Accuracy Part 3.

If I sit in front of a pair of speakers powered by some 18w triodes pumping out 3% distortion and my impression of that is the same as that of a live perfirmance, I simply don't give a monkey's how that is done - I simply enjoy the experience.

The number of those who have tried to go the so called accuracy route, and invested fortunes in very expensive amplification and speakers, only to end up selling the lot and ending up with some nice valves and high efficiency speakers is legion.

Indeed it seems to be the norm for those experienced enough to "downgrade" and find musical bliss rather than reaching nirvana through ever increasing complexity and technology.

I don't care about the recording, I care about the performance these days. If you compare a master with a red book CD anyway, you will realise that the software is lightyears away from the original recording anyway.

I have not heard TD's amp. I have however heard the majority of commercially available amps from Nad to Levinson, Rotel to Krell, Bel Canto to Tact, Bryston, Lavardin you name it! Unless TD has trully discovered nirvana, and is about to become a multimillionaire, then what a very large number of music lovers have learnt still holds true That measurements mean a great deal less than some mathematicians would have you believe.

You can save yourself a great deal of money by realising at the outset that nothing is perfect and you should choose something that you feel sounds closest to live music. Indeed technical measurements should not be published as they are rarely of any use to anyone when trying to assess the musical enjoyment available from the equipment.

 

Titian,

I must confess that you were a complete surprise to me and it's because of you that I don't feel frustrated after my "trolling". So, thank you very much.

As for your mixed feelings, I really felt the same way about the people of this forum. I always felt that anglo-saxonic people were, above all, pragmatic.

Maybe our "Hi-fi" is just way of escaping to our own reality... a way of "escaping the matrix".

Cheers!

 

i believe the saying goes "if it measures good and sounds bad, it's bad. if it measures bad and sounds good, you've measured the wrong thing"

 

Like valve amps, perhaps??

 

BD,if thats what floats ya boat then who are we to criticise.However,when you make statements like 'accuracy is everything',its fair to say thats an invitation for us to have a heated debate,because to some of us accuracy is meaningless.
Unless it just means crap,I suppose thats another word for Paul Ransons 'innacurate systems'whatever they are.I suppose sounding like shyte is another word for it

 

Prehaps its put up or shut up time Vasco,
Time for TD to take magic Null 1 to the patent office, stamp your name on it & watch those offers roll in. I'm sure Tones can help, after all why hang around preaching about the divine end to all sonic journeys.
Accuracy & live performance arn't the same thing, when I'm in the reharsal rrom, we try to get the best possible 'sound' that will fill the criteria for the material we are trying to record.
At a gig, its what works on the night, some venues are superb, it just clicks and it sounds like your playing in heavan, others like the Hammersmith Odoen, sorry labatts appollo, are just overdriven bass holes, that sound worse that a fully dcs's up chord amp'd rig with B&W's 801's (Is that possible?)
The point is, the sound generated is chalk and cheese, not just acoustic's but home many pints the mixing engineer has swollowed or persil style substanices he hoovered up his left nostral (always noticed that roadies and sound guys snort with the left )
There is no such thing as prefect sound, its just what happens to be 'right' for you.
So 'Do us all a favor (Ant Music :chunder: ) and cease & disist on the soap box bit, and try and be a bit more laid back & music orientated, you might find you like listening too the stuff now your happy with your near zero null factor sounding syatem capatin
MR pcm, digitally manipulated and rough as a badgers sound

 

Paul,

I don't think that's the case. Your so called fantasy systems offer IMO high fidelity to the original performance, whereas some hifi systems offer high fidelity to a recorded medium.

I know which one I find more interesting

 

could the accuracy people, the staunch ones please answer my question and enlighten me, I hear this word, yet I don't understand what is meant....

 

merlin,
the fact that your amp is injecting a bit of soul into what is undoubtedly heavily studio eq'ed, dsp'd, processed, compressed music is what you prefer.
bd prefers to hear what is on the disc warts and all.
as a subjectivist - i reckon you're both right but personally i'm firmly in the former camp.
cheers


julian.

 

By definition, according to the long quote you included at the top of this thread, the preferred amps are not 'straight wires with gain' they're adding something to the signal, so this isn't hifi and it's not 'fidelity to the original performance' (which of course often doesn't exist).

You're welcome to pursue any path you like without any quibble from me, it's just this refusal to see the philosophical difference that bugs. I don't understand why you, 'AK' and the others are so defensive about this.

Paul

 

Agree Julian,

but a good example of the former sounds so much more like real live music to me than any example of the latter so which is the higher fi?

 

accuracy vs. realism

Well ... IMHO, realism and accuracy are two distinct concepts. An "accurate" amp would be the so called "wire with gain". Its output would mimic exactly its input - only the scale would be different.

This behaviour is what we look for with null test - for some, the epitome of acuracy.

I have some questions regarding the null test:

a) a speaker is not only a load but a generator - the back-emf the back-emf produced by the speaker (which is related with the amplifier's own signal) is sent backwards to the output stages of the amplifier. How does the amplifier handle this signal? maybe this explains why the sonic results of a given amplifier depend so much on the speakers attached.
b) Since this back-emf is real, the result "null test" for a given amplifier must depend on the used speakers. Is this signal visible on the "null test"?;
c) We get different results by changing the amplifier environment: cables, powercord, spikes, etc. Are this effects measurable by the null-test?
d) How do I relate the result of the "null test" - and its deviations from the null - with subjective experience? Can I identify the "electronic grain", lack of soundstage depth, how "dinamic" or "textured", or "airy" would the amplifier sound? How much "body" its sound will have? I think this will be quite valuable to be able to relate measurements with experience ...
e) It would be interesting to see real data. When I did scientific work and published some papers, the setup was described, the data where presented, discussed and a thesis was formulated. I would like to see stronger arguments ...

Finally ...
What I try to achive through an audio system is the so called "suspension of disbelief". So, what really matters to me is: how credible a system sounds? There are ao many steps in the chain - since the capture of the performance to its reproduction by OUR speakers in OUR room - that it may be that the most realistic rendition of a recording is not the most accurate to the recording being played. Lets look at the extremes of the chain (for the sake of simplicity): the microphones which capture the sound don't capture it in the same way as our ears (regarding, namely, its sensitivity to volume and direction); on the other extreme our speakers don't spread the sound in the same way of the original recorded instrument. Cello, drums, piano ... they all have a distinct radiation pattern which - in any case differs from our speakers.
So, it's possible (I mean, in principle...) that an accurate system does not sound realistic at all.

Let's face it: this a complex reality and there's not much serious scientific work addressing it. I don't see - and don't expect it to happen - MIT, Harvard or Cambridge sponsoring many PhD's in this field.
At last, there's the placebo effect ... it's not only what we listen, but what we believe. I have chosen to be more simple-minded than many of you and believe my senses - if it sounds good, then it's good (for me).

Vermeer

 

merlin,
that's a purely subjective opinion based on fickle audio memory - however as it's all we poor humans have to go on i'd go along with you for the purposes of this argument. however as paul has repeatedly pointed out hi-fi is the reproduction of what is on the carrier medium and if the amp is adding distortion then it's not strictly speaking hi-fi.
i'm actually in favour of finding another name for 'emotional music reproduction' and popularising it as the 'hi-fi industry' is pretty much a dead duck in the face of the a/v onslaught. is this the kick in the arse the 2 channel brigade need?
just imagine good looking, convienient, emotionally engaging kit without the b&o and bose associations - got to be a winner.
cheers


julian

 

We should call it emotional fidelity or E-fi!

It's the new black, you know!

 

Actually Julain you have a point. Maybe hifi isn't selling to the younger generation because it's a dead end and in reality is anything but!

I suspect a few youngsters might be tempted to save up if exposed to a system that really moved them like at a gig. Maybe they are simply too wise to fall for the old hifi rubbish perpetrated by much of the industry?

After all, it's been proven time and again that an iPod can sound as good as a high end CD player in the right circumstances, likewise with transistor amps.

Vermeer, I like your description of the two approaches and am glad to see that you have found greater pleasure like me in not chasing the dragon. I'd have thought that reality was a lot easier to sell than the idea of zero distortion and clean sound.

 

Vermeer, the 'null test' is not useful for anything other than demonstrating that an amplifier is a 'SWWG' in actual use with music into a real speaker. It was invented to show the faithful that an amp that measures well using conventional tests performs well with a real signal. It's in the nature of faith that they didn't accept it.

The 'back emf' will show up on the null test by worsening it, although most good amps have a very low output impedance and so this effect is minimal.

Paul

 

Paul, I'm not defensive about the accuracy thing, for all I know I have the most accurate system known to man, it matters not a jot how accurate it is, the ONLY thing that matters is does the listener enjoy listening to it.

What does bug me is your arrogance, that you have an accurate system, and others such as me have a "fantasy system" how do you know this?

Don't go on the opinion of an egotistical Dr, you question my posts, and I feel have a certain animosity towards me because of my run inss with your aquaintance, if we met we'd no doubt get on, FWIW I think you'd actualy be surprised how musical and accurate my system is, if a piece of music sounds rotten on my system, it's the disc or the composition, coz thats all it plays, what's on the disc, a certain other had his illusions shattered by some shiny boxes sans Mana and it was too much for him to take.

So Paul don't make assumptions about things you have no knowledge of and maybe we can get on in the future, who cares wether we LABEL something accurate or musical or whatever, the bottom line is that is all jargon, at the end of the day we wouldn't listen for hours if we didn't like it, never mind what label describes it.

 

clearly, Vermeer is an Impressionist! I concur!

 

To be honest merlin, I have a lot of young friends, being young myself and most couldnt care less about hifi. Its very rare to come across someone who does, and like me, those who do tend not to be all that bothered about accuracy or realism as long as the sound is enjoyable, and thats my only criteria too - I cant be bothered to go after the best, I want good yes, but the best I dont care about, I really do just want it to be able to bang out a few dance, pop and rock tunes out, download a few MP3's and be done.

People with your commitment to music and fidelity are very rare, and they are all but non-existant in young people. For most young'uns, including me, I guess convenience has take a big precedent over ultimate quality - as long as the quality it decent and its easy to use, then thats great for us. Most young people cannot be bothered with 5 grand hifis, valves, turntables, isolation or even to swap a CD these days, and I admit that in some ways it is sad, but thats how it is...

Edited to add that a lot of my friends are music loves and musicians not that I know much about it, and very few of them really care that much as long as its decent...

 

I absolutely agree Paul

My question was trying to find a reason for it. Could it be that modern hifi turns them off? It just doesn't sound different enough to a PC and mini system to get them interested?

I remember my youth! Quality did seem to bring benefits. I remember the first time I heard an LP12 and was shocked. Seems to me, these days hifi doesn't improve the listening experience enough to justify the cost. Especially when you've got so many other passtimes to enjoy such as video gaming, text messaging and binge drinking Or is it the music that sucks?

I'm "hip to the groove daddy ho"! Most of the time I can't be arsed to do anything other than pump sounds from the Powerbook through the system. It's a satisfying passive activity. But there are times when I want an active experience, and then I sit down, stick on the vinyl, crank it up and get transfixed for 20 minutes or so. That's got f all to do with technology IMO. but it is an experience I feel is beneficial to anyone.

My quandry is whether this apathy is because music no longer matters or because the yout' just don't get the opportunity to hear really good music systems that communicate with them? After all, gig attendances don't seem to have dropped over the years> For me, you can trace the decline of the hifi industry back to the advent of digital media and recording. And that's scary!