Warming up for best performance.

[gmgraves]

12 hours ago, STC said:

 

While it’s true that tube circuits benefit from “warming-up” (about an hour before serious listening, I’d say), I have never seen anything conclusive about solid state stuff. Depending on the design, some stuff might benefit (like amplifiers and possibly DACs - I leave my DAC on 24/7).

[gmgraves]

5 hours ago, mansr said:

Lab equipment manuals often state that calibration is valid only after a 15-minute warm-up.

While that is interesting (and true), we aren’t measuring, we’re listening. Two different things. The level of accuracy required to measure something requires a perfectly stable circuit. Not sure if that level of stabilization is audible, but I suspect not.

[gmgraves]

1 hour ago, KeenObserver said:

From what I understand, Benjamin D'Over recommends breaking in their USB cable for five years.

I hope you’re being facetious. The idea of “breaking-in” a cable is simply ludicrous in my opinion. It’s just WIRE for crissake! Maybe there’s a difference between different USB cables, and maybe there isn’t (I wouldn’t know, I only use USB audio for my desktop system, not in my main system). I’ve never heard any difference between any USB cable I have, and I’ve got them from AudioQuest, Kimber, Nordost, and a dozen generic ones from everywhere! They all sound worse than Optical or Coax SPDIF or balanced AES/EBU to me.

[gmgraves]

4 hours ago, kumakuma said:

 

 

Missed the significance of the name at first read...

Don’t feel bad, I did too...

[gmgraves]

19 hours ago, fas42 said:

Unfortunately, warming up is a bit part of achieving the SQ I chase. On switch on from cold, the quality can be pretty dreadful, to my ears, and it will requires hours of solid conditioning of everything, especially the speaker drivers, until decent performance is reached.

 

This is a very big part of why it's so difficult to "present it on a platter" - there's an excellent chance that one, tiny little thing has not stabilised enough, or conversely, that some area of the system has degraded in that time frame, for some stupid reason, while waiting for everything else "to be right" - so, for that session, "I ain't got nothing!" ... 🙄.

 

The real engineering challenge is to ensure that one can state quite emphatically that given a certain sequence of warming up procedures, and that within a sensible time frame - minutes, not hours, days, etc, etc - that the SQ is at an acceptable level. Anything else is an admission of failure, as far as I'm concerned - if you're trying to do commercial product. Which is why I'm still experimenting ... 😉.

You know, Frank, If you actually acquired some real equipment (especially speakers) then your "SQ chasing" wouldn't seem so laughable to the rest of us. The idea of working about system SQ when your idea of speakers are a pair out of a ghetto blaster boom-box!

[gmgraves]

On 10/21/2019 at 5:35 PM, fas42 said:

Oh dear ...

 

 

Most audiophiles are trapped in this mindset - which is why real progress in the audio world is sooo slow ... who knows, it could take a 100 😊 years before it extricates itself from the swamp ... in the meantime, have lots of fun playing the bling game - quick, who's got the most impressive looking rig?! 😜

Not you, that's for sure! It's not bling that's important, it's performance. Today's Marantz, Pioneer, Harman Kardon, and other "Mass Market" (or what used to be called "mid-Fi") amplifiers and preamps can be very close in audible performance to Krell, D'Agostino, Pass, etc amps and preamps, and here it is largely a matter of bling (do you know that the CNC'd thick aluminum fascia on the dSD Puccini DAC adds six THOUSAND US dollars to it's price? And heaven knows what the fancy casework on the D'Agostino stuff costs) that makes them so expensive. That's why I like Schiit's stuff. The cases, while handsome, are more test-equipment handsome than jewelry fancy. All of their money goes into the works (where it ought to go). The cases are functional, even handsome, without being ostentatious. I just wish that the legends on their front-panels were bigger. You need a magnifying glass to read them, even close-up. I had to put a strip of tape on the front panel of the Yiggy and write the names of the inputs and sample rates on the tape so that I could see them!

 

But speakers are among the few components where price truly is the measure of quality. The best, most accurate speakers are EXPENSIVE, there's no getting around it. The MG30.3 Magneplanars are not only Magnepan's most expensive, they're the company's best. The ML NeoLith is the most expensive ML at US$70K+, and is arguably their best (although a CLX system with a couple of ML Subs at around US$30K is probably just as good).

Unfortunately, no matter what you do with your mid-fi gear all soldered together and modified, it cannot make-up for the undeniable fact that your pair of Boom-Box speakers out of a ghetto blaster cannot be very good and certainly can't make the rest of your chain live up to its potential, even as limited as it is!

[gmgraves]

On 10/21/2019 at 6:14 PM, Racerxnet said:

 

Yes Frank, we all know how accurate and extensive the frequency response of your 1 inch drivers are in comparison to my Genesis system. Boy oh boy am I smitten by your choices and knowledge. You’re really speeding things up in the audio world. Golly, I think Arnie Nudell should have contacted you in the design phase when Genesis was started. Anyhow, I hope you realize how foolish you look. If you come to the states , bring your prized laptop for a spin, and we can compare the replay of our favorite songs. Maybe others on this forum can come along for a ride and you can educate us all. I’ll host!

 

MAK

He obviously doesn't know how foolish he looks. If he did, he wouldn't post the same nonsense on forum after forum ad infinitum, ad nauseam. 

[gmgraves]

1 hour ago, fas42 said:

George, I started with a high a high end CDP, and high end amplifier, and bottom of the range bookshelfs - and got magic sound. Then went out and listened a huge range of gear, many using very expensive speakers - and they all sounded rather pooey. In fact, the more expensive the speakers were, quite often the pooier they sounded  ... now, I have tickets on myself that I'm a kinda logical sort of guy; so I could easily have said, the more expensive the speakers, the worst the sound - but i went a step further, and thought, maybe the expensiveness just is more revealing of the lacking of the chain driving them ... and strangely enough, that concept has worked ever since ... 😊.

 

Speakers are used an excuse for sub-par sound, without hesitation in most circles - it takes a bit of experimenting to work it out, but it it turns out very ordinary drivers have no trouble revealing problems earlier in the chain - so the latter is sorted out first.

Frank;

You are wrong. Certainly not every speaker(regardless of price) is going to suit everybody, and, again, no speaker is perfect, But in my experience speakers like the Radialshtaller 101 sound better than the Rogers LS3/5a, Soundlab’s flagship sounds more like real music than does any Polk speaker I’ve heard, and Manepans sound better than their cone-based  contemporaries - to me!

[gmgraves]

58 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

And I see, and hear the 'foolishness' of people chasing better sound by ignoring the basics, and fantasising how some piece of kit even more dressed up than the one they currently own, will "magically" bring them The Promised Land ... 😉.

Well, that’s an extreme viewpoint. One starts with good equipment (and that doesn’t necessarily mean the most expensive) and mixes and matches components to work well with one another. Then, one uses best practices to connect he equipment together (no, not soldering them together), and treats one’s room for best sound. No, you cannot just buy a bunch of expensive components and haphazardly throw them together and expect the best sound. But you do have to pick good equipment and use knowledge and good sense to get the best out of it! No matter what you do, starting with mediocre or worse components will never give you anything better than mediocre sound.

[gmgraves]

13 hours ago, gmgraves said:

dSD Puccini

Obviously, I meant dCS. Sorry about that!

[gmgraves]

15 hours ago, fas42 said:

Let's say we are both confused ... 🙂.

 

I've been reading, and hearing the same stories, over and over again, for decades, about what makes for good listening ... and, it ... doesn't ... work. By contrast, I've established a certain approach which always works - provided one persists with the exercise ... so, whom I'm listening to, are my ears, 😉.

Frank, you’ve been POSTING the same story for decades (at least it seems that way, the way you invade every forum on this site and post the same nonsense over and over and over and over to a group of audiophiles who decided long ago that your words have no credibility)!

We sure do wish that you could learn a new song, though. The one you’ve been singing has gotten really old, especially since the words convey no information and the song makes no sense.

[gmgraves]

16 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

Teresa, what happens is that the microphones pick up all the sounds that our brains use to identify what the nature is of what we're hearing; all the subtle clues that go with live music making. But in normal quality playback these are so damaged that our minds can't unravel what's going on - "It sounds a mess!". Higher quality replay shines the light on what's there strongly enough - and our brains can separate what it 'knows' belongs to the music, from everything else.

 

Audiophile recordings, IME, are sometimes too obviously manipulated, and are 'too simple' - the richness of sound textures is lacking, which makes them less satisfying, compared to other recordings.

Bullshit, Frank! You have no idea what you are talking about! “Audiophile recordings are sometimes too obviously manipulated and are ‘too simple’” ????!!! Where do you get this stuff? What’s your definition of “too simple”? Many so-called “Audiophile recordings” are made with only TWO microphones. It can’t get any simpler than that without being mono. And yet, such recordings can be the most accurate and realistic sounding that can be made. These recordings are not manipulated AT ALL! If you prefer multi-miked, multi-channel recordings to simple, honest stereo recordings, then I have to say that you have obviously either never been to a live classical concert, or you had no idea what you were hearing when you were attending such a concert!

Quote

"Old Yamaha CD players" ... ? I would put the original unit, which I still have, against most current replay chains - assuming it had been nicely warmed up, etc - and it would knock them off the perch with ease. You see, what it had in spades was 'musicality', smoothness - this is so "vinyl sounding", it's scary ... 😜.

 

We must assume, Frank, that your idea of what constitutes good sound, and what many of the rest of us consider good sound are galaxies apart! I had a Yamaha CD player once, and it was, like it’s contemporaries, mediocre sounding. Of course, I didn’t solder it to my amplifier, so maybe that accounts for why my perception of the Yamaha’s sound and yours differs so. 🙄🤦🏼‍♂️