Hello Keithj,
""What I DO complain about is the person who makes an absolute statement (cables are directional) and who can't back it up with facts or tests of any sort. ""
The back up is that others have observed and reported the effect,
and the reasons have been given earlier in this discussion.
And intelligent observations and comments given too.
Just because YOU have not heard it does not deny the existence of the fact.
I must say that I am tiring of this negativity from you.
I suggest that you re-read this whole subject from the begging
post, and then reflect on your statements - some of them are just plain rude.
As Bernard stated - ""If i read such stuff like MrFeedback reported, and cannot follow for the moment, i always wonder what it is i am missing, on which detail i should focus or do my ears or my system fail? I never would downtalk another person's experience or claim it is bogus, particularly if i have no experience on this field. ""
This is from an informed, experienced and respectfull contributor.
My view is that, it is details such as this, that require some attention after all the other factors in a high resoloution audio system have been addressed.
This fine attention to detail is what gives the ultimate results.
BTW - your bio mentions car racing - those things are much louder and much nastier sounding than any hifi or live system - are you sure your ears are still up to the job ?
Also lets hear of your formal training, system, experimenting, experience, and your age.
I expect that you are a novice compared to many of those posting here, and out of your depth.
So go on tell us about how many systems or components that you have experienced, the best audio system that you have experienced, and your own late night a/b comparisons and tinkering, and the results, and I'll happily do likewise.
If you can't do this, then don't bother coming to this table.
If you have intelligent and relevant information to share regarding audio research, then do so, if not then zip it.
There, I feel better now.
""So, the guy who made the absolute statement (do not remember who and do not care) has embarrased himself enough, let him survive his goof, ok? I doubt he will let become it a habit ""
I am not the least embarrased, because other posters confirm these findings!
Bernard, interesting observations regarding connectors - Have you tried good contact treatments, Cramolin for example?
Regards to all. Eric.
""What I DO complain about is the person who makes an absolute statement (cables are directional) and who can't back it up with facts or tests of any sort. ""
The back up is that others have observed and reported the effect,
and the reasons have been given earlier in this discussion.
And intelligent observations and comments given too.
Just because YOU have not heard it does not deny the existence of the fact.
I must say that I am tiring of this negativity from you.
I suggest that you re-read this whole subject from the begging
post, and then reflect on your statements - some of them are just plain rude.
As Bernard stated - ""If i read such stuff like MrFeedback reported, and cannot follow for the moment, i always wonder what it is i am missing, on which detail i should focus or do my ears or my system fail? I never would downtalk another person's experience or claim it is bogus, particularly if i have no experience on this field. ""
This is from an informed, experienced and respectfull contributor.
My view is that, it is details such as this, that require some attention after all the other factors in a high resoloution audio system have been addressed.
This fine attention to detail is what gives the ultimate results.
BTW - your bio mentions car racing - those things are much louder and much nastier sounding than any hifi or live system - are you sure your ears are still up to the job ?
Also lets hear of your formal training, system, experimenting, experience, and your age.
I expect that you are a novice compared to many of those posting here, and out of your depth.
So go on tell us about how many systems or components that you have experienced, the best audio system that you have experienced, and your own late night a/b comparisons and tinkering, and the results, and I'll happily do likewise.
If you can't do this, then don't bother coming to this table.
If you have intelligent and relevant information to share regarding audio research, then do so, if not then zip it.
There, I feel better now.
""So, the guy who made the absolute statement (do not remember who and do not care) has embarrased himself enough, let him survive his goof, ok? I doubt he will let become it a habit ""
I am not the least embarrased, because other posters confirm these findings!
Bernard, interesting observations regarding connectors - Have you tried good contact treatments, Cramolin for example?
Regards to all. Eric.
Re: Wire,Wine, and Whiners.
Nor me. And who accused anyone of fraud? Wine tasting is normally done at least single blind and sometimes double blind for verifiable results.
Who said there was? I mean this nicely.
Ah, so now it's a dogma? You know? Or believe you hear?
I don't listen to wires. I listen to music. You know, that stuff that comes out of speakers. My system is very conservative and gives me pleasure. I don't look at the various components but concentrate on how the music is reproduced. If there are problems, these can be investigated and fixed.
Personally I think there are more problems with the recordings and loudspeakers than there are with interconnects. Did you know that high quality woofers have anything up to 10% second harmonic distortion? And excellect tweeters are around 2%? Vinyl pickups also generate significant distortion. All this was investigated in various articles in AES over the years.
/stir mode on
Methinks you have an indefensible position that you are trying to defend come hell or high water. If so then defend it in a manner that is at least justifiable. If it's just your opinion, then say that as a defense (it's a valid one) and let's move on and add value to the audio industry and pleasure to our listening.
/ stir mode off
regards, Keith
HarryHaller said:
Nor me. And who accused anyone of fraud? Wine tasting is normally done at least single blind and sometimes double blind for verifiable results.
Who said there was? I mean this nicely.
Ah, so now it's a dogma? You know? Or believe you hear?
I don't listen to wires. I listen to music. You know, that stuff that comes out of speakers. My system is very conservative and gives me pleasure. I don't look at the various components but concentrate on how the music is reproduced. If there are problems, these can be investigated and fixed.
Personally I think there are more problems with the recordings and loudspeakers than there are with interconnects. Did you know that high quality woofers have anything up to 10% second harmonic distortion? And excellect tweeters are around 2%? Vinyl pickups also generate significant distortion. All this was investigated in various articles in AES over the years.
/stir mode on
Methinks you have an indefensible position that you are trying to defend come hell or high water. If so then defend it in a manner that is at least justifiable. If it's just your opinion, then say that as a defense (it's a valid one) and let's move on and add value to the audio industry and pleasure to our listening.
/ stir mode off
regards, Keith
DiceMan:
Yes, I have TDR. My background is RF and microwaves.
Hairy Holler:
If Bob Pease can be the "Czar of Bandgaps", I guess I can be "Il Capo di TDRs". Or maybe "Il Duce di TDRs". Whaddya think?
Actually, I think all this talk of TDRs and "75 ohm RCAs" has me thinking about a new law............
Jocko
Yes, I have TDR. My background is RF and microwaves.
Hairy Holler:
If Bob Pease can be the "Czar of Bandgaps", I guess I can be "Il Capo di TDRs". Or maybe "Il Duce di TDRs". Whaddya think?
Actually, I think all this talk of TDRs and "75 ohm RCAs" has me thinking about a new law............
Jocko
Keithj and adding pleasure to our listening
I thought that we were trying to add pleasure to our listening. I was as mystified as you seem to be until I sat down and listened. I am an Electrical Engineer. I like to measure things and get repeatable results with corelation between cause and effect. It is not always possible to do. Should I rob myself of increased pleasure from my system because of this? In my opinion no. Do I think there is lunatic fringe in High End audio? You bet. There is also an incredible overlap between what we can hear and what we can measure, not to mention interpeting the results of these measurements. I guess that is what makes this an art as much as a science. I guess we will respectfully agree to disagree on this matter.
H.H.
P.S. I am afraid that your Karma has run over my Dogma.
I thought that we were trying to add pleasure to our listening. I was as mystified as you seem to be until I sat down and listened. I am an Electrical Engineer. I like to measure things and get repeatable results with corelation between cause and effect. It is not always possible to do. Should I rob myself of increased pleasure from my system because of this? In my opinion no. Do I think there is lunatic fringe in High End audio? You bet. There is also an incredible overlap between what we can hear and what we can measure, not to mention interpeting the results of these measurements. I guess that is what makes this an art as much as a science. I guess we will respectfully agree to disagree on this matter.
H.H.
P.S. I am afraid that your Karma has run over my Dogma.
Jocko and TDR
Definitely Il Duce, but only if you you promise to make the pulse trains run on time (DR) and promise NOT to call me the Misfit of mosfets, the Earl of enhancement mode, the Duke of depletion mode, or the Tyrant of transconductance. Maybe we can make Dice45 the Viceroy of Vacuum tubes......
H.H.
Definitely Il Duce, but only if you you promise to make the pulse trains run on time (DR) and promise NOT to call me the Misfit of mosfets, the Earl of enhancement mode, the Duke of depletion mode, or the Tyrant of transconductance. Maybe we can make Dice45 the Viceroy of Vacuum tubes......
H.H.
Keith and Eric,
could you please do me the favor and tuck your damned male pride away, both! each of you has made vaild points but behaviour THD figures are altleast at 20% , did i say total harmonic distortion? this is nonharmonic distortion!
Keith,
'fraid have to take sides concerning Eric's complaint of your negativity and being plain rude. This is not ok. and, .... if you start to open your mind, you will feel less tempted to be rude!
Aha, so you atleast partially know, BTW, the same with wines (and your post is contradicting), the last thing i would do is double blind testing. I light some candles, preferably in hollow salt chunks with orange hue, flooding the place with orange light, I hum "OM" to myself and spin a gorgeous record, have the wine breathing fresh air some hours before and the whole place already is slighlty smelling like the wine, have some fresh French bread and then, .. i enjoy it! And... for complex wines, the complex harmony of a late string quartet from Beethoven suits me best
Why don't you apply to wines what you apply to music? best way to get acquainted with wines. Not restricted to wines, you get the concept, i am sure. And i am with you, prefering to listen to music and not to wires.
Although your curiosity may drive yo one day to find out more about wires.
Eric,
reading this, i could kick myself having wasted any second to contribute here! If a man's cannot be proven wrong, let's see if there is a flaw in his reputation! Works fine, ask any politician! ...
:mad
It are not your technical points that are flawed, it is the attitude emerging from how you presented them! Instead of handing the experiences you made down from high as absolute statements, you could be friendly with Keith and and lead him by asking innocent questions and making him experience himself there are things not so easily explainable by the textbooks. Atleast you could try. But, danger, you have to do so with a pure heart, with a clean, constructive mind, otherwise the questions will not be innocent.
So, now, Keith and Eric, you folks are friendly now and try to learn from each other! OK???
Jocko,
) is hmmmmh.... king-size ... is it still growing?
New law about RCAs, eager to hear about that!
Harry,
certainly no viceroy, certainly not. Still learning myself. Far form having any sort of even relative mastership. Concerning turntables and tonearms, well maybe i know a bit more about that topic, after all that's why i became an engineer.
One property of an open mind is that it shows you clearly what you still don't know. Funny story, i designed a linear tracking tonearm using a very very stiff air bearing. To my experience, low end tends to be muddy without the cartridge having strong guidance, strong in relation to the cartridge's compliance. Some tonearms excel in low end reproductions and they all have an incredibly stiff tonearm wand and a stiff bearing.
Desiging my tonearm, i mostly do engineering work. The tonearm wand subtopic however got me curious and i decided from a strong hunch to have the tonearm wand replacable .
Then i got acquainted with VTA pioneer David Shreve who uses a strip of basswood glued on a strip of balsawood as tonearm wand of his heavily modified Rabco linear tracker (which is a gymbal arm, not a unipivot). No torsion box structure, nothing, just a wood of medium weight / stiffness glued to balsa. Cannot work. Does work. ..... okok, he prefers Shure cartridges which have high compliance, highest, admitted, but not high enough, way form being high enough. Remember Newton's actio=reactio? Cannot work. Does work. I have reports from third persons raving about David's Rabco arm's sound and particular about the low end.
Although i am deep in the tonearm topic, i cannot tell at all why a given tonearm sounds how. This is voodoo, in best case backed up by coincidental observations, probability clouds, but lots of them. Titanium seems to give nice results in some cases, particularly as tonearm wand. And carbon fibre, too. Ever heard the painful noise a titanium or carbon fibre tube makes when hit? then you never would believe this substance to be suited for tonearm wands. Anyway, i am glad i intentionally incorporated voodoo into my engineering work, i decided to choose sonics by choosing the tonearm wand, be it titanium, bamboo or virgin bone. It has to be tried out, no predictions, but bets accepted.
I am terribly curious how the basswood/balsa wand will sound on my tonearm! Not only with a Shure, also with a stiff MC. Keith, you read that? Get the concept? Dig why i told that story?
could you please do me the favor and tuck your damned male pride away, both! each of you has made vaild points but behaviour THD figures are altleast at 20% , did i say total harmonic distortion? this is nonharmonic distortion!
Keith,
'fraid have to take sides concerning Eric's complaint of your negativity and being plain rude. This is not ok. and, .... if you start to open your mind, you will feel less tempted to be rude!
Aha, so you atleast partially know, BTW, the same with wines (and your post is contradicting), the last thing i would do is double blind testing. I light some candles, preferably in hollow salt chunks with orange hue, flooding the place with orange light, I hum "OM" to myself and spin a gorgeous record, have the wine breathing fresh air some hours before and the whole place already is slighlty smelling like the wine, have some fresh French bread and then, .. i enjoy it! And... for complex wines, the complex harmony of a late string quartet from Beethoven suits me best
Why don't you apply to wines what you apply to music? best way to get acquainted with wines. Not restricted to wines, you get the concept, i am sure. And i am with you, prefering to listen to music and not to wires.
Although your curiosity may drive yo one day to find out more about wires.
Eric,
reading this, i could kick myself having wasted any second to contribute here! If a man's cannot be proven wrong, let's see if there is a flaw in his reputation! Works fine, ask any politician! ...
:mad
It are not your technical points that are flawed, it is the attitude emerging from how you presented them! Instead of handing the experiences you made down from high as absolute statements, you could be friendly with Keith and and lead him by asking innocent questions and making him experience himself there are things not so easily explainable by the textbooks. Atleast you could try. But, danger, you have to do so with a pure heart, with a clean, constructive mind, otherwise the questions will not be innocent.
So, now, Keith and Eric, you folks are friendly now and try to learn from each other! OK???
Jocko,
Il Duce ... hmmmm I knew before your ego (should i have called it self-confidence
) is hmmmmh.... king-size ... is it still growing?New law about RCAs, eager to hear about that!
Harry,
certainly no viceroy, certainly not. Still learning myself. Far form having any sort of even relative mastership. Concerning turntables and tonearms, well maybe i know a bit more about that topic, after all that's why i became an engineer.
One property of an open mind is that it shows you clearly what you still don't know. Funny story, i designed a linear tracking tonearm using a very very stiff air bearing. To my experience, low end tends to be muddy without the cartridge having strong guidance, strong in relation to the cartridge's compliance. Some tonearms excel in low end reproductions and they all have an incredibly stiff tonearm wand and a stiff bearing.
Desiging my tonearm, i mostly do engineering work. The tonearm wand subtopic however got me curious and i decided from a strong hunch to have the tonearm wand replacable .
Then i got acquainted with VTA pioneer David Shreve who uses a strip of basswood glued on a strip of balsawood as tonearm wand of his heavily modified Rabco linear tracker (which is a gymbal arm, not a unipivot). No torsion box structure, nothing, just a wood of medium weight / stiffness glued to balsa. Cannot work. Does work. ..... okok, he prefers Shure cartridges which have high compliance, highest, admitted, but not high enough, way form being high enough. Remember Newton's actio=reactio? Cannot work. Does work. I have reports from third persons raving about David's Rabco arm's sound and particular about the low end.
Although i am deep in the tonearm topic, i cannot tell at all why a given tonearm sounds how. This is voodoo, in best case backed up by coincidental observations, probability clouds, but lots of them. Titanium seems to give nice results in some cases, particularly as tonearm wand. And carbon fibre, too. Ever heard the painful noise a titanium or carbon fibre tube makes when hit? then you never would believe this substance to be suited for tonearm wands. Anyway, i am glad i intentionally incorporated voodoo into my engineering work, i decided to choose sonics by choosing the tonearm wand, be it titanium, bamboo or virgin bone. It has to be tried out, no predictions, but bets accepted.
I am terribly curious how the basswood/balsa wand will sound on my tonearm! Not only with a Shure, also with a stiff MC. Keith, you read that? Get the concept? Dig why i told that story?
Excellent post......
Fair comment. Rudeness is not a good idea. I'll be reasonable from here on. However my substantive comments haven't been addressed and that's why I'm being rude. Trying to provoke a response that says hmmmm, maybe I'd better check that and maybe it isn't universal. As far as an open mind is concerned, Carl Sagan said that it shouldn't be so open that it falls out. What he meant was that have an open mind, yes, but a healthy degree of skepticism is a good idea.
Possible new law. "Don't let an RCA connector near your system". As far as I'm concerned, they deteriorate over time. I use Suhner BNC that keep their characteristics over long periods (10 years in one case I have). Even replace connectors in bought equipment.
Now to wine..... (love the stuff). My point was that, to obtain verifiable results, wine tasters use single and double blind testing. A trained wine taster is often able to identify the wine, the year and sometimes the area of the vineyard the grapes came from. They have no cues as to what the wine is.
Now the pleasurable bit with the wine is to drink it with companiable people in nice surroundings and so on. These all have positive effects on your impression of the wine.
What we have are two complimentary things. One is the seeking for the verifiable, the other is seeking for pleasure and enjoying oneself. The same applies in the audio world. I opine that many people who go down the subjective line totally are doing immeasurable damage to the world of audio.
So, by all means have your subjective view. Look for arguments that support you. Also look for arguments that don't.
Me... I've been in the audio world since 1965. I'm in my early 50s now and recognise the deterioration in my hearing. I started with various bottles (EL84, KT88, KT66) and built various systems including Williamson amps and so on. About 1980 I started turning to transistors and op amps. My present system is all solid state, with Marantz pre, Sony CD55ES CD, Thorens TD128S/Grace 707/Grace F9E (for stuff I can't get on CD). Power amps are home built (Australian AEM 6000 - 2 x 250 watts mosfet and sub woofer amp). Speakers are Dynaudio 17W75 and D28s in cabinets from Elektor several years ago. All cables are made from RG174 or RG58 for interconnects and from automotive power cable for loudspeakers.
My background is in telecommunications engineering. I learnt early on that many of the problems that audio people think they have now were solved in telecommunications back in the 1930s. Go figure.
Motor racing. Unfair comment. I used to drive go karts, and am now involved in racing (as a Pace Car driver) and in rallying as a safety official. When I'm on the track I use ear protection (it comes as part of the radio gear).
That's me in a nutshell.
regards, Keith
dice45 said:Keith and Eric,
could you please do me the favor and tuck your damned male pride away, both! each of you has made vaild points but behaviour THD figures are altleast at 20% , did i say total harmonic distortion? this is nonharmonic distortion!
Keith,
'fraid have to take sides concerning Eric's complaint of your negativity and being plain rude. This is not ok. and, .... if you start to open your mind, you will feel less tempted to be rude!
Fair comment. Rudeness is not a good idea. I'll be reasonable from here on. However my substantive comments haven't been addressed and that's why I'm being rude. Trying to provoke a response that says hmmmm, maybe I'd better check that and maybe it isn't universal. As far as an open mind is concerned, Carl Sagan said that it shouldn't be so open that it falls out. What he meant was that have an open mind, yes, but a healthy degree of skepticism is a good idea.
Possible new law. "Don't let an RCA connector near your system". As far as I'm concerned, they deteriorate over time. I use Suhner BNC that keep their characteristics over long periods (10 years in one case I have). Even replace connectors in bought equipment.
Now to wine..... (love the stuff). My point was that, to obtain verifiable results, wine tasters use single and double blind testing. A trained wine taster is often able to identify the wine, the year and sometimes the area of the vineyard the grapes came from. They have no cues as to what the wine is.
Now the pleasurable bit with the wine is to drink it with companiable people in nice surroundings and so on. These all have positive effects on your impression of the wine.
What we have are two complimentary things. One is the seeking for the verifiable, the other is seeking for pleasure and enjoying oneself. The same applies in the audio world. I opine that many people who go down the subjective line totally are doing immeasurable damage to the world of audio.
So, by all means have your subjective view. Look for arguments that support you. Also look for arguments that don't.
Oh yes. I think that you should experiment as much as you like. If you do and find something different, investigate the mechanisms and see if it can be explained.
Me... I've been in the audio world since 1965. I'm in my early 50s now and recognise the deterioration in my hearing. I started with various bottles (EL84, KT88, KT66) and built various systems including Williamson amps and so on. About 1980 I started turning to transistors and op amps. My present system is all solid state, with Marantz pre, Sony CD55ES CD, Thorens TD128S/Grace 707/Grace F9E (for stuff I can't get on CD). Power amps are home built (Australian AEM 6000 - 2 x 250 watts mosfet and sub woofer amp). Speakers are Dynaudio 17W75 and D28s in cabinets from Elektor several years ago. All cables are made from RG174 or RG58 for interconnects and from automotive power cable for loudspeakers.
My background is in telecommunications engineering. I learnt early on that many of the problems that audio people think they have now were solved in telecommunications back in the 1930s. Go figure.
Motor racing. Unfair comment. I used to drive go karts, and am now involved in racing (as a Pace Car driver) and in rallying as a safety official. When I'm on the track I use ear protection (it comes as part of the radio gear).
That's me in a nutshell.
regards, Keith
Keith,
Carl Sagan is right -- i presumed we all have our brain alert when investigating stuff. But i slightly disagree with "healthy degree of skepticism ... " Mentally alert, yes, sceptical as a base attitude, well, with that I've got a problem although the philosophical difference may appear minute. It is about the same as the well known joke about the optimist and the pessimist and the glass half filled with water, the optimist say it is half full and the pessimist says it is half empty. Same thing, different attitude.
Attitude forms reality, not inverse
BTW, do you know what the engineer says concerning the glass water?
He sez, "it is twice as big as it needs to be"
Mentally alert: for me this means i crosscheck whenever i ge the chance to do so. Insuring i do not compare apples and oranges.
So did i today. Yesterday i buit myself a nice lil' strobe thing to measure my TTs platter speed (I have bad eyes and electric light and strobe disc always was very unreliable for me). As European, i settled on 100Hz strobe frequency. Of course, as American standards make European engineers something between mildly smile or snort in disgust.
As usual, i spent way more time on the gadget to optimize it and to tinker with it and have a real high-contrast, sharp image of the strobe bars. And then i did (just to make the job complete) a crosscheck on strobe pattern bar count and frequency ... and re-calculating, i found out that with 50/100Hz, the strobe is only accurate at 33.33 rpm. With 60/120 Hz, all three speeds fit. Can you imagine that? They bullshitted generations of record lovers with wrong speeds at 45 and 78!
very interesting indeed. Didn't know htey cannot spot the Chateau the wine comes from. (into bad joke mode today) once they took a famous wine tester by his word being able to spot any wine and year. He succeeded remarkably. Then they handed him something looking like a Rose. He tatsted it and spit it out "phew, that's gasoline !!!" "Yes, indeed but which brand and which year?"
Yes, being mentally alert.
Biased me, my opinion on the subjectivist/objectivist thing is, that objectivism is a mental state that one has to pass but in that one not necessarily has to remain. Among my audio friends there are mostly subjectivists who are former objectivists ... and the most hard-core of them are iron man Thomas Mayer (being on the 100% hedonist path) and Manfred Huber who calls himself an "aware part time objectivist" ... but let me see if i can find the "king's way": measuring anything you can measure and then try to correlate what you hear with what you measure. Anyone who does this still should find a common vocabulary with a pure, dyed-in-the-wool objectivist.
BTW, the audio gear is meant to gve pleasure to the listeners and the whole spec thing is but a crutch to ensure this. Cannot be fully ensured as audio is highly subjective, is a matter of taste.
May i doubt your hearing deterioates?
Sure, your sensor is degrading, but your signal processor is making it more than up. And it cnbe that your subconsious mind refuses to listen that critical to details, that it has grown to enjoy the entirety
Could it be that you initially considered SS technology to be superior and your judgement was biased by that and it is quite a while ago you crosschecked whether tubes really are inferior? Just a question, a very innocent one
For the record, i do not believe tubes or transistors are inherently superior, my friend Hartmut builds gorgeous SS amps and he abandoned tube amp building.
But i do think that one should crosscheck from time to time whether the path one is running for your now is the right one. Oh, and knowledge improves in some fields. You mentioned the EL84 which i consider one of the best tubes ever designed. It sounds wonder ful as pentode (surprisesurprise) and it is really stunning triode-wired. Pure music.
If i would not have the tubes and trannies i have, i would give an ECC82-driven EL84 with a decent modern 8 kOhm SE OPT my 1st try or if i could not obtain such a trannie, i would parallel 3 of them and use a typical 2A3 OPT.
Concerning, TT, keep the Grace arm and stay tuned on coming TT threads as soon as Jason opens us a TT forum!
Eric,
biased me, no question, red sounds best to my ears (the brain immediately translating this to ultra-dark-red Bordeaux wines) no question for me, good Bordeaux' are unequalled AFA the whole scope of properties of a great wine is concerned. Yes, there a facny Californians and south african and Australians, but .. they are fancy in some respects and flawed in others .... I prefer great Bordeaux and would dare to state that up to a price of 40$ a bottle one gets fair exchange for the money and does not even pay for the badge. Above that (referring to German prices), the return on investment ceases to look good.
Harry,
gorgeous pix ! What a radiating charisma!
Carl Sagan is right
-- i presumed we all have our brain alert when investigating stuff. But i slightly disagree with "healthy degree of skepticism ... " Mentally alert, yes, sceptical as a base attitude, well, with that I've got a problem although the philosophical difference may appear minute. It is about the same as the well known joke about the optimist and the pessimist and the glass half filled with water, the optimist say it is half full and the pessimist says it is half empty. Same thing, different attitude.Attitude forms reality, not inverse
BTW, do you know what the engineer says concerning the glass water?
He sez, "it is twice as big as it needs to be"
Mentally alert: for me this means i crosscheck whenever i ge the chance to do so. Insuring i do not compare apples and oranges.
So did i today. Yesterday i buit myself a nice lil' strobe thing to measure my TTs platter speed (I have bad eyes and electric light and strobe disc always was very unreliable for me). As European, i settled on 100Hz strobe frequency. Of course, as American standards make European engineers something between mildly smile or snort in disgust.
As usual, i spent way more time on the gadget to optimize it and to tinker with it and have a real high-contrast, sharp image of the strobe bars. And then i did (just to make the job complete) a crosscheck on strobe pattern bar count and frequency ... and re-calculating, i found out that with 50/100Hz, the strobe is only accurate at 33.33 rpm. With 60/120 Hz, all three speeds fit. Can you imagine that? They bullshitted generations of record lovers with wrong speeds at 45 and 78!
very interesting indeed. Didn't know htey cannot spot the Chateau the wine comes from. (into bad joke mode today) once they took a famous wine tester by his word being able to spot any wine and year. He succeeded remarkably. Then they handed him something looking like a Rose. He tatsted it and spit it out "phew, that's gasoline !!!" "Yes, indeed but which brand and which year?"
Yes, being mentally alert.
Biased me, my opinion on the subjectivist/objectivist thing is, that objectivism is a mental state that one has to pass but in that one not necessarily has to remain. Among my audio friends there are mostly subjectivists who are former objectivists
... and the most hard-core of them are iron man Thomas Mayer (being on the 100% hedonist path) and Manfred Huber who calls himself an "aware part time objectivist" ... but let me see if i can find the "king's way": measuring anything you can measure and then try to correlate what you hear with what you measure. Anyone who does this still should find a common vocabulary with a pure, dyed-in-the-wool objectivist.BTW, the audio gear is meant to gve pleasure to the listeners and the whole spec thing is but a crutch to ensure this. Cannot be fully ensured as audio is highly subjective, is a matter of taste.
May i doubt your hearing deterioates?
Sure, your sensor is degrading, but your signal processor is making it more than up. And it cnbe that your subconsious mind refuses to listen that critical to details, that it has grown to enjoy the entirety
Could it be that you initially considered SS technology to be superior and your judgement was biased by that and it is quite a while ago you crosschecked whether tubes really are inferior? Just a question, a very innocent one
For the record, i do not believe tubes or transistors are inherently superior, my friend Hartmut builds gorgeous SS amps and he abandoned tube amp building.
But i do think that one should crosscheck from time to time whether the path one is running for your now is the right one. Oh, and knowledge improves in some fields. You mentioned the EL84 which i consider one of the best tubes ever designed. It sounds wonder ful as pentode (surprisesurprise) and it is really stunning triode-wired. Pure music.
If i would not have the tubes and trannies i have, i would give an ECC82-driven EL84 with a decent modern 8 kOhm SE OPT my 1st try or if i could not obtain such a trannie, i would parallel 3 of them and use a typical 2A3 OPT.
Concerning, TT, keep the Grace arm and stay tuned on coming TT threads as soon as Jason opens us a TT forum!
Eric,
biased me, no question, red sounds best to my ears
(the brain immediately translating this to ultra-dark-red Bordeaux wines) no question for me, good Bordeaux' are unequalled AFA the whole scope of properties of a great wine is concerned. Yes, there a facny Californians and south african and Australians, but .. they are fancy in some respects and flawed in others .... I prefer great Bordeaux and would dare to state that up to a price of 40$ a bottle one gets fair exchange for the money and does not even pay for the badge. Above that (referring to German prices), the return on investment ceases to look good.Harry,
gorgeous pix ! What a radiating charisma!
Hi Bernard and All,
I find the local (Swan Valley)and South-West Australian wines pretty hard to go past.
At around the AUS $20 mark are some real beauties, easily and locally available.
I have a friend who owns a winery in Swan Valley, his block adjoining Evans and Tate (a renowned and awarded local producer).
IMHO, his wines are even better than E&T, especially the ones that he hides away for special occaisions.
Also he hosts a winery jazz afternoon each month - outside in nice gardens, surrounded by vines, choice of good reds and whites to sample by the bottle, good company, and good live music.......
Aaaahhh, this is subjectivism at its best - IMHO + IME.
Back to objective listening testing and subjective enjoyment - whilst wines in their variety are all enjoyable of course,
I find my self-references alter according to the brew, and this can invalidate or at least alter some findings - for better experimental consistancy Jonny Walker Red is very suitable in my experience.
Skäl, Eric.
PS - Thanks Keith for your response - I'll reply properly soon - no time just now.
Skäl to you too, Eric
I find the local (Swan Valley)and South-West Australian wines pretty hard to go past.
At around the AUS $20 mark are some real beauties, easily and locally available.
I have a friend who owns a winery in Swan Valley, his block adjoining Evans and Tate (a renowned and awarded local producer).
IMHO, his wines are even better than E&T, especially the ones that he hides away for special occaisions.
Also he hosts a winery jazz afternoon each month - outside in nice gardens, surrounded by vines, choice of good reds and whites to sample by the bottle, good company, and good live music.......
Aaaahhh, this is subjectivism at its best - IMHO + IME.
Back to objective listening testing and subjective enjoyment - whilst wines in their variety are all enjoyable of course,
I find my self-references alter according to the brew, and this can invalidate or at least alter some findings - for better experimental consistancy Jonny Walker Red is very suitable in my experience.
Skäl, Eric.
PS - Thanks Keith for your response - I'll reply properly soon - no time just now.
Skäl to you too, Eric
RCA plugs on digital outputs is the joke of the century.
The worst BNC plug sounds better then any RCA.
As for cables I can´t hear A difference on directionality. Many people spend more money on caps, resistors and cables as they should. You should spend your money where it counts and makes a big difference. For instance on good big power supplies, big heatsinks, short cables, good speaker units. If you are going to spend 500 $ on cables, it´s better you buy better tweeters or woofers or crossover parts. If want to buy 300$ ac power cords for your amp. it´s better to to buy a bigger power supply and do the right filtering. A lot of solutions are easy and you really see a difference. It´s better to spend a 1000$ and make a 10% inprovement than 5000$ on tweaks for 0,1% inprovement only you hear.
The worst BNC plug sounds better then any RCA.
As for cables I can´t hear A difference on directionality. Many people spend more money on caps, resistors and cables as they should. You should spend your money where it counts and makes a big difference. For instance on good big power supplies, big heatsinks, short cables, good speaker units. If you are going to spend 500 $ on cables, it´s better you buy better tweeters or woofers or crossover parts. If want to buy 300$ ac power cords for your amp. it´s better to to buy a bigger power supply and do the right filtering. A lot of solutions are easy and you really see a difference. It´s better to spend a 1000$ and make a 10% inprovement than 5000$ on tweaks for 0,1% inprovement only you hear.
levels of audio enlightenment
Promitheus,
agree with your BNC preference, but you do not yet know Redel plugs.
Couldbe you re-equip your whole stuff with Redels
As far as your anti-tweaking rant is concerned, well, have to re-post the five levels of audio enlightenment:
1* adjusting the volume knob
2* tweaking retail-bought equpiment
3* building kits as prescribed
4* modifying structures designed by others
5* designing/building own stuff from the scratch
Progressing to the next level always means improved mental penetration of how sound can be influenced. One passes the outer ring, then the next ring, ..., finally one knows very well how achieve what.
I'd presume anone of us should be atleast at level 3* but to reach 3* most people have to pass 1* and 2* and tweaking equipment is the only thing within reach until then; consider, the salary not always grows with skill, sometimes it outgrows skill (and maybe the ability to transfer skills to completely different fields) ... and some of us who may be medical doctors, philosophers, SF novel authors , butchers, tailors, bus-drivers, bankers, stock-brokers, etc. .... and have never been taught the basic electronics skills, they had to crawl thru the matter themselves and often w/o any help and had to pass thru level 1* and 2*. I do not think i would like to put **** on level 2* allthemore as, definitely being 5* myself, there are many tweaks that work and that i am unable to explain why they work and how. And some of my audio buddies, having far more advanced knowledge than me still are unable to explain them. Yet my buddies and me use those tweaks.
I have to agree, to the knowledgable DIYer, $500 are better spent on vital components (coupling caps being among them !! ) than on power chords. but let those at level 2* have their fun with power chords and let those slowly creeping from 3* to 4* have their fun with $$ resistors.
And, we should not forget we have many lurkers/guests undecided whether they can dare to pass the border between 2* and 3*. I would not like to have them chased away, i want them passing the border and join us and having more fun than before
Promitheus,
agree with your BNC preference, but you do not yet know Redel plugs.
Couldbe you re-equip your whole stuff with Redels
As far as your anti-tweaking rant is concerned, well, have to re-post the five levels of audio enlightenment:
1* adjusting the volume knob
2* tweaking retail-bought equpiment
3* building kits as prescribed
4* modifying structures designed by others
5* designing/building own stuff from the scratch
Progressing to the next level always means improved mental penetration of how sound can be influenced. One passes the outer ring, then the next ring, ..., finally one knows very well how achieve what.
I'd presume anone of us should be atleast at level 3* but to reach 3* most people have to pass 1* and 2* and tweaking equipment is the only thing within reach until then; consider, the salary not always grows with skill, sometimes it outgrows skill (and maybe the ability to transfer skills to completely different fields)
... and some of us who may be medical doctors, philosophers, SF novel authors , butchers, tailors, bus-drivers, bankers, stock-brokers, etc. .... and have never been taught the basic electronics skills, they had to crawl thru the matter themselves and often w/o any help and had to pass thru level 1* and 2*. I do not think i would like to put **** on level 2* allthemore as, definitely being 5* myself, there are many tweaks that work and that i am unable to explain why they work and how. And some of my audio buddies, having far more advanced knowledge than me still are unable to explain them. Yet my buddies and me use those tweaks.I have to agree, to the knowledgable DIYer, $500 are better spent on vital components (coupling caps being among them !! ) than on power chords. but let those at level 2* have their fun with power chords
and let those slowly creeping from 3* to 4* have their fun with $$ resistors.And, we should not forget we have many lurkers/guests undecided whether they can dare to pass the border between 2* and 3*. I would not like to have them chased away, i want them passing the border and join us and having more fun than before