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Fas42’s Stereo ‘Magic’


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54 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

that’s speakers. All speakers sound very different. Audio playback cannot mimic real music playing in a real space. But speaker makers can focus on aspects of real  music (those who are trying, anyway) that are important to them, and try to get those right. Unfortunately, when they all. Focus of different aspects of a live performance, to the extent to which they are successful at getting those areas right, and the price point that they are aiming at, determines the actual sound of those speakers. At the very best, above a certain price point, the differences will be  a matter of the manufacturer’s “corporate taste”. No one ever said that Audio is perfect. You want really accurate speakers? Down to about 50 Hz, you can’t beat Martin-Logan’s CLX electrostatic. They are so real sounding with such low coloration that every time I’ve heard them play my recordings, they almost bring tears. To my eyes. If they weren’t so physically large, I’d have a pair.

 

Right, you have just said it. There's a speaker setup out there that you've heard that reveals what's on the recording more closely than anything else you've come across. That is, you don't hear the system - you hear the musical event event captured ... so, the latter exists as an absolute, which would be revealed every time you took any recording to that rig, and played it. So, that's the goal...

 

Everything else, normally, is below that standard - that is, faulty. I use that terminology because that's how I look at it. But I don't see it as being the fault of the speakers - why "speakers sound very different" is because each chain driving a certain set of speakers has enough issues to completely colour the sound; if each chain was adequately sorted then what you would hear each time is "Martin-Logan’s CLX electrostatic"  ... because then you are not hearing the speaker; you are hearing the recording which happens to pass through a CLX, on its way to your ears.

 

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The differences in amplifiers is much more subtle once you get above a certain price point. Most of that is the result of the interface between speakers and the amplifier. Different output stage design strategies interact differently with different speakers. I hate reviewing good amps because it’s so hard to describe he sound of a well designed and built amp. It’s much harder than reviewing, say, DACs, where the differences are much less subtle. The thing about DACs is the higher the price, the definitely more refined the conversion becomes.

 

You keep wanting to isolate the components, one from each other - as soon as you do that you lose the essence of what needs to be done ... to consider the system as a whole. No ambitious vehicle is ever designed or built like that, as a hodge podge of sub-assemblies from different makers - which why they get it right, and audio rigs don't, 😉.

 

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No, it hadn’t been worked on “like you do”. The owner had not hard wired the components together like you do. The amp and speakers needed repair. Being more than 50 years old, they were tired. The speaker cones had become brittle and the suspensions had lost their compliance. Except for the tweeter, the components were replaced with new ones designed specifically to replace and upgrade the performance of the AR3a. The amps were from the early ‘60’s. They needed new caps anyway, but the Hafler Accrosound output transformer were, and remain excellent. The circuit boards needed replacing, and the modifier made his own from the Audio Research mod article that appeared in “The Audio Amateur” back in the early ‘Seventies. All the old carbon resistors in the audio path were replaced with metal film types, and all the caps were replaced with polypropylene caps and the power supply caps were modern electrolytics bypassed with polypropylenes. 

 

Indeed it has ... parts which weren't good enough have been replaced with much higher standard versions; the owner considered each area, and everywhere the construction and quality were below par, he did what was necessary to bring it up to standard ... you see, this is how it works - which means that what one does with every specific rig will be different; you only 'fix' what needs to be fixed.

 

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However, other than replacing the RCAs with gold plated WBT types, all interconnects were normal ones and the speaker cables were good quality 12 Gauge OFC copper, connected via gold plated banana plugs. Not what you do.

 

Yes, he ditched the junk quality connectors, and replaced them with about the best quality variants ... tick.

 

I do what has to be done to bring the perceived quality to the right level. Something which I have repeated over and over again ... but you ignore that, because it would spoil your great story of how I don't have a clue, 😁.

 

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See, that’s where you and I run into problems. There is simply no way for that lash up of yours to do that!  I’d be willing to wager that if any of us here actually heard your “system”, we’d all have to suppress laughter. If you told us exactly what you did in the minutest detail so that some of us could copy it precisely, again we’d laugh.

 

Like I have to suppress the grimace of distaste when I listen to the mess a particular ambitious rig makes of a recording that I know well, perhaps, 😉.

 

Of course you would laugh if you knew the minutest detail of what I concern myself with - members of audio forums have been doing exactly that for years now - and they then turn around and confirm how really terrible the recordings are that I mention, on their "100% transparent, essentially perfect rigs", 🤣.

 

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I’ve been looking for an analogy, and I think I’ve come up with a fairly accurate one: what would you say if you read on some car forum that some guy had taken one of those tiny, two-stroke Subaru 360s that the company started with, and claimed that he had made that tiny thing go from 0-100 Kph in under 5 seconds and gotten a top speed of 300 Kph out of the original drive train? And, he had done so only by replacing the fuel hose and all the vacuum hoses with bigger ones, and replaced the spark plugs with hotter ones and the HT leads with solid wire, and added electronic ignition. Would you believe him? Of course not. Why? Because there is nothing about that tiny little car, with it’s 360 cc two-stroke engine that would give it even the potential to do any of that, irrespective of what the owner upgraded, tweaked, or modified. Do you now understand why your claims have ZERO credibility?

 

My goodness ... my Perreaux power amp with 90V power rails, capable of 700 watts into 8 ohms when saturating, according to the manual, is really a just like "two-stroke Subaru 360" in disguise ... who would thunk it, 🙂. Guess I should have gone instead for the Krell I compared it to, back then - the fact that the Krell sounded particularly shitty, on the day, must have been imaginary ...

 

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2) You just shot yourself in the foot with your car analogy. If you have a Porsche with a dud engine, you get the engine either rebuilt or replaced. You don’t try to improve the car by fitting a new fuel line, bigger carburetors, higher quality HT leads, etc. to a broken engine!

 

 

I listened to Porsches with dud engines for years and years - the owners or demonstrators didn't have the slightest idea that there was anything wrong; to them, it was performing perfectly - "It has be right, because it has the right badge on the front!"

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28 minutes ago, fas42 said:

Okay, time to close this down, George - you're not interested in my methods, nor in achieving the best that's possible from recordings.

 

Wow, that's your take away from George's posts???

Sometimes it's like someone took a knife, baby
Edgy and dull and cut a six inch valley
Through the middle of my skull

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1 hour ago, kumakuma said:

 

Wow, that's your take away from George's posts???

 

George needs to believe that it costs a lot of money to achieve satisfying replay from recordings - he lives in a part of the world where Money Is King, and therefore he expects any solution to involve such. Everything in my experience says that it doesn't work that way - that is, you can spend a lot money and still not achieve convincing SQ; conversely, smart use of low cost items, suitably optimised, can produce competent playback - and everyone who fights the concept that there are excellent value for money solutions for those who want to get most from their recordings is doing the audio world a severe disfavour. People in general can't be bothered with better sound - so long as it makes roughly the right noises they're happy with it - and if they consider something might be better, then they will be told by people like George that this is only possible by using lots of money - and so they think, "Forget it!"... it's a lose, lose situation, for everyone.

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8 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

George needs to believe that it costs a lot of money to achieve satisfying replay from recordings - he lives in a part of the world where Money Is King, and therefore he expects any solution to involve such.

 

 

You continue to astound us all with ever more ridiculous posts. 

Sometimes it's like someone took a knife, baby
Edgy and dull and cut a six inch valley
Through the middle of my skull

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59 minutes ago, kumakuma said:

 

You continue to astound us all with ever more ridiculous posts. 

 

And I'm astounded that people can't follow the logic:

 

From George,

 

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Hell, I didn’t even know you HAD a Perreaux amp! Why are you wasting time with the cheap crap you’ve been touting all these years if you have equipment like that at your disposal?

 

That is, I have a reputable amplifier, and therefore shouldn't need to waste my time with "cheap crap" ... but I am hearing the same music from the NAD, as I did from the Perreaux - why, because both are delivering what's on the recording, and not getting in the way by adding too much of their own signature.

 

What I'm hearing here is that such is impossible - any piece of gear has to be smeared with great dollops of money, to have any validity ... some people are incapable of comprehending that such is unnecessary. And why is that the case with audio? Because, the underlying parts are very close in capability, between the cheap, and the expensive - it's very much a case of being a variation of the 90/10 rule; you get 90% of what's there using only 10% of the money; and that's only if that initial 10% is well spent!

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19 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

Care to elaborate?

 

Go back and read again the sentence I quoted.

 

Do you honestly believe that is the reason why George believes what he does?

Sometimes it's like someone took a knife, baby
Edgy and dull and cut a six inch valley
Through the middle of my skull

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George's experience has been, that more expensive the system, the greater the chance that it can sound "special" - I counter that by saying, a system can also sound "special" if a great deal of care and attention is paid to much lower cost items, in terms of ridding them of the shortcuts that allowed the manufacturers to put them out at a more everyday price - and that this can be done at a very reasonable cost. But George won't have a bar of this - to him, a magic spell has been cast over certain components, by them having the "right designer", the "right manufacturer", the "right bling", and most importantly, the "right price" ... everything else is junk. I can't read that any other way, than "Money Maketh the SQ".

 

George wants the audio world to be Black and White; the fact that someone says that every Black, and every White is really a shade of Grey doesn't appeal to him ... 😉.

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1 hour ago, fas42 said:

a system can also sound "special" if a great deal of care and attention is paid to much lower cost items, in terms of ridding them of the shortcuts that allowed the manufacturers to put them out at a more everyday price - and that this can be done at a very reasonable cost

 

Only a "reasonable cost" if you place little value on the endless hours you spend "polishing your turds"

 

 

 

 

Sometimes it's like someone took a knife, baby
Edgy and dull and cut a six inch valley
Through the middle of my skull

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4 hours ago, gmgraves said:

 That makes no sense. “ I can buy cheap stuff and second guess the cheap design, and spend time and money to overcome the cheapness.” 

that’s because it’s true. Quality is expensive. Do you think that a Ford Fiesta is the same quality as a Rolls Royce, or a Porsche, or a Ferrari?  These cars are expensive because they are not designed or built down to a price, and are not mass produced items. Are you now saying that by tweaking you can turn a Fiat 500 into a Ferrari? Of course not. That’s the only relationship between price and quality. I’m not saying one has to spend an arm and a leg to get good audio, but you can’t get it from junk either. My amp, for instance, was only $2500, but it has been rated very highly in SQ by everyone who has reviewed and measured it. Like I said, before, good equipment doesn’t have to cost a lot, but you have to buy wisely. My friend who rebuilt those Dynaco tube amps chose wisely, because, though old, the core technology is still quality.

You are wrong. I’m merely saying that that your “method” cannot do to the equipment that YOU have, what you claiming will do.

 

Your comment about 'I can buy cheap stuff', follows exactly the thinkning about my ED Beta experment some 100's of posts ago :-).   The difference is, I knew that I was doing an experiment -- just curious because something didn't add-up about the design. 

 

Again, the situation is this -- even in audio, a superior design often requires a 'rethink' from more primitive concepts.  Sure, anyone 4 yr degree EE can design a working audio amplifier or audio preamp - but I guarantee that 4yr diploma will not guarantee a great design.  More functional designs often require a rethink, a re configuration of components, different feedback architecture, a slightly different componentry, etc.

I can make a tolerable (not really great) power amplifier out of 2n3773 power transistors, but they don't have the bandwidth of more common power transistors used nowadays.  Sure, feedback can hide a multitude of problems -- but there IS a difference and CAN be improvements when starting from scratch.

A lot of designs, it is best to just strip everything out, start from scratch, re-using the power supply -- then throwing out the power supply and re-doing that!!!

 

Oh, btw, some packaging designs aren't all that great WRT interference/gnd, even though a good circuit board design can mitigate some of the problems, there are still cases where wiring is needed.

If someone is so bright to 'redesign' low end electronics, then it is simply more efficient to start from scratch, and buy a well chosen power supply (I would do that because the issues of power supply noise/power-line effects, etc our outside of my expertise.)   I can do a well filtered power-supply, but it is also important to look from the standpoint of the power supply source also.  I just don't have the expertise for EMI and switchers are so common now.  (I did design a super robust switcher back in the 70s for an industrial product, but the power requirements of an audio amp are far outside of my experience also.)

 

Anyway -- rather that start with a 'crippled' design, just do it super well from scratch, right?   Geesh, I don't need those 5 parallel transistors on the MC phono preamp, I am so good that I can do it with one of them 🙂  (There is a real joke in there somewhere.)  Geesh -- I don't do EE anymore, but still love it.

 

John

 

John

 

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1 hour ago, John Dyson said:

Geesh, I don't need those 5 parallel transistors on the MC phono preamp, I am so good that I can do it with one of them 🙂  (There is a real joke in there somewhere.)  Geesh -- I don't do EE anymore, but still love it.

IIRC, devices such as the LM394 are fabricated using parallel transistors, and I have a couple somewhere with an HFE of around 1,500.

 

How a Digital Audio file sounds, or a Digital Video file looks, is governed to a large extent by the Power Supply area. All that Identical Checksums gives is the possibility of REGENERATING the file to close to that of the original file.

PROFILE UPDATED 13-11-2020

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31 minutes ago, sandyk said:

IIRC, devices such as the LM394 are fabricated using parallel transistors, and I have a couple somewhere with an HFE of around 1,500.

Using parallel good transistors is a well known technique to improve the input voltage noise behavior, because effectively the relatively constant part of the rbb value is averaged down.  It isn't a totally straightforward tradeoff, but parallel transistors (BJT or JFET) can sometimes improve input noise behavior.

 

The complications include matching the paralleled transistors, and cannot just keep paralelling more and more nonlinear capacitance.  However, the LM364 was a sweet little device within its limitations (limited maximum VCE afair.)   The LM394 had a pretty big parasitic capacitance, and being a transistor parasitic is nonlinear -- one reason why the hugest geometry jFETS arean't always the best choice.

 

But yea, when I mentioned 'I can do the design with just one transistor', I was speaking of the idea that the circuit can be made to work with one transistor, but might give a bit more hiss...

 

It isn't always a good idea for a hobby person to 2nd guess a designer who does that certain kind of design all day as a profession.  Sometimes a design can certainly be optimized, but there be dragons.

 

John

 

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