@Classicalfan
Could it be an option, to evaluate your current system, and hereby get a deeper sense of what you truly seek to improve?
Could it be an option, to evaluate your current system, and hereby get a deeper sense of what you truly seek to improve?
You need a forum where the technique is simply discussed by the users themselves, but you are unlikely to read in Russian.
I personally do not really like this site, since technical parameters are put above all, instead of using ears to evaluate which device sounds better.
It turns out that an apparatus with more zeroes (less distortion) is praised as the best and they cannot explain why it actually sounds worse than the one with 0.2 distortion.
If we take their classification of devices, then at the hi-fi show you don't need to listen to the equipment at all, just hang the parameters of the device on the listening door and whoever has more zeros sounds better.
The developers have understood what is taken into account and is of great importance and deliberately make devices with low distortion but with unimportant sound.
The problem is,that we stopped trusting our ears and this is the most important component for evaluation but many different opinions allegedly confuse objectivity and it is impossible to determine whether it sounds good or not, and then people begin to rely on numbers that are not subjective but accurate, and then we fall into the trap of numbers and the developers use this. Therefore, this site a trap for those who trust numbers and not hearing. If you take away measuring equipment from Amir and arrange a blind test, then I think the rating of the devices will change quickly.
One part of people trusts numbers, and even more people visit various forums, asking the opinions of users what device sounds like.
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I think you don't understand that with the knowledge of the number that are objective, you can find out how they react. And of course our hearing is subjective, but those subjective factors can also be set in numbers. I like certain types of colouration (harmonic distortion) to a certain degree, and with those objective measurements i can see which has those in the right amounts.
This sites gives objective numbers, and tell which is pure mathematical the best and why, but you still need to interpret those numbers and graphs to your own preference and situation. And that is something nobody can do for you, as it's very personal and subjective.
This sites gives objective numbers, and tell which is pure mathematical the best and why, but you still need to interpret those numbers and graphs to your own preference and situation. And that is something nobody can do for you, as it's very personal and subjective.
@Sun12.
Nothing is black or white 😉
Of course it needs to sound good. But mostly it measures good too, when that occur.
ASR are great at what they do - but of course they cant account for personal taste or preference.
Studies show that we are terrible at finding specific flaws in a system with our ears. But that does not mean that we cant dicern whether something sounds nice or not. But scientific data helps us with a path through scientific issues. So I would recommend using the different tools for their different purposes.
When you simply listen to different system, like at a friends place or an exhibition. You never truly know what is going on, or why something might not sound right. This is where the right measurement can bring you right back on track - rather than speculating whether you have golden ears or not.
It's never a question whethe to measure or not - it a question of how, what and when to measure - IMO 🙂
Nothing is black or white 😉
Of course it needs to sound good. But mostly it measures good too, when that occur.
ASR are great at what they do - but of course they cant account for personal taste or preference.
Studies show that we are terrible at finding specific flaws in a system with our ears. But that does not mean that we cant dicern whether something sounds nice or not. But scientific data helps us with a path through scientific issues. So I would recommend using the different tools for their different purposes.
When you simply listen to different system, like at a friends place or an exhibition. You never truly know what is going on, or why something might not sound right. This is where the right measurement can bring you right back on track - rather than speculating whether you have golden ears or not.
It's never a question whethe to measure or not - it a question of how, what and when to measure - IMO 🙂
To be fair, you did say:
Audiocircle leads a hard life, the forum almost went under a few years ago and found salvation in commercial forums. Hi-Fi magazines operate in much the same way - advertisers pay the bills.
To be clear - you are looking for a place that will help you choose all the things that are not speakers, right?
That leads us to think you wanted more of what we have here. 🙂
Audiocircle leads a hard life, the forum almost went under a few years ago and found salvation in commercial forums. Hi-Fi magazines operate in much the same way - advertisers pay the bills.
To be clear - you are looking for a place that will help you choose all the things that are not speakers, right?
I think you are grasping at straws. I know of NO true objective review of audio equipment. Some try to be, some pretended to be, but clearly were either as you suggest ( You could track the Julian Hirsh review to the back full page ad every time) or were just pushing the mystic BS broadly, if not for specific brands. Someone has to pay for it! A few try, but fall short. If for no other reason is we do not have singular type numbers that tell the story. Differences are either linear distortion or non-linear and are complex. There are no simple numbers for either.
Unfortunately, the standard objective measurements do not fully reveal what we hear differently between products and as I verified ( can't say discovered, as I was pointed in the right direction) found how some equipment performs is dependent on others in the chain. Specifically amplifier/speaker interaction. To make matters worse, what we hear differs. My hearing when young was far extended compared to most men. My wife is hyper sensitive to distortion in the 4K region where I can bust get a hint of what she is hearing. Others are accustomed to more non-linear response. You can bet BB King did not have a subwoofer.
If you can't here a difference, then it does not matter. The specs won't mean a thing. So listen and compare for yourself. I bowered over a dozen power amps before I bought the wrong one. ( Bought a B&K, very good but should have paid twice for an Aragon. )
I have a Chinese cheap BB DAC. Compared it to several very high end ones. I could not hear a difference for over 100 times the price. I am not positive I could hear a difference between my DAC and my Rotel CD. Back in the day, there was a slight difference between BB and Wolfson. All of them are better now.
The one place where specs USED to help was in tuners. Pretty much OBE, and the ones left are barely so-so, so not much to learn. Find an old top line Kenwood and rebuild it.
Preamps should all be better than the source. Modern OP-Amps are as good as the best discrete used to be. Some differences in phono stages, but I challenge you to hear a real difference between an old Hafler and a JC-1 as long as you select the correct input impedance. No disrespect to John, as the JC-1 may be the best ever built, just the margins are so slight, how many times a record has been played is more significant.
On the low end, never went wrong with Denon. Up one step, Rotel and NAD usually did not disappoint. Move to high end and half is not as good as a cheap Denon, the rest can be superb. Never disappointed with Parasound. Had a friend who was a professional audio engineer and he swore by Emotiva. What is clear, is you get more when paying above low end, but once into high end, price and quality have little to do with each other. Spent some time with a Bryston. Solid. Tank. Could hear no difference with my Parasound for a fraction of the price. Specs? Hafler could demonstrate they had virtually no distortion, yet I could clearly hear the effect of DP compensation vs when I converted one to TMC. Can I measure the difference? No. I know what the difference is and why, but to measure it would cost more than my house.
Here is another way to look at a system. Fix the first 90% of what is wrong. Then reassess and fix the first 90% of the remaining 10%. Continue. Pretty soon you reach diminishing returns. This is an engineering approach and is no help if the goal is to have the biggest stack of great reviews to brag to your friends. Even when I was young enough to care, I was too poor so it did not matter.
The weakest part in the chain is still the speakers. Second the room. Then the source material. We spend too much time fretting details on the little bits leaving the biggest problems on the table. But let's face it, a new amp is much sexier than a sheet of Owens Corning 705.
waxx makes a great point. What is available. When I lived in Boulder Colorado, it was pretty good. Even in the Md./Va./DC area, I could not find what I wanted to hear. Moving to the Piedmont of NC, far less. They think Best Buy is a high end store.
Unfortunately, the standard objective measurements do not fully reveal what we hear differently between products and as I verified ( can't say discovered, as I was pointed in the right direction) found how some equipment performs is dependent on others in the chain. Specifically amplifier/speaker interaction. To make matters worse, what we hear differs. My hearing when young was far extended compared to most men. My wife is hyper sensitive to distortion in the 4K region where I can bust get a hint of what she is hearing. Others are accustomed to more non-linear response. You can bet BB King did not have a subwoofer.
If you can't here a difference, then it does not matter. The specs won't mean a thing. So listen and compare for yourself. I bowered over a dozen power amps before I bought the wrong one. ( Bought a B&K, very good but should have paid twice for an Aragon. )
I have a Chinese cheap BB DAC. Compared it to several very high end ones. I could not hear a difference for over 100 times the price. I am not positive I could hear a difference between my DAC and my Rotel CD. Back in the day, there was a slight difference between BB and Wolfson. All of them are better now.
The one place where specs USED to help was in tuners. Pretty much OBE, and the ones left are barely so-so, so not much to learn. Find an old top line Kenwood and rebuild it.
Preamps should all be better than the source. Modern OP-Amps are as good as the best discrete used to be. Some differences in phono stages, but I challenge you to hear a real difference between an old Hafler and a JC-1 as long as you select the correct input impedance. No disrespect to John, as the JC-1 may be the best ever built, just the margins are so slight, how many times a record has been played is more significant.
On the low end, never went wrong with Denon. Up one step, Rotel and NAD usually did not disappoint. Move to high end and half is not as good as a cheap Denon, the rest can be superb. Never disappointed with Parasound. Had a friend who was a professional audio engineer and he swore by Emotiva. What is clear, is you get more when paying above low end, but once into high end, price and quality have little to do with each other. Spent some time with a Bryston. Solid. Tank. Could hear no difference with my Parasound for a fraction of the price. Specs? Hafler could demonstrate they had virtually no distortion, yet I could clearly hear the effect of DP compensation vs when I converted one to TMC. Can I measure the difference? No. I know what the difference is and why, but to measure it would cost more than my house.
Here is another way to look at a system. Fix the first 90% of what is wrong. Then reassess and fix the first 90% of the remaining 10%. Continue. Pretty soon you reach diminishing returns. This is an engineering approach and is no help if the goal is to have the biggest stack of great reviews to brag to your friends. Even when I was young enough to care, I was too poor so it did not matter.
The weakest part in the chain is still the speakers. Second the room. Then the source material. We spend too much time fretting details on the little bits leaving the biggest problems on the table. But let's face it, a new amp is much sexier than a sheet of Owens Corning 705.
waxx makes a great point. What is available. When I lived in Boulder Colorado, it was pretty good. Even in the Md./Va./DC area, I could not find what I wanted to hear. Moving to the Piedmont of NC, far less. They think Best Buy is a high end store.
There aren't any and there has been little-to-none since the end of the stereo boom in the 70s. Why would someone that genuinely possesses the relevant expertise want to do it given they will have had to spend years of study and experience to acquire the relevant technical knowledge and understanding? The pay for home audio equipment reviews is well below what someone with genuine expertise would command. The resourcing in terms of time and equipment required to perform a proper review is unlikely to be made available and the resulting poor standards would likely harm an experts reputation and future work prospects. There is little to interest a genuine technical expert apart from financial remuneration in reviewing commodity hardware that comfortably exceeds what is required to perform it's technical function. DACs and amplifiers largely sit in this category.
It is probably safe to say that pretty much all reviews of home audio equipment today are performed by people that lack the relevant technical expertise and/or have interests that conflict with full and open technical reviews. This isn't too bad in practise because they are almost all free to access and if the reader acquires relevant technical knowledge to interpret what is presented there is some useful information. As consumers we may no longer be able to pay a modest sum to access reliable full technical reviews about home audio equipment but we can access partial unreliable information for free. So get educated and enjoy.
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One has to realize that audio equipment has evolved, as well as how we interact with it. Digital processing has gained a significant foothold in audio equipment. The "reviewers" of yesterday would be ill equipped to navigate the inner workings of a lot of this gear.
One of the sites I've mentioned look at the gear from this perspective, debunking "claims" and providing a level field, leaving the esoteric like or dislike up to the reader.
One of the sites I've mentioned look at the gear from this perspective, debunking "claims" and providing a level field, leaving the esoteric like or dislike up to the reader.
I think the single most useful site for multi-way speakers is John Krutke's site: Zaph|Audio
Here you will be able to study an objective process of designing a multiway speaker:
-Evaluating raw drivers by performing measurements on a reference measurement baffle
-Selecting appropriate drivers which will integrate well together and represent value for money, then designing the crossover based on measurements from the actual constructed speaker/cabinet.
The information is not presented as a tutorial so there is somewhat of a steep learning curve to find what he has published useful. You will have to do your own research into software and measurement tools which are still available and relevant today. However, by studying the measurements and reading his worded evaluation of each driver you can learn how to read measurement data. By studying his multi-way designs you can learn the intricacies of crossover design and pick up some neat shortcuts to use in your own designs.
Many of the drivers John tested are still relevant today, however he stopped publishing to the site almost a decade ago. Some more recent measurements are available here:
Measurements and compare | HiFiCompass
I also have some measurements on my own site:
Timothy Feleppa's Pages: Speaker Measurements - Midrange/Fullrange Speakers 4" and smaller
Timothy Feleppa's Pages: Speaker Measurements - Woofers 5" to 8"
Without hating on what Troels Gravesen has published, I would caution that a lot of his designs seem to be based on subjective evaluation, measuring only the frequency response and little consideration seems to be given to non-linear (harmonic, intermodulation) distortion in his designs. While subjective evaluation of a constructed multi-way speaker is certainly valid to ensure that technical tradeoffs (such as minimization of the number of components in a crossover design) result in a speaker which actually sounds pleasing, I think that you're doing yourself an injustice if you don't consider all possible measurements in the selection of drivers before you bother purchasing drivers, building an enclosure and designing the crossover. The choice of drivers which are integrated together and the choices of crossover frequencies in some of his designs become somewhat misguided if you have seen non-linear distortion data for the drivers he uses.
There is also a conflict of interest as he sells designs and products under the "Jantzen Audio" brand and has commerical relationships with driver manufacturers such as SEAS, which he uses extensively in his designs. Particularly I would say that 'boutique' crossover components such as ultra expensive capacitors give no objective improvement to a speaker. The point of negligible gains is reached with components costing 10x less than he spruiks on his site, imo.
Here you will be able to study an objective process of designing a multiway speaker:
-Evaluating raw drivers by performing measurements on a reference measurement baffle
-Selecting appropriate drivers which will integrate well together and represent value for money, then designing the crossover based on measurements from the actual constructed speaker/cabinet.
The information is not presented as a tutorial so there is somewhat of a steep learning curve to find what he has published useful. You will have to do your own research into software and measurement tools which are still available and relevant today. However, by studying the measurements and reading his worded evaluation of each driver you can learn how to read measurement data. By studying his multi-way designs you can learn the intricacies of crossover design and pick up some neat shortcuts to use in your own designs.
Many of the drivers John tested are still relevant today, however he stopped publishing to the site almost a decade ago. Some more recent measurements are available here:
Measurements and compare | HiFiCompass
I also have some measurements on my own site:
Timothy Feleppa's Pages: Speaker Measurements - Midrange/Fullrange Speakers 4" and smaller
Timothy Feleppa's Pages: Speaker Measurements - Woofers 5" to 8"
Without hating on what Troels Gravesen has published, I would caution that a lot of his designs seem to be based on subjective evaluation, measuring only the frequency response and little consideration seems to be given to non-linear (harmonic, intermodulation) distortion in his designs. While subjective evaluation of a constructed multi-way speaker is certainly valid to ensure that technical tradeoffs (such as minimization of the number of components in a crossover design) result in a speaker which actually sounds pleasing, I think that you're doing yourself an injustice if you don't consider all possible measurements in the selection of drivers before you bother purchasing drivers, building an enclosure and designing the crossover. The choice of drivers which are integrated together and the choices of crossover frequencies in some of his designs become somewhat misguided if you have seen non-linear distortion data for the drivers he uses.
There is also a conflict of interest as he sells designs and products under the "Jantzen Audio" brand and has commerical relationships with driver manufacturers such as SEAS, which he uses extensively in his designs. Particularly I would say that 'boutique' crossover components such as ultra expensive capacitors give no objective improvement to a speaker. The point of negligible gains is reached with components costing 10x less than he spruiks on his site, imo.
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The content isn't exactly new, but still lots of info that is useful and accurate to this day. The information includes unique approaches that few, if any, others have attempted and so you may find insights here that you won't anywhere else.
Art Ludwig's Sound Page
Art Ludwig's Sound Page
