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Audio myths and misconceptions


Guest Simonon

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3 hours ago, BATMAQN said:

Doesn't it all boil down to we choose what we want to believe, someones idea of a lift in performance if any will differ from person to person I don't care what other people get up to, I do what I want to make myself happy make my own decisions when it comes to upgrades, gear, cables, turntable mats whatever, you can choose to believe in hype, snakeoil or not it is a choice but if it makes you happy who is anyone to judge.

Its not judgment. Its educating people who may be fooled into wasting thousands of dollars on snake oil. If you are informed that it cannot scientifically make a difference and still choose to spend your money and receive some form of gratification then that is fine. I am sure there are times I have done that and will do it again. If it makes you feel better then do it. Don't be defensive because you feel stupid.

2 hours ago, mikey d said:

12" singles are where it's at :)

Its all about size really.

1 hour ago, Simonon said:

A very well thought out comment and I have never thought of it this way. I can see that an electro mechanical device such as cartridges and speakers can sonically change or burn in after a period. Tubes although burnt in at the factory during manufacture, grading and testing may further change sonically over a number of days. Solid state electronics to my mind doesnt need a burn in period but my brain needing time to adjust to the new equipments sonic qualities makes perfect sense to me emoji3.png

I know my system sounded better after a few days. I don't know if that was scientifically measurable or it was my perception but that is irrelevant. How something sounds is entirely subjective. :thumb:

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20 hours ago, Eggcup The Daft said:

Closer to the recorded sound, though, or not?

Interesting that

Was sort of a more relaxing reproduction, weather it was closer or not to the real live performance is very difficult to say. Sort of made me want to keep listening, before was a little forward after more enlightening the reproduction presented further back in the listening plane.

Experienced a similar thing when doing similar at my lounge.

 

The job was to have a go at isolating the 4 x Holton Power Amps and miniDSP from vibration. The Exidos Malstrom X 18" quartet that stand in pairs next to the amp array tend to make things vibrate :lol: a bit, including eyeballs.

 

Used large 50mm thick 500mm wide 2m long Tasmanian blackwood slab and placed that on sorbothane blocks before piling the array back on.

 

The "moment of realisation" has happened twice now so, must actually give some more recognition to others who use/manufacture isolation tech on the hardware 

 

EDIT and to add, had better experience with hardware  isolation Tech, than signal or power cables

(Really am diving for cover now)

Edited by Guest
I do that sometimes
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19 hours ago, rocky500 said:

CD's and digital playback is the biggest con this century. 

Better sound they say. I am still waiting for that. :)

It's come a long way since Brothers in Arms - Dire Straits in the 80's, to me one of the greatest masterings of digital format I've heard still  

One thing, records need money thrown at them, the format is very easily tainted/contaminated as when around someones big buck set up you dare not sneeze near by :ohmy: will run for the door.

Tend to agree a well set up TT will do a CD, but a studio Hi Bit rate recording done right can be right there with the TT.

All about personal preference and content listened to IMHO

It's really hard to get decent records also, not really had much luck with pressings of the new age, let alone one with no groove noise or completely ready to play out of the plastic for all that cash, generally prefer to pick up a heap of second hand CD's from the markets for pocket money (the more content the better for me). At the end of the day, it's a listening style choice and definitely  either format is very worthwhile

 

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Guest Eggcup The Daft
26 minutes ago, rocky500 said:

CD's and digital playback is the biggest con this century. 

Better sound they say. I am still waiting for that. :)

If the test is "fidelity" digital recording can do much more than analogue, and especially than vinyl records. Consider for a moment, just the compromises introduced to proper dynamic recordings just by the requirement to produce records that can be tracked by even a good turntable.

 

Digital audio technology is no con.

 

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Guest Eggcup The Daft
59 minutes ago, crisis said:

 How something sounds is entirely subjective.

Maybe, but the soundwaves in the room aren't. That is worth considering.

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Quote

 

Digital audio has always been more accurate than analog recording mediums in several respects: dynamic range, distortion, noise, flat frequency response. Analog recordings have limited dynamics, background noise, and higher distortions than digital – even the earliest digital.

 

But, “faithfulness to the original signal” is another matter, and a very subjective one at that. When an engineer thinks faithful it is easy to quantify the elements that make it so: dynamics, frequency response, noise, distortion. Easily measurable guidelines.

 

When a music lover thinks faithful, she is more likely to find it difficult to describe, yet no harder to recognize: openness, musicality, proper tonality, rhythm, timbre, and space.

 

I think most of us would agree that from our viewpoint, the digital of 1998 was less faithful to the original signal than analog–vinyl or tape.

 

Today, the opposite has occurred. We can safely suggest that digital, properly done, exceeds both the engineer’s and music lover’s expectations of faithful reproduction, relative to analog recording mediums.

 

 

http://www.psaudio.com/pauls-posts/audio-myth-2/

 

JSmith :ninja:

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2 minutes ago, Eggcup The Daft said:

Maybe, but the soundwaves in the room aren't. That is worth considering.

I get the ever increasing impression there are at least two different trains of thought/hearing. One continuously hears the terms "musical" when sound reproduction is being described. If you are listening to music then the term must be subjective as all music no matter how badly or otherwise  it is being reproduced is "musical". The term seems to be used as an antonym to accurate where "accurate" is deemed "analytic". So in very simplistic terms analytic to me is "accurate" in as much as it is reproducing the source with no added or subtracted information. "Musical" seems to be used when describing valves or analogue where there is some form of introduced of distortion. Whether to make a sound more acceptable to ones subjective preferences or not.

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2 hours ago, emesbee said:

While I do believe there is such a thing as 'burn in', particularly in regard to speakers, I do sometimes wonder if what we attribute to burn-in is really our brain recalibrating itself to the change in the equipment.

 

An analogy might be getting a new pair of prescription glasses. Every time I get a new pair they seem strange for a while (especially so with graduated lenses), although its always hard to quantify what that is. Within a fairly short period of time though, the feeling of strangeness disappears, and everything looks normal again. If my glasses were an audio device, I might be tempted to say that they had 'burnt-in', but it is really my brain that has adjusted to the changes, presumably by altering the connections between certain neurons. Presumably the same happens with our sense of hearing.

 

 

Someone who works in a hifi shop could easily test this by putting some brand new speakers next to the floor shop demo version of the same model. 

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Guest Simonon
oh my lord, talk about starting the apocalypse 
The apocalypse comes when our wives find out how much some of us have really spend on this hobby ?
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5 minutes ago, Simonon said:
3 hours ago, swervyn said:
oh my lord, talk about starting the apocalypse 

The apocalypse comes when our wives find out how much some of us have really spend on this hobby ?

the "apocalypse" comes when realise the wife has actually known this all the time :D

 

am sure they can use google ! and count up the dollars ! hehe

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38 minutes ago, Eggcup The Daft said:

just the compromises introduced to proper dynamic recordings just by the requirement to produce records that can be tracked by even a good turntable.

they figured this out a while back and invented the riaa curve :)  circa 1954 since when its been standard...

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIAA_equalization

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2 hours ago, Eggcup The Daft said:

If the test is "fidelity" digital recording can do much more than analogue, and especially than vinyl records. Consider for a moment, just the compromises introduced to proper dynamic recordings just by the requirement to produce records that can be tracked by even a good turntable.

 

Digital audio technology is no con.

 

My post was just cheeky response to your first post in the thread. :)

I like them both but had to throw in that Vinyl is better than Digital as it just seemed like that type of thread.

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12 hours ago, swervyn said:

Right o, here is one thing I read and see here in the forums that I just cannot fathom.

 

I (not me, but in general), have a pretty good set of speakers, maybe 5 or 6k worth

 

i got $1400 speaker cables which have brought out incredible detail that i have never heard before

Different speaker cables may exhibit different electrical characteristics, which, in turn, may alter the frequency response of the speaker. No mystery. Just science.

 

Quote

 

now, i have got $300 mdf squares that lift my $1400 speaker cables off the floor and the difference is incredible, wtf drugs are they on

 

seriously how can lifting your speaker cables 50mm off the floor make such a remarkable difference?

 

 

It doesn't make any difference. It is purely imaginary.

Edited by Zaphod Beeblebrox
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6 hours ago, rocky500 said:

My post was just cheeky response to your first post in the thread. :)

I like them both but had to throw in that Vinyl is better than Digital as it just seemed like that type of thread.

 

Yep, there's one in every thread. :excl:

 

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Guest Eggcup The Daft
1 hour ago, Zaphod Beeblebrox said:

Different speaker cables may exhibit different electrical characteristics, which, in turn, may alter the frequency response of the speaker. No mystery. Just science.

 

What you noted is well known and has been so for many decades. So-called 'room gain' relates to reflective surfaces near the speaker. Additional problems may be caused when coupling speakers to a floor which interacts with the speakers (ie: a suspended timber floor).

Correct, of course - but @swervyn was referring to lifting cables, not speakers... unless there's something unusual about the floor, cable lifters would appear to me to be based on another myth.

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1 hour ago, Zaphod Beeblebrox said:

Different speaker cables may exhibit different electrical characteristics, which, in turn, may alter the frequency response of the speaker. No mystery. Just science.

 

What you noted is well known and has been so for many decades. So-called 'room gain' relates to reflective surfaces near the speaker. Additional problems may be caused when coupling speakers to a floor which interacts with the speakers (ie: a suspended timber floor).

The context of what was written and your reply is beautiful. Not only does it show you need new glasses but it finally indicates you are now waiver on the fence and are ready to embrace the world of tweakdom. Well done mr Quixote.

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11 minutes ago, Eggcup The Daft said:

Correct, of course - but @swervyn was referring to lifting cables, not speakers... unless there's something unusual about the floor, cable lifters would appear to me to be based on another myth.

YIKES! I couldn't believe that anyone buys into this cable lifting nonsense, so my subconscious blocked out the relevant text. 

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1 hour ago, Zaphod Beeblebrox said:

YIKES! I couldn't believe that anyone buys into this cable lifting nonsense, so my subconscious blocked out the relevant text. 

I couldn't believe what you said either.  I thought that a miracle had happened and that you had crossed to the other side for once.

John

 

 

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13 minutes ago, The Spider said:

I leave my set up powered on permanently. I have no scientific reason for doing this, probably picked it up from Dad.

 

is there any Science to this or is it myth?

It's stupid. The myth arose from older style computer hard drives, which, when powered down, had a tendency (in rare instances) to crash heads into the disk surface. It was, therefore, better to just leave them running, rather than risk a head crash. Nowadays, all hard drives 'park' heads on power down. 

 

OK, that's where the myth arose. However, there is a little more. 

 

Big amplifiers can suffer with damaged rectifiers at switch on. However, in a properly designed product, this should either be a non-problem, or one which is not a big deal. Small amps and preamps are not a problem. 

 

There is a big problem with leaving equipment switched on: Electrolytic capacitors. Electrolytic caps are more like rechargeable batteries than regular capacitors. The charge-discharge cycle is related to a chemical reaction within the cap (sort of). As such, electrolytic caps have a rated life-span, which is typically 1,000 hrs ~ 10,000 hrs at the rated temperature of the cap. Obviously, at lower temperatures, that life-span is extended. 

 

So, you have two big problems:

 

1) The life-span of the electrolytic caps.

2) The temperature of those electrolytic caps.

 

Keeping your gear switched on WILL wear out electrolytic caps. 

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Advances not recognised for audio compressed with a psychoacoustic codec

 

In the late 1990s, mp3 files started to become popular. At the time, hard disks were still expensive and file size reduction was important. The bitrates used for the compression to mp3 were usually low, and mp3 is not all that efficient a codec anyway. The sound quality often left a lot to be desired. Mp3 files developed a bad reputation amongst audiophiles. Deservedly so, in my view.

 

A lot of people don't seem to have become aware that a modern codec at a high enough bitrate can be fully transparent for their ears (i.e. not matter how hard they tried they would not be able to hear a difference, even in an A B test quickly swapping between compressed and uncompressed versions). For example, a stereo source compressed using the AAC codec, at around 256kbps, will sound the same as the original for most people with almost all music. It will only be exceptional passages of music where a slight difference may be audible; and even then only some people will be able to notice it.

 

However the notion that if the music is converted with a lossy codec it must sound inferior has persisted in the minds of many audiophiles.

 

(Note: I am not referring to compression of the dynamic range, an issue with modern CDs of pop songs.)

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3 hours ago, Zaphod Beeblebrox said:

Different speaker cables may exhibit different electrical characteristics, which, in turn, may alter the frequency response of the speaker. No mystery. Just science.

 

It doesn't make any difference. It is purely imaginary.

If you can here a difference then there is a difference. This writing stuff off as imaginary because primitive man made  science cant prove it, is just as much hocus pocus as what this topic is about.

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