I suppose you are talking of Jean Hiraga ?
He made some very nice designs and is famous for his amplifier "The monster". I had met him twice. A passionate and nice guy.
When the first articles were written about speakers cable's sound, i was very intrigued. So, i had spend some time to tests, measurements and listening at this time. It is exactly at this time I realized that, by compensating the impedance of the loudspeakers so as to obtain a flat impedance curve, and by using very fast amplifiers with a large margin of stability, this effect disappeared and that it was no longer possible to note a difference, sufficiently audible, if it still exists. Since that day, all my personal speakers have been compensated. It was about this time that I began to take a serious interest in the current feedback topology and to favor the slew rate at the rate of distortion for my personal use.
To be honest, i believe I am the exact opposite of an "Audiophile". I prefer to spend my money in records rather than in expensive audio gears, while my home system use some expensive compression drivers and home made horns in plain wood.
My position is to focus my attention where it matters the most. Quality of power supplies, quality of electronic, interconnections etc...
About speakers systems, dynamic behavior is my first criteria, after linearity has been optimized. Acoustic treatments of the rooms, low vibrations of the enclosures. This, to explain I will never follow-you in the field of things that I can not explain or understand, like the interest of a magical Bybee device that contradict the few things I know about the laws of physics or ... cables burning. I need to know what I am doing, and why, and there are so many thinks we can improve first in a system, that really introduce huge changes (Both in listening and measuring). And value for money matters.
To have, in the past, lost a lot of time chasing ghosts, I think never again be influenced by any marketing pitch whatsoever. And if, like you, I attach great importance to what I hear, I submit my impressions to all the countermeasures I can.
On the other hand, I will never follow the academic and quasi-religious positions of the "Objectivists", in the absence of unquestionably established human audibility thresholds. And I often say that high fidelity is a game of dupes, a make believe game.
You can understand my position which is the consequence of my biography, half of my professional life devoted to electronic and acoustic design, and the other to music production.
All based on a total lack of certainty and an insatiable curiosity and thirst for learning. I like, each time i can, to look at the things upside down, exploring in an "out of the box" position, but ensuring that the landscape that I can see on the other side of the walls is not an illusion.
And then, I have other passions, literary writing, photography, programming. "High fidelity" always leaves me dissatisfied.
I do not go any more to the hifi shows, the worst places, imho, to listen to the music. I would love to meet you, John, but I would prefer it to be around a good table with good dishes and with a good bottle of wine.
I would like to add that it seems to me that, although some "high end" designers have produced notable advances in the quality of recording and music reproduction (and John have left his footprint in this hall of fame), it seems to me that it is the industry that has made advance the most the overall quality of the sounds we hear today. What comes out of the headphone jack of my smartphone today, even in MP3, would have been considered ultimate and miraculous in the 70s. Apart from that subtle details on *which* ;-), perhaps, we lost something.
Talking about the technique, of course. Not global musical production. :-(
Talking about the technique, of course. Not global musical production. :-(
Yes T, I meant Jean Hiraga. I pretty much agree with you on power amp cables as well. We had some real problems in the early days, when we departed from Zip Cord (lamp wire) to the more exotic designs, but my choice today is fairly easy to drive.
I am disappointed that you, of all people that I know, will not attend the Munich show in May, but I do understand. You have to be a 'crazy audiophile' to like the 'excess' of it!
I am disappointed that you, of all people that I know, will not attend the Munich show in May, but I do understand. You have to be a 'crazy audiophile' to like the 'excess' of it!
For cables carrying power, my religion is simple: As big diameter I can afford and, of course, as short as possible. A religion without missionaries.
I use copper bars in my personal amps when I can, but I have never done enough tests to evaluate the diameter limit. Easy overkill can save time and it is beautiful to look at ;-)
The only thing esoteric I tend to prefer about home signal cables: Monofilament when it is possible.
I use network cables for signal at home*.
I have the feeling that the sound is less granular, more fluid. But I would not give my hand to cut about that ;-)
As you use to say "it works" (good enough for me). Easy to cut at the exact minimal length (I love clean wiring an shorter is better), easy to weld and they are not expensive. I have so many other things to improve first in my system before to ask myself questions about cables ... and so lazy with age.
*Belden for pro use because they are solid and easy too.
Maybe! Also really depends on whether there's any energy up high to meaningfully excite any aliasing.
But it's probably a multibit DS topology DAC no? Bring out the pitchforks!
Oh not It's true single bit DSD. Meitner on the EMM DV2, DSD, MQA, & Digital Audio | Stereophile.com . Ed likes DSD.
Wow, those are more dogs in the "race" than I initially thought!
At least you are open about it, unlike some others who push their business.
Not necessarily. Different DAC designs have different sensitivity to jitter. Unfortunately, today's high performance S-D DAC chips tend to be very sensitive. That is to say, sensitive in terms of the extent to which sound quality is affected by jitter.
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I mean you won't find me buying it or anything! The IMD is pretty ugly, replete with a combination of aliasing product and general messiness. It's also 90 db down, so my concerns are generally less. A chinese board mimicking the EVM of the nicer chips of the big players (the BS chips everyone uses.
) will grossly outperform this by most any metric, but it's not really a rational product design, now is it? The jitter looks more like mains injection, which itself is plenty problematic.
And just to be sure, you don't have any hard evidence for this, right? Hard being either repeatable measurements and/or rigorous blinded testing.
Because I can appreciate this as your speculation, but 1.) it doesn't bear out in j-tests 2.) you're stating it as if this is a universally known fact rather than your impressions. And again, I have no problem with impressions, I have an issue with the lack of evidence to back up the firmness with which you're writing.
In a measurement, but not in a listening test. We have to learn how to correlate measurements with perception. In the case of S-D DACs, a number of things are affected perceptually. Optimum reproduction of cymbal sounds seems to be a pretty good subjective proxy for jitter performance. That, and the extent of excessive 'brightness' across the audio band.
Mark, there's a gulf between "showing me" in person, which is wildly subject to all the vagaries of human perception, influence, etc, and having harder mechanistic data that can be written up. Remember, I'm at least somewhat an academic, so I love me my methods sections.
I want to be 100% fair, I don't trust myself as a reliable subject in terms of listening tests. I don't trust *anyone* in this regard! I'm happy to take part in some folks tests, provided the methodologies and analysis are laid out beforehand. I do trust my feelings about whether a change makes me happy or not, because I don't care whether it's real or purely made up in my head. Nor do I assume insincerity in others to that same effect.
I want to be 100% fair, I don't trust myself as a reliable subject in terms of listening tests. I don't trust *anyone* in this regard! I'm happy to take part in some folks tests, provided the methodologies and analysis are laid out beforehand. I do trust my feelings about whether a change makes me happy or not, because I don't care whether it's real or purely made up in my head. Nor do I assume insincerity in others to that same effect.
I like measurements. I also pay little attention to cymbals when listening to music. I'm an acoustic space lover so our reference points are somewhat at loggerheads.
Exhibits A and B are close in jitter performance of EMM vs benchmark. The DAC that costs one tenth measures better. On a parameter I do not believe I can hear. But I could not spend 30k on something that is no demonstrably better other than in terms of 'look at my wad'.
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I agree, but I am old and only have so much time and energy, and I have other things that need doing first, according to my own priorities. But, once you have seen for yourself, I would of course be very grateful if you would volunteer to do all the above work yourself.
In terms of trust, this is easy to hear stuff. Not something at the edge of human perception, and it isn't stuff subject to Fletcher Munsen, or to volume level. So, its not the type of thing that tends to fool people.
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