the story ... "The quality of the drum beat alone, even on my tiny laptop speakers, tells the story ..." Shocking that you would say something like that listening to an unknown microphone recording, with unknown placement, in a foreign room, with unfamiliar equipment, compressed thru lossy YouTube, played back on your admittedly "tiny" laptop speakers! Can you not appreciate that whatever you're hearing (and making a fidelity judgment on) is maybe if you're lucky something like 10% of the complexity of what the actual system might have sounded/felt like if you were there in person? Really disappointing (and disturbing), Frank, when it comes to your apparent lack of ability at reality-testing. I think this thread really needs a "Black Box Warning" about the unhealthy side effects if one chooses to consume what is being expressed! At the very least, a strong recommendation to utilize critical thinking skills is in order. EdmontonCanuck, Teresa and botrytis 3 Archimago's Musings: A "more objective" take for the Rational Audiophile. Beyond mere fidelity, into immersion and realism. R.I.P. MQA 2014-2023: Hyped product thanks to uneducated, uncritical advocates & captured press. Link to comment
Popular Post Archimago Posted August 9, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted August 9, 2021 1 hour ago, fas42 said: I hope everyone enjoyed their little round of nastiness ... unfortunately, what's losing out is audio itself - the message that has been presented to the general population for years is that if one wants a very high standard of music playback then staggering amounts of money has to be thrown at it; and even then there are no guarantees ... this is an absurd situation; especially when you consider there are value for money solutions in so many other things in life. So, I shall continue to point out that there is a path which bypasses the ridiculousness of the high end audio game, by one means or another ... I think many of us already believe this. It's the rest of the claims that appear to be clearly off kilter or impossible to believe. Nonetheless, having heard the related Edifier S2000 Mk III, I think a bit more money will achieve significantly better sound. I think @hopkins has a great point. Given your propensity to judge YouTube videos' audio quality you really should post one on your system and show us how it sounds "right" compared to that one above. Considering the reluctance to even post pictures of the steps with the Edifier, obviously we should not be holding our collective breaths. Having the thread get quiet again probably would be a good thing... Racerxnet, Teresa and botrytis 3 Archimago's Musings: A "more objective" take for the Rational Audiophile. Beyond mere fidelity, into immersion and realism. R.I.P. MQA 2014-2023: Hyped product thanks to uneducated, uncritical advocates & captured press. Link to comment
Popular Post Archimago Posted August 9, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted August 9, 2021 14 hours ago, fas42 said: If a person doesn't have the knowledge, and DIY skills, then it will cost money - that's what's unfortunate with the current audio world: it's almost impossible to purchase anything which will deliver capable SQ straight out of the box - and most certainly, at a reasonable price... the Edifiers are so far ahead of anything else I've fiddled with in the past, in raw form - and that's a very positive sign. They still have a warming up from cold issue, which I suspect will be almost impossible to solve for some time yet, for rigs in general - and that demonstrates how difficult the job is. Why don't you just itemize a list of things you've done to the Edifier system so far and tell us what has improved either with each step or in general. That would be helpful. Quote You have noted that I have a YouTube channel, where I have posted some videos of previous exercises, yes? Yeah, but it's just poor-sounding, noisy audio as far as I can tell. Not a knock against you personally, this is simply like many of YouTube's lossy home recordings. For example, the noise floor on your Philips HT system sounds pretty poor compared to the recent videos you linked by others. There's also no video on there to show what the system appears like or in what way you've modified anything. Quote *sigh* 🙄 ... I posted a single shot of what is there now - which has provided ammunition for quite some time, for those who wish to throw poo ... considering I'm always working in a prototyping mode; that is, everything is very messy, and unintelligible to someone who doesn't understand what the aim is - why would I be motivated to do this, hmmm? Hence the explanations of what the intent is ... 'cause, that's what matters ... Indeed ... 14 hours ago, fas42 said: Okay, just tracked down this roughy recording I did of the Edifiers 9 months or so ago - a lot has been done since then ... Look. For strangers on the Internet to have some measure of belief in what you do and some level of respect, it's important to communicate well and show reasonable transparency. The bottom line is that your communication style is nebulous. It's unclear what you're exactly doing and how that's impacting anything. Tools are there for showing images, videos, better quality recordings; you're not using them to engage with readers to show your case. That audio recording you link to above is 1 minute long, 16/22.05, noisy, rolling off before with nothing above 11kHz, you and presumably your wife (?) talking, and furthermore mono. If you don't mind me asking, can you tell us how old you are? (I've been transparent in my blog that I'm almost 50 now.) The reason I ask is that I believe hearing ability is important to consider. As much as nobody seems to want to talk much about it (eg. I see Stereophile writers often claiming stuff like "I'm 70 and my audiologist thinks I've got great hearing!"), we don't live forever of course and hearing ability, especially those higher frequencies, sadly does have a "best before" date on those hair cells. Show some transparency, maybe there's then stuff to talk about. Otherwise, I do appreciate @The Computer Audiophile letting me know how to use the ignore feature (which I've never done here or anywhere else). Racerxnet, kumakuma and MarkusBarkus 2 1 Archimago's Musings: A "more objective" take for the Rational Audiophile. Beyond mere fidelity, into immersion and realism. R.I.P. MQA 2014-2023: Hyped product thanks to uneducated, uncritical advocates & captured press. Link to comment
Archimago Posted August 10, 2021 Share Posted August 10, 2021 1 hour ago, fas42 said: Too hard to have a look at the Edifying Journey thread, 😉? I have repeatedly, repeat, repeatedly stated that noise coming over the mains has been a major factor - so at the moment I have a crazy mix of filtering circuitry and extension cords to help isolate from this noise - which appears, currently, to finally knock it on the head. Saying what's in it would be ridiculous, because I'm certain parts of it are counterproductive, or unnecessary; and, I now need to carefully go backwards, and eliminate that which serves no purpose. Also, it looks a crazy mess - functionality is the first step; blingifying it is the last ... In a way, yes! Which is why I prefer a blog format if there is some kind of "ongoing journey" because on forums there are typically too many back and forth discussions and after a couple of pages, one loses track and gets bored unless truly attentive. Quote Also, the power on/off switch was been bypassed; this was awkward to do, but necessary. What was gained was reduction of distortion. This means that one can go louder, with no sense of anything being unpleasant about the sound. I haven't achieved full invisibility of the speakers; but currently the SQ at its best is highly satisfying. Yes, it's noisy. And the why was that the camera I used for recording had very poor S/N; this certainly discouraged me from doing more than a few captures - it was an exercise to see if it was worthwhile trying this sort of thing. Which it obviously isn't, 🙂 ... Will be hitting 70 next year - checked a couple of years ago, just using a test disk and speakers, and at that point one ear could still register an 18k signal; the other could only reach 15k. However, that has zero to do with being able to hear distortion ... Thank you Frank. Good to know and I appreciate that self disclosure. To be honest, I have strong doubts that you would be able to hear 15kHz pure tone without quite high thresholds, much less 18kHz as a ~70 year old male. In any event, I also don't see why this has "zero" to do with hearing distortions. I have not seen a study that doesn't suggest at least some degree of loss of general acuity across all frequencies through the decades (even though high frequencies worse). If you're talking about severe distortions, then sure, an older male should be able to hear these things, but this would also be easily measurable (which you have not shown). If it's very subtle distortions, then I'm afraid as we get older, my bet is that these will be harder to appreciate. Quote What the goal is, is to match the qualities of live sound - no matter what state one's hearing is in, if one has no trouble distinguishing live sound from the reproduction of it, then your hearing is good enough. And the reproduction isn't good enough. To me, the recordings I use for checking progress sound the same to me now as they did 40 years ago. And if the rig is flawed in the key areas I worry about, then they still sound obviously 'wrong'. I appreciate that you believe this, but nonetheless find this hard to believe is true. Quote What you say would make a lot more sense to me, if I could just wander into a room with any old, half decent system playing - and it impressed me. But they don't. Until it becomes a norm that everyday rigs don't have obvious flaws, then talking about FR, and mono, and random noise is meaningless - it's the experience of live music making that matters to me; which appears not to be of interest to you. Then there's really nothing to talk about. If the definition of a good system (at least "half decent" one), is literally YOU wandering into a room and YOU needing to be "impressed". And YOU thinking this sounds "live" with no other means of showing, or expressing what exactly you're hearing, what "distortion" you're talking about, or ultimately improving when performing your "magic", then I'm afraid this self-absorbed, idiosyncratic way of thinking will likely not be of use for others. Anyhow, carry on. All the best to you and yours and I hope ultimately you achieve your ideal with the Edifier speakers. For the price, at least the S2000 Mk III I tried was pretty enjoyable with some nice features and good build. botrytis 1 Archimago's Musings: A "more objective" take for the Rational Audiophile. Beyond mere fidelity, into immersion and realism. R.I.P. MQA 2014-2023: Hyped product thanks to uneducated, uncritical advocates & captured press. Link to comment
Popular Post Archimago Posted August 19, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted August 19, 2021 2 hours ago, fas42 said: Just came across this image, of a really, really expensive rig, in another forum, This, to my eyes, is a diabolical disaster - how there could be any hope of getting decent SQ out of this mess is beyond me - it would take extreme engineering, inside the cabinets, to cope with this ... the amount of cross interference and injected noise would be off the charts ... It's ugly, but I don't think it would be appropriate to judge too harshly unless there is evidence that this is an issue. You'd be surprised at how ugly cabling can look but have no significant impact on noise. botrytis and The Computer Audiophile 2 Archimago's Musings: A "more objective" take for the Rational Audiophile. Beyond mere fidelity, into immersion and realism. R.I.P. MQA 2014-2023: Hyped product thanks to uneducated, uncritical advocates & captured press. Link to comment
Popular Post Archimago Posted August 20, 2021 Popular Post Share Posted August 20, 2021 On 8/18/2021 at 11:07 PM, fas42 said: In your world perhaps ... but not in mine, 😉. There's noise, and then there's noise ... there's enough "lack of hygiene" there to make a 'difficult' recording unlistenable - easily ... put it this way: you lift the lid of an expensive new amplifier, and something like that, at a smaller scale, greets your eyes ... what would you think of the manufacturer; and what chance do you think that it would provide optimum performance? 🙂 ... Well, I guess we live in different worlds - or at least understand the world from very different perspectives. I've learned long ago that what greets the eyes is not necessarily the same as what greets the ears. I fear that you put too much faith in what you see, rather than what you hear. That leap of faith suggesting that the result will be "unlistenable" and "easily" audible is remarkably presumptuous for not actually having heard the system in question. I'm blown away that a man can say such things with no knowledge of the actual thing itself. One wonders then what else you would claim, but in fact know nothing of?! (Oh yeah, as I recall, you've never actually tried SSD drives but quoted something about them a few weeks back.) botrytis and Teresa 1 1 Archimago's Musings: A "more objective" take for the Rational Audiophile. Beyond mere fidelity, into immersion and realism. R.I.P. MQA 2014-2023: Hyped product thanks to uneducated, uncritical advocates & captured press. Link to comment
Archimago Posted December 27, 2021 Share Posted December 27, 2021 On 12/20/2021 at 5:41 PM, fas42 said: Just to comment on In particular, that the Powerwall arrangement secured better SQ than the other configurations - considering the efforts that @austinpop has already gone to condition and filter that which comes from the grid, it still made a sizeable difference going across to that which was exclusively supplied by internal reserves, the Powerwall batteries. Which says what? That it is not trivial to completely isolate an ambitious audio system from the vagaries of what the power is like coming from the street - I certainly can vouch for that, having always had to jump through many hoops to get decently clean mains being fed to gear. So, in spite of what you have already done, there is a good, a very good chance of securing better sound by adding yet further measures to improve the mains waveform - consider this as being a better value for money exploration, than many of the other things audiophiles try. What's the long term solution? Pretty obvious - to have equipment as produced by the audio industry not being so damn sensitive to this! Keeping up a constant whinge to people who matter, to try and design their products better, should help - otherwise the poor consumer has to keep running around, sorting out the stuff that should have been done in the factory ... . The "elephant in the room" with discussions like these is that we accept at face value that the reported "sizeable differences" are a statement of fact that is actually audible and anyone listening would come to a similar opinion. That might or might not be the case. IMO, if anything is clearly audible, one should have objective evidence as well. IMO, it's important not to get too deep into rabbit holes for claims which are simply unsubstantiable. Just like claims of this nature in the magazines - maybe it's a thing, maybe it's not... Archimago's Musings: A "more objective" take for the Rational Audiophile. Beyond mere fidelity, into immersion and realism. R.I.P. MQA 2014-2023: Hyped product thanks to uneducated, uncritical advocates & captured press. Link to comment
Archimago Posted April 28, 2022 Share Posted April 28, 2022 On 4/25/2022 at 7:44 PM, fas42 said: Quite pleased with the Edifiers rig at the moment ... this has been a steady process, identifying each weakness in turn - and tweaking to improve the overall robustness and integrity of the chain. Key ones have been sensitivity to noise from cables, and external electrical activity; and the latest one to rear its ugly head, , was sensitivity to the physical stability of the plastic Toslink optical cable. Of course, that issue has been there, all the way though; it was just a matter of time before its presence became obvious enough - so then I knew I had to do something about it. At the moment just a kludge; applying tension on the cable so it can't 'flop'; with damping so that the applied tension doesn't excite other vibration modes. So, what has the step by step process delivered? At the moment, highly satisfying sound - excellent soundstage, depth; the speakers are "invisible" enough that I'm not fussed about scraping that very last ounce of performance in this area; 110 year old recordings come up very nicely, are enjoyable to listen to, as a musical event. The "surgery" has reduced the level of annoying artifacts to a point where they are mostly inaudible; the "health" of the system is now good enough for it largely do its intended job: reveal the content of recordings well enough so that no matter what is put on, it always, works ... Glad it's working out for you. Got pictures of this Edifier rig with the modifications? Archimago's Musings: A "more objective" take for the Rational Audiophile. Beyond mere fidelity, into immersion and realism. R.I.P. MQA 2014-2023: Hyped product thanks to uneducated, uncritical advocates & captured press. Link to comment
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