Hifi, why bother?

[ppppenguin]

Having read at least most of Mark's version of "War and Peace" it makes me wonder about the engineers who design some of these iffy amplifiers etc. Presumably they are designed by some sort of engineers though one can have doubts. If so are they "true believers" who design like that because genuinely believe in it. Or bad engineers who don't know any better. Or cynical engineers who know full well they are doing something iffy but do it anyway because it pays their salary.

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

"Drink to me only with thine eyes"....

...and you'll stay sober

[BusyBee]

Well after reading through things here and noticing more and more complex approaches to audio reproduction I am still of the opinion on keeping things simple. I note Jeffrey's post "As I keep saying, we don't just listen with our ears " and agree.

As an engineer examining the system I do notice that one thing requires addressing, although has been hinted at throughout: Assessment of the physical and mental capabilities of the user / listener. A simple point would be that all peoples' hearing is different. How can any electronic system be designed for correctness without addressing and assessing these differences individually; Noting here that simple tone controls or even the usual equalizers will not be sufficient. Like with hearing aids individual assessment would really be required. Perhaps still out of reach for commercial companies.

Covering Amie's point about the expensive ECC82. Yes it is probably expensive at £50 but when compared to the latest super mega processing chip, also costing £50, that will be obsolete by September and, although mathematically technically superior, for most listeners is neither here nor there? Sales and peer pressure will win out. Companies will sell all manner of 'latest gadgets' with brief lifetimes knowing full well they can push even harder the next model. 'Audio phools', as they are often termed, are a point to extreme but there are a lot of casual / everyday users who are, in many ways, led on in exactly the same way by the latest technology and it's supposed, and often underutilised in practice, benefits.

I am not suggesting it at all but exemplifying the greater scope of the problem. To each his or her own. For me it's 'simple'. For others it's complex processing etc.

Tracy

[Diabolical Artificer]

I was surprised too Mike, an amplifier with 8% distortion should sound horrible, this was only a brief test though, maybe if you had to listen to such a setup for a good while with different types of music the outcome wouldn't be as good. I'll look into it further but suspect it'll go nowhere, interesting though.

"Personally, I find amplifiers pretty boring these days" Your a lot further on Mark though, I'm only just learning about all this stuff. I'd love to do some speaker design unfortunately I don't have a grand to drop on some nice drivers, that said I found this interesting - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKIye4RZ-5k

"Swapping and changing various pieces of their gear to try and obtain that objective seems perfectly natural to me." Guitarists do it too, searching for The Tone; blokes an things that make noise with knobs on. Shame we can't get our hands on explosives.

Andy.

[Mark Hennessy]

Having read at least most of Mark's version of "War and Peace"...

I know that's humour, but I will just make the general point that one of my pet hates is short posts on engineering forums. Especially unhelpful one-liners from the smart-arses - we went through an unhappy period on here where we got too many of those. Forums are supposed to be about sharing information and helping people, and that takes an investment of time on both sides. That's what separates us from social media.

I know there's a risk that longer posts won't be ready fully, but I'd rather err on the side of giving too much detail than not enough. People can easily skim the bits they know, but are much less likely to ask for clarification of the bits they don't.

...it makes me wonder about the engineers who design some of these iffy amplifiers etc. Presumably they are designed by some sort of engineers though one can have doubts. If so are they "true believers" who design like that because genuinely believe in it. Or bad engineers who don't know any better. Or cynical engineers who know full well they are doing something iffy but do it anyway because it pays their salary.

All of the above, in my experience.

The best designers realise that people like particular types of distortion and have developed the ability to design circuitry to produce it. They are equally able to design extremely low distortion amps - after all, that's easy - but they do what is asked of them.

There are also designers who know very little about electronics, but have had a bit of success with basic circuits (and good marketing). These are the sorts of designers who are likely to believe in magic, and will claim to be able to tell a resistor type and brand by listening to it. The ones I have met are completely sincere about this - they are enlightened. Dunning–Kruger in action.

And naturally there are plenty who sit somewhere in-between these extremes. But most of them are at the sane end of the spectrum and do good stuff happily behind the scenes. The ones you've heard of are the ones you need to be most careful about, as the cult of personality is powerful in the hi-fi world. Most designers choose to stay completely anonymous for that reason - and many companies realise that naming their designer potentially brings as many problems as benefits.

Of course, a lot of designers are freelance, so giving the client what they want is important, even if it goes against the grain. Depends on their personal situation, of course.

[Mark Hennessy]

Well after reading through things here and noticing more and more complex approaches to audio reproduction I am still of the opinion on keeping things simple. I note Jeffrey's post "As I keep saying, we don't just listen with our ears " and agree.

Umm, he was quoting me!

I'm not normally precious about this sort of thing, but I've been saying that for years, so claim it as mine, for what that's worth

As an engineer examining the system I do notice that one thing requires addressing, although has been hinted at throughout: Assessment of the physical and mental capabilities of the user / listener. A simple point would be that all peoples' hearing is different. How can any electronic system be designed for correctness without addressing and assessing these differences individually; Noting here that simple tone controls or even the usual equalizers will not be sufficient. Like with hearing aids individual assessment would really be required. Perhaps still out of reach for commercial companies.

This is a good point, but consider this: a hi-fi system should sound as realistic as possible.

So while we definitely do hear differently, our hearing system will be working much the same, relatively speaking, whether it's in front of a real instrument or a replayed version.

If you used a comprehensive equalisation system to return your hearing system to some sort of nominally flat condition, then your hi-fi would sound radically different to a live performance. Is that really a good idea? Probably not.

The place for detailed equalisation would be in a hearing aid. Modern ones are very comprehensive. Having done that, there's a much better chance that your hi-fi might sound like a live performance. But of course, that assumes one is needed.

All that said, a bit of gentle equalisation can be useful as our ears age - that's why I think it's a bad idea that bass and treble controls were removed from most hi-fi amplifiers back in the '80s.

Though it's not just our ears that are the problem. Speech on the TV is often terrible. Now, I know what those lapel microphones sound like because I use them at work, and I equalise them appropriately (I only have to walk next door into the studio to hear what the presenter sounds like). Whenever I watch the TV news, what I hear is a microphone with inadequate equalisation, so lacking in HF and having a bit of a midrange "honk". The reason for this, of course, is extreme pressure on budgets that mean a lack of time to worry about such subtleties - it's "good enough". But then, I have a pair of LS3/5As for watching TV - if I was using the speakers in the TV, that would be the least of my worries

Of course, one of the big problems with hi-fi enthusiasts is that they rarely listen to live music, so don't know what real instruments sound like. This lack of a point of reference certainly explains some of the more extreme speaker designs I've heard

Covering Amie's point about the expensive ECC82. Yes it is probably expensive at £50 but when compared to the latest super mega processing chip, also costing £50, that will be obsolete by September and, although mathematically technically superior, for most listeners is neither here nor there? Sales and peer pressure will win out. Companies will sell all manner of 'latest gadgets' with brief lifetimes knowing full well they can push even harder the next model. 'Audio phools', as they are often termed, are a point to extreme but there are a lot of casual / everyday users who are, in many ways, led on in exactly the same way by the latest technology and it's supposed, and often underutilised in practice, benefits.

I am not suggesting it at all but exemplifying the greater scope of the problem. To each his or her own. For me it's 'simple'. For others it's complex processing etc.

Tracy

I've been looking at the sold prices for Mullard ECC82, and there's a really wide range. I honestly wouldn't have expected to pay more than a fiver for one - hence my original response to that question - but some do go for much more. Like I said subsequently, if £50 was a realistic asking price, then I don't understand why the question was raised. So I'm not really sure what conclusions I should be drawing. No problem...

Yes, I agree that simple is best. But today, complicated is cheap.

We've been given one of those Google smart speakers. No, we're not using it

It uses a 2" drive unit, and it sounds surprisingly reasonable for that size. However, a more careful listen shows that there's a lot of DSP behind it - you can hear the multiband compression they're using to give the illusion of bass and power. But to the casual listener, it sounds reasonable enough.

The "simple" alternative would have been a bigger drive unit (and perhaps a tweeter, now that the diaphragm is larger), a bigger amplifier (hence bigger PSU), and a much larger enclosure. You could probably do away with all the audio processing, apart from some gentle EQ that would amount to a few Cs and Rs in the analogue domain. It's what I would do. But then, I'm not afraid of analogue electronics - unlike most graduates that I see today.

But of course, your product is now substantially more expensive, and less marketable because of the bigger size.

So in this example, "simple" is not "best". "Complicated" means "more sales". It's compelling, isn't it?

I'm not afraid of digital signal processing - I use digital sound desks all the time at work, and own one personally for doing live gigs. But I worry that DSP is over-used as a "sticking plaster" to fix problems that could be solved by spending the time and money where it counts. For example, a bad loudspeaker drive unit can be improved a lot by complicated equalisation, and at first glance it will sound quite reasonable. But you have to remember that peaks and troughs in the response of a drive unit are caused by resonances, and resonance implies energy storage. So even if you bung in a notch filter to tame a spike, it will still draw attention to itself, even though it appears to be completely flat on a frequency measurement plot. That's something you often need to do to PA speakers with horn tweeters, BTW. You can still see it when you do a waterfall plot, and you can usually hear it too.

Ultimately, signal processing is a tool. It can be used wisely, or not...

[Mark Hennessy]

"Personally, I find amplifiers pretty boring these days" Your a lot further on Mark though, I'm only just learning about all this stuff. I'd love to do some speaker design unfortunately I don't have a grand to drop on some nice drivers, that said I found this interesting - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKIye4RZ-5k

To be fair, you're doing stuff with valve amplifiers that I haven't. So I'd argue that you're further on than me in some respects

Regarding speakers, you don't need to spend big money on drive units. Like all aspects of hi-fi, more cash does not guarantee more performance - in fact some of the big name drive units are extremely over-priced for what you get.

I just play about with whatever cheap driver I have on hand. A while back, a friend gave me an 8" Eminence PA driver (thanks, Guy!), and I've had hours of fun with that. I chucked it in a spare cabinet along with a Vifa 1" soft dome tweeter (that was also given to me), and have spent ages playing around with the crossover design. I've learnt a lot in the process. Some iterations measured OK but sounded terrible, and vice versa. Finding out why is the major challenge, of course. I've no idea if I'll ever build "real" speakers based on these drivers - but I am tempted to buy another driver to make a compact PA for folk or acoustic stuff, or perhaps to build a pair of foldback speakers. I want to get the lathe out to experiment with waveguides for the tweeter, but woodwork is a bit tricky at home right now because I need to have a major clear-out.

The major barrier to speaker design was the measurements. Few of us have access to an anechoic chamber (although a garden and a ladder is surprisingly good, as we don't need a terribly low noise floor for most measurements). These days, free software is available, and measurement mics aren't expensive. I did invest in a Dayton Audio Omnimic system because it was reasonably priced (about the same as a mid-range Fluke DMM) and very simple - I did that to take a lot of the guesswork out of it, but I did also pick up a Behringer ECM8000 (about £30) some years previously and will experiment with getting that going with REW or similar.

Next on my to-do list is some 4" drive units that Mike gave me a few years back. As he likely has some more, I'll write up my results for the benefit of anyone who wishes to experiment with them. First impressions are really positive, and I have a few ideas for their use. Until I've measured their T-S parameters, I have no idea what sort of bass end they have, and whether they'll be best suited to a closed or sealed box, but I've been looking forward to this for ages now.

I tend to stick to small driver units because speakers take up a lot of space. And there's something quite rewarding about squeezing the best performance out of a small drive unit. I do know people who fill their cars with subwoofers (removing the rear seats in the process) and compete in competitions - now that is a seriously expensive hobby! Fortunately, we don't have the space here to think about trying anything like that.

[Amie]

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

Hello Mark.

That's the point. Value. Market value, not true value.

Someone somewhere has broadcast the idea that, (in the example I gave), the yellow print version of that valve from Mullard has some magical audio quality that makes them desirable.

So less well informed people will then want them in preference to other equally adequate components, creating a demand, inflating the price.

What my point was, are the owners of these items that are prepared to sell them the ones who are ripping of the gullible, not being the instigators of the claims?

.... Don't know why the question was raised?

Why, because you said that you believed that people were being ripped off, nobody makes them buy stuff, if they choose to believe the shampoo bottle science and are happy with it all the better. It doesn't matter if you believe it, as long as they do.

The only distinction between the one instance is that the vendors of the equipment you describe are defrauding by copyright, and the other instance the vendor is defrauding by omission. If the customer is happy with his purchase then all that's happened is someone is happy and someone makes a living. Whether we like it or not.

I can see how it would be cloying to you as an engineer when you've done your utmost to make something as near perfect, then someone then messes it up because they prefer it messed up. Just as a Chef must cringe when a restaurant customer asks for his steak well done and covered in ketchup!

All the best
Amie.

[Crackle]

Hi Mark
I cant remember if I mentioned this. One of the projects I used those 4 inch units with was to make a couple of ported bookshelf speakers 10.5 x 5 x 7 inches.
I once used them for a party we had on a concrete barge after a yacht race. I was driving them from a 50 + 50 watt Inkel amp at a little bit below full power, probably 30 to 40 watts, we could clearly be heard 400m away on the shore.
I was told the drive units were the same as used in the Wharfedale Modus Cube.

Mike

[Kalee20]

Several things come out of this thread.

It started with Diabolical Artificer saying he'd trialled several amplifier topologies, and found that after optimising, the better the spec, the more boring the sound. He preferred 8% distortion. And then went on to ask, Who needs hi-fi?

Mark H pointed out (post 3) that whatever the lousy amplifier did to make things sound nicer, it could in principle be done upstream in the studio process. And then, just use a low-distortion amplifier to drive the loudspeakers.

Then, we got onto what made things sound 'nice,' whether people would pay more for it, is DA enjoying something other than what the original artist intended, ethics of upping price for something of no technical merit (or possibly demerit), gullibility etc etc. However, looking at it from the design point of view, the trouble with setting out to produce an amplifier which would sound 'nice' to DA, is we just don't know how to write the spec!

Measuring frequency response, distortions, damping factor, is straightforward in principle. If our breadboard amplifier doesn't meet the target in one of these, it's down to finding out why, and then tackling it. We're likely to experience dead-ends and about-turns in the design process. But as engineers, we know what we're aiming for.

However, if we can't even write the requirement spec, the design cones to something not much better than having trained monkeys solder things together at random, we switch it on, and of those circuits which don't immediately start smoking, we feed a signal and see how it sounds. Given enough time, eventually, a circuit would be produced which sounds good to Andy. I'm not saying he was working anything like at random, but his surprise comes through, that the bad spec amplifier was the one he liked best. And that, to me, is most unsatisfactory, because who's to say whether we have reached the peak of 'niceness' or whether a tweak exists which can make it even better?

[Mark Hennessy]

(snipped, but so it's obvious which post I'm replying too)

Hello Mark.

Hi Amie,

I think I'm struggling with this. I'm worried that I might inadvertently offend you by missing the point you're making - I'm not doing so deliberately, I promise.

You raised the example of second-hand products, and with it the argument that something is worth what someone is prepared to pay for it. And you're absolutely right, of course. But, I wasn't discussing s/h.

Second hand products have generally been around for a long time, and lots of people have owned them and reviewed them, and so in general, people are able to make a more informed decision (ignoring the uncertainty about condition inherent in any s/h purchase). Of course, the original marketing could still be a factor to some degree, but much less so than when the product was new and less of a known quantity. Naturally, factors like age and scarcity all come into play here as well.

But for new hi-fi products - especially when they are relatively new to market - a potential customer essentially only has the marketing to rely on.

You might think that in addition you'd have magazine reviews (on-line and print), plus what people might say in the forums. Plus advice from your dealer...

But dealers and reviewers basically regurgitate the manufacturer's marketing material. Actually, it's quite surreal when you're reading a review and you spot one of your own phrases in there! And I've even had dealers use my phrases in conversation with me (no-one knows that I write this stuff!). It's both hilarious and scary. Either way, reviews and dealers are not the independent source of information you might hope for. And of course, people reviewing gear on hi-fi forums have generally bought the gear in question, so they're not going to say anything bad about it.

I hope that this explains that I'm making a distinction between new and s/h, and explains why. In the context of esoteric hi-fi, the consumer is in a uniquely difficult position. Less so when buying s/h, or perhaps a model that has been established for many, many years, but still, it's a murky world.

More generally, I don't know how much you've investigated the hi-fi scene, but it might be interesting to take a look at some of the stuff they put out there.

I went to a random dealer's website and looked at a few valve amplifiers - all costing serious 4 or 5 figure sums. I don't want to name any companies because this is a public forum, but here's some typical examples:

The --'s great strength is that's it's a very organic-sounding amp. Few amplifiers combine such resolution with such a self-effacing sound. Highs are sweet and beautifully layered, producing a shimmering treble few rivals get close to. The sheer quality of the -- makes itself felt when you go back to more conventional alternatives.

So, what does this claim? Absolutely nothing - there's no information at all contained in that extract. However, what does it suggest? Just look at all those audiophile buzzwords in there: "organic", "resolution", "layered", "shimmering". That's a decent buzz-word bingo score! Lots of people wish their systems were more organic, even if you can't describe what organic is meant to mean, let alone quantify it. As a designer, I have literally no idea how to make one of my designs any more or less organic. Or shimmering!

The remarkable output transformer (a design by audio legend Tim DeParavicini) delivers speed, sophistication, and above all the ability to reproduce your music like a live performance.

"Speed"? What's that then? Audiophiles love that word, along with "slam" and "timing". All completely unquantifiable and meaningless in an electronic device. "Sophistication"? And I wonder what it does to make the music sound live? Perhaps there are people shuffling about in their chairs behind you? It's all nonsense, but again, highly suggestive. Who doesn't want more sophistication in their music?

They mention Tim dP, who is a well-known and respected designer, and no criticism of him is intended by me. However, note the technique of naming a designer in the marketing material (remember what I said earlier about the cult of personality in hi-fi?). Curiously, the company making this amplifier have a very strong reputation already, so don't really need to name-drop...

There's an extract from a What Hi-Fi review on the same page:

in sonic attitude, it sounds as modern as valve amplifiers get. There's plenty of drive and energy – both qualities similar designs fail to deliver. Few valve integrated amps have punch, but this one does.

So, what exactly is this reviewer trying to say? "Modern"? I guess "drive and energy" refers to power output (25 watts per channel), but it's not clear if "similar designs" refers to other 25 watt amps. And "punch"? As for "sonic attitude", I've no idea what that means. You really have to admire these people - making this stuff up is not easy.

But note how they're basically saying what the manufacturer has said. "Modern" = "sophistication", "speed" and "live performance" = "drive and energy" and "punch". OK, they're not exact similes, but you hopefully see what I mean.

For some people only a large triode valve like the 805 can give the golden warm tone which is so pleasing, with its feeling of air and space and sense of realism.

"Golden"? Wow! "Air", "space" and "realism" are definitely helping us to rack up the buzz-word bingo points, but again, what do they mean in audio engineering terms?

So, 3 amplifiers, and lots of meaningless words and phrases that say nothing specifically, but they suggest so very much. It's borderline mis-selling - the closer to the borderline, the better - but not so close that the ASA can do anything. Given the non-technical nature of the intended audience, it's actually quite deceptive - they will totally believe that the designers are indeed able to design in sophistication, realism and layers, when in reality all that is impossible.

For the sake of balance, there are a fair few other amplifiers on the same website that don't make such claims, so this sort of behaviour is not compulsory. But it is widespread. I didn't make a special effort to find the "best" examples - they are just what I found, in the order I found them in.

If you want to be truly horrified, try some cable manufacturers. Again, without naming names:

---'s ---- interconnects use four conductors, made from pure copper, pure silver, or a combination of both. The improved design allows you to achieve greater bandwidth meaning that the soundstage is more open, the midrange more natural, bass is deeper and cleaner and the treble sweeter.

This is a line-level interconnect cable that goes in-between something like a CD player and an amplifier.

"Wider bandwidth" might be true, but even the cheapest, nastiest cable will be comfortably within 0.1dB at 20kHz. But while the high frequency response might be improved (for no practical benefit), note how that claim is stretched to the bass end as well. How can a wire improve the bass depth and cleanliness? Any wire will pass DC with no problem. And as for making the soundstage more "open", exactly how could this this claim be verified?

Cables in this range vary in price from £190 to £1,300 (rounded) for a half meter length. You can get 1m versions for about 60% more, meaning it's possible to pay £2,100 for one of these! Just to be clear, it is a piece of wire with a couple of phono plugs at each end...

Again, chosen at random, first example found. Not untypical, though... Here's a cheaper one - a bargain at only £99 for a 1m length:

The improvements mean that the --- carries more musical detail. Dynamics are better, instruments and voices sound more realistic and there is better definition and clarity. The --- will let you see further into and get more involved with the music you listen to. Right now cables need to be better than ever, there are very affordable turn tables and digital players that deliver music with real coherence.  The jump in performance over the past couple of years has been amazing, especially in relation to less expensive equipment. They need a new generation of cables, and those cables need to be able to carry a signal with the musical coherence that the new digital and analogue players are producing.

Draw your own conclusions!