Hifi, why bother?

[Amie]

....I no longer see audiophiles as "phools" - I honestly feel that some/many of them are victims. But if it wasn't audio, there's no shortage of other industries out there willing to take their money. Funny old world...

Hi All.

I see the ethics of catering to audiophool desires are being broached, can those of us who know that these people are being manipulated honestly say that, if for instance, we had in our hand, say a yellow print, jubilee, Mullard ECC82, and a Phool waved a £50 note under our nose for it, we would not snatch the cash?

Now come on

Thanks,
Amie.

[Craig]

....... especially if it's a passive crossover (active is cheating - too easy!).

Since amplification is now so easy and cheap I don't understand why passive crossovers should still be used in new designs. Put the DAC and amps in the speakers and feed them with AES digital audio. (I do understand why you might not always want to do this and there are certainly cases where you can't)

Meridian have been doing that for decades. Their current range are all of the form DSPxxxx, take an RJ45 digital input, DSP based crossover and driver EQ, DAC and and multiple power amps (I suspect class D) all integrated into the enclosure.

https://www.meridian-audio.com/products/...dspeakers/

Cheapest one is £3,300 and the most expensive £48,000+

Craig

[Mark Hennessy]

Balanced audio connections over a half-metre distance are utterly pointless in most scenarios.

Don't you mean under a half-metre distance.... ?

Andy

Yes, that was badly worded - I meant "over" as in a bridge over a river - so when carrying audio over a half-meter distance, which is different to "carrying audio distances over half a metre". The context was clear though, which should have helped to clear up the ambiguity: domestic audio interconnections, such as connecting a CD player to an adjacent amplifier. But selectively quoted, it is unclear, I agree.

Sorry for any confusion, but at least it's reassuring that someone was reading what I wrote.

[Mike Watterson]

Class D can now be better than Class AB or Class B for audio. Class A is relatively easy
If money is no object then:
Physical pot to set input gain, driven by a motor for remote control. (I have a JVC HiFi with such a nice volume control, mute is pretty to watch)
Sample at 192 kHz to reduce complexity and improve impulse response of the front end anti-aliasing filter.
An eInk display for the graphic equaliser response curve to suit room/speaker combo. Set by knobs / touch as desired. Stays as is with no power. Used also to input curves for speakers.
Four class D amps per channel (up to 12 channels) for up to 4 speakers per enclosure.
Input room dimensions, speaker locations and quantity etc.
An option to measure each speaker / enclosure using a reference microphone at the listening position.
Input: Mono, Stereo, Binaural, all the types of four channel and five channel by analogue line level. Phono inputs for crystal, cerammic, moving coil, moving iron etc. Tape head inputs. Optical & RCA & HDMI loop/in for digital audio. WiFi and BlueTooth RF in. FM Tuner in because it's free in the WiFi/BT chip.
Output: separate mono / stereo / binaural for headphones as well as main output.
DSP by an FPGA or even an ARM can manage Audio. All the usual buttons and knobs feed the DSP for Bass, Treble, Loudness modes, rumble, hum notches. But also crack and scratch filters for discs.
Standalone: Add your own speakers, optionally with crossovers removed.

Edit:
The PSU, box, displays and knobs for a decent power class D amp with DSP might cost more than the ADC, DSP and amps!

[Mark Hennessy]

....I no longer see audiophiles as "phools" - I honestly feel that some/many of them are victims. But if it wasn't audio, there's no shortage of other industries out there willing to take their money. Funny old world...

Hi All.

I see the ethics of catering to audiophool desires are being broached, can those of us who know that these people are being manipulated honestly say that, if for instance, we had in our hand, say a yellow print, jubilee, Mullard ECC82, and a Phool waved a £50 note under our nose for it, we would not snatch the cash?

Now come on

Thanks,
Amie.

I absolutely would not do that. Never. No way.

Perhaps that's stupid of me, but I could not and would not rip off anyone, and especially not an audiophile. I'd rather be poor but be able to sleep at night. Which is why I work in professional audio rather than hi-fi.

As a general point to all, I've never liked the term "audiophile", but I accept it is the common-usage term for them. But I dislike the pejorative versions like "audiophools" or "phools" even more. So let's drop those, please. Mocking them only serves to alienate us engineers even further, which makes it easier for the people selling the wacky $$$ stuff that is the real problem in all this.

Mark

[Amie]

Hi.

I absolutely would not do that. Never. No way.

Point taken regards pejorative terms Mark, sorry

But, I'm afraid I can't see my example as being any different to selling a rare stamp, or, painting, or motorcar. It's just human nature in the extreme case, the positional good, the value of something that no one else, (or few others), have, owning the "best".

No one will take any notice of a stupid girl, but, have you tried to explain to one of these "audio enthusiasts" why they are wrong, and not be regarded as one of the ignorant unwashed?

What do I know?

Thanks,
Amie.

[valvekits]

I have friends who take their hi-fi seriously and really just want to get the best performance out of their system. Swapping and changing various pieces of their gear to try and obtain that objective seems perfectly natural to me.
The fact that they are sometimes easily exploited by marketing hype, might be due to the fact that they have a little bit of knowledge, but without the same reasoning that we (with our experience) are able to apply.



Eddie

[Kalee20]

Hi All.

I see the ethics of catering to audiophool desires are being broached, can those of us who know that these people are being manipulated honestly say that, if for instance, we had in our hand, say a yellow print, jubilee, Mullard ECC82, and a Phool waved a £50 note under our nose for it, we would not snatch the cash?

Now come on

Thanks,
Amie.

I absolutely would not do that. Never. No way.

Perhaps that's stupid of me, but I could not and would not rip off anyone, and especially not an audiophile. I'd rather be poor but be able to sleep at night. Which is why I work in professional audio rather than hi-fi.

The hi-fi experience, though, is more than just the sound, it's the visual appeal. And the intangible.

So, I'd be happy to sell good, tested, yellow-print, ECC82's, 83's, etc for at the market rate. Granted it's ephemeral, but something is worth what people are prepared to pay.

Would you, Mark, similarly consider it unethical to sell a good-but-nondescript ECC82 'pull' for £5 on the basis that the buyer could get a new NE5534 for under £1?

And a few years ago, a Series 1Land-River was auctioned at a 6-figure sum. Why? It happened to be Winston Churchill's old one.

How emphemeral is that? But, it's how the market works.

Good thread, by the way!

[Craig]

Class D can now be better than Class AB or Class B for audio. Class A is relatively easy

All depends. They Hypex NCORE are a superb class D product with stunning specifications. They are fairly cheap at Euro275 each, and will push out 400W into 4 ohms. The exceptionally low distortion residual is flat with frequency, and lacks the rising distortion at higher audio frequencies that class B does (and class A too).

The only way that you can pull that sort of trick with a conventional power amp is to use feedforward error correction. Difficult to do, and keep an amp stable and not oscillate at MHz. There are only a few that manage sub ppm distortion across all audio frequencies this way - and not within orders of magnitude of the cost of an NCORE.

There is however an interesting topology however here https://neurochrome.com/products/modulus-686 that gives the same sort of performance as the NCORE at around the same price, using chip power amps (LM3886), but with a mildly rising distortion above 5kHz.

Craig

[Mark Hennessy]

So, I'd be happy to sell good, tested, yellow-print, ECC82's, 83's, etc for at the market rate. Granted it's ephemeral, but something is worth what people are prepared to pay.

So are you saying that Amie's example ECC82 actually has a market value of £50?

If so, then that's different. I was assuming, given the context, that the value of £50 was massively inflated, which is why I said I wouldn't rip anyone off. If, however, £50 was the rough market value, then I don't understand why the question was posed - again, given the context.

I think we're talking about 2 distinct things. I was thinking about this last night, and tried to compose a reply, but it was late and I didn't think I was explaining myself very well, so gave up! I'm not sure I'll do any better now, but anyway...

So, with the example of the ECC82, and the subsequent mentions of stamps, paintings, cars, and now a Land Rover, it's clear that Amie and you are discussing second-hand goods, which are worth what people are prepared to pay for them. Obviously, we all understand that...

However, in this thread, I'm talking about items of "Hi-fi" that are available brand new, today.

Quotes because the stuff we're talking about are quite far away from any definition of hi-fi that I'm aware of. Remember, what started this was Andy's description of his enjoyment of euphonic distortion. For people who like that sort of thing, there are no shortage of extremely expensive amplifiers that provide just that.

Which gets into the "esoteric" end of the hi-fi scene. Where you pay more for less performance. And it works because people like distortion.

Here's the crux of the matter: people who buy these expensive low-powered, highly distorting valve amplifiers will argue until they are blue in the face that these amplifiers are much more realistic than "boring" solid state amplifiers. But how can they be? We, as engineers, understand that a half-decent solid state amplifier neither adds nor takes away from the signal, but the valve amplifier is adding colouration, with its high distortion and non-flat frequency response. So the only conclusion is that these people prefer to hear a rose-tinted version of the performance, rather than what the artist intended. Which ain't hi-fi by any definition that I'm aware of. But it is personal preference, which is fair enough.

But are these people getting ripped off? In my mind, that depends entirely on the marketing.

If the manufacturer says "look, this amplifier has an absolutely lousy technical performance, but as luck would have it, all the deficiencies happen to add a certain something to the sound which we really like, and think you will too", then you really can't argue with that. This is completely honest selling in my book.

Of course, that never happens. We all know that the manufacturers will promise the earth and all its riches, and that's what the proud new owners will believe they have bought into. Having spent all that money, how can they be hearing anything else? There are all sorts of subtle tricks going on here, and things like confirmation bias kick in. All very powerful.

It's hard to explain all this stuff in a simple forum post - one day I'll write a full length article about it for my website, though I doubt it will win me many friends.

Suffice to say, when I started hanging out with people in the hi-fi industry, I expected that I would learn everything there is to learn about designing equipment. But mostly, that has not been the case (there is one notable exception who I won't name here). What I have learnt most about though - and this surprised me more than you can imagine - is marketing. In most cases, the product is almost an after-thought, provided it's basically OK. I quote one company owner directly: reasonable products and a brilliant understanding of the market.

And he's right. Which is really depressing for most engineers, because selling is not in our nature. If a potential customer at a show asks us to tell them about our latest amplifier, we'd say something along the lines of "Yeah, it's OK, but I didn't have enough time to finish optimising this part of the circuit, and I wanted to use a bigger heat sink and mains transformer, and the chassis design was compromised because I wanted to use aluminium rather than steel". Engineers just want to do the best job possible, and the dirty business of actually shifting the product is someone else's problem. It's not unusual for there to be a healthy disdain of sales staff among engineers, and the feeling is usually mutual - though in my experience this is mostly in larger organisations; in smaller companies, the engineers realise that there's no point coming up with the best design in the world if there's no-one to sell it. And, let's face it, a good sales person can sell almost anything. You have to respect what they do, even if you don't understand it.

Of course, much as all this might be obvious enough, I've found that it is magnified in the hi-fi industry particularly. Perhaps because it is undeniably a shrinking market, and is especially difficult for the smaller companies who don't have the resources to design their own circuitry (and write code) for things like Bluetooth and wi-fi streaming - which might seem pretty passé in this day and age because of the ubiquity of products doing it, but in reality there's a relatively small number of companies doing the work and selling the hardware and IP to smaller companies. It's no different to buying a CD mechanism and chipset from Sony or Philips, because it would be madness for a small or medium sized company to design their own from scratch. But if you're buying in these modules, there are many risks!

Anyway, I've digressed a lot - as I say, it's complicated to explain - though simple enough once you understand it. I've not touched on pricing structures, but suffice to say, I was horrified at how much the retailers and distributors take. The profit the manufacturer gets really is tiny - I won't discuss it in public - but given that, I can well understand the importance of marketing over everything else. Bear in mind the relatively small quantities involved - hi-fi is a luxury, discretionary purchase, and these days the market is a tiny fraction of what it once was. You can't run a business on the sorts of slim margins that the mass-market manufacturers can.

Against that backdrop, it's no wonder that there are so many companies selling over-priced cables and accessories - margins are much better for those. Who cares that the benefits are marginal at best - just set the marketing machine into motion. Careful to suggest rather than make any actual claims - we don't want the ASA involved - but the power of suggestion is more than good enough!

Obviously there are many other industries selling equally dubious products, with marketing that relies on insecurity and bad science, but I think audio is one of the worst. I don't know what the answer is, but perhaps Darwin will win in the end - after all, the companies and enthusiasts on the "fringes" of audio are merely scaring potential new customers away. It's a shame, because the people who would have had a half-decent midi system back in the '80s or '90s now listen to tiny plastic Bluetooth speakers, often in mono, because that's all that's in the shops. Luckily, John Lewis still offer a few mini-systems from Panasonic and Denon, along with some good stuff from Ruark, who saw the writing on the wall and moved away from hi-fi into the "lifestyle" market, and are doing good stuff with it. I remember when John Lewis used to sell hi-fi "separates" - when they were mainstream. Now, you have to seek our an independent retailer or Richer Sounds - which most people won't do, and those that might will get the woo-woo cable hard-sell once they've chosen the main components, which will put at least some of them off - I've know many "normal" people who abandoned their system purchases at that point. It's a shame... But then, car dealers also push things like gap insurance and paint protection and electrical stores do the same with extended warranties - again, because margins on the main item (be it the hifi components, the vehicle, the washing machine) are so tight these days. It'll be interesting to see how the retail market responds to the current difficulties...

Well done to anyone who read all of that. Sorry it was a bit of a ramble...

The hi-fi experience, though, is more than just the sound, it's the visual appeal. And the intangible.

As I keep saying, we don't just listen with our ears