Value, lack there of, and "High End"

[fas42]

4 hours ago, crenca said:

What say you?  Has this hobby lost all sense of value?  Do the trade publications and webzines focus too much on "halo" products such as the Orangutan Reference?  What would Audiophile 'reporting' look like if they took seriously the reality of value?

 

Interest in audio is a bizarro world because nearly everyone has a poor sense of what can be achieved. Most want their gear to make their recordings "sound better!" with little understanding what that actually means - if your vision of the goal is terribly blurred any sort of spectacles which change the look of it can seem like magic - until the novelty of the new "blurriness" wears off. In those circumstances playing with pricier and pricier items can assuage the thirst for satisfaction, makes up for the lack of sense of direction to some degree.

 

Personally, all the worthwhile value is in the "miserable" recordings - and you get value from kit that gets out of the way; the true "high end" is that which offers up purely what's been captured in front of the microphones, and nothing of itself. If it's too tied up in being a trophy hobby then the game of the costlier it is, the better it is, will dominate.

[fas42]

14 hours ago, Blackmorec said:

Thanks for your reply. A friend of mine is one of the founders of a well known company manufacturing high-end hi-fi electronics..,..amps, pre-amps etc.   His biggest cause of failure, by far?    ‘Contact enhancers’ applied to sockets and contacts.  Stabilator 22A may work, may be chemically stable over time and at elevated temperatures and may not migrate to places to don’t want it.....but a great many contact enhancers end up doing far more than desired and end up being very noisy.  Metal fatigue, oxidation, non-gas-tight crimps,  poor mechanical design that impacts contact integrity, materials chosen without reference to sonics....just a few of the problems with cheap RCA sockets 

 

Amen. The poor quality of the RCA interface is probably the number one killer of subjective quality in rigs; it doesn't take long to become aware of the general 'offness' of the sound, no matter how expensive the setup, caused by this feature - people live in a fantasy, that the priciness of everything surrounding a poor piece of implementation can somehow magically make up for its shortcomings - ummm ... the last time I checked, this idea doesn't go down too well in other fields of endeavour ...

 

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Gold has several characteristics that make it ideal for electrical connectors. Firstly due to its electron configuration it does react with other materials or gases at mildly elevated temperatures...so it remains pure in a connection

Second, its quite soft, so high spots wear down and bed-in to make better, high-percentage surface area connections. 

Third because its surface remains clean and smooth it has the feeling of being self lubricating, which means connectors can be mechanically very tight without the connection seizing.  So ultimately a well made gold connection can be tighter, with better surface contact and no degradation. 

 

Perhaps gold can be made to work. I tried this in the beginning, but it never held up; always audibly degrading over time. Genuine gastightness is the only method I've found to date that has sufficient integrity for worthwhile audio.

[fas42]

5 hours ago, crenca said:

First, the "high end" space occupied by these particular Devore's is often justified by the "trickle down" effect - the SQ gains in alleged to exist in this stratosphere eventually make their way down to more affordable products.  Yet, the evidence is slim.  Most real SQ gains appears to be made in places outside this niche "high end", such as the more general consumer electronic world and the pro audio world.  The myth of the artisan designer (such as Devore himself) making fundamental "discoveries" is just that, a myth.  Real research and gains is actually a much harder process that takes time and money these 1 man shops don't have..

 

What boutique makers have always contributed is the attitude that taking extra care makes a real difference. And doing that costs money, meaning the consumer pays for it. Of course, a lot of the cost goes into having a super duper, bling exterior, which certainly helps the buyer feel he's getting value for money .

 

If one wants realistic, competent, convincing sound, then there are no discoveries to be made .. except, that attention to detail is critical. Many people in isolation over the years have tripped over this fact, myself included - but the industry as a whole is not interested; not an exciting enough concept ... .

 

So, for as long as the mainstream "never gets it" there will always be room for small crews to put together and deliver systems that achieve high standards in SQ - and charge as much as everyone is comfortable with.

[fas42]

5 hours ago, esldude said:

Too bad Camac/Lemo connectors didn't replace RCA's.  They are fairly simple and gas tight. Levinson used them on some gear at one time. 

 

Long term, high integrity gastightness is the key; soldering is the simplest, but least convenient solution, well done silver pastes, etc, application also works.

 

The ultimate solution is to have everything in one chassis; but that then introduces other concerns; vibration, adequate isolation and shielding between electrical areas - and disrupts the audiophile's need to fiddle, .

[fas42]

dup ...

 

[fas42]

6 hours ago, Albrecht said:

I go to audio shows like CES or RMAF out of interest and curiosity to see what's new, how well gear performs, and what combinations of components work well together to make a system sound great. I also go there to hear how well my system stacks up against others. I know that I can't afford much of what I hear, - but I don't let a component's price point interfere with enjoying or not-liking what I'm hearing. I have been both surprised at how much super expensive gear sucks, and how great really cheap gear sounds much better than it's price indicates.

 

 

Audiophiles, and the industry in general, don't get it ... remarkably low cost, unpretentious equipment, especially these days, can easily trounce very expensive rigs in nearly every area that gives long term listening pleasure. "Monster rigs" may do well at some showoff, gymnastic sound exercise - but sound pretty awful at everything else ... what they frequently lack is attention to detail at sorting all the "little things" out; and hence are nigh on impossible to take seriously ...

[fas42]

16 minutes ago, Paul R said:

I think in some ways what you are saying is true, but I do not think it is as simple as all that. There are other factors involved than just cost, making a multi-dimensional axis necessary to plot the value and quality of a system in. 

 

It's all well and good to make broad sweeping statements, but the devil is in the details.  More details please. 

 

 

Yes, the devil is in the details ...

 

Other factors are:

•  How aware the listener is to the fact that the reproduction is audibly flawed - if one thinks that "it must be more accurate, because the gear cost more!" then you will be fighting an uphill battle.
• How prepared one is to do something about those flaws, and whether one will use money, or DIY tweaking to improve the situation.
• How many compromises one is willing to accept, knowing that the end result is worth it. One compromise I accept is that cheaper gear generally requires more warm up time; I know that on cold switch on that the sound will be quite mediocre, and means a conditioning period has to be gone through, before I take the SQ seriously ... if I were to pay big money for a setup, I wouldn't tolerate more than say 5 minutes before close to optimum sound was being produced; otherwise, what the hell was I paying good money for!

[fas42]

36 minutes ago, Albrecht said:

Although I hear and respect your point, - I think that it's a decent size generalization that I could give counter examples. Although, - you and I may mean something different by "monster rig." I do think that there is a certain truth to diminishing returns: that is also a moving target that varies from person to person. IMO, - there's more than a few $40,000 retail systems that sound incredible, fit into different size rooms, and perform significantly better than system's at half the cost, - and although said $40K system might not be quite as great ad some really great systems costing more than double that, - diminishing returns on those big systems make it not worth it, - at least as far as I hear them.....

 

Everybody has a different sense of what "systems that sound incredible" means - mine is that I can put on any recording that I happen to like, or happen to come across; and I'm taken to a special place, the event that was captured in the recording. Ambitious, in terms of size and cost, rigs often fail badly at doing this - and that's the core of my point.

[fas42]

15 minutes ago, shtf said:

In fact, with an ever improving superior foundation in place, my components have almost become somewhat of accessory status.  Meaning, so long as my system is built on a superior foundation, the components matter so much less than one might suspect.  In truth, it's what superior foundation does for the performance of the components that makes all the difference.

 

Today, my foundation costs roughly 65% of my entire playback system's retail cost (roughly $25k) where just one of my 3 little but superior line conditioners (part of my foundation) retails for the same price of my most expensive component.  It's a paradigm shift in my strategy toward reaching the mark and it's taken me significantly further than the usual component upgrade path ever could.

 

But of course without the bling of my $9k Esoteric CDP and my $8k BMC int. amp nobody seems to take me seriously anymore. 

 

 

 

I take you seriously, very seriously - you're going to down a similar road to me, but are doing it at a higher expenditure level. Coming from a technical, electrical background, I can push things by using el cheapo short cuts - my 'line conditioning' has used a huge variety of techniques and ideas over the years, none of which has cost much simply because I use what is most effective, that's lying around, or cheap to purchase from conventional stores - I'm always experimenting, so often go backwards as well as forwards.

 

My version of the laughably cheap component is the use of speakers on the bottom rungs - currently, simple Sharp boombox speakers, with drivers that have no trouble handling lots of power, give me all the feedback I need for working on the setup. The cabinets are far too flimsy for serious volumes, but depending on everything I will probably mass load them, etc, a bit down the track.

[fas42]

13 hours ago, Summit said:

 

It’s truly great that you are focusing on the right things while the majority of manufactures doesn’t 😁.  What would be even better IMO, is if you would share how to achieve super SQ on a shoestring to the rest of us. That attention to “detail” is critical, most can attest to, but it’s kind of vague and I would need more details on how to do it for it to be of any help.  

 

It's only vague, because every situation is different. All the techniques I use have been used by plenty of other people, and written about; in fact, most of my tweaking methods are merely copying what others have done, and I discard the ones that don't work, for the particular setup.

 

The big difference about me is that I know exactly what the SQ is that's my goal; most people are stumbling about, and getting excited about something "sounding spectacular", and worrying about whether one configuration "is nicer" than another. To me this is akin to wanting a certain car because it has a great exhaust note, or a well done colour scheme for the interior - completely ignoring the fact that the ride is terrible, and it chews petrol at a ferocious rate.

 

As I have said numerous times, the number one skill is to be able to listen to a rig, and pick it to pieces - if you can't hear what it's doing wrong, then the chances of making the right moves to improve the performance will be almost random. Once you have identified a clear problem then try various, and the most likely, ideas for tweaking the setup.

 

An obvious one most have done is reduce outside interference; mains noise - experiment to find out how sensitive the SQ is to rubbish on the power coming in, by deliberately switching on 'noisy' appliances on a neighbouring socket. If the sound suffers major degradation, then there's obviously something to be worked on.

 

What I do is keep going round and round, to different areas of a system, and trying things to see if I get an audible improvement. I know from repeatedly experiencing it, that eventually convincing sound pops out - I just have to persist until this happens.

[fas42]

2 hours ago, bluesman said:

So there is indeed a technical pursuit of objective perfection in audio, manifested and measured as closeness of fit between the source waveform and the reproduced waveform.  But there is also a subjective pursuit of excellence, manifested and measured as listener satisfaction.  Technical perfection and listener satisfaction can be quite disparate - the only thing they have in common is that audio equipment is sought and sold on the basis of both, although each supports a different set of listeners.

 

This is wrong ... technical "perfection" and listener satisfaction go hand in hand - I have never yet come across a rig, or worked on a system where the satisfaction doesn't improve as the technical correctness is increased.

 

Why many people fail to understand this is because the tools for measuring "technical perfection" are so poor at, well, measuring. Yes, they do a brilliant job of pulling numbers out of the air, but, "those numbers are NOT the ones that matter!"

 

The ability of a setup to resolve low level detail well is absolutely crucial, yet no-one measures this, in any way that's useful. Which is why subjective listening is enormously effective for assessing performance, still.

[fas42]

Just now, bluesman said:

 

For some listeners that’s true - but the “great unwashed” clearly prefer at least a bit of enhancement in their sound. Why do you think there are so many named EQ settings in mass market players? My car’s optional OEM sound system lets me select among multiple EQs that include “feel”.......

 

Look at the huge market for earbuds with “enhanced bass”.  Do you really think this is an effort to achieve pure fidelity to the source?

 

Enhancements work for audio systems that are below par; one attempts to 'balance' the sound so that it's more pleasant to the ears, the distortion that accompanies the playback is masked to some degree, after playing with EQ a bit.

 

A trivial example is a car radio; typically, the treble is pretty awful, and one tries to offset this by lowering the high end, and pumping up the lower frequencies. I certainly tend to jockey the HF in ours, trying to find a level where this area of the sound is not too obnoxious, without killing all sense of sparkle in the music.

[fas42]

1 hour ago, Paul R said:

 

Okay Frank - I do not think you can have it both ways. Either your titanic efforts can make a hunk of junk sing, or they cannot. Said it before, if all one has is an AIO box from Walmart, it can and will sound great to you. If you really want to hear the music. If you are a gearhead, it may be unendurable. A person who falls somewhere in between may be happy until they find something better. 

 

"Titanic" efforts will almost always make cheap stuff sound better; because the core circuitry, which is cheap as chips these days, performs 'technically' just as well as that used in much pricier items. But, one doesn't attempt to make a lowly car radio work better than its raw form, because there are far better things to do with one's time - the word is, motivation ... .

 

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But a hunk of junk is never going to sound as good as a well-built system put together with even a modest amount of competence. And, as competence increases, so will the quality of the sound.  Value, however, is always completely relative. The value of that AIO box from Walmart may be much higher to its owner than a $50k system to its owner. And justly so! 

 

 

There will always be relative quality, for a variety of reasons; an obvious one is that it takes quite a bit of money to get very low distortion deep bass; the physics of air behaviour is against you here!

 

The value to the listener is dependent on their experiences; someone who say just wants lots of impressive bassy sounds served up can be very easily satisfied these days - but I would be very dissatisfied with a $50k rig with obvious audible deficiences; it would irritate me intensely, in the same way as a new BMW with a bad rattle inside the dash would disturb the owner. The higher the price, the higher the expectations - a modest rig, which ticks nearly every box, and never trips up in an obvious way, would represent excellent value, to me.

[fas42]

49 minutes ago, Summit said:

 

Yes you certainly do, but how about something concrete that you do but not the industry.

 

I need to keep repeating myself, because the message doesn't get through - I don't get excited when the system is "a little bit better"; rather, I have a very specific goal for the SQ, which I work towards ... it's sort of like trying to break a speed record: if I reach 100+% I've won; if I only make it to 99.9% - I've failed, so to speak.

 

Obviously the industry doesn't work this way - the main thrust is to add extra layers of bling, and 'bigness'; and promise the world - meaning, with a bit of luck your rig may do a better job.

 

In some industries the word is "integration" - you have people whose only job is to assemble various modules that form the whole; and then do whatever it takes to ensure that the end result performs to a certain standard. That's what I do, and something the audio industry is not at all interested in.

[fas42]

1 minute ago, Paul R said:

 

I think, but am far from certain, that what he is saying is that it really does not matter what one does, one just keeps hacking at the system until it matches one's expectations. 

 

That's it!

 

1 minute ago, Paul R said:

 

If so, it seems like a very inefficient and error-prone way to do things.  At least, to me.

 

Constantly buying and selling bits of kit, in the hope that the rig gets better is not a "a very inefficient and error-prone way to do things" ?

 

All I'm doing is tweaking in a similar manner to many other people; but I have good understanding of what may be useful, from my electrical engineering background. And I know how to listen.

 

1 minute ago, Paul R said:

 

But if it works, then more power to him!

 

-Paul

 

 

The viewpoint is everything. If a rig is not up to par, then consider it faulty. You listen carefully, and home in on where there's a clear issue. And work towards solving that audible shortcoming. And then move on to the next weakness, which may now only be apparent - because the previous issue masked this more subtle anomaly.

[fas42]

5 hours ago, crenca said:

So, related to audio, I would say that there is a perfect form of high fidelity out there for which all of our systems are but shadows on a wall 😉  The value of our systems is connected (even determined) to this perfect form.  This form is not a mere relativism - it really exists, even if we can only approach it in an imperfect and relative way.

 

And that's quite obviously true ... the "perfect" form is that which imposes zero character on the playback of the recording; it's 100% true to what the source material "says", with all the 'defects' of the recording equipment, and storage type, being the only anomalies.

 

Which means that 2 'ideal' rigs should always sound subjectively identical, no matter how they're constructed. Since in the real world they are dramatically different, we are way off being in such a place.

 

A practical compromise of a high standard is possible, though rarely achieved - this manifests with various characteristics, one of which being that it becomes impossible to aurally detect the speakers.

[fas42]

2 hours ago, bluesman said:

I have no idea why you ask if lovers of pop music who like enhancements to the "source waveform" are disqualified from being audiophiles.  None of us has suggested anything remotely resembling this.  An audiophile is (by definition) anyone who likes one or more aspects of audio - live music recording and playback, synth pop, sound effects and equipment for equipment's sake are equally valid pursuits.  Philia is Greek for fondness and appreciation.  Each of us has his or her own preferences that define the sound quality we seek from our system and its sources.  You're just as much of an audiophile whether you EQ aggressively or not at all.

 

 

What's quite hilarious is that highly accurate, competent playback of pop, etc music is frequently far more "powerful", has greater emotional impact than dead straight recordings of classical compositions. But a high percentage of audio rigs are too compromised to deliver those more "extreme" forms of music competently - and so the contents of the recordings are never correctly heard.

[fas42]

33 minutes ago, Paul R said:

 

Snork! 

 

Eh, what's correct for a pop recording? That is one difficult question to answer. (I tend to say the engineer's work is the most correct rendition of a pop work.) 

Comon now, these huge generalizations are not really all that helpful!  Examples please? DSOTM? Pyramid? Rumors? Well, maybe not rumors...

 

 

Ummm, what the data says in the recording ... get it right, and you get the Big Experience. An album that I would use is ZZ Top's Afterburner, because the nature of the mastering makes this one difficult,

 

 

This should project the vocals as being very natural, almost relaxed in nature, with a driving intensity from the synthesizer sounds, and a sense of deep, deep bass.

[fas42]

10 hours ago, bluesman said:

 

Let me help you.....

 

How in the world could anyone know if the vocals sound "natural" without having heard Dusty Hill and Billy Gibbons singing live and unmiked?  They may sound believably real, but there's no way to know how accurately their voices are being reproduced.

 

Has anyone been fooled by a PA system? That is, you're in a room and someone alternately speaks live, and uses a a microphone and speakers; I don't know about you, but it's always abundantly obvious which is which, to me ...

 

And virtually all audio rigs fall down the same hole; the voices sound "fake" - I have zero interest in what Bill Gibbons voice "really sounds like", but it's quite special when I have no difficulty "seeing" a real live human vocalising in front of me.

[fas42]

9 hours ago, HIFI said:

I have to laugh.  I have this image of Frank jamming out to ZZ Top on his Sharp Boom Box speakers and the experience he is having in all of it . . . Especially the “deep deep” bass.

 

Ummm, I've done this for a variety of rock, but not ZZ Top as it happens, . People have a huge handicap, in imagining small speakers throwing up a huge soundstage behind the boxes, extending to as far back as one could want - which is why I find ambitious, monster speakers so laughably pathetic much of the time - they're miles from being in the game ...

 

The sense of deep bass is what matters, and it's the harmonics that determine how well this comes across, not the fundamental; that "hit in your guts" impact I find almost non-existent in fancy rigs, and no manner of bass blubbering can make up for that.

[fas42]

6 hours ago, Summit said:

 

Don’t forget that Frank is a magician that can make bad systems and recordings sound great with his secret tweaks.  

 

Magician - yes

 

Make bad systems sound great - no

 

Make "bad" recordings sound great - yes

 

"Secret" tweaks? If being fussy and methodical is a secret, that's new to me ...

[fas42]

6 hours ago, Paul R said:

 

I guess I can not tell much about this video at all. It’s all sounds very unnatural to me, and I have no idea if it is supposed to sound that way, or if it is just because as a rule, I do not like zzTop’s music.  I do not like 50’s crashing guitar played that way, and to be honest, I can’t even hear a synth in there. Unless you mean that awful sound is a guitar synth. 

 

Yes, you have to be there - all the drum sounds are synth, and they are "unnaturally sharp" in their quality. But that's the point; they're not meant to sound like their acoustic cousins - and it's remarkably effective when reproduced well.

 

6 hours ago, Paul R said:

This is very good,  it does not sound natural to me either. It sounds limited by the recording. 

 

This recording would be quite easy to have the vocals render well; the rig doesn't "have to cope" with a driving backing at the same time.

 

6 hours ago, Paul R said:

 

While this recording sounds totally different, but so is the performance. And the recording media, which appears to be a handheld shaker iPhone. 

 

 

This one is a recording of the PA system, so you're behind straight away - released live performances always take the signal from the mixing desk; before being damaged by the pro amps, and PA speaker rig ... this would sound like being near a PA system, no matter how good the rig. Note the tonal difference between the performers, and the audience noise and interjections - the latter has real bite and impact, while the music doesn't.

 

6 hours ago, Paul R said:

So with two real examples, both of which sound very different on an iPhone, and even more different on either system currently setup here, which one is more natural? How the devil would you make both of them appealing on the same system? 

 

 

The last one would never sound natural, as I just said - but could still be appealing; like being in the audience of that concert.

[fas42]

Will just mention that contrasts in music are a major part of what makes the experience so appealing. Classical composers have always used this of course, but pop music is full of such too. Part of the appeal of that ZZ Top album is that the intensity and drive of the beat is balanced by the, yes, softness of the voices - combining driving and restrained sound elements creates an emotional dynamic which I find very satisfying..