The Ten Biggest Lies in Audio World ?

[AltecLansingFan]

This article (4 pages) I found on the internet. What do you think of it

True or Not True.

You can read it, and if you have an opinion, please let us know.

pag.1 http://ip565bfb2a.direct-adsl.nl/articles/urban-legends/10-Lies-1.jpg
pag.2 http://ip565bfb2a.direct-adsl.nl/articles/urban-legends/10-Lies-2.jpg
pag.3 http://ip565bfb2a.direct-adsl.nl/articles/urban-legends/10-Lies-3.jpg
pag.4 http://ip565bfb2a.direct-adsl.nl/articles/urban-legends/10-Lies-4.jpg

[greyhound]

yep its al true.........
except for the golden ears ofcourse, beacause those are mine:D

truth is im not convinced when it comes to tubes. but the main reason for that im not able to listen to tubes a lot.
a brief impression at someones house gives me more info on the acoustics in the room and the speakers.
so if my dutch forum will do a good test with tubes vs transistors ill be there.

audiocritic is great

[Allanvh5150]

Ever heard a tube guitar amp manufacturer claim that his amps had that great transistor sound? :)

[lovethatsound]

Wow, those are interesting!

Thanks for sharing.

[Vintage Nut]

Ever heard a tube guitar amp manufacturer claim that his amps had that great transistor sound? :)

No, but I wonder how much of that has to do with marketing.

Just wondering.

Does the transistor manufacturer claim his amp sounds like a tube? And, if so, how much of that is marketing too?

Again, just wondering.

By the way, nice article! Keeps me grounded, as if I could afford not to be. =)

[speakerdave]

Argh. Just rack it up with everyone else's opinion and listen to what you like.

The root assumption of this article seems to be that the exaggerations of advertisers are of the same order of reality as listeners's experience, that there is no mutual causal relationship or ontological difference between the two; therefore they can be used as interchangeable counters in his argument. Nothing could be further from the truth. Writer is simply promoting his own supposed acuity. Bosh.

1. Cable: I haven't systematically explored different cables, but I do know they ALL sound better on the little trestle thingies.
2. Tubes: Bosh.
3. Digital v. analogue: Bosh. "Once again the lie has little bearing on the mainstream where digital technology has gained complete acceptance" You mean the folks lunching at McDonalds who listen to their music on Zenith Allegro's? Am I being elitist? Yes. I think it's interesting that we seem to accept social and financial elites but cultural ones are geeks or eggheads or "mandarins." The writer here does acknowledge the importance of execution. What's missing from the discussion here and elsewhere is that vinyl played on a midfi Thorens with a midfi Shure cartridge through a '70's Japanese receiver sounds better than any CD played on your typical mass market player loaded with cheap IC's in the analogue output. And MP3's--jeez. Is it news to anyone that most people will sacrifice quality to price and convenience (and liberty to safety)?
4. Listening tests. ABing can help decide between two pieces of equipment, but who has the technology to determine SPL matching to <.5dB difference? And I should think that using a listening test to evaluate listeners would add tension to the equation. Would anyone's subjective experience or objectivity be unaffected? My experience of listening evaluations is that contrasts are immediately discernible, but the "ear" adjusts very quickly. I think that for evaluating equipment and media subjectively listening to the music over longer periods and being aware of one's own emotional and aesthetic responses to it is superior to analytically listening to the sound.
5. Negative feedback. I have not listened to enough different equipment to be able to isolate the effects of this. I do have a zero-negative feedback preamp which a really like in some ways and not so much in others. Whether either effect is related to its lacking feedback I don't know.
6. Burn-in: Does it cost anything to believe this?
7. Bi-wiring: Beats me whether this is silly or not.
8. Power conditioner: The cleaner the better, but I would put the money in other places first.
9. CD Treatments--I don't know anything about any of them, but . . . . The writer equates the physical medium with the digital data and says that since the digital data is undegradeable (as he claims) the physical medium is too. But everyone knows better.
10. Golden ears: This is interesting to me. The only place I've seen more exposure anxiety than a gathering of audiophiles is in church.

David

[Allanvh5150]

All the things he talks of can make a difference to a ponit. then it becomes a matter of diminishing returns for your dollar. The monster cable debate is a classic. If the resistance of a cable is less, it must transmit more power to your speakers. Having said that, 2.5 square mm cable is plenty good for 1000 watts or so. Changing to silver will give you more power to you speakers but at these levels 10 more watts doesnt make a difference. Cd treatments on brand new CD's make no difference although I have used various treatments to solve problems with old CD's that skip and some of the processes work ok. Of course these are working on the optical quality of the plastic. If a CD is dirty and it is skipping, you clean it and it doesnt skip. Makes sense to me. But all in all, our hobby is rather subjective. If you like what you are listening to it is all good.:)

[edgewound]

Does the transistor manufacturer claim his amp sounds like a tube?

Yes...Yamaha did in the 1970's. I had one...and it didn't. But it was reliable. I could rely on it to not sound like a Marshall.

Ok...but it did work trouble free.

[edgewound]

My experience of listening evaluations is that contrasts are immediately discernible, but the "ear" adjusts very quickly. I think that for evaluating equipment and media subjectively listening to the music over longer periods and being aware of one's own emotional and aesthetic responses to it is superior to analytically listening to the sound.


David

David...That was brilliantly and very thoughtfully stated.:applaud:

[rek50]

First off, I'm not a "Sharpie" flipper, have no connection to them, bla, bla, bla.
After reading about treating the edge of a CD with an exclusive product (can't remember the name), to "Smooth" out the "Digital" sound, I thought
here we go.......another snake oil.....

Some years later, the green edge treatment, popped up again on another
"Nut" forum. Some swore by it, others claimed it was bunk. For chits an grins, I decided to prove them wrong.

I had an elcheapo Ozzy O's greatest hits CD. It was shrill, raspy.....NFG.
I took out a green sharpie marker, colored the edge, let it dry, and gave it a spin. WHAT, :blink: how can this be? It did sound better. The sharp raspy highs were toned down.

No risk, no investment (if you happen to have a green sharpie). See for yourself. It can be removed with alcohol.........

BTW, I think my car runs "Smoother" after a proper "Detailing"......YMMV

[louped garouv]

i have heard of marking up the edge of a CD to bypass pirating technology, but not to make them sound better...

[Allanvh5150]

The "Tube Transistor" debate will rage for many years to come. From my point of veiw as a sound engineer, when doing live production work I like an amplifier to be cold and clinical with absolutely no colour at all. We always work very hard to make our speaker systems as flat as possible but why not the rest of the electronics? If I used tubes in this analogy there would be too much colour and it would be difficult to get a "flat" eq. The same goes in the recording studio IMO. However, on playback I like to have the best of both worlds. Big mosfet amps below 1000hz and tubes above. I have built some monster tube power amps in my time but I feel they lack the control down low. But for guitar amplification where the amp is pushed way into overdrive, you need a tube. Most of the odd harmonics are cancelled in the output transformer and the harmonic distortions are even order. These add to the total sound and give the feeling of warmth. A tube HiFi amp can have a distotion figure of 5% or more but it will still sound pleasing to the ear. :)

[Mr. Widget]

The placebo can at times be more powerful than any other drug. Then again, if you are a diabetic and need insulin, if you forgo the insulin for the placebo, it will likely kill you.


Widget

[Allanvh5150]

The placebo can at times be more powerful than any other drug. Then again, if you are a diabetic and need insulin, if you forgo the insulin for the placebo, it will likely kill you.


Widget

:rotfl:

[greyhound]

in my opinion the article tries to tackle the ridicioulous claims that the manufacturers make when it comes to things like silver cables and how they were made by elves in the mountain of mordor and will let you hear things in recordings that arent even there.

or people who pay 40 dollars for a miniature bottle of cd cleaner that will make the sound more transparant and tighten up your bass.
thay dont tell em that a big spray of dashboard cleaner has the exact same ingridients. and costs maybe 2 dollars.

all the things said in the artickle are true but its up to you if you do anything with it.
i know these things but in the end my ears and mood wil decide.
because thats what i need and use whan listening to music.

if you think your music sounds better because of an expensive netfilter
please use it.
i wont say its not possible

[gedlee]

This article (4 pages) I found on the internet. What do you think of it

True or Not True.

You can read it, and if you have an opinion, please let us know.

pag.1 http://ip565bfb2a.direct-adsl.nl/articles/urban-legends/10-Lies-1.jpg
pag.2 http://ip565bfb2a.direct-adsl.nl/articles/urban-legends/10-Lies-2.jpg
pag.3 http://ip565bfb2a.direct-adsl.nl/articles/urban-legends/10-Lies-3.jpg
pag.4 http://ip565bfb2a.direct-adsl.nl/articles/urban-legends/10-Lies-4.jpg



There are some points that I have issue with. The points about tubes and feedback. Now I am not a tube advocate nor a zero feedback advocate, but there are reasons for both those points of view. Tube amps, because of there design, tend to have very low feedback and very low crossover distortion. Crossover distortion is the single most audible form of distortion and it can be endemic in solid state designs. Feedback can acentuate the crossover problem. So a poorly designed tube amp could well sound better than a poorly designed solid state one. If they are both well designed then audibility isn't an issue and they would both sound the same. A novice has almost no chance of getting a solid state amp right, but almost anybody can design and build a decent sounding tube amp.

So the blanket "lie" claim in those papers is not as clear cut as it might seem. The bottom line is that a good amp design is a good amp design, but its far from true that all amps are designed properly.

[just4kinks]

He is more or less right about everything, but he exaggerates some of his points and it comes over a little obnoxious. I doubt that this article will be very convincing to the "golden ears".

On this topic, I prefer Douglas Self's writing on on "Science and Subjectivism in Audio":
http://www.dself.dsl.pipex.com/ampins/pseudo/subjectv.htm

[ALTEC9846-8A]

I agree with this article 100%. It's too bad people on other audio forums don't agree with me but some people can't change

[Allanvh5150]

I have built tube amps for most of my life and I am not sure where this guy is coming from. At volume I could teach a baby to tell the difference between tube and solid state. Under normal operation a tube will out perform a transistor in most ways. In fact the table is currently turning back to tube. A few people are developing ways to put triode tubes onto integrated circuits. Last time I checked they had 1000 tubes on a chip. they are easier to make as you dont need any silicon. As for his negative feedback arguement, when negative feedback is applied it is out of phase with the original signal. The signal has to go through the amp before the feedback is generated, so the feedback goes onto some other part of the waveform. It is pretty easy to design zero negative feedback into a tube amp and they sound way better for it. Also from a "purity" point of view, there are far less components in the audio path than in most solid state gear. And point of fact is that there are more amplifiers made with tubes now than there were in the fifties and sixties. Everyone said "wow, lets make solid state amps". And now we are back to tube with a vengence. I cant think why, apart from the fact that the bulk of solid state amps sound like bum.:)

[Ian Mackenzie]

A novice has almost no chance of getting a solid state amp right, but almost anybody can design and build a decent sounding tube amp.

The bottom line is that a good amp design is a good amp design, but its far from true that all amps are designed properly.

I agree in principle.

But historically the fact is there are/were a lot of practical limitations in circuit design. For example some so called Tube amps that people thought were good such as some old Leak and Quad amps are really are rubbish compared to a contemporary desigsn using modern approaches like Conrad Johnson, the BAT and Cary.

On the novice scense it is no easier. I would say the tube guys are a long way behind in terms of consistency of results compared to the minimalist two stage solid state designs using Jfets and mosfets by Nelson Pass and Erno Borbley.

Therefore the premise anyone can build a decsent tube amp in real practical terms is no where nearer the truth than it is solid state. There are of course commercial good solid state examples like Boulder, Pass Labs and Ayre ans tube example as mentioned above.

Of course if depends on what you mean by descent.

[gedlee]

Therefore the premise anyone can build a decsent tube amp in real practical terms is no where nearer the truth than it is solid state.

Of course if depends on what you mean by descent.

There were two hedge words in my statement "almost anybody" and "descent". But I still would claim that a tube amp is easier to design than a solid state one. I saw a guy design and build a tube amp who had almost no knowledge of electronics and it was sold in the marketplace. To properly bias a solid state amp is not a simple calculation, although with SPICE you could just cut and try until something worked out I suppose.

[4313B]

And now we are back to tube with a vengence.Who is "we"?

Is Bose coming out with a tube Wave!? Are there tube iPods on the horizon!? :bouncy:

;)

[Mr. Widget]

He is more or less right about everything...

I agree with this article 100%. There is no doubt that there is quite a lot of audio quackery out there, however there is a lot of room between Julian Hirsch's old stance of "all properly working amps sound the same" and where the cable swapping mpingo disc set lives.

If all you ever heard was midfi you can't really pass judgement on this stuff... sure, we as men pass laws on women's rights, or we as the "first world" decide what is best for our less fortunate neighbors, but if you want to make a valid value judgement of $10K amps, $2K speaker cables and the like you should spend some time with the believers.

FWIW: I have never bought an expensive cable or grossly expensive piece of audio gear in my life, partly due to my economic situation, but also I have never been convinced of their value. That said, the author of "Ten Biggest Lies" has made a few accurate observations and stated a hell of a lot of uninformed opinions. There is more to this stuff than simply a group of charlatans fleecing a bunch of sheep.


Widget

[grumpy]

There is more to this stuff than simply a group of charlatans fleecing a bunch of sheep.

Indeed... but the fleecing charlatans are certainly in the mix as well.

Aczel is good at exciting folks by making absolute statements with elements of truth.
Sometimes his writing is entertaining, sometimes, not so much. I don't find it valuable.

-grumpy

[4313B]

There is more to this stuff than simply a group of charlatans fleecing a bunch of sheep.Not much more though.

It's actually pretty silly if you sit down and think about it.

[Robh3606]

Well the real kicker is this is a subjective hobby. These is no absolutely right way to do it. Anyway we do it with current technology pales in comparison to the real thing. The whole damn things a lie.

I love it anyway though.

Rob:)

[AdamimAdam]

http://audioheritage.csdco.com/vbulletin/attachment.php?attachmentid=31914&stc=1&d=1207245924

[Ian Mackenzie]

Who is "we"?

Is Bose coming out with a tube Wave!? Are there tube iPods on the horizon!? :bouncy:

;)

Actually there are..by Fatso ( a brand) as I recall.

[Ian Mackenzie]

There were two hedge words in my statement "almost anybody" and "descent". But I still would claim that a tube amp is easier to design than a solid state one. I saw a guy design and build a tube amp who had almost no knowledge of electronics and it was sold in the marketplace. To properly bias a solid state amp is not a simple calculation, although with SPICE you could just cut and try until something worked out I suppose.

Hey Earl,

Well I guess a splash 2nd harmonic distorton from a nice little SE tube amp is quite saleable.

On the subject of how simple or difficult it is to enter this market have you had a reply from Audio Express or the author in the next issue. That and the F5 should interesting reading.


Ian;)

[gedlee]

Yes, They are going to publish the letter and the author did contact me.

He admitted to misunderstanding a lot of my work and the errors, so it may all come out fine in the end.

The interesteing note from from Ed Dell - the editor. He commented that he had published dozens of papers on horns in his mags, but never knew what I had said in my letter.

[Allanvh5150]

Well the real kicker is this is a subjective hobby. These is no absolutely right way to do it. Anyway we do it with current technology pales in comparison to the real thing. The whole damn things a lie.

I love it anyway though.

Rob:)

As subjective as i know it is, I really cant tell the difference when I put the wooden block on my power cable. The brochure said I would instantly notice a difference. :)

[Fangio]

...Are there tube iPods on the horizon!? :bouncy:

;)how about tube amp/docking stations! A steal at 300€ (http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=380013667444&ru=http%3A%2F%2Fsearch.ebay.com%3A80%2Fsearch%2Fse arch.dll%3Ffrom%3DR40%26_trksid%3Dm37%26satitle%3D 380013667444%26fvi%3D1).. :coolness:

[Allanvh5150]

someone invents somthing very small and then someone makes an accesory that is 100 times the size:)

[Robh3606]

As subjective as i know it is, I really cant tell the difference when I put the wooden block on my power cable. The brochure said I would instantly notice a difference. :)

LOL:D

Me too, I can't hear that block or the rissers for the cables on the floor. I am sure I can't hear Magic Pebbles or the Teleportation Tweek as well. I have an engineering backround and am to grounded by it to go that route.

Some people swear by these tweeks. That's fine by me if it makes them happy. If they get a kick out of adding a block here or a bag of peebles there where's the harm. They feel better for it and they enjoy their systems more. Most of us are adults spending our own money and if that's what they want to spend it on I don't see the issue.

Rob:)

[Ian Mackenzie]

The top Marantz CD player has a non resonant chassis.

I can understand that and tube dampers.

But purple pens and little blocks of wood..............FFS.

[Maron Horonzakz]

Yeh !!!! there are crooks in audio,,, that should not be a surprise.:D

[Robh3606]

The top Marantz CD player has a non resonant chassis.

I can understand that and tube dampers.

Both make sense to me as well. I don't know how audible a difference there might be but at least they have some credible reason why they could make an improvement. Tubes are microphonic if I had a tube amp I might give them a try. It's the faith healer type tweeks I just don't get or how someone would embrace them and not pop the most obvious question.

How does it work???

If you can't answer that without quantum physics it's time for me to move on.

Rob:)

[Ian Mackenzie]

Rob,

Reminds me of the Stereophile show we did in NY.

Ian