Understanding the Audiophiles community.

[STC]

19 minutes ago, Paul R said:

 

I do, but it isn’t mine. Five big Maggie’s, custom built room, audio components littered with evil glowing tubes. Sounds like being at the concert. Lovely, but not my style.

 

Five Maggies is not a stereo system.  For symphony, it is all about the ambiance. To reproduce the ambiance you need surround speakers. That’s why it sounded real enough.  I use 20 (and another 10 is waiting) to reproduce the ambiance. 

 

19 minutes ago, Paul R said:

 

(*sigh*) This is an old saw that everyone knows, but everyone has also heard an exception to. And those exceptions grow more and more common. 

 

All of us have been fooled, at least for a short time, occasionally.  A system can be built that will fool you, at least for a short while, and on some specific material. Yeah - modern systems are that good. Even a very average TV today will fool you with doorbells or phones. Much less a high end system with multi channel sound. 

 

For some even mono can produce soundstage and depth. The illusion is what our hearing is all about. It equates the sound to sound you have preciously heard and liked. 

 

3D sound is binaural sound over loudspeakers. Ambisonics ( not to be mixed up with Ambiophonics which is a retrieval method of the 3D from stereo), VR, MR and AR are specialist recordings for 3D sound.  It is a whole different world. 

[Paul R]

34 minutes ago, STC said:

 

Five Maggies is not a stereo system.  For symphony, it is all about the ambiance. To reproduce the ambiance you need surround speakers. That’s why it sounded real enough.  I use 20 (and another 10 is waiting) to reproduce the ambiance. 

 

 

For some even mono can produce soundstage and depth. The illusion is what our hearing is all about. It equates the sound to sound you have preciously heard and liked. 

 

3D sound is binaural sound over loudspeakers. Ambisonics ( not to be mixed up with Ambiophonics which is a retrieval method of the 3D from stereo), VR, MR and AR are specialist recordings for 3D sound.  It is a whole different world. 

 

May be that it is a distinction without a difference. Many “stereos” these days are 5.1 rigs or better. Multichannel sound might well be the default for the future. 

[Paul R]

13 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

Monsters aren't necessary - it just makes it much easier to get the driving electronics to behave themselves ...

 

As a BTW, I haven't yet heard horn speakers in the flesh do a respectable job of playback - the setups always have had too many issues, and all the things that make people dislike horns were too prominent.

 

Had to think about that. Monsters are part of the fun for some folks. Just not for me.

 

They do not define what is necessary to be an audiophile, though unfortunately, that is the picture most common of our hobby. It is an extreme that gets remembered. 

[Albrecht]

13 hours ago, STC said:

 

This thread is about understanding  audiophiles. Understanding about  their extraordinary claims. It is very much about your ability to turn your players ( Sharp speakers and NAD) to be better than Avant-garde system. You said it. 

 

So please teach us the magical power where you frequently post youtube videos and elaborate the SQ. That special talent is so rare. I have not seen anyone who could do that. I have a good pool of incredibly talented musicians and recording engineers who also know one or two stuff about SQ. 

 

Where else you expect the voice of the listeners to be since they were recorded in the same room? What about those time where you used to tell you could be transported to the orginal event just by listening to the Youtube sound. Do you see your own contradiction?

 

 

It's pretty rare to find an audiophile who makes extraordinary claims. This is all subjective, and therefore, the audiophile is always going to recognize that their system will never be anything approaching "the best," - and there are other system's with different sonic characteristics that are "better" but not "right" for them. Most all audiophile statements either say, or imply, "for me."

 

[christopher3393]

"As the art of reading (after a certain stage in one's education) is the art of skipping, so the art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook."  ---William James, Principles of Psychology

 

So true for the audiophile and the forum reader as well. 😊

[mansr]

3 hours ago, Albrecht said:

It's pretty rare to find an audiophile who makes extraordinary claims.

I suppose that depends on where you consider the ordinary to end. Personally, I draw the line at supposed phenomena at odds with currently accepted science and engineering principles.

[Albrecht]

6 minutes ago, mansr said:

I suppose that depends on where you consider the ordinary to end. Personally, I draw the line at supposed phenomena at odds with currently accepted science and engineering principles.

"" currently accepted science and engineering principles ""

 

And you can't find any of what you may call "audiophile" component that does not.....

 

[Ralf11]

8 minutes ago, mansr said:

I suppose that depends on where you consider the ordinary to end. Personally, I draw the line at supposed phenomena at odds with currently accepted science and engineering principles.

 

OTOH, recent data show that the universe s expanding FASTER than expected by theory.

 

That may explain the high noise levels that keep infesting our bits.

[Paul R]

1 hour ago, mansr said:

I suppose that depends on where you consider the ordinary to end. Personally, I draw the line at supposed phenomena at odds with currently accepted science and engineering principles.

 

LOL! I like to think I do too, but... can you explain why different USB cables can and do make a change in the sound, coming from the same computer to the same DAC?  Damn if I know why they do, but they do. Friends and people whose opinions I respect have measured the hell out of those cables, with results that are exact and identical, and the dang things still sound different. 

 

Less so with today's equipment perhaps, than 5 year old gear, but still... it's annoying.   

 

The "fringe" side of the Audiophile spectrum often comes up with very hard to believe empirical findings that are just about impossible to explain. Until of course, someone does.  But until then, totally dismissing it is not a great idea, even though I admit, I am guilty of that behavior upon occasion. Pretty much when something breaks my suspension of disbelief. 

 

[fas42]

9 hours ago, Paul R said:

 

Mmm... I am bothered a bit by the generalizations. There is simply no way that, in direct comparison, a set of $49 speakers will produce the same or as good a result as say, a $600 pair of Maggie’s. Or as a pair of $2400 Harbeth P3ESRs. It makes zero sense.

 

Which means that you still haven't understood the core concept - that is, you're aiming to listen to a capture of a musical event; NOT, the "specialness" of an audio system. Audiophiles are obsessed with the idea that their playback rig are the magic ingredient that turn a pumpkin into a fairy coach - ummm, no ... again, it's what's on those boring bits of plastic, and a dusty file that's magic. All a rig has to do is get itself out of the way enough so that the recording magic comes through - which a cheap setup, knowledgeably tweaked, can achieve.

 

Quote

Also, the “sweet spot” - it is Possible, with beam formed transmission arrays, to have the sweet spot follow a person’s location around much of a normal room. It is not possible to do that with two $49 speakers. 

 

It is possible to put an enjoyable system together with $49 speakers. But you are getting a little loosey goosey about what is possible, and short on details of exactly how to accomplish this magic.

 

 

The magic is in the brain of the listener. Playing mechanical games, such as "beam formed transmission arrays", is a crutch, in every sense of the word - doing things like that assists the brain to catch the drift of what the presentation means - which is not necessary if the quality of what emerges from the speakers is good enough; in the latter case  the mind correctly interprets what it hears, and forms an illusion which matches the data.

 

Until a person understands the importance of eliminating all weaknesses which introduce anomalies that the brain can't discard, they will never grok "how to accomplish this magic." This was the technique I used 35 years ago, and is still the one I use today - it's 100% reliable. Swapping $100 speakers for $10,000 ones is as useful as pissing into the wind, if one is after convincing sound.

[fas42]

8 hours ago, Paul R said:

All of us have been fooled, at least for a short time, occasionally.  A system can be built that will fool you, at least for a short while, and on some specific material. Yeah - modern systems are that good. Even a very average TV today will fool you with doorbells or phones. Much less a high end system with multi channel sound. 

 

I'm going to tell you a scary story ... we have an older LCD screen, with speakers which at least point in the right direction. As an experiment some time ago, I tried playing audio CDs from a Blu- ray player through the HDMI link to the set - with some patience in terms of settings, forcing the TV circuitry to be as dormant as possible, and taking some measures to improve the mains quality - and that super cheap, simple combo started to manifest the qualities I'm after. That is, a soundstage formed behind the set, and key aspects of tonality were in place ... yes, severe limitations; bass content made everything rattle, and volume limits were easily hit - but the fundamentals were seen to be in place.

[Paul R]

18 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

I'm going to tell you a scary story ... we have an older LCD screen, with speakers which at least point in the right direction. As an experiment some time ago, I tried playing audio CDs from a Blu- ray player through the HDMI link to the set - with some patience in terms of settings, forcing the TV circuitry to be as dormant as possible, and taking some measures to improve the mains quality - and that super cheap, simple combo started to manifest the qualities I'm after. That is, a soundstage formed behind the set, and key aspects of tonality were in place ... yes, severe limitations; bass content made everything rattle, and volume limits were easily hit - but the fundamentals were seen to be in place.

 

I think you may be assuming that this is a new discovery.

 

Take that same BRP, run it into a NAD 316BEEE, attach a set of Maggie MMGS to that, put one on either side of the television and turn off the TV sound.  Massive improvement in every aspect. Toggle back and forth between the two outputs, tv speakers or Maggies, and that is a direct comparison. The TV, at least, an older TV, will not even come close. I expect you would get a 100% match in any poll that the Maggies were a better choice. This would be so even if you optimized the TV speakers to the nth degree.

 

-Paul 

 

[fas42]

30 minutes ago, Paul R said:

 

LOL! I like to think I do too, but... can you explain why different USB cables can and do make a change in the sound, coming from the same computer to the same DAC?  Damn if I know why they do, but they do. Friends and people whose opinions I respect have measured the hell out of those cables, with results that are exact and identical, and the dang things still sound different. 

 

Less so with today's equipment perhaps, than 5 year old gear, but still... it's annoying.   

 

The "fringe" side of the Audiophile spectrum often comes up with very hard to believe empirical findings that are just about impossible to explain. Until of course, someone does.  But until then, totally dismissing it is not a great idea, even though I admit, I am guilty of that behavior upon occasion. Pretty much when something breaks my suspension of disbelief. 

 

 

Which is exactly the areas I address. A simple explanation which covers the situation is that audio rigs are normally far too fragile - that is, not enough effort has gone into ensuring that the electrical behaviour is fully robust, under all circumstances.

 

Think of a road bridge. One can throw one across a chasm, in a 3rd world country, which does the job; that is, everything gets across to the other side. Only trouble is, the damn thing reacts to every load, groans and shakes, and puts the fear of God into the innocent tourist - compare to that to a fully engineered effort which take a bevy of thundering semi-trailers, all at once, and laugh it off.

 

Most hifi rigs fall into the former category; they are slowly learning, which is why the most recent bits of gear are generally better behaved.

[fas42]

1 minute ago, Paul R said:

 

I think you may be assuming that this is a new discovery.

 

Take that same BRP, run it into a NAD 316BEEE, attach a set of Maggie MMGS to that, put one on either side of the television and turn off the TV sound.  Massive improvement in every aspect. Toggle back and forth between the two outputs, tv speakers or Maggies, and that is a direct comparison. The TV, at least, an older TV, will not even come close. I expect your would get a 100% match that the Maggies were a better choice. This would be so even if you optimized the TV speakers to the nth degree.

 

-Paul 

 

 

Maybe, maybe not. At the last Sydney audio show there was a room set up by a specialist audio high end installer. With small Maggies. Which when driven by one source produced admirable sound; it ticked the boxes. Switched to a different source path, the magic disappeared - irritating, "I can only take this for a short time" sound emerged.

 

It's The System, Stu... . "Good" speakers can't fix faults introduced earlier in the chain; in fact, they make the listening much worse ...

[Paul R]

28 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

Maybe, maybe not. At the last Sydney audio show there was a room set up by a specialist audio high end installer. With small Maggies. Which when driven by one source produced admirable sound; it ticked the boxes. Switched to a different source path, the magic disappeared - irritating, "I can only take this for a short time" sound emerged.

 

It's The System, Stu... . "Good" speakers can't fix faults introduced earlier in the chain; in fact, they make the listening much worse ...

 

Let's directly address the subject. I doubt there is any "maybe" about it - if the Maggies produce "irritating" sound from your source, so will the 1" speakers in the TV.

 

The Maggies will better reproduce the signal fed to them as more accurate sound. That is not a mind trick, it is actually measurable. And no rattles and buzzes to "get in the way." 

 

You can replace the Maggies with some other equal quality speaker. Say, a pair of PSB Synchrony Bs.  I just could not think of any comparable speakers in the $600 range off the top of my head. 

 

-Paul 

 

 

 

[fas42]

19 minutes ago, Paul R said:

 

Let's directly address the subject. I doubt there is any "maybe" about it - if the Maggies produce "irritating" sound from your source, so will the 1" speakers in the TV.

 

The Maggies will better reproduce the signal fed to them as more accurate sound. That is not a mind trick, it is actually measurable. And no rattles and buzzes to "get in the way." 

 

You can replace the Maggies with some other equal quality speaker. Say, a pair of PSB Synchrony Bs.  I just could not think of any comparable speakers in the $600 range off the top of my head. 

 

-Paul 

 

 

 

 

Of course the Maggies as a device for transducing electrical energy into sound waves will be superior. The position I come from is that a reproduction chain with a poorly performing link will always be an inferior proposition as a tool for listening to recordings than a "cheap throwaway" that has no such obvious flaws.

 

A better link does not fix other, faulty links. If I am constantly aware that the sound is defective, then the game is lost - the solution, for me, is obvious: sort out the faulty area; then, you can tizzy up other areas as much as you and your wallet likes.

[Paul R]

24 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

Of course the Maggies as a device for transducing electrical energy into sound waves will be superior. The position I come from is that a reproduction chain with a poorly performing link will always be an inferior proposition as a tool for listening to recordings than a "cheap throwaway" that has no such obvious flaws.

 

A better link does not fix other, faulty links. If I am constantly aware that the sound is defective, then the game is lost - the solution, for me, is obvious: sort out the faulty area; then, you can tizzy up other areas as much as you and your wallet likes.

 

Kinda deflecting there, but it is probably my fault. And I think your reply is true.  Let me try again - please give a real instance of a "cheap throwaway" system superior to a Nad 316BEE and a set of Maggie MMGs. I don't believe there is much that either of those components do wrong and an awful lot they do right.  The "cheap throwaway" systems I am grudgingly familiar with are things like this:  

 

$69, with Free Shipping. (But it looks cool! It's got METERS!! and Blue Lights! Like a McIntosh!! )

 

Perhaps we are simply talking about two very different things when we talk about low end equipment. The stuff above, no matter how much you work on it, puts out junk - very unsatisfying sound. I have an acquaintance that actually bought this - thing. Even the people in his office turn it off every chance they get... 

 

 

 

[fas42]

22 minutes ago, Paul R said:

 

$69, with Free Shipping. (But it looks cool! It's got METERS!! and Blue Lights! Like a McIntosh!! )

 

Perhaps we are simply talking about two very different things when we talk about low end equipment. The stuff above, no matter how much you work on it, puts out junk - very unsatisfying sound. I have an acquaintance that actually bought this - thing. Even the people in his office turn it off every chance they get... 

 

 

 

 

Good choice as an example - what cripples these efforts, as is, is that they try and include everything and the kitchen sink, for the money. Which is impossible... if some semblence of overall quality is the goal. Gear with the most buttons wins is the thinking of the manufacturer, and it's aimed at people who want to be impressed by having "all these options!".

 

It would be an interesting exercise to see how much the SQ could be rescued - taking such seriously, one would get under the hood and disable just about everything, none of the meters, readouts work, none of the switches, knobs either - reduce the thing to a bare bones amplication circuit. Also, sort out the junk wiring inside the speaker cabinets.

 

See the approach ... eliminate the rubbishy auxiliary parts, simplify and make more robust all the shortcuts that make it look good to a propective consumer, and that make it easier to manufacture; reduce it to the bare essentials of electrical circuitry for doing the work ... it's all the Gee Whiz!! hooey, cheaply done, that cripples the thing.

[Paul R]

Yes, but what "throwaway" system would you match up to a Nad 316BEE and Maggie MMGs? In specific. 

 

 

[fas42]

3 minutes ago, Paul R said:

Yes, but what "throwaway" system would you match up to a Nad 316BEE and Maggie MMGs? In specific. 

 

 

 

A fair match up would a throwaway that's been given a working over as I described, versus a 'raw' NAD and Maggie combo - agree?

[STC]

9 hours ago, Paul R said:

 

May be that it is a distinction without a difference. Many “stereos” these days are 5.1 rigs or better. Multichannel sound might well be the default for the future. 

 

This is entirely a different topic. In your post .  you said it is impossible for a system to play all the different genres equally well and then you cited a 5.1 system as opposed to standard s.0 system that audiophiles are familiar with. Besides @Kal Rubinson and myself, no other audiophiles in this forum agree that a multi channel system is far more realistic than a stereo.

 

Going back to your post, I disagree that those 5.1 multi channel couldn't reproduce the magic of vocal. ESL speakers are very good at reproducing vocals. It doesn't make sense to me as I too use ESL speakers. Nor for someone who uses all ESL speakers even for the ambiance to play simple vocal stereo.

 

Unfortunately, the message that no one system could reproduce all the different genres accurately will continue in the audiophile world due to many ill informed opinions. 

[STC]

7 hours ago, Albrecht said:

It's pretty rare to find an audiophile who makes extraordinary claims.

 

It is pretty rare not to find an audiophile who doesn't make extraordinary claims.

 

Some examples from this forum.

 

1) Resolder the joints and turn the Boombox set to be better than a proper high end stuff or at least as good as them.

 

2) Changing cables, can increase soundstage. I am still trying to find that.

 

 

[kumakuma]

4 minutes ago, STC said:

 

It is pretty rare not to find an audiophile who doesn't make extraordinary claims.

 

Some examples from this forum.

 

1) Resolder the joints and turn the Boombox set to be better than a proper high end stuff or at least as good as them.

 

2) Changing cables, can increase soundstage. I am still trying to find that.

 

 

 

3) Zipping and unzipping a digital file will cause it to lose sound quality

 

4) Sending it over the Internet will do the same

[STC]

3 minutes ago, kumakuma said:

3) Zipping and unzipping a digital file will cause it to lose sound quality

 

I do not know about that. But I know frequent zipping and unzipping can shortened the lifespan and affect quality in other areas. : ) 

[fas42]

4 minutes ago, STC said:

 

It is pretty rare not to find an audiophile who doesn't make extraordinary claims.

 

Some examples from this forum.

 

1) Resolder the joints and turn the Boombox set to be better than a proper high end stuff or at least as good as them.

 

 

Ahhh, dear. Doing this eliminates the junk quality of the connectors used - would you use lowest quality nuts to connects parts of your Ferrari together? The word is "integrity" - you sort out decisions made to lower the end price of things.

 

The concept of "weakest link" is quite foreign to many audiophiles ...