umm… i havent read all the replies YET, but from your OP, i want to know why you think distortion is something that will always be there? You dont have to overdrive anything, if you have the right equipment and its set up right, you’ll never have to worry about solid state amps and their ‘unpleasant’ distortion…
Mort, I think you may have misunderstood my ‘true scotsman’ thing. Basically it goes like this:
Person #1 “A true scotsman eats haggis”
Person #2 “I’m a scotsman, and I don’t eat haggis”
Person #1 “You may think you’re a scotsman, but you’re not a true scotsman”
You’re defining what audiophiles are ‘supposed’ to be, but some people who really are audiophiles do not fit your definition. It’s really a pointless argument on both sides because you’re really just arguing a definition of a word.
I’m not even going to try to defend the high priced cable thing, in my own experience any changes due only to cable were minimal. I HAVE heard differences, though they could probably be explained purely by testing inaccuracies.
something clever, whether you want to call it distortion or not, tube amps don’t really sound like solid state amps. Even if SS amps introduce zero distortion, some people prefer the tube sound. FWIW, I’ve heard a set of speakers that sounded downright unpleasant with one SS amp, but sounded very nice with a different SS amp, and with tube amps. Before you think that first amp was just crapola, it did a nice job with a different set of speakers.
Amps I don’t know about, but tube mikes, well, that’s another story. There’s one particular tube mike that sets my teeth on edge whenever I hear a recording made with it. Drove my friend the recording engineer nuts, you see, because it was his favorite mike to use, so he recorded nearly everything with it, and then would play it back for me to get my opinion. Distressed him mightily when I started complaining that the thing sounded like it was being broadcasted from a Peavey PA system. And, yeah, him and a few others have given me double-blind testing on it, and I pick out that damn mike 99% of the time.
I’ll go along with you on he defintion thing. And, like I said, What does my opinion matter?
As for the cable, I will admit that there is a chance you can hear something - but only in the case of a bad cable (defective in some way) compared to a good cable. A poor solder joint (or crimp) on the connector can cause problems (noise and distortion.) A corroded cable can cause noise. A speaker cable that is too small may cause some of the volume peaks to lose power.
That last you’ve mentioned is what I’ve been trying to get at here the whole while. You are describing a classic impedance mis-match between speakers and amp.
The impedance of a speaker is given as (nominally) 4 ohms or 8 ohms, or whatever. That is, however, just the nominal value. In reality, the impedance varies depending on the frequency of the signal. Consider that the frequency response of the speaker in anything but linear, and then consider that frequency response is determined in part from the mechanics of the speaker and the electrical properties of the speaker coil (or piezo crystal, etc.) Now consider that the mechanical properies will also influence the electrical properties, and you’e got a great freaking huge mess that results in a frequency response that looks like a cross section of the Swiss Alps - and an impedance chart that is just as bad.
Now, take your amplifier. In theory, a perfect amp has a flat frequency response and its specified output impedance at all frequencies and power levels. Now jump over to the real world for a while. The output impedance of a solid state amp is pretty much constant over the whole frequency range - overload conditons ignored for the moment. This leaves pretty much just your speaker as the deciding factor in the frequency response of the amplifier/speaker combination. Until you get to a volume where the powersupply of the amplifier can’t deliver enough power. Depending on whether you hit the voltage limit or the current limit first, you’ll either get clipping (voltage because of the regulators) or else you’ll get a drop in level as the capacitors discharge and the magnetic field in the transformer reaches saturation and can’t deliver enough current.
The distortion caused by those things, combined with the fact that the transformer’s and the capacitor’s frequency responses are non-linear, and combined with the non-linear frequency response of the speakers, gives each amplifier/speaker combination a different sound when driven to overload.
Now, take a tube amp. The impedance output stage itself (due to the transformers and capacitors needed to match the high impedance tube output to the low impedance speaker) is non-linear. Couple this with the non-linear impedance of the speaker, and you get a great big question mark with regard to the frequency response of the speaker/amplifier combination. The two may combine to make the response flatter, or they may combine so as to make the peaks and/or valleys deeper or higher. The only way to tell is to measure them and see. Add in the non-linearities of the powersupply in overload, and things get really interesting.
Its a great hairy mess, isn’t it? It is not as simple as tube versus solid state. It comes down to this amp (tube or solid state) versus this amp (tube or solid state) with [i[this* speaker.
Objective better (flatter frequency/impedance/phase response and lower distortion) can be measured. Subjective better (I like more highs in my music, or I prefer this microphone preamp because it does a soft limit instead of clipping) can’t be measured, it is a matter of taste.
To each his own, but please do try to understand what you are talking about and to express whether you just like it that way (subjective better) or if it is technically better (objective better.)
I have a Rotel amp and CD player, combined with a set of Tannoy floor speakers. It cost about $1500 in total, sounds great, and most people never heard of those brands.
Yet, upon reading this thread, I don’t feel like such an audiophile anymore. I’d say I’m in Tamerlane’s 95% bracket. 
I saw a demo of some “only $125,000 each because they didn’t have the fancier cabinets of the quarter-million” speakers once. Real quote of the guy running the demo, who was the president of the company:
So, each speaker had about $150 in drivers and let’s say another fifty bucks for the crossover and incidentals. The other $124,850 was for the box (he explained that, too), design, overhead, and profit.
How did they sound? Real nice. Better than my $4 garage sale specials? Yep, though they were surprisingly close. Enough better to justify the price difference? You’ve got to be kidding. Do I have a customer who owns a pair? Yeah, but it could be so he can say his speakers cost that much. Do I have another customer looking at full home theater set of 'em? Sure do, God bless him.
So, while I can understand a quest for quality reproduction, my opinion is that audiophiles on the extreme end are involved in a game of upmanship and, though I may think they are nuts, my personal world is better for it.
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The only “audiophiles” that bother me are those fools who turn the bass way up while driving around town. Hell, I might not be majorly into sound but I can appreciate a decent stereo system. I bought a decent one a few years ago to better enhance my television, DVD, and PS2 experience. Unfortunately I have to wait until my wife isn’t around before I can turn things way up.
Marc
Mort, you’ve got me thinking, maybe a better technical view of the equipment iwould help the audiophile pick better matching gear. Most of the reviews in the mags come with a bunch of charts of this and that, but nobody I knew could read them worth shit.
Coldfire, those Tannoys look pretty nice, wouldn’t mind having them in my system.
Wow, you guys are serious - in HS I thought my friends & I were audiophiles b/c we hung out at a real stereo store & not Best Buy (at least I did buy a Harmon Khardon amp, which is still kickin’ it 20 years later).
I have a suggestion for you. Find a community orchestra in your area and offer to help them in some way so that you can attend rehearsals. I’m serious about this. Or learn to play the triangle or something. Because there is no audio experience to match a decent orchestra in a reasonable space - rehearsals can be awesome. You will love it.
It appears, though, that “[m]ost audiophiles…don’t ‘do’ concerts. It’s part of the religion, but not part of the life.” Seems to me that while it’s good to be interested in better sound reproduction, doesn’t this sometimes get carried into excessive obsession over minutiae, and ignoring the whole point of it all – which is to let music bring joy into our lives?
Hey Mort,
I am a 25 year old audiophile, with about $15K+/- in my system (new retail, my investment considerably less). I fall well into the “make music” not “perfect sound” camp, which is part of the reason I have use a McIntosh amp and pre. Anyway, I think you are spot on about the audio press, and one of the major, perhaps the major, critisim that audiophile have about Stereophile etc. is that they don’t really do enough system basaed reviews. Like you say, the amp has to work well with the speakers you want to use, and more importantly, it has to SOUND good to you. If you don’t like the way it sounds, even if it has great measurements, what is the point?
I have about $1K in cables total running through my system, again new retail value, I buy alot of used stuff. Do I hear a difference over cheaper stuff? Yes. Is it night and day? No, but it is enough to justify the level of investment I have made, to me. I will never go out and buy a $2.5K power cord, becasue even if it does sound better in some way, I would rather buy $2.5K in CDs and LPs for my music collection. To me, the hardware and the software have to combine to make the system. I can’t understand audiophiles who build systems so revealing that they can only listen to a dozen CDs on them. I want to listen to old blues albums, and old jazz and classical recordings, and rock and enjoy the experience, even if it means the system is colored in some way.
Anyway, to those of you who think Bose is it who may be reading this, there is a whole other world out there to enjoy. Turn off the TV, and turn on the music.
Cheers.
Which makes you an exception, from what I understand. What I’ve read and been told seems to indicate that audiphiles confuse their taste with objective reality.
You’re going for what sounds good to you, and you seem to be clear on the fact that it is probably not a 100% true reproduction of the recording - which is fine, as long as that’s what you want.
What torques me is the “it sounds better” meaning “I like it more” thing, which you seem not to have, Rhum Runner.
I would be interested to find out what difference you hear in the cables you use.
What do I hear? Well, here comes one big problem with audio and that is describing things accurately. A bit of a language problem, but I’ll do my best.
When I moved from a cheap $20/M RCA cable to the $150/M cables I have now (Which I got for about 50% off retail) I noticed several things. One, high frequency instruments sound more realistic. For example, a violin playing near the top of the register retains a bit more of the sound of the wooden body of the instrument instead of sounding so nasal. Cymbols and highhats seem to “shimmer” more clearly, sounding more like metal than simple white noise. A quieter background, ie a lower noise floor. Clearly audible when you put your ear to the tweater with no music playing, and can be audible when you have a dynamic piece of music. More seperation of instruments, for example listening to a jazz combo I think I hear a more focused presentation of the individual players. A sax sounds more like it coming from right there as opposed to being unlocalized.
Expliniations? Well, frankly alot of it may be in the connectors themselves. The WBT locking RCA plugs on my cables give a much tighter connection than the slip fit cheap ones, and this might result in a better signal transfer. I am not an EE, so I don’t know, but I have spent 100s of hours (I listen to my system on average 1.5-2 hours a night, and all day on weekends) in front of my system, and I know what it sounds like. Little things are noticable, and while I have never done a double blind test, I believe that cables are capable of making subtle improvements.
I also agree, to a certain extent, with the audio rags that you can’t swap cables every 5 minutes and keep the sounds straight in your head. You have to sit and listen for some time.
Now, I think I am right at the point of diminishing returns. $150/M and about $300 for a 10ft set of speaker cables is about all I can justify in my head. The degree of improvement beyond that point doesn’t justify the expense, and I would rather buy music.
Speaker cables, right?
A slight bit of corrosion, or a loose fit on the connector, can cause diode style clipping. This would be more noticeable for low level signals. It would also tend to bounce noise from lower frequencies up into higher frequencies (clipping causes harmonics=higher frequencies from lower ones.)
Since tweeters usually convert more electrical energy into sound, it would show up most there. Since the higher frequencies are important for determining direction, that could influence your “seperation of instruments” and your “focused presentation.”
That I can get my teeth into.
I will also concede that at high power levels, a cable will actually flex with the variation of the magnetic field around it - which could also cause the strands in the cable to rub on one another. If the wire strands are oxidized, then you would get a little noise out of that, which would also screw up your higher frequencies.
Sounds, though, like its the connectors rather than the cable.
Actually, I was describing what I heard moving from cheap RCA cables up to more expensive Kimber ones. I haven’t played much with speaker cables, I used to just use some 12g bare wire cord, but then I got a sweet deal on some bi-wire cables and bought those (Synergistic Research, if you want to know the brand, not that it matters). Now, going from single wire to a bi-wire set up made a noticable difference, and measurable difference with Rat Shack SPL meter, in system efficiency. Setting the gain at the same level as judged by the (very accurate) meters on my Mac amp resulted in ~ 3 db gain in room volume. As a result, the system is quite a bit more dynamic, but of course this may just be an indication that my 12g cables weren’t up to the task.
In any event, this stuff may not be the best value in the world, but then, neither is going out to dinner you know? Some people will go out and blow $200 on dinner and a bottle of wine for two. Me, I eat ramen noodles, and blow $200 on music or audio equipment. At the end of the night, at least I still have something to show for my $$ spent. Just playing with the stuff entertains and interests me, and that is enough.
Rhum Runner, do you think it was the connectors that made the difference in what you heard, or the engineering in the cable itself? (speaker or interconnects)
Also, in your SPL tests, you of course started the amp cold for both tests, right? Or warmed it up the the exact same level for each test.
Played the exact same signal, tone generated of course, since music has way too much variation to measure accurately. Had the SPL meter mounted in one place?
Well, there are so many variables between cables it is hard to say. Maybe just unpluggin the cables and pluggin in new ones removes a bit of oxidation and makes for a better connect? Maybe it is the connectors themselves (WBT locking RCA plugs screw on and make very very tight connections) Then there is the cable itself, and the twist of the wire, the solder joints etc… so the answer is, I guess, I don’t know.
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The amp was warmed up, turned off just long enough to swap cables, the amp output level was set to 2W on the beautiful big blue meters (which I believe are very precise, though I can’t claim that they are accurate since I don’t have a multi-meter) and I was using test tones from one of the Stereophile set up CDs, and also pink and white noise. SPL meter was in the same spot, resting on a table I had placed where my chair normally sits.
Now, by going to a bi-wire set up I had removed the gold plated jumpers between the binding posts, maybe that was where the problem was?!? I never tried a double run of 12g bare wire. Also went from bare wire on the speakers and bannana plugs no the amp to bannanas all the way around. Lot’s of variables. I’m only telling you what I heard, not why I heard it.
God, what a mess that was. pluggin? connect? Bad tags. Yikes.
Where tube amps really shine (though I use them in virtually every aspect of my music) is in a dedicated listening space where you can get the full effect of enhanced imaging. I swear you can point to where the various instruments are.
Actually, there are only two in the cable itself, resistance and capacitance. Neither of these has anywhere near an audible effect when comparing cables. As you mentioned though, corrosion and poor connections can be heard.
As far as the speaker cables are concerned, it sounds like the jumper was definitely the cause of the DB drop. Instead of one bare wire and a jumper, now you have two full bananner plugs. Greater surface area, tighter connection. You could easily get a large reduction in resistance across the connection from this.
My point is, what are the chances that everything you hear is from the $50 in connectors, and not the $1000 in cables? Almost 100%, I would say.
What do the cable companies market? Oxygen free wire, directionally aligned copper molecules, etcetera ad nauseum. Ask many Audiophiles why their cables sound better, and they just repeat the same BS.