HiFi+....at it again!

Tone,

If I thought that PR&T was only about foot tapping, (which I don't, and I don't ever recall saying I did) I'd have lots of angle iron and glass.

Leading, edge, body, and decay tell the entire story of just one note. Remember what I said about your system being able to shape notes well......?

To me, that is how you get the goosebumps as well as the big grins.

 

Steve, wrong Steve, the post was for Steve M (7th Veil)

 

Spxy,
Sorry to reply so late. I have compare Kimble 8TC, QED Silver anniversary, DMN and Eccose Reference monocystal speakers cables side by side. The differences are very small. However, my initial impression is the Eccose was the best. Better bass. More transparent in midrange. DMN being solid core has the softess sounding bass.

However, when we compare the same speaker cables without knowing the identity all these differences are not so obvious anymore. We come to realize these cables are actually identical.

Further reading suggest the so call audible differences between cables have been documented by a lot of people. However, they are not done under blind condition. Not even cables manufacturers has done this. On the other hand a smaller group of people who have tried to compare cables with blind comparison and they come to the same conclusion.

I am sure you could tell the difference between 2 pair of loudspeakers without knowing their identity. However, do not think you could with your own loudspeaker cables?

 

Guys,

I have been reading the FAQ section in B&W which is known as one of the big loudspeakers manufacturer.

Quote,

The characteristics of the cable can be divided into two categories - macro and micro.

Macro properties
The impedance of resistance is constant with frequency (you can have frequency dependent resistance, but that need not concern us here). The impedance of inductance is proportional to frequency and that of capacitance inversely proportional to frequency. Any impedance in series with the speaker has the potential to alter its frequency response. Even pure resistance can do this, because the impedance of the speaker varies significantly with frequency, and the attenuation caused by the external resistance depends on the ratio of the two.

Of particular interest here is the bass region. Closed-box speakers have a peak in the impedance at the fundamental resonance frequency. That is when the mass of the bass driver cone resonates with the stiffness of its mechanical suspension and the air in the enclosure. Vented-box (reflex) speakers have two impedance peaks. The change in response caused by series resistance in the bass region is similar to reducing the strength of the magnet of the bass driver and so are the audible effects. The bass loses its grip and tightness and begins to sound slow. One can, to some degree, acclimatise oneself to changes in response shape at higher frequencies, but the changes in the bass characteristic do not go away with extended listening. We have heard plenty of differences between cables, but whatever the method of construction, in our experience it's always the resistance that controls the bass quality.

End.

I have highlighted the sentence that is of interest to our parennial discussion. Do you think 'moa' should email their engineers and ask if they actually observe these during DBT? Really hope they do otherwise I would loss faith in their products.


Edit.
Thought I add the link to the above original article here.link

 

Yes, B&W speakers are crap

 

I've been less than impressed by a few B&W speakers now. That oh-so-clever Nautilus style tweeter was given far too much prominence in early designs like the 600 series 2 and was unbearable to listen to for long periods. The 600 series 2 bass was all over the place. Bloated. Uneven. Boomy. Moving up the range, the CDM1NT improved things somewhat in its original guise but then that wretched Nautilus tweeter turned up again (705 is it?). And still the bass was a bit soft. Then there was the CDM9NT which nearly put me to sleep. Someone really ought to take a pair of Conway 3's down to B&W and show them how it's done

 

B&W are in case you have forgotten, one of the world's largest and most successful loudspeaker producers.

They are extremely good at marketing extremely average product.

 

Is there anyone out there who's good at marketing the good stuff?

 

The good stuff doesn't really need it to any where near the degree of the B+W's of this world, when's the last time you saw a Roller or a Bentley advertised other than in the those mags you get at the doctors surgery

 

Tony,

that will be due to the fact that they have an enviable and long established brand identity.

Trouble is, 99.9% of the UK population think Rolls Royce when you say quality and Bang & Olufsen when you say hifi

 

I suppose it's churlish of me to bring it up but if Rolls Royce/Bentley had had the slightest idea of what they were doing marketing wise, they wouldn't be German now.

What about Bristol? Fine British cars, they've been going since just after WW2 when they took the excellent BMW pre-war designs, improved on the engineering, and started manufacturing under the Bristol marque.

Bristol now proudly sell 2 cars a week. How many do BMW sell?

I'm sorry guys but the fact that Bose, B & W and B & O are large, successful hi-fi companies with crap products does not mean that "The good stuff doesn't really need it to anywhere near the degree of the B+W's of this world". It means that the good stuff needs marketing that's one hell of a lot better than it's got right now.

Yeah.

 

Could this be that Bristol weren't after world domination? Maybe to survive, employ some of their staff and to make what they wanted to make was their goal.

One dealer only and in Kensington explains it all.

The goal of many "high end" companies is to get the opportunity to make the music how they see it. In fact, fame and fortune beyond their plans would be a long term course that would be destructive to their values in their eyes.
AND niche markets make good margin on niche products. Thats its point.

Bristol make far more money on every car than BMW, that's the point of their business.

And to play devils advocate:
is the superior marketing skills and more importantly, management skills of Ivor Tiefenbrun, Julian Vereker and Anthony Michealson proof that the previous paragraph remains a good excuse for those that haven't made it?

Notice they don't appear to be British either! Perhaps its a British disease!

Who knows. What I do know is that niche means choice and often innovation, which gives us more chance of finding what we want. Big marketing and big companies = greater competition and lower prices. Hoorah to both.

 

Good post. I'd like a little of each.

Adequate funding and better marketing, leading to more sales and a larger company can bring down the prices of even niche products. Not many customers complain at lower prices.

Becoming larger is not, in itself, a reason for a decline in quality or reduction in innovation; in fact with more advanced production techniques, quality can improve. The problem is that the large companies mentioned have lost touch with what it was that started them in business in the first place. It doesn't have to be that way.

Is making music incompatible with making money?

 

It seems to be a peculiarly British disease that we (well, I'm only half British) are very good at innovating but pretty hopeless at marketing those innovations. More often than not the Germans, Japanese or Americans will snap up British ideas and make piles of cash making marketable products out of them.

Just off the top of my head, the telephone, television, radar, transistors, computers, jet engine and hovercraft were all British inventions - none of which we really have anything to show for now.

Tones probably has the accurate numbers but AFAIK the UK still has one of the highest rates of patent registration per capita. Increasingly though British inventors and innovators are taking their ideas overseas because British companies just aren't prepared to take risks and don't want to know

Michael.

 

Michael,

When it comes to marketing, i'd say the UK were world leaders. I can see no other reason why people buy from some of the UK's larger HiFi brands.

It's production that we've always had a problem with!

Companies such as Naim of course, tend to combine slick media marketing with a strict "zero tolerance" approach to it's dealer base and user groups to sell their WMD's (weapons of music destruction)

 

I'll see if I can find some figures, but AFAIK the only country in the world where domestic applications outnumber foreign applications is Japan. But then the Japanese do file the most amazing number of what could only be termed "pot boilers" - patent applications on little slivers of invention (and sometimes barely inventions at all).

P.S. Here you go:

http://www.overpopulation.com/faq/Health/education/patents/

As you can seem, the Japanese are champs, with 994 patents granted per million population. S. Korea is second with 779. The UK is 'way down (82) compared to Germany (235) (you may cheer, Michael), France (205) and Sweden (271) and even Luxembourg, heaven help us (202). The USA has 289.

This, of course, says nothing about the quality of the patents involved. I also suspect that the European Patent Office figures complicate things - these may be national patent applications only, and the UK is the most frequently requested designated state in European applications, meaning a drop in national applications. On the other hand, nearly all German companies file a German national application AND a European application designating Germany simultaneously. They will eventually have to surrender one (most places forbid double patenting), but by that time they know which one they want - if the Deutsches Patentamt gives a nice broad patent, the European designation is dropped.

 

The telephone wasn't a British invention - it was invented by Antonio Meucci, an Italian who moved to Cuba, and then to America. In 1871, Meucci couldn't afford to patent his invention, but obtained a Caveat, stating his paternity to his invention. In 1874, he tried to sell his invention to the Western Union Telegraph Company - two years before Alexander Graham Bell filed his patent application, but Western Union lost Meucci's equipment and the information he'd supplied, and fobbed him off with excuses until after Bell's patent went through - it was later shown that Western Union had a financial deal with Bell, giving them 20% of the profits from Bell's telephone. Bell's patent for the telephone was annulled in 1887, but as Meucci's Caveat had expired, he was never credited with the invention. However, two years ago, Congess officially stated that Meucci was to be considered the inventor of the telephone.

 

Originally posted by 7_V [/i]
Adequate funding and better marketing, leading to more sales and a larger company can bring down the prices of even niche products.

[/QUOTE]

Ah but by description it stops being niche! Once your organisation relies on playing to a larger audience it has to keep doing so to pay for its infrastructure. Then you have to ensure that your product appeals to a wider palet etc etc.

So, innovation doesn't have to stop, in fact may get better funding (not always better results). Quality does improve. But imho that indefinable something that is someones vision will inevitably be diluted or lost.

 

The only hifi show I have ever attended. I was there in the Nordost dem. Utter crap, IMO. The dearer the cable, the 'thinner' the sound. Just awful.