Ohh, but the TV industry would beg to differ! 😀
(..well not truly bad, as few new TV's are actually bad.)
..people like over-saturated colors, brightness you can use to land an airplane at night, contrast levels to obtain that classic 8-bit look, etc.. 😱
Show them a properly calibrated TV and it doesn't get much attention.
Yes, that's a big system. I have that syndrome of wanting a small system that sound like a big system. It is possible but due to trial and error, hard to reproduce with different set of drivers and enclosures.
Sounds like you feel guilty. Yes, active electronics reduce transparency but in a three-way the passive crossover for the bass driver (along with its not-in-phase interaction with mid-woofer) is a big burden for small amplifiers (especially class B) to produce proper "sonic", dynamics or details. So when very low frequency is available, its a trade-off I would take too.
I don't remember why I mentioned that. I think it was in relation with small speakers. More from empirical experience than theory. A woofer requires huge current from certain bass passage. Class-A amps can produce that. Most class B amps, even if we overrate the power supply, the difference is not always audible...
But there is big power amplifiers that can instantly deliver big current? That's another issue with bass performance imho. Which is, high woofer damping is not always better sound-wise. Why? Because when we hear a percussion/drum, for good sound the stick/pedal should quickly bounce back. This effect is often lost with too much transconductance of bipolar or too high a damping factor. And small/light woofer cones suffer more than big woofers.
I believe that for certain load of passive crossover and woofer there should be an optimum damping or output impedance in an amplifier.
Pick the Hiraga 30W (Class-A). The damping is low but listen to the bass, especially the fatigue-related distortion. Different with most people, I prefer the class-A amp to handle the woofer (because of this effect) and normal class AB amp to handle mid-high because the distortion of most class-A amps change the tone such that sounds become so unnatural (especially with bipolar output like the Hiraga).
That Klippel Test is for sissies 😀 It is there for "marketing" purposes.
If it were serious, there should be a test level where only a few (or even none) people can pass, which is the reflection of actual situation where most people are struggling just to understand that small differences can be audible.
..people like over-saturated colors, brightness you can use to land an airplane at night, contrast levels to obtain that classic 8-bit look, etc.. 😱
Show them a properly calibrated TV and it doesn't get much attention.
Markbakks remark:
"Let’s face it. Most audiophile sets are far from optimal. So there always remains room for upgrades."
These made me realize the difference between hifi and pro audio market. It would be poor business try to sell either products for the other market, only very few are interested. For example directivity for hifi market is not very sexy term, but for pro audio it is one of the most important. Hifi market will always contain mixed bunch of very different offerings since the clients are emotional. Pro audio (thinking about live sound) market is more about technical performance per currency unit. Studio folks are interestingly in the middle ground, there is interest for technical performance and it is for personal use so kind of emotional as well.
This kind of thinking from the business perspective would yield following conclusion, for example: when there is technical performance in a product in the Hifi market, it must be very expensive since they won't sell many per year?🙂 Or, there is no market for good sounding Hifi, just for different sounding Hifi. 😀 Another, one can find any level of performance for reasonable amount of money just by looking around and over the market segments, so don't trap your self people!😉
Last edited:
Did you do it yourself ? If so, which one exactly and how did you score ? In that case are you sure you reached the lowest score offered by the test itself ? After finishing you can see a histogram, showing the statistical distribution of the scores and where you are within that range. And there are onbly very few that reach -48 dB.
Regards
Charles
You got my point. But there is interaction between the two. And 'belief' plays a role in pro audio too.
I conclude further a discussion about the quality of each of our hearings is as valid as discussing merits of the sets we listen to. But some seem reluctant to do so.
From what John Ego wrote I assume that he did not or that if he tried he failed very early on.
Probably best if I ignore him from now on as he doesn't really seem to know what he is talking about.
That's true on an individual basis and people may be reluctant for all sorts of reasons, more interesting I think are studies into thresholds of audibility because they might explain the mechanisms for some of the more dubious things that people say they can hear.
I have tried a lot (including that Klippel test). It's not a "few" people actually. Cos it's too easy (I'm sorry).
Sorry, if I offend you or anything. I didn't mean something like that. I was just tired every time in this forum I hear/read people accused others of bad things simply because he couldn't understand why he couldn't hear what few others could.
It's like thinking that other people's IQs must be as low as his.
While I am always on the left side of the more or less Gaussian distribution in this test there are others with much better hearing or better equipment (or the combination of both) than me. When I repeat the test I can even see that my scores stray quite a lot, depending on my actual mood, listening level, equipment used, etc.
But it is not a test intended to fail or pass like a driver's test etc so why are you talking about "too easy" ?
Maybe you can share a screenshot of your score.
Regards
Charles
P.S.: There are distortion levels that I can detect in A B testing that would still not be disturbing at all for normal music listening.
But it is not a test intended to fail or pass like a driver's test etc so why are you talking about "too easy" ?
Maybe you can share a screenshot of your score.
Regards
Charles
P.S.: There are distortion levels that I can detect in A B testing that would still not be disturbing at all for normal music listening.
Hi Charles
... And I am precisely in the mid section of the gauss. And therefore ON TOP OF ALL ... 😀 äxbääx !
No kidding: I think these kind of tests like the klippel one are only suited for persons who are able to widstand a certain amount of frustration.
I greatly appreciated your idea of slowly degrading material and then resetting to a standard level. Our brain's dicrimination is better if big delta occurs over a short time (=crisis or wow-effect) than small delta's over a long period (=customization).
And here are even situations when things (e.g. also midranges) get better and better and better all the time without having to fiddle anything for a change. Naturally. For free and for sure:
Shepard-Risset Glissando - YouTube
... And I am precisely in the mid section of the gauss. And therefore ON TOP OF ALL ... 😀 äxbääx !
No kidding: I think these kind of tests like the klippel one are only suited for persons who are able to widstand a certain amount of frustration.
I greatly appreciated your idea of slowly degrading material and then resetting to a standard level. Our brain's dicrimination is better if big delta occurs over a short time (=crisis or wow-effect) than small delta's over a long period (=customization).
And here are even situations when things (e.g. also midranges) get better and better and better all the time without having to fiddle anything for a change. Naturally. For free and for sure:
Shepard-Risset Glissando - YouTube
Last edited:
I wanted a credible test that will prove the audibility of small differences in audio reproduction. Well, no, I don't need it anymore, I don't care. I don't need to prove anything.
And why is that? BTW, isn't it cool if I said that this and that amplifier produce unnatural sound and when people disagree I show them my certificate from Klippel? 😀 But the Klippel Test result won't be sufficient because it's too easy. I will still be seen as an idiot having no credibility. It takes courage for someone in this thread to say that copper cable sounds different from silver cable. I would never claim something like that ever 😀
When we mention distortion, is it that distortion as in THD? Not for me. Because many anomalies are not captured sufficiently in THD. Even in THD, 2nd order supposed to have different weight than 4th order.
I have an acquired taste about natural midrange frequency sound. I was exposed to this in the last 2 or 3 years. It was not important before because I didn't know. Sound we hear comes out of the speaker after passing the amplifier, source and recording itself. Garbage in garbage out. We don't know if the amp is capable if the speaker is not, vice versa.
Us, extraterrestrials have not fully invaded your planet yet because of this thread, the best millennium entertainment so far. We just would like to know where to find the device you human beings call an "ear" and if provided with after selling services ?
True, prices on HiFi equipment are low volume which requires a high price to be viable as a business. More than double that high price amount just for distributor/retailer costs. 😱
For most (HiFi) it's a matter of "aesthetic" priority: Dynamic contrast? Image quality? Soundstage? Freq. linearity? Physical looks? etc.. and what is the "weighting" for each?
Notably, that priority often changes for each individual over their lifetime.
As a loudspeaker DIY'er that's true at the component level and in context with cabinet structure, and to a lesser extent room structure.
This makes "world's best midrange" a "Holy Grail" (or "Philospher's Stone") seeking endeavor.
"Optimal" for one person is typically quite different than "optimal" for another, and it's often a "moving target" over-time just for that one designer, particularly in regards to different projects (loudspeaker designs).
In our relative wealth tweaking saves us from boredom. And we find every excuse, lame or not. Try and fail over and over again. I guess we could call it evolution.
Time to get back on topic? To me the best sounding midrange is that which doesn't distort too much in and near it's passband (relatively easy to accomplish) and integrates good with the other ranges. Think of level, acoustic summing and dispersion. So context might be not everything, but I can't leave it out of the equation.
Time to get back on topic? To me the best sounding midrange is that which doesn't distort too much in and near it's passband (relatively easy to accomplish) and integrates good with the other ranges. Think of level, acoustic summing and dispersion. So context might be not everything, but I can't leave it out of the equation.
yep using pentodo in pushpull with feedback for a lot of power is a non sense ....
Hi Simon
Didn't want to sound snobbish. There are those who who reach better scores than me. The distortion at the "top of Gauss" is already at a level that is not really disturbing. At that level one would probably not even notice if just being presented the distorted version. It would probably be different with spectrally more dense material.
Regards
Charles
