Who is also an audiophile?

[summaron]

I have a rather low budget, satisfyingly mid-fi setup. Early on I decided to put my money towards optimizing the mid range and forget about everything else. Since I listen mostly to small jazz groups (early Thelonius Monk and John Coltrane) and classical recitals (Arcadi Volodos, Wilhelm Kempff, Reine Gianoli) it's worked out quite well.

1) The turntable I found next to a trash can at Broadway and 3rd in New York City, not far from the great and always very tempting Stereo Exchange. The table is a 1950's vintage AR XA (supposedly the basis of the Linn), to which I attached a Linn LVX tonearm from a poorly performing Rega-clone Revolver turntable. What a difference a suspended deck makes!

2) Basic Sony Walkman CD player

3) David Bogen integrated amp, with gutsy and playful 6V6 vacuum tubes. The Bogen is an early 1960's model--made at a time when amp designers actually went out to orchestral halls and jazz clubs and tried to replicate that sort of accoustic.

4) BBC designed 1970s LS3/5a's studio monitors. (Perhaps the speaker version of the rigid Summicron.)

5) 18 gage solid core copper speaker connects--all of $3.00 worth.

6) Grado cartridges ($40 version now; Signature 8M when I have enough set aside to get a new stylus.)

 

[Keith]

I used to be a bit sound obsessed and always insisted on certain amps or certain speakers and was convinced it made a difference. Sometimes driving home late at night if your in the mood and it's a good piece of road a $500.00 car sound system can seem as good as anything you've ever heard ... maybe it was something I smoked? :angel:

To draw comparisons between sound gear and camera gear is interesting ... in the scheme things ...if rating audio quality in the camera world, what would the Yashica Electro sound like ... from some of the pics I've seen come out of it in the time I've been on this forum (Avotius comes to mind) it would be right up there at a humble $35.00 or so! 😛

 

[al1966]

I built and designed most of my hifi but due to divorce and homelessness it got lost on the way🙁 Now I cant be bothered as I realized I had lost something on the way, the great excitement of hearing a cool new song or piece on cheep radios and the like. Now I listen to most music on an Ipod through a car stereo. That being said I do want to build a new amp and speakers to listen to it through. I still have designs in my head but these are not ott just I think half decent, but I keep spending money on paper ink film etc and that is more important (doing a photography ba) and I dont want to fall in to the trap of gear again.

 

[dee]

Just a thought - talking about sound reproduction and accuracy ... how many times has a live concert - sounded like the worst sound system ever ?

I came to the conclusion that If I could here the organ behind two boys in exquisie harmony , the system is fine ... then either I or the system has a bad day [ too dry or too damp ? the system not me ! ] , and the magic does not work !

Anyone here been astounded at the depth of some old mono records - helped by two speakers ?

this thread is not good - I now need to upgrade my Rega and fit the Helios Orion somehow , or fix the Pink Triangle - they live just down the road - or - or - and - and -

dee mented

dee

 

[dee]

Just a thought - talking about sound reproduction and accuracy ... how many times has a live concert - sounded like the worst sound system ever ?

I came to the conclusion that If I could here the organ behind two boys in exquisie harmony , the system is fine ... then either I or the system has a bad day [ too dry or too damp ? the system not me ! ] , and the magic does not work !

Anyone here been astounded at the depth of some old mono records - helped by two speakers ?

this thread is not good - I now need to upgrade my Rega and fit the Helios Orion somehow , or fix the Pink Triangle - they live just down the road - or - or - and - and -

dee mented

dee

 

[dee]

... anyone made a link between a modern turntable + valve amps and the 50s Leica / I 22 / I 50 lenses , I love on my M 8 ?

The detail might not be there , but the atmosphere / reality , IS !

I have been worrying about not wanting modern lenses for '' emma '' , but I never considered a non valve audio system - unless designed by Tim Parvincini - [ if that"s how you spell it ! ]

I was at a HI Fi show in an hotel and this 6 foot plus maverick genius was curled up bored stiff in one of those open wardrobes - he knows that sampling sound is useless in that kind of situation !

In launching his if-you-have-to-ask-you-can't-afford-it amps - he was feeding with a cheap cd player , WICKED !

I love that attitude - one in the eye for the serious attempts to maximise their systems with noise coming from everywhere ! I love it !

dee structive

 

[jvr]

Just a thought - talking about sound reproduction and accuracy ... how many times has a live concert - sounded like the worst sound system ever ?

Once I was in a bar and the sound system was terrible. The recording of the piano sounded hollow and very mettalic, with a lot of strange colorations. I was annoyed by that. Suddenly, I looked back and there was a guy playing a real piano, no amplification. The piano was really lousy. 🙂

One of the bad things about having a real good system, where you can hear MUSIC all day long without strain, stress or fatigue (I'm lucky enough to be in that point), is that going to live concerts is not so "exhilarating" anymore, you really get part of the adrenaline that goes in a live performance (of course, even classic! ).

But I know, someday, I'll just sell the whole stuff and keep just a small system, costing probably 100x less and that will give me 99% of the pleasure.

The strange thing is that won't buy the same system I would have bought if I hadn't spent 20 years on upgrades... 🙂 Today, I know there are things I value more than I thought, while others (more obvious) fade quickly.

If I had to sell the Dartzeels, I would go back to valves, no doubt, at all.

For me (ok, I'm in Europe, USA may be different!) valve amps are just like diesel cars and transistors are just like petrol cars: if you want a really inexpensive car, buy petrol (transistors). If you have a bit more money to spend, you'll be much better with diesel (valves). From a certain point over, diesel vs petrol is a moot point, just like valves vs transistors. ... 🙂

The Dartzeel it's an amazing amp, in the sense that it has all the qualities of the valves (smoothness, musicality, transparency, "light", etc, etc, it sounds more like "good valves" than the Jadis JP80+JA100 combo, and that's saying a lot: it sounds a bit like a single-ended-triode on steroids) with al the qualities of transitors (ok, it only gives out 150 watts. If you need to drive 80 db/W/m, 2 ohm speakers on a big room, or use your amp to power a soldering iron, Krell is better). But I have no doubt I would go valves if I had (wanted?) to "downgrade"... 🙂

 

[topoxforddoc]

The piano may not have been lousy, but the room acoustics may have been. Pianos are not the same - I only have to ask my wife that, as she has given up her career as a family doctor to teach the piano. We went through a bit of keyboard GAS for a while - Kemble upright, Yamaha electric piano, Yamaha electric keyboard and now a Steinway Model B grand too. The difference is that hers takes up even more space than mine (that includes both hi-fi and cameras).

I don't think any hi-fi system really sounds like a live gig, but then again the sound engineers set up live gigs differently to studio recordings. However a good hi-fi system can really make you believe that the artists are in the room with you.

Also i think anyone into music should go and see a few live gigs regularly - whether it's rock concerts, jazz combos ina small club, opera or a full orchestra. It just makes you appreciate it all the more.

Finally, as for valves (tubes) or solid state (SS), I'm a valve fan. Valves and really good horns, like the Avantgardes, are just fantastic. I haven't heard a SS system that I really like yet.

Charlie

 

[philhirn]

hey guys,
though I certainly can´t afford a real real audiophile system, I´d like to build a decent small scale setup centered around vinyl, and any hints, good websites etc that would help me to get a hold on all that matter (I´m quite a regular at the Berlin Philharmonics, but don´t know anything about the technical aspects of audiophily if you will) would be much appreciated.

Cheers and a happy new year,
jmk

 

[Rob-F]

Just a thought - talking about sound reproduction and accuracy ... how many times has a live concert - sounded like the worst sound system ever ?

I came to the conclusion that If I could here the organ behind two boys in exquisie harmony , the system is fine ... then either I or the system has a bad day [ too dry or too damp ? the system not me ! ] , and the magic does not work !


dee mented

dee

Yes, and yes! I've attended a live concert and thought, "The sound is muddy, strident, and is too recessed in the midrange!"

And I or my system have "bad sound days." I don't know about the humidity, but one factor is the amount of noise on the AC power line. Late on a Saturday or Sunday night, when industrial plants are shut down, the AC line tends to be cleaner, and teh system sounds better.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

I'm recovering (although I still own a system where just cables make a Noctilux seem cheap. Very cheap. 🙁) and I am again able to sit down and just listen to music.

If you have that much money to waste, why don't you send me some of it and i'll waste it in a more useful fashion. I'd buy a Leica, I've never owned one and probably will never be able to afford one, but I'd use it every day and take lots of beautiful photographs. 🙂

Seriously, I truly think that 99.999% of the music being made today is pure garbage. I'm no old grump, i'm 32 years old and I have no interest in the spewings of the American entertainment industry. I don't listen to music and I don't own a television and I never waste my money or time going to movies. I do spend a lot of time in art museums and a lot of time making art.

 

[wolves3012]

I like good audio gear but only to a point. I wouldn't call myself an "audiophile". I'll admit I spend too much money sometimes and that I still like vinyl, but I also have an endless supply of CD's.

To some extent I see camera/lens fetishism and "audiophilia" to be almost one and the same phenomena. They are people who have been the victims of media/marketing.

It's profound technical ignorance married with hypnosis by reviews and magazines/websites.

The same people who will spend $3000 on a lens for their snapshots simply because they read that the lens will give them the "Leica Glow" is the same person who will spend $2500 on interconnects or $3000 on AC/Mains cable. (Yes, a plug that goes into the wall. Some sell for $10,000) It's simply mumbo-jumbo and self delusion, but "religious" adherents are the most voracious supporters of their cause.

Almost none of them are engineers or scientists.

I'm not sure I can condense my views to the extent you have. I agree wholeheartedly!

 

[wolves3012]

hey guys,
though I certainly can´t afford a real real audiophile system, I´d like to build a decent small scale setup centered around vinyl, and any hints, good websites etc that would help me to get a hold on all that matter (I´m quite a regular at the Berlin Philharmonics, but don´t know anything about the technical aspects of audiophily if you will) would be much appreciated.

Cheers and a happy new year,
jmk

Subscribe to :
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org
You will learn much.

 

[wolves3012]

I started getting in the whole cable thing, but couldn't hear the difference in the different interconnects.
Eric

This is quite likely because there IS no difference in audio terms.

Let me lay down a challenge to the "audiophiles". It's not an original one either:

Show me one, single, supportable, scientifically conducted double-blind (preferably ABX) test where a difference was shown to exist between low-end and high-end interconnects. I know of some that showed that there is absolutley no difference.

Yes, there are significant differences once you pass way beyond the capabilites of human hearing.

Multi-thousand dollar/pound power cables? Maybe you can explain two things: Firstly, the power has travelled many miles down various cables and through transformers and so on. A few feet of cable makes a difference to that? I think not. Secondly, if the power supply in your hyper-expensive gear doesn't cater for the noise on the power line and remove it, aren't you being cheated by your investment?

 

[wolves3012]

Audiophile: One who likes audio (music) - yes I am.

Audiophile: One who spends vast sums on gear that has no substantiated advantage - No, that's not me.

I've had a long interest in audio gear. Many times I've been asked what should a person buy. Advice: If you like the sound and can afford it, buy it. If that's a £25 all-in-one gadget, fine. If it's £25,000 worth of goodies, so be it.

It's a constant source of amusement to me the pseudo-science touted that allows so many companies to extract large sums of money from gullible people. Not to mention the self-proclaimed "golden ears" who claim to hear the difference. After all, if you just spend huge sums on a new cable (or whatever), you're hardly likely to admit that you can't hear a difference!

And no offence to those on here who have parted with large sums and been happy with the outcome. Good luck to you.

 

[foto_fool]

Chris Crawford you are an iconoclast if not an anachronism, and I salute you.

As jvr suggested, I intended to post an in-line shot of my very modest system, but suddenly the icon for inserting a photo is missing from my editor window; hmmmm...

Oh well. My front ends are a Pro-ject turntable/arm with a Summiko Blue Point, as well as a Njoe Tjoeb CD player burning a pair of Telefunken ECC-88's and Burr-Brown OPA-627's in the output buffer. Preamp/phonostage is an Audible Illusions Modulus currently burning a matched quad of Siemens CCa. The electronic crossover is a DIY based on a Welborne Labs design and is out of the system at the moment as I am recountouring the low-pass section to second-order. The high-pass amp is an acurus DIA-100 and the low-pass a Classe CA-150. High-pass monitors are design-build units based on Morel drivers. I'm re-countouring the crossover for the near-complete new low-frequency units: small design-build enclosures with 8" Peerless drivers in Isobarik cofiguration, which should be good for an f3 of about 37Hz.

All my interconnects are DIY based on Chris VenHaus' "Fine Silver Interconnects", using Eichmann Bullet Plugs. Chris is another photographer/audiophile - uses digital and probably not an RFFer. My speaker cables are a DIY design based on Kimber 4TC. The power cables are also DIY. All interconnects and cables are double or triple shielded to minimize RFI (yes, your wireless router IS messing up your sound).

Not counting the cost of tubes, man-hours, and whatever cost one places on dirty looks from the spouse, I have about $6,000 in this system. When I put in a Harmonia Mundi CD recording of Philharmonia Baroque doing Vivaldi Recorder Concertos you can hear the performers breathing, as well as the corners of the recording space - the entire Berkeley First Congregational Church fits in my living room. Or I can knock the pictures off the walls if I choose.

Of course, my three-year-old has pushed in the centers of my mid-drivers and bounced the needle off the Blue Point.

- John

 

[summaron]

ust a thought - talking about sound reproduction and accuracy ... how many times has a live concert - sounded like the worst sound system ever ?

A friend who reviews music says the symphony halls of the 1990s have the accoustics of bad cd/solid state systems, as if no one knew any difference these days. Davies Hall in San Francisco is sort of an example of this type of construction, though the newer Disney Hall in Los Angeles (where Dudamel will soon be conducting) is supposed to have very nice sound.

I'm convinced there are lots of satisfyingly good systems you can buy for not terribly much. The British sound magazines always used to recommend carefully matched systems at L~250, 500, 750 levels.

I think once you decide you'll forego the sound of the piano hinges creeking and the wheezing of the players (something you never hear, or at least notice, in live performances), it isn't too expensive. A vacuum tube or two along the way helps with the nice decay of piano notes and the general harmonic structures. And as one once burned, beware of the cables racket!

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Chris Crawford you are an iconoclast if not an anachronism, and I salute you.

LOL. I am strange, that's for sure. I know so many people who's lives are truly under the thumb of the entertainment industry. Thier lives ruled by the times that "Their" shows come on the television.

When I lived in Santa Fe, I lived with a girl out there who, along with her 16 yr old son, were the worst examples I have ever seen. They watched TV 24/7. The woman wouldn't leave the house and do anything, I had to practically beg her to go out to eat with me because she was just lazy. all she wanted to do was watch TV. She called in sick at her job every other day cause she didn't feel like doing anything except sitting in front of the idiot box. Her kid was worse. She let him drop out of high school so he could sit in his room watching TV and playing video games all day. He wasn't a naturally stupid kid either...had potential he was throwing away.

I drove up to Indiana and got my 10 yr old son and brought him out over the summer. Him and I spent the whole time he was there going to museums, hiking in the mountains, taking pictures, driving around to see the natural beauty of New Mexico. She wouldn't do any of this with us, wanted to watch TV instead. I don't think my son met her son at all the whole 6 weeks he was staying with us; her son never left his bedroom. It was sad to see people so enslaved by mindless trash like that. My ex got fired from her job recently cause she was too lazy to work. She is about to lose her house, but she told me yesterday that her and her son spent money to go see a movie. Personally I'd prefer eating. And having a home.

All I can say is that I am thankful beyond anything you can understand that my kid would rather read a book, go outside and play, go hiking, build model rockets, play with animals, see museums, and think rather than watch TV, listen to mindless music, waste money going to movies or play video games.

http://www.amazon.com/Closing-American-Mind-Allan-Bloom/dp/0671657151 Check this book out. The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom. Bloom was a college professor and he taught long enough to see students in the days when they came to school and studied; and then he saw the transition to todays environment where students are constantly plugged in to walkmans, ipods, music even when "Studying". He says his students in the last years he taught were virtually unteachable because you couldn't get them to THINK. The constant sound in their ears numbed their minds as surely as drugs do, and made them impervious to learning.

 

[Pablito]

Around 15 years ago, the NY Times audio equipment critic wrote about a double blind test of amplifiers, where audio reporters and other experts in sound techology compared a cheap Pioneer solid state receiver with a high end tube amplifer system. CD player and speakers were the same, the "experts" did not know which amp they were listening to. Oh, they could tell the difference alright. But half of them gave the edge to the cheapo Pioneer receiver.

Hey, I just love the music.

 

[rxmd]

A friend who reviews music says the symphony halls of the 1990s have the accoustics of bad cd/solid state systems, as if no one knew any difference these days.

Wow. In this generality this allows one of two conclusions:

(1) 1990s symphony halls sound bad because the architectural acoustics designers in the 1990s were semi-deaf idiots, spoiled by running around with a Walkman all day, who didn't appreciate quality and didn't know any difference.

(2) 1990s symphony halls sound different because there was a different taste prevalent at the time. This taste is not en vogue today, so it's labeled as "bad".

Allow me to elaborate a little bit. Solid state systems don't sound "bad" per se, just different. Since the mid-1990s two things happened. Firstly, partly due to various developments on the financial markets, a lot of people especially in the US or the UK had significant amounts of disposable income. Secondly, the general sentiment of "back to the good old days when quality still meant something" arose that has, among other things, contributed to the renaissance of Leica, bakelite wall plugs and tube amps. Under these circumstances it's no wonder that people who've made a significant emotional (and financial) investment into old-fashioned technology tend not to appreciate some more modern technology - hence the sentiments against plastics in camera construction, against autofocus that has made it too easy, and against solid state technology in amplifiers. The fact that they label this as "bad", and hence the acoustics of buildings designed during an era when this was the predominant taste (among architects and among audiophiles in the 1980s and 90s, too!) as "cheap", is hardly surprising, but it also probably says as much about the people doing the labeling as about the acoustics themselves.

Philipp