Peter Aczel. What I have learned after six decades in audio.

[Odd]

Audio Legacy

[SEAWOLF97]

a lot of good nfo there ..thx for posting

[Ducatista47]

"Loudspeakers are the only sector of audio where significant improvements are still possible and can be expected. I suspect that (1) further refinements of radiation pattern will result in the largest sonic benefit..."

This is mainly why the MBL speakers I wrote about created my best audio reproduction experience so far. They have spent many years and developed the omnidirectional speaker to a convincing level. That is, while not perfect, convincing the listener that he is listening to a performance (given a quality recording). Surround and multichannel (three plus) are not even playing in the same league. They are weak substitutes for what MBL has already achieved.

I will add that you don't need self powered speakers to employ active crossovers. Then there is crossoverless. No question, passive crossovers are a limiting technology.

I agree with pretty much the entire essay, and am especially pleased that someone else knows that higher rez capture has advantages but playback past 16/44.1 offers zero advantage or improvement, and that tubes offer a different sound but not accuracy.

[BMWCCA]

Loved his take on wires and cables!

[Horn Fanatic]

The eternal question: Do you know how to make a small fortune in the audio business?

The eternal answer: Start off with a large one.

Good article, BTW.

The last two paragraphs intrigued me. They remind me of conversations I have had with other "audiophiles". They tell me that speaker such and such sounds like the real thing. I ask them, "Have you ever heard a live string orchestra, or live band with a large horn section? Have you even had the hair on your arms stand up because of the tactile effect on your skin from being in an auditorium with 40 violins playing, or a 20 piece horn section?"

"No", is their reply. I ask them, "Then how do you know if it sounds like the real thing?"

[svollmer]

"The principal determinants of sound quality in your listening room, given the limitations of a particular recording, are the loudspeakers - not the electronics, not the cables, not anything else."

This hasn't been my experience. My experience has been the room plays the biggest role in the quality of the sound one hears. To take it to the extreme, listening to the best stereo money can buy in an echo chamber would not be as rewarding as listening to a modest system in a well-designed room with proper bass trapping, diffusion, and dimensions.

I also disagree with his assertion on amplifiers. I used to be a devotee of Julian Hirsh and believed all properly designed amps sounded the same until I replaced a 200WPC BGW 750C with a 100WPC Adcom 545. I had the 545 only because the seller of the Adcom preamp I wanted would not split the two and I had to purchase both. I inserted the Adcom only to test it before summarily offering it up for sale. To my surprise, the bass from the Adcom was much tighter. The speakers were JBL 240 Ti and the BGW was in mint condition and operating perfectly. They both sounded good, but they also sounded different even though I wasn't expecting it at all.

I also find it curious that those who don't hear differences between things tend to attack those who do. While those who do, aren't offended that other don't and typically try to encourage them to enjoy the differences.

[Ducatista47]

As one knowledable of room acoustics, you will understand the simple explanation of Julian Hirsh's assertion. A man who had similar knowledge once spent time in the converted garage, I believe it was, that Hirsh tested everything In. The acoustics were so bad that everything did sound the same in there - terrible. Despite being an engineer, Hirsh was apparently a dufus about room acoustics.

When it comes to amplifiers, one can not assume that they are all competent or accurate. Plenty are, but plenty are not. The most accurate examples sound very much alike if they are not impedence mismatched to their speaker load. Much of the high end product is very colored, especially the tube offerings. Mass market amps with too many gain stages will be somewhat indistinct sounding. Too much processing, similar to poorly done room correction. Lazy speaker design contributes too. Low efficiency little boxes need big power, and great amp designers (Nelson Pass for instance) know that you can design a more accurate lower powered amp than a higher powered one. It takes real talent to design a good sounding, quiet high gain amp for difficult to drive loads. The best amps for electrostatic headphones, which reveal every fault fed to them, have 54 to 60 dB of gain and no noise that you can hear. And few gain stages.

I do have use for a specialist amp type. They do exist and have their uses. It is a case where one compromise yields enormous improvement elsewhere. Audio reproduction is still, at this point, all about compromises.

[BMWCCA]

"The principal determinants of sound quality in your listening room, given the limitations of a particular recording, are the loudspeakers - not the electronics, not the cables, not anything else."

This hasn't been my experience. My experience has been the room plays the biggest role in the quality of the sound one hears. To take it to the extreme, listening to the best stereo money can buy in an echo chamber would not be as rewarding as listening to a modest system in a well-designed room with proper bass trapping, diffusion, and dimensions.

I also disagree with his assertion on amplifiers. I used to be a devotee of Julian Hirsh and believed all properly designed amps sounded the same until I replaced a 200WPC BGW 750C with a 100WPC Adcom 545. I had the 545 only because the seller of the Adcom preamp I wanted would not split the two and I had to purchase both. I inserted the Adcom only to test it before summarily offering it up for sale. To my surprise, the bass from the Adcom was much tighter. The speakers were JBL 240 Ti and the BGW was in mint condition and operating perfectly. They both sounded good, but they also sounded different even though I wasn't expecting it at all.

I also find it curious that those who don't hear differences between things tend to attack those who do. While those who do, aren't offended that other don't and typically try to encourage them to enjoy the differences.

I don't think you are in disagreement. Note that the author wrote:
"The principal determinants of sound quality in your listening room . . ."

And I agree with you on amps. There are probably few amps as similar as the Crown DC300A-II and the PS-400 and yet when I replaced my bi-amped D-series amps with the PS-series, I experienced an improvement in sound quality that caused me to prefer one over the other.

Likewise I purchased a complete Soundcraftsmen system (out of Canada!) which included a Pro-Power-Four amp I really hadn't intended to use. Like you, I tried it out just to make sure it was all working and compared it to a PS-400 on a pair of L7s. I found a discernible difference in the way each handled bass response and in my mind preferred the linearity of the Crown. Someone looking for some extra bass kick may have chosen the other way. Point being, there really was a difference. Of course I kept both amps though my spares now include back-ups for the Crowns and not the Soundcraftstmen. You often hear people express surprise as to how fantastic the old Soundcraftsmen amps sound and, in particular, the differences seem to focus on bass reproduction. I don't deny that amps have "voicing", and I have a lot of amps I can compare including Crown, Soundcraftsmen, Carver, and Adcom.

Point of interest would be that old story of Bob Carver building an amp under challenge to mimic the sound of a very expensive amp which he did—twice—successfully creating amps to mimic the sound of the Mark Levinson ML-2 and the the Conrad-Johnson Premier Five. If there was no audible difference between amps, why the challenge to re-create that voicing?

In fact as I type this there's yet another PS-400 making its way to me bundled with its mate, a PSL-2, both nearly new-in-box from the hometown of Crown.

[Maron Horonzakz]

Well you can have differences in micriphones.. J Gordon Holt proved that. In his Stereophile test CD

[hsosdrum]

Here's my take on the whole "sound of wire" controversy: Since sound only exists in our brains, it stands to reason that anything that consistently influences how our brain perceives sound has what is commonly referred to as "a sound of its own". If speaker wire "A" consistently sounds different to you than speaker wire "B", who's to say that what you're hearing isn't real? Anything that causes our brains to interpret stimulus in a certain way and arrive at a certain result, whether it's the stimulus coming from our auditory system or the stimulus coming from our knowledge that we've just spent a few thousand bucks on new speaker wire, is causing a legitimate change in the perceived result: sound.

Musical enjoyment is the result of the total of a host of different influences, only one of which is how our auditory system is physically reacting to the air pressure variations occurring at the moment, and how our brain is interpreting those reactions. One of my most profound music listening experiences occurred when I was riding to a gig with our roadies in our band's equipment truck back in the early 1970s. We were in the middle of the upper Midwest, trying to find anything on the radio, and we managed to find a station that was playing an orchestral recording of Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition," a piece on which I had played percussion in my college symphony orchestra a few years earlier. By the time "The Great Gate of Kiev" had ended I was so moved that I had tears running down my face and goosebumps all over. What moved me? Certainly not the faithfulness of the audio reproduction through a 4-watt mono amplifier and single 6X9 dual-cone speaker while barreling down the highway at 60 MPH in the cab of a noisy Ford N700 truck. It was the unexpectedness of making a connection with what had been one of my most memorable musical experiences. The strength of that connection made that hearing of that music at that moment more powerful and memorable than any of the hundreds of times I had subsequently heard much better recordings of that piece played on very expensive audio systems. In other words, if your expensive cables provide you with a stronger emotional connection to the music you hear on your system, they sound better.

P.S. My audio systems are all connected using plain 14 AWG speaker wire and stock audio cables.

[1audiohack]

Damn! I wonder what they use for speaker wire in F700's?!?

[Mr. Widget]

I also find it curious that those who don't hear differences between things tend to attack those who do. While those who do, aren't offended that other don't and typically try to encourage them to enjoy the differences.

I have experienced the opposite... when I couldn't hear the "obvious improvements" made by someone else's favorite cables he was quite offended. I was surprised by his reaction, but he had gone to some efforts to pack and ship them to me.

I do like hsosdrum's take... if you hear it then it is real for you. I have a buddy who has a very nice system I always enjoy listening to. He is always using crazy expensive cables and lots of them as his system is multi-amped. Sometimes the cables are AudioQuest, sometimes they're Cardas, sometimes they're from the hands of Zeus... I sure doubt they make that much difference, but they seem to make him happy. And they certainly do look cool.

Hey Odd, thanks for posting that link. I enjoyed reading his thoughts.


Widget

[svollmer]

I have experienced the opposite... when I couldn't hear the "obvious improvements" made by someone else's favorite cables he was quite offended. I was surprised by his reaction, but he had gone to some efforts to pack and ship them to me.

I do like hsosdrum's take... if you hear it then it is real for you. I have a buddy who has a very nice system I always enjoy listening to. He is always using crazy expensive cables and lots of them as his system is multi-amped. Sometimes the cables are AudioQuest, sometimes they're Cardas, sometimes they're from the hands of Zeus... I sure doubt they make that much difference, but they seem to make him happy. And they certainly do look cool.

Hey Odd, thanks for posting that link. I enjoyed reading his thoughts.


Widget

Good points Widget and I'm sorry your friend was offended. I would hope he would chalk it up to the different ways different people experience things.

I find myself in the camp of being able to hear the differences in some things, but not others. Cables fall into the "not others" category for me. I've always wanted to take a cruddy, cheap interconnect and some super cheap speaker cable and try to compare it with some really nice, but not necessarily expensive, interconnect and speaker cable. I figured if I'm going to ever hear the difference, doing a "terrible junk" versus "nice stuff" comparison might work. I just haven't had the time to get around to doing that.

Maybe our small east coast group can do that next time we get together. Oh, the friends, food and beer is always good too!

[speakerdave]

Peter Aczel is entertaining. Hal Holbrook said about Mark Twain that you could open one of his works 'most anywhere and before you'd read two pages, on average, you would be laughing out loud. Peter Aczel, though initially intriguing, one regretfully sees sliding from critic to curmudgeon to crank in about the same space. All perception is subjective, Samuel Johnson's boulder kicking notwithstanding, to a very significant degree, and it is best to allow that subjectivity to others and acknowledge it in oneself. Mr. Aczel went blissful over the titanium domes in the XPL160, fer 'eaven'sake! It may be the best implementation ever, I don't know, but in general undamped titanium domes make me ill, excepting our very own, of course. There's a real limitation there somewhere, I would say. In general I think he is a more trustworthy critic of the audio industry than of audio equipment.

[hsosdrum]

Damn! I wonder what they use for speaker wire in F700's?!?

Knowing our roadies, in our N700 it was anything they could swipe...