Article: Guest Editorial: Why did audio stop being about audio?

[thyname]

3 minutes ago, tmtomh said:

 

Cool! Yes, I had a similar experience and removed my preamp from the chain - I found the sound clearer and more satisfying with my Oppo feeding my power amp directly.

 

Speaking of which, I've just (mostly) sorted out basic room treatments and speaker placement in my new listening room in my new house, and now that I've done that, I am thinking about a power amp upgrade. I have an Adcom GFA-5400 which I like a lot, but given its specs and its age I am fairly confident I could improve upon it by getting a newer amp since there are now several somewhat reasonably priced options whose performance measurements are sufficiently better that they could result in an audible improvement.

 

If I had $3,000-$4,000 laying around, the upgrade decision would be easy. I'd get a Bryston 2.5B3 or a Benchmark AHB2 and be done with it. But I'd feel a lot more comfortable spending 1/3 to 1/2 that amount, so the search, while encouraging, continues. In the meantime, I feel fortunate that while I know I could improve the sound, I find the current sound fully satisfying. So I'm in no rush.

Well... knowing you well from ASR forums posting, I believe your Amp choice is a no brainer! The Benchmark AHB2. 😉. And since you are satisfied with current sound, you can simply wait and save the money for your primary choice. By then, maybe there is a new and improved AHB

[crenca]

13 hours ago, tmtomh said:

But the op-amp based Magni DAC measures better, and so I would be inclined to get the op-amp version of the Magni. Of course if I got the op-amp based Magni and didn't like it, I wouldn't try to convince myself that I did like it. I'd get rid of it - but I wouldn't buy the discrete-stage Magni instead, because the measurements suggest to me that if I don't like the Magni op-amp version, it's probably not the op-amps that are causing the sonic problem

 

Or, it could be the problem is the op-amps.  Even the designer probably does not know exactly why there are sonic differences.  You could take Schiit up on the offer and order both and return the one that sounds worse.  The thing is, the measurable differences are really really slight, really low level differences.  It's just not "objectively" likely that the sonic differences are attributable to these usual gross measurements.  More likely the differences are in what's not measured, and what is measured is "very very good" for both and a not a factor.

 

edit:  tmtomh said "DAC" but we both meant the Magni HP amplifier.

[thyname]

6 minutes ago, crenca said:

It's just not "objectively" likely that the sonic differences are attributable to these usual gross measurements.  More likely the differences are in what's not measured, and what is measured is "very very good" for both and a not a factor.

+100! Wow! I had to double check multiple times who wrote this. I could not believe it.

[crenca]

13 minutes ago, thyname said:

+100! Wow! I had to double check multiple times who wrote this. I could not believe it.

 

 

Well, don't get too excited 😉 As I have said all along, the problem is not the occasional individual lapses of objectivists into "radical objectivism", the problem is the stubborn status quo of radical subjectivism of the culture.  Most "audiophiles" really do believe that impressionism applies to digital communication, cables, grounding boxes, etc.  and all the rest of The Big Crazy that most of "the industry" leverages and the subjectivist consumer likes because it goes along with their feel good consumerism.  Until there is a serious understanding and discussion of all that, the sensible right and wrong use of measurements is almost impossible to have.

[crenca]

17 hours ago, Middy said:

In life 90% of the time I try and give an answer in the most holistic, rounded way i can think of, drawing on my  experiences, limited knowledge and hypotheticals with the most positive outcome.

 

90% of the time people don't want advice.. Just reassurance of what they have already decided 3 days ago....

 

For me knowing this takes away the frustration as a normal act of human nature.  I have a collection of items unused, making me just as blind to my initial desires.

A thousand warnings about a kick in the nuts... The real lesson is learned after the fact.... What the fancy term? 'Operant  conditioning' ? 

 

 

Lot's in this sort of post around the nature of consumerism.

 

The "unused items...making me blind to my initial desires" is thoughtful.  I would say that they are just reminders of desire, but desire being what it is means that it can't be remembered.

[plissken]

I purposefully stepped away from the thread. In that interim something was nagging me. 

 

It was the title and the point that it remains fundamentally unanswered:

 

Why did audio stop being about audio?

 

When products are championed in the market place that are proven empirically to have no possible impact on audio.

 

 

[tapatrick]

10 minutes ago, crenca said:

 

Lot's in this sort of post around the nature of consumerism.

 

The "unused items...making me blind to my initial desires" is thoughtful.  I would say that they are just reminders of desire, but desire being what it is means that it can't be remembered.

I detect an understanding of Buddhist philosophy 🧐🙏

[tapatrick]

13 hours ago, tmtomh said:

 

For something like a similarly priced DAC from, say, PS Audio, I would steer clear because I've seen at least one multi-thousand-dollar PS Audio DAC that measures horribly considering its price and what such a unit could be capable of - measures sufficiently bad that its deviations from high fidelity could be audible.

Curious about this statement. Is this true of current DACs or one sample and from what year? Your posts carry some authority which I  appreciate, plus I’m a happy owner of a PS audio DAC. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

1 hour ago, plissken said:

I purposefully stepped away from the thread. In that interim something was nagging me. 

 

It was the title and the point that it remains fundamentally unanswered:

 

Why did audio stop being about audio?

 

When products are championed in the market place that are proven empirically to have no possible impact on audio.

 

 

I'd say this began soon after the first phonograph was invented for home use. There just wasn't an online forum for people to complain back then.

[Middy]

All that ticker tape was from early audiophiles moaning..... wax is more organic than this new fad shellac....

 

I Alpha beta tested with 4 flapper girls...😁

[tmtomh]

2 hours ago, crenca said:

 

Or, it could be the problem is the op-amps.  Even the designer probably does not know exactly why there are sonic differences.  You could take Schiit up on the offer and order both and return the one that sounds worse.  The thing is, the measurable differences are really really slight, really low level differences.  It's just not "objectively" likely that the sonic differences are attributable to these usual gross measurements.  More likely the differences are in what's not measured, and what is measured is "very very good" for both and a not a factor.

 

edit:  tmtomh said "DAC" but we both meant the Magni HP amplifier.

 

That's a good point - in particular with something as inexpensive as the Magni, the practical choice probably is indeed to get both and compare.

 

RE op amps, I'd be curious to hear from @mansr and other members with significant engineering knowledge about the question of whether or not the main existing measurements can reasonably be considered to capture the performance of op amps vs a discrete stage. My understanding (which could be mistaken) is that they do.

 

I also worry about the argument that sonic differences are attributable to the as-yet unknown parameters that we don't measure. If you are going to put forth that argument, the burden is on you propose some type of factor or aspect that would need to be measured, which currently isn't. Absent that, we're left with open-ended "it could be anything and I have no idea what it could be but I know it's something and if you disagree you are just close-minded" arguments - like the arguments people make elsewhere on these forums that the conditions under which a digital music file was copied and transmitted over the internet creates a sonic signature that is not contained in the 1s and 0s but still somehow "travels" with and is permanently encoded in the file; or that different USB cables that produce identical outputs from a DAC nevertheless have some as-yet-unknown difference that enables better or worse bass control and soundstage to emerge from the DAC in defiance of all measurements that say otherwise.

 

Finally, I also think the burden is on you to establish some basis for your claim that existing measurements are "gross" aka too rough or rudimentary to capture sonic differences. That is not my understanding. Differences in frequency response, phase, noise, distortion, and so on are clearly audible so long as the measurements show differences within the experimentally determined audible range of humans. And in that regard I think it's worth noting that while we are remarkably insensitive to sonic differences below certain thresholds, we are conversely very sensitive to many of those same sonic differences once they are above our threshold. For example, most people probably can't hear the difference between a -90dB SINAD DAC and a -110dB SINAD DAC, especially in real-world listening conditions. But by the same token, studies have shown that humans can consistently identify a sonic difference between two musical signals when the volume difference between them is as small as 0.2dB (not directly - they can't necessarily pick out which one is louder or even figure out that the volume is the factor that's been changed; but apparently that tiny volume change does enable the perception that something is different between the two).

[tmtomh]

3 hours ago, thyname said:

Well... knowing you well from ASR forums posting, I believe your Amp choice is a no brainer! The Benchmark AHB2. 😉. And since you are satisfied with current sound, you can simply wait and save the money for your primary choice. By then, maybe there is a new and improved AHB

 

Hopefully an improved one that allows the AHB2 to then be acquired at a discount! 😀

 

I don't know, though - I value durability too, and that Bryston 20-year warranty is quite something...

[Ralf11]

1 hour ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

I'd say this began soon after the first phonograph was invented for home use. There just wasn't an online forum for people to complain back then.

 

But ridicule of audiophools dates back to the 1950s at least.  So they were making absurd claims and complaining somehow 

[mansr]

22 minutes ago, tmtomh said:

RE op amps, I'd be curious to hear from @mansr and other members with significant engineering knowledge about the question of whether or not the main existing measurements can reasonably be considered to capture the performance of op amps vs a discrete stage. My understanding (which could be mistaken) is that they do.

At the voltages and currents involved here, there is nothing one can do with discrete components that can't be done better as an IC.

[Ralf11]

a custom designed IC, or is an off the shelf IC adequate?  (e.g. layout, crosstalk, etc. etc.)

[Jud]

23 minutes ago, mansr said:

At the voltages and currents involved here, there is nothing one can do with discrete components that can't be done better as an IC.

 

More information would be interesting and helpful. What voltage and current levels would be reasonable cutoffs? And why better as opposed to equally as well?

[tmtomh]

2 minutes ago, Jud said:

 

More information would be interesting and helpful. What voltage and current levels would be reasonable cutoffs? And why better as opposed to equally as well?

 

An IC can be designed to tighter tolerances than a discrete-component stage (that much I know; others can elaborate beyond my level of understanding).

[mansr]

13 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

a custom designed IC, or is an off the shelf IC adequate?  (e.g. layout, crosstalk, etc. etc.)

We're talking about low-level audio amplifiers. Nothing exotic here, and many ready-made parts are available with excellent performance figures. For example, take a look at the OPA1611 data sheet. It describes a circuit that amplifies the distortion to make it measurable. Even if the official figures are inflated, matching its performance with a discrete circuit would take considerable effort. Why not leave that to the experts who designed the chip? They're probably better at it than you are.

[mansr]

11 minutes ago, tmtomh said:

An IC can be designed to tighter tolerances than a discrete-component stage (that much I know; others can elaborate beyond my level of understanding).

Right, and you can fit a silly number of components in a small area, enabling much more advanced circuits. The smaller size also makes the IC less sensitive to radiated noise.

[mansr]

18 minutes ago, Jud said:

More information would be interesting and helpful. What voltage and current levels would be reasonable cutoffs?

It's hard to pick a particular number. One factor is thermal management. I guess you've seen power amp output transistors bolted to a heatsink. Not only is it easier to get rid of heat from a discrete component, keeping that heat away from other components is also a good thing. Another aspect is component size. At high currents (hundreds of amps), a diode might need to be an inch in diameter. No sense in trying to integrate that.

[tmtomh]

10 minutes ago, mansr said:

It's hard to pick a particular number. One factor is thermal management. I guess you've seen power amp output transistors bolted to a heatsink. Not only is it easier to get rid of heat from a discrete component, keeping that heat away from other components is also a good thing. Another aspect is component size. At high currents (hundreds of amps), a diode might need to be an inch in diameter. No sense in trying to integrate that.

 

Thanks - the part I've bolded answers the question I've always had about why op amps are so much better suited for headphone amps than power amplifiers. 

 

Would it be accurate (or at least substantially accurate) to say that this principle also is why, with traditional Class A/AB amps, more powerful amps need more transistor banks/output stages - and therefore when a company makes multiple power-rated amps in the same model line, people sometimes note that the less powerful models, with fewer output stages, measure and sound cleaner?

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

1 hour ago, tmtomh said:

I also worry about the argument that sonic differences are attributable to the as-yet unknown parameters that we don't measure. If you are going to put forth that argument, the burden is on you propose some type of factor or aspect that would need to be measured, which currently isn't.

But this also rises the issue of a lack of skills, interest, time, etc... on the part of the person making the argument. He may have no clue what to even propose. I'd say this is 99.9999% of people making the claim (including myself).

 

I certainly hear what you're saying, but the burden shift is never going to lead anywhere. 

[thyname]

5 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

But this also rises the issue of a lack of skills, interest, time, etc... on the part of the person making the argument. He may have no clue what to even propose. I'd say this is 99.9999% of people making the claim (including myself).

 

I certainly hear what you're saying, but the burden shift is never going to lead anywhere. 

‘Agreed! Not everyone is an engineer. An engineer specializing in audio that is. Including myself. Most of the people into audio are hobbyists. Not engineers. 

[thyname]

30 minutes ago, tmtomh said:

 

Thanks - the part I've bolded answers the question I've always had about why op amps are so much better suited for headphone amps than power amplifiers. 

 

Would it be accurate (or at least substantially accurate) to say that this principle also is why, with traditional Class A/AB amps, more powerful amps need more transistor banks/output stages - and therefore when a company makes multiple power-rated amps in the same model line, people sometimes note that the less powerful models, with fewer output stages, measure and sound cleaner?

 

‘That’s a great point, I mean all this discussion you are having. A breath of fresh air from the general radical objectivists opinion that “all amps sound the same as long as they have enough power and current for a certain speaker”

[Wilderness]

On 12/9/2019 at 10:20 AM, firedog said:

If you want me (us) to spend big bucks on a device that costs 2X, 5X or 50X, the price of a "conventional" equivalent, shouldn't you have an ethical obligation to base those claims on more than sighted and - by definition biased -listening?

 

If I understand you correctly, I find that sometimes exactly the opposite happens.  I went to a audio dealer this summer to listen to some speakers from a respected brand thinking I would like them.  I didn't.  They sounded somewhat dull and congealed.  Then the dealer played the same songs I requested with a different set of speakers, and I thought I would not like them.  I did.  They sounded dynamic and balanced and had good tone and a fantastic soundstage.

 

We don't always have expectation bias when we listen without double blind testing.  Sometimes we are surprised by what we hear.  And when we have a chance to compare, we wind up getting what what we want or close to it.

 

I have experience using the scientific method with studies, and so I understand the argument for using it.  If I submit a study to an academic journal, I will have used the scientific method with coders, rigor, etc. to keep my opinions out of it as much as possible.  When I listen to music, however, I want to feel something.  Emotion.  Goosebumps.  Awe.  Acoustic instruments and vocals played over equipment that can convey good tone, decay and attack make me feel compassion and appreciation for the artistry and the audio equipment.

 

I'm listening to Sondra Sun-Odeon right now, and she is carrying me away.  That can't be measured (or can it?).  I think it would be cool if someone would invent a device that could measure how we are affected by music and the equipment we use to listen to it.