Hifi, why bother?

[Mark Hennessy]

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

Hi Mike,

Yes, I remember that. I'm looking forward to finding out a bit more about them myself. As I say, I'll post my findings here.

While you mentioned they were used by Wharfedale, I don't think you mentioned a model before. That's really useful, as it might help me to find out a bit more about them. But my measurements will be my primary source in any designs I do.

Mark

[Amie]

Hi Mark.

I just picked up on your remarks about ethics and value.

Forget the valve, or second hand. Who is at fault in the following scenario.

The manufacturer of the dubious HiFi, the shop that sells it, (assuming that the customer isn't so stupid as to order without trying for themselves), or the customer for believing the hype.

My point once more is, as has been said, in the instance the customer likes the sound, and believes there is sufficient value they will buy. But I think that in most instances the value of non essential items is a positional good, where the actual functionality is of second importance.

Status rather than functionality is what these people are selling/buying.

AND, I do agree, the marketing copywriters do come up with some cringeworthy BS! Not a fact or real measurement in sight. It really should alert the buyer to the situation. If they believe all of that flowery language then they deserve all they get.

Thanks,
Amie.

[ppppenguin]

The examples that Mark gives, show that audiophilia is more akin to religion than engineering. If people are buying this stuff then they are willing to put serious amounts of money down in pursuit of their particular grails. In a previous post I wondered about the types of engineers who design this stuff. You also wonder about the people who market the kit. Are they also true believers, who actually believe what they write, or hucksters who want to extract large amounts of money from people who are then giving it willingly. This latter is akin to some of the less reputable religious groups, where the leaders enrich themsleves greatly.

The professionals who are recording and/or broadcasting all the sound are generally a sensible lot. They only have to go from the control room to the studio to hear the actual sound. Though in the case of some music there isn't really anythng that could be defined as original. The recording IS the original sound. Lesser deception is also common. Apparently the late Little Richard didn't play the piano on all his recordings, though we are led to believe he did.

I go to live classical concerts (used to go, when will we be able to do so again?) which provide a reference point. Though the sound isn't always good. At a Prom last year I was in a poor seat at the Albert Hall. The balance between cello soloist and orchestra was probably much better in the BBC broadcast than what I heard live.

I've also been to live concerts which have used amplification and where the audible experience was horrible. An example a few years ago was a Turkish folk band playing at the Maltings, Snape. In the first half the sound operator had the belief that louder is better. It was painfully awful. Half the audience walked out. Those of us who stayed for part 2 actually heard the band. Somebody must have had a word with the sound guy. In that acoustically efficient space only the smallest amount of amplification was needed to tweak the balance.

[Nick]

Its a market economy - I'm not at all sure why so many people get worked up about this - it's an individual's choice.

Personally, I'm an engineer, so I look a numbers as well as listen - if I hear a difference, I like to know why that is. But my ears are mine and mine alone; what I like or dislike will be very different to even my siblings, my children or indeed, anyone else. My decision rationale is, by definition, mine.

Many folk simply don't care - if it sounds good enough, they're happy...

...and for others, it's almost a lifestyle decision - the hardware is architectural - part of the design of their environment - the cost is secondary.

Who cares? If a dealer or designer can get someone to pay a lot of money for something that an engineer could match acoustically for a fraction of the sum, good luck to them. We can laugh about it, but at the end of the day, it matters not one jot.

[Refugee]

Jeffrey is right about the listening room acoustics.
Before buying new expensive gear I would do some testing.
Using a portable mono or stereo mixed to mono player place it at each proposed speaker location and walk around the room.
If the bass and treble splits and sounds like the directions it is coming from differ... Stop.
Spend the remainder of your money on acoustic panels.

[Kalee20]

I think after this post:

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

the thread got diverted onto the value of second-hand items. Which didn't seem to be the intention. Anyway, Mark took things a step forward which made Amie's £50 double-triodes appear trifling:

If you want to be truly horrified, try some cable manufacturers...


...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...

Either way, if it's what the punter wants, and is prepared to pay for it to enhance the hi-fi experience, then go for it!

Forget the valve, or second hand. Who is at fault in the following scenario.

The manufacturer of the dubious HiFi, the shop that sells it, (assuming that the customer isn't so stupid as to order without trying for themselves), or the customer for believing the hype.

My point once more is, as has been said, in the instance the customer likes the sound, and believes there is sufficient value they will buy.

Exactly. Engineers can have a quiet chuckle, maybe

But, DA's original post, Hi-fi, why bother? he's saying that his inferior amplifier sounds nicer to him.

There's something wrong somewhere: his 'better' amplifiers, designed on sound principles, don't give him as much pleasure as the simple, cruder amps. And I presume he's achieved happiness without spending £50 on gold-print valves, £2,100 for esoteric cables, or even 10p for a couple of negative-feedback resistors!



Moving on: his amplifiers aren't at fault: his measurements have confirmed that.

So, what he's actually criticising, is the original artist's work. That must be the case: his 'good' amplifiers have been proven to add or subtract nothing (we'll leave loudspeaker discussions for now, as the same applies and these were presumably a constant factor anyway).

[ppppenguin]

So, what he's actually criticising, is the original artist's work. That must be the case: his 'good' amplifiers have been proven to add or subtract nothing (we'll leave loudspeaker discussions for now, as the same applies and these were presumably a constant factor anyway).

This is a very inteersting point. I don't have hard evidence but I'm fairly sure that a lot of pop releases were (still are?) mixed to sound OK on cheap equipment. Dansettes and small portable radios back in the day. As a result they may not sound too good on high quality kit. It was, perhaps still is, common to have a par of small speakers at the mixing desk so the balancer can check his work on something closer to small domestic kit.

I'll repeat Eckersley's comment from c1930: "The wider you open the window the more the dirt flies in". While some of the first generation ADCs were a bit iffy, CD is an essentially transparent medium. What's on the studio master tape is what arrives at the DAC. Compare and contrast with LPs which have various measurable and obvious distortions. So an inferior recording might well be disguised by LP release but rendered horible on CD. Remastering for CD is commonplace. It can be done well or badly. Some of von Karajan's recordings can be a nightmare because he thought he knew the engineer's job better than the engineer himself.

I don't claim any particular expertise but some speakers seem to emphasise faults with the source, other speakers smooth over them. If you're making a recording or broadcast then you want the monitor speakers to show everything. The famous BBC LS3/5A are like that, though it's years since I've heard them. I have a pair of Quad ESL63s. I also listen to a fair number of 78s. I'm surprised (and pleased) at how little fuss these speakers make about the imperfections on 78s. They are audible but not shoved in your face.

[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.

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

Sorry Mark! I missed that. Well at least your thoughts are getting around and will influence people

[Mark Hennessy]

Lots of points here. Too many to respond to individually. I'll pick up on a couple:

Its a market economy - I'm not at all sure why so many people get worked up about this - it's an individual's choice.

A lot of people get worked up about football. Why? Because they love it.

So I get (slightly) worked up about the state of the hi-fi industry because I love hi-fi. So there! 

I've have repeatedly acknowledged in this thread that people are free to spend their money however they want. But I just wish there was a bit more honesty.

It's not so much the existing hi-fi devotees that I'm worrying about - they are already trapped in the "spend, dopamine hit, doubt, insecurity, dissatisfaction, spend..." cycle, and there's relatively little you can do for those.

Rather, I really wish hi-fi could become mass market again. I know that a lot of people would love better sound at home, but they see hi-fi as too expensive, too complicated, too niche. And you can see why. Hi-fi is basically a cult now. As an industry, hi-fi is killing itself. That is what's at the root of my frustration.

Even Richer Sounds - the last of the chains where you can still buy a reasonably priced hi-fi system from - spoils it by pushing woo-woo cables, which alienates customers (I know of people who walked out when the cable hard-sell started).

There's nothing there that I haven't already said, but it's a long thread and I've written far too much already. But this is the briefest way I can summarise why I'm so disappointed with the state of the industry that I once dreamt of working in.


PS: Amie, I think Nick's point is similar to what you're saying? Either way, I'm not ignoring your last post

This is a very inteersting point. I don't have hard evidence but I'm fairly sure that a lot of pop releases were (still are?) mixed to sound OK on cheap equipment. Dansettes and small portable radios back in the day. As a result they may not sound too good on high quality kit. It was, perhaps still is, common to have a par of small speakers at the mixing desk so the balancer can check his work on something closer to small domestic kit.

Without re-reading everything I've written, I'm fairly sure I've mentioned this already, or at least alluded to it. But it's possible I wrote it and deleted it - despite the length of my posts, they are seriously edited down by the time they appear.

Yes, a range of speakers will be available for the mix engineer, including the dreaded Auratones: https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/aur...sound-cube.

Some studios took it at stage further, and installed low power broadcast transmitters, complete with typical transmission chain equipment in common usage (Optimods, etc), so that artists could go and see how their mix sounded in their cars! Actually a very good idea, as they could tune across the band and instantly compare theirs to others (obviously "references" are commonly used used in the studio, but there's something special about hearing it in the car you drive every day). IIRC, this was discussed in an interview with the Bee Gees, who were talking about how they recorded "Tragedy" - it was an interesting programme, and if I can find a copy, I'll link to it.

So yeah, mixing for the target context is important.

I'll repeat Eckersley's comment from c1930: "The wider you open the window the more the dirt flies in". While some of the first generation ADCs were a bit iffy, CD is an essentially transparent medium. What's on the studio master tape is what arrives at the DAC. Compare and contrast with LPs which have various measurable and obvious distortions. So an inferior recording might well be disguised by LP release but rendered horible on CD. Remastering for CD is commonplace. It can be done well or badly. Some of von Karajan's recordings can be a nightmare because he thought he knew the engineer's job better than the engineer himself.

In the heyday of vinyl, good mastering engineers were really sought after - they did the seemingly impossibly job of making vinyl work well. They fully understood the limitations of the cutting lathe and the vinyl itself, and skilfully employed lots of signal processing to make the recording fit within that envelope. All quite separate from the studio mix (generally, the mastering engineer only had access to the finished stereo mix).

In theory, mastering - or at least the signal-altering part of mastering - is not required for CD - the stereo mix could go straight on the CD. But in practice, the mastering engineer will need to alter levels between tracks, or might need to gently EQ because the mix monitor speakers were bass-heavy or similar, or add a bit of compression and/or peak level limiting. The mix is just that - a mix. Good though it might be, it might not be absolutely "radio-ready".

That was all fine until the Loudness Wars came along, and the poor mastering engineers were forced to do absolutely horrible things to mixes. And those mixes might already have been bad if the studio engineer had similarly been "got at". And of course, most "remastered" releases are normally less good than the original, but are basically an opportunity to sell the back-catalogue again (good trick that, much cheaper than inventing a new delivery format, then having a ruinously expensive format war and a lot of unhappy consumers who backed the wrong horse). The Dynamic Range Database is a great resource for comparing original to remastered releases, and much more besides.

Yes, some early CDs were criticised for their sound quality. It's very hard to be sure if the problem was mastering or elsewhere - in reality, there was probably several causes. There's rumours of post-mastered (for vinyl) tapes being put straight onto CD because the studio mix couldn't be located, which might explain a thing or two. But it was a time of great change, both technically and artistically, and people were getting used to the clean, undistorted sound of digital, which is free from the restrictions of vinyl, so were pushing levels at HF (for example) because they could. Often, the vinyl mastering "tamed" the excesses of what came out of the studio.

As you might image, vinyl vs. digital is (still!) a massive point of contention in the hi-fi world. Unfortunately, it is just about impossible to convince these people that they sound different because of the different mastering. You can't do a genuine comparison of vinyl medium to the CD medium because different content is placed on each of these two formats. Now, if they refuse to understand/believe/accept such a simple argument, it's no wonder you can't convince them about the more detailed things that we've been discussing in this thread...

I don't claim any particular expertise but some speakers seem to emphasise faults with the source, other speakers smooth over them. If you're making a recording or broadcast then you want the monitor speakers to show everything. The famous BBC LS3/5A are like that, though it's years since I've heard them. I have a pair of Quad ESL63s. I also listen to a fair number of 78s. I'm surprised (and pleased) at how little fuss these speakers make about the imperfections on 78s. They are audible but not shoved in your face.

That's simple. That's just what good loudspeakers do.

Other speakers will be less flat, and could have significant peaks in their response. That will flatter some recordings, but make others unbearable.

That, in a nutshell, is why audiophiles who use hi-fi speakers are always changing them.

Also in a nutshell, that's why in a showroom dem with carefully chosen material, most people will pick hi-fi speakers over "monitor" speakers.

Rather like their video cousins, monitor speakers are intended to be neutral and honest. Whereas Hi-fi loudspeakers are simply designed to sell. Again, market forces and personal preference - I have no problem with that. Though I do have a problem with a certain well-known brand that markets its speakers as "monitors", yet they sound (and measure) worse than a lot of hi-fi speakers. And we're back to dishonest marketing again. Nurse!

The LS3/5A is well loved by many, but sounds just a bit boring to a lot of hi-fi fans. That was certainly my first impression (though I was only 16, to be fair!).

Actually, within the realm of "monitor class" speakers, the LS3/5A is a bit of a cheeky ruffian. But it was excellent for its time, and it is a well-known quantity - I and many others can mix successfully with them. But today there are better options...

[ppppenguin]

I've not owned many pairs of speakers in my 63 years. First were Goodmans Maxims, given to me by an uncle when I was about 15 and he was upgrading. Amazing little things though inevitably lacking in real bass. I once A/B compared them in a rough and ready way against my ESL63s and they didn't come out too badly. I still have them. Then B&W DM1 that I bought secondhand. Perfectly decent speakers, I no longer have them. Then Spendor BC1, bought new from London Sound after extensive listening. I sold them a few years ago at the NVCF reckoning I'd never use them again. Lastly the ESL63s, bought secondhand c1991 and finally rebuilt by One Thing.

I also may still have a battered pair of Leak Mini Sandwiches. I thought I liked them but when my '63s were away I decided I didn't any more. I'd remembered them as smooth and domesticated. Perhaps they had deteriorated over the years. I've got one other pair of bookshelf speakers that are perfectly usable. Can't remember what they are, they are hidden away somewhere.

Not many amps, tuners, turntables etc either. In other words I'm not a real hifi enthusiast at all. I do like music.