#audioblr

[audio-luddite]

Speakers Again!

There is a remarkable group of speakers on Craigslist today in our city. In the $1200 dollar range there are some big Technics, JBLs, a Maggie, and an Infinity RS 2.5.

One ad especially caught my attention. It was a pair of Allison Ones.

Not this pair, I was looking for a good Picture.

You never see these out there. From the 1970s era with a "Boston" sound. These guys are three way with six drivers each channel. They could be called quasi-omidirectional. In the wars over speaker theory Omni direction always comes up. The trick here is they must be placed hard against a wall so the wall becomes like an acoustic mirror creating a virtual omni pair for each channel.

Back in my youth these were respected. The designer Roy Allison was out of AR (Acoustic Research) and had a hand in the famous AR-3. Oh, and yes I wanted a pair. Much easier to live with compared to maggies and more conventional high end speakers.

I liked the concept as it was pretty simple. The angle of the two faces is 90 degrees as I recall. You get symmetry on two planes when against the wall. Wall placement has several advantages. It helps in the low Bass by bumping it by around 6 db (wall and floor) It limits multipath reflections a bit. The room fills with sound and there is a significant area of radiator surface with two of everything per side.

All the drivers are flat on the faces so from a central listening position you are 40 to 45 degrees off axis to them which should mess up the highs a bit but they were reputed to have excellent imaging so there is that.

These were one of my influences for design. My invisible speakers are also set hard against the wall. It pleases the wife to not have big ugly boxes in the middle of the room. If I was not a DIY type I would probably buy these.

Hmmm maybe I should build some......

#audiophile #high end audio #audioblr #cheap audiophile #Allison One Speakers

[richardmurrayhumblr]

Zahera of Nalak-bel The poem is entitled=> Yerewfo, The Bard to Zahera: The cup of Zahera plus six fool #rmaalbc   #artist  #richardmurray #rmtj Audiobook- full poem https://www.kobo.com/us/en/audiobook/yerewfo-the-bard-to-zahera-the-cup-of-zahera-plus-six-fool Book cover black and white version https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Zahera-of-Nalak-bel-BW-941242244 Book cover color version https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Zahera-of-Nalak-bel-Color-941248429

#rmaalbc #artist #richardmurray #richard #zahera #nalakbel #calligraphy #poetry #poem #rmtja #rmtj #audiobook #black #kobo #blackblr #poetblr #poets on tumblr #black on tumblr #audioblr

[lafortis]

Quick shout out to old Arabic AND Indian dudes for just absolutely blowing my fucking mics out

No srsly way better than old white dudes where theyre fucking silent three feet away from it

#i can compress this #i cant gain up a non-existent signal #audioblr #techblr

[artide]

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZQ-6NjSaNH0CABI1ArR3-wpb__lruxOW/view

#audiobook #audioblr #ilprofeta #gibran

[i-just-want-to-be-a-cat]

I don't know enough about mixing audio. I can do set up and strike. But I don't know how to mix. Or even begin mixing. I think I know what gain and gates are. But nothing else. Please send help. Really, I want lots of help. I want to be able to do this.

#Personal #techblr #audioblr #bad audio

[audio-luddite]

Battle Lines.

Many conflicts occur from misunderstandings. Those lead to opinions and different opinions lead to taking sides. Criticism of what I think is criticism of me. Wanna fight? I just watched an interesting You Tube video on digital recording. (see below) They talk about sample rates and bit depth and well stuff which engineers deal with in audio. Interesting they relate bit depth directly to tape noise.

The consumer or audiophile listener has to take a side right? I mean I have said many times I prefer my analog source of LPs to Streaming and CDs. The fight between digital and analog is very similar to the solid state versus glass conflict. You wanna fight?

But recently I have gone on about how I have some really good CDs. There are true audiophile CDs even with the limits of 16 bit and 44 khz.

My CD player is good, but not high end. It costs less than my current phono pickup. But good can be pretty good.

I am beginning to lean on the idea that it is the recording and processing of the disc (either shiny clear, or big black type) that is the big difference. A poorly done recording and a ham fisted mastering will make a poor playback no matter how fancy and expensive your music spinner is. Or for that matter if it is digital or analog.

And there is a direct parallel between how a digital signal can go bad and how a solid state or tube amplifier can sound good or bad. Clipping is a word used when a signal exceeds the capacity of a medium to portray it. In a power amplifier tubes are always praised for how they clip. Overdrive them and they keep pretty calm and if you are a guitar player they make nice distortion sounds. A solid state amplifier reacts dangerously with nasty harmonics and even gobs of DC to blow speakers. Personally in audio I think if you are clipping an amp you have got something seriously wrong.

I get frustrated when people go on and on about how tubes clip nicely or better. Why clip anything at all? It can explain why a relatively small tube amplifier, say 60 Watt, can sound as good as a much bigger solid state one of 240 Watts. But generally clipping is something to be avoided. Don't do it!

In digital recording if you clip a signal it generates harmonic artifacts that sound very bad. So much of poor CD sound can be from bad recording or conversion from analog to digital at the front end of the process. Done right it sounds fine.

The debate about bit depth is also a distraction. A CD has much more Dynamic Range than an LP, but an LP is adequate for almost all music. Sound effects maybe not.

In one of my discussions with the Tube Guru he used the analogy of hearing a bee buzzing on the other side of the garden then it gets hit by a lightning bolt. That is about the DR that a CD is capable of. Need that much?

The real application is in the recording and studio mixing phase where more bits give you lower noise so layering tracks will not lose everything into hiss. Higher bit rates are to facilitate analog input filters of easier slope to prevent frequencies above the Nyquist limit from getting in. That is a problem at the front end.

I like reasoned factual discussion. You can still like this or that, but lets not fight. There still is no best, just preferences. Enjoy the sounds.

#audiophile #high end audio #audioblr #cheap audiophile #tubes vs transistors #telarc digital #digital versus vinyl #Youtube

[audio-luddite]

Pure Digital versus Pure Analog

From where I sit they can both be pretty good.

Right now I have a TELARC CD spinning. It is pure FN digital. Recorded in 1980 in Atlanta Georgia on a Sound Stream digital tape system. (16 bit 50 kHz! oh dear not CD rebook) The insert says no compression, no limiting, no equalization. How much more pure do you want?

It is my Carmina Burana disc. Chorus and Orchestra doing big music. I hear nothing wrong with it. The treble is way past what my old ears can detect. The Bass is seismic. And yes the ARC Cl60 is on duty so the drums have great texture and I cannot explain how great a chorus of human voices sound.

It would only be better if I understood Latin and Old German from the 12 Century. Then the songs about bad luck, lost love, and not getting the girl while getting drunk would be so in tune with the 20th century experience. (that was my century). I imagine the 21st century aint that different.

The sound is splayed across my wall. Some feels outside the angle of the speakers, but most is stretched clearly between the geometry of their location. It has height which is weird but it is an amazing illusion.

I got no complaints. Well maybe too many mikes so the mix was tricky. The venue space is "complicated".

I think from outside adhering to the dogma of pure this or pure that puts a frame of reference that people will use to throw cold water on the experience of great art. Wow that drum was HUGE.

I will be following this with a pure analog recording. I got lots of those. Where infinite resolution and purity of an analog signal falls down is limiting and equalization. We shall see. They are different.

Analog actually has infinite resolution you know. If the recording is simple you get intimacy. If it is not well other stuff.

Next up Jazz.

Ok a different purity. Organic? Forgive me in that I have had enough wine to not be a legal motor vehicle operator. But I get a real nice feeling with this one. Jazz at the Pawn shop. From the age before digital. Nagra IV tape decks with a simple mix and just let run. There is no info on mastering or equalization but it is acknowledged as a good one.

The space is good. And yes there is clinking of glasses and silverware. Really cool and natural details. Good? Yes! The music is fine and for purists the performance is not up to New York or Chicago, but damn this is Sweden people!

That vibraphone is spooky.

If I had access to 96kHz DSD I could say bits slay, but I don't. My analog front end is much better than my CD player, but hey to each their own. Oh and I have each.

The main thing is the music.

#audiophile #high end audio #audioblr #cheap audiophile #turntables #audio technica #Telarc Digital

[audio-luddite]

The Truth the Whole Truth

But nothing is the truth.

I have been meditating on the eternal dichotomy of tubes versus transistors. In my opinion the big difference is in power amplifiers.

Small signal devices as in preamplifiers in class A operation are not so different in either glass or solid state. But in power amplifiers the difference is significant and is the cause behind the wars between the tribes.

First up is for high quality devices the differences are small. And neither is best. Though I do lean towards solid state for being more accurate.

So I meditate on nanoseconds and feedback. No device is free from distortion. That is just another way of saying they are not perfect. An excellent method to reduce distortion is feedback, or if you like to stand on your head feed forward.

The idea is simple. Compare what you get at the output to the input. If there is a difference other than magnitude subtract it (negative feedback) or add the inverse by way of a perfect small signal amplifier. (feed forward see that THX patent or the old QUAD amp) Either way is a correction signal. Fix the error.

Some people fret over the idea that if you correct an input that passes through the same imperfect device it is never right. Some people will claim that making a device with no correction signal is an obvious choice. It only has to be perfect.

All of my power amps have negative feedback. All told I have 4 of those. 3 are solid state and 1 is tube. Just in terms of wire and the speed of light it takes about a bit over a nanosecond for the correction signal to get from the output to the input. A nanosecond is a billionth of a second. That inverts to a frequency of gigahertz. None of my amps go to gigahertz so that gap would get lost no? It is effectively no delay at all.

A tube amp is special though. All production tube amps have output transformers. Small signal class A devices do not need output transformers so they are not that different. Power Tubes are high voltage and speakers are low voltage (except for electrostatics) so you need an impedance matching device, a transformer. And 99 times out of 100 the correction signal is pulled off the secondary winding which is many feet of wire and loops of magnetic flux away from the power tube. As magnetic flux is involved and all sorts of black magic and differential equations you also get phase issues as well as other things which makes the feedback a bit weird and always off a bit. Oh the test instruments show things as better, but not quite right to human ears.

I can hear the effect. My high end tube amp masks tiny little details my brute of a transistor amp is quite happy to reveal. BUT the tube amp paints lovely colors over the signal. I do mean lovely, rich, and very attractive textures. It is a shame they are not real, but I like them. That in the end is the difference. I know they are not real. I know those tiny sounds are there under the nice colors.

That is why the transistor amp is more accurate. The tube amp is prettier sounding. If both were perfect they would sound exactly the same.

I have the advantage of not adhering to either side of the hostile argument. I have both. Also when I put the black Franken-Amp back in service as the weather warms up it saves the tubes in the glass beast. Rather than one or two years service I should get double whatever is due.

#audiophile #high end audio #audioblr #tubes vs transistors #cheap audiophile

[audio-luddite]

Some people get it right.

I did my usual lap of the audiophile directory and saw a name.

The Audiophiliac guy was interviewing David Chesky. I have a number of Chesky LPs and they are excellent. He has been around a while. I had a mental image of an old heavyset geezer with gray hair and well.... I was way wrong.

DC is a skinny long haired dynamo. He can play and does play with all sort of equipment. He is a musician, a composer and a record producer/engineer. His home is an Aladdin's cave of audio gear.

Ok here is the link.

The best part was DC dominated the show and Steve said very little. DC is a maker of art, Steve is a spectator.

I am surprised and impressed that his main system is a set of Quad 57s. They are tweaked and have added super tweeters, but still old Quad Electrostatics at heart. I love the still picture of the guy with an electric guitar between the most polite speakers ever to leave Jolly Old England.

He has several set ups so he can compare his mixes. He describes the process very well. But the Quads are the main set.

Key point is his goal as a recording engineer is to make the sound clear, clean, and accurate. He wants the wall of your home to disappear and be replaced by sound. Sound with depth and width and height.

Yet he respects distortion and different dynamics.

I can testify that his LPs are excellent. He is exploring new methods of distributing music.

He goes on about how high end equipment is arts and crafts as opposed to hard technology. Hey I can get behind that. As there is no best portrait painter there is no best amplifier. It is what you like.

I think you have a couple of benchmarks to a high end audio system. It has nothing to do with brands or methods. First is you have a convincing illusion of a performance in your room. (I got that) Second is you like the voice or sound of the system for your music. (I got that too!)

Actually my system has two voices. Winter is one and summer is the other based on the amp then on duty. So similar and different.

Actually Spring is coming and when I swap out the amplifiers I will do a detailed comparison. There is no one type of high end.

#audiophile #high end audio #audioblr #tubes vs transistors #vinyl #Chesky #vinyl records #Youtube

[audio-luddite]

40 plus years of audio wisdom.

Is it egotistical to call my opinions wisdom? Hey this is MY tiny corner of reality so deal with it. I have heard a lot of high end audio equipment, some touted as state of the art. You know what tout means?

First golden rule there is better and good, but there is no BEST. As things ascend the hill of quality the paths lead to things you like. Perfect may not sound the way you want. You may like sugar in your coffee. (Ruins it for me)

Second golden rule is this is supposed to be fun. Do not get angry that people like different things or disagree with you. Appreciate different perspectives.

Every method of sound reproduction has distortion. Every method of measuring distortion has flaws or limitations.

Equipment reviewers are imperfect and human and are motivated by their situation. They almost always give positive comments, they have to. Read between the lines and make your own judgements.

When considering a purchase think critically.

Sometimes you may just want a taste of something different. That is perfectly fine.

Good equipment has a definite voice. Specific brands usually have specific voices that reflect the preferences of the designers. I conclude that this voice is a particular family of distortions that the device has. If there was no distortion it all would sound the same.

Both Tubes and Transistors can be used in high end gear. Neither is inherently better. They each have weaknesses. They are different.

Both pure analog and digital methods and media can be very good. One is NOT inherently better than the other. I have both pure analog and pure digital recordings of impeccable quality. I also have combination of those technologies that are excellent too.

It is great to have high quality recordings of good music. It is fine to have less than great recordings of great performances too. Music is performing art after all.

Psychology and preferences will drive purchases. Nobody is immune. Sales people need to sell. Snake oil products are common. A community of people that believe something reinforce that belief amongst themselves, even if it is false.

I have found that over four decades the absolute quality of audio systems has not improved that much. The golden ear experts described a lot of gear as perfect and realistic and many positive adjectives back 50 years ago. I have assembled systems with older equipment and it is pretty good. Preferences for particular things change.

Try to explore and have fun.

#audiophile #high end audio #audioblr #vinyl #tubes vs transistors #turntables #audio wisdom

[audio-luddite]

I did a browse of Tumblr "Audiophile".

OK weird.

Much of the stuff is photos of old stuff from brochures and magazines (like paper OMG). I guess some people kept all that stuff. Grandpa was a hoarder of audio mags? I see lovely ads for crap product. It was crap 60 years ago and still is today (like the BOSE 901). There are some bits showing good stuff but not much. And there are the confused people who don't understand obsession with vacuum tubes and LP records.

There are links to very artistic audio themed soft-core porn. Some are adds for console stereos draped with girls in lingerie. A good stereo will bring the girls in for sure. At least that was thought in the 60s? And there are people posing as golden ears. Some experts might be expert, but you gotta pay the bills no matter the crap information they put out. Number ten in this guy's top ten turntable list is pure crap now and forever.

I have even seen totally phony photo-shopped systems that I know could never exist. You know a turntable has to be at least a bit more than 12" across to fit an LP which is 12 inches in diameter. So that picture just don't scale right.

I guess in summary it is not much fun to look at that tag as there is so much dross.

If you are an audiophile then you probably know good from bad or want to. If you are just interested or new to this then there is a problem. There is a hell of a lot of misinformation conspiracy and noise.

First problem is the term audiophile. It means literally you love sound. The presumption is you appreciate the quality of sound. That is different than liking music in general, or some specific type of music. That would be a musicophile. All it takes is adding -phile to the end of a word.

So if you like music as opposed to just the sound of steam locomotives passing by and care for good clean sound then you are bumping up against this other -phile thing. Do not be intimidated. I assure you that listening to a favorite artist with all the sounds fully resolved and blasting away in your home is a good thing.

It is strange to me that people will spend a small fortune on a sound system for their car and far less in their home. Though I suppose if you live in an apartment loud music will make no friends, but being a big bass thumper in traffic is OK and even expected. Hey if you love that sound well sorry to tell you... yup audiophile.

Now to cost. There can be a lot of money spent. Some people will spend six figures restoring a car from when they were young. It is a hobby where it is possible to spend gobs of money. And there are many people, and companies who will help you spend your money.

You can spend much less and get good results. My equipment has only two relatively new things in it. One Phono Cartridge, and one vacuum tube. All the rest of the electronics are decades old. My speakers are a few years old but I built those as I know best. The cost has been interesting. By selling off older even collectable stuff I have spent effectively no money over the past 7 or 8 years. Yes I bought that stuff once long ago, but economically it was sunk money.

I have the advantage of experience and know the good stuff from the less good. I know what brands to look for. I also know which products have cults around them that blur the flaws. I call myself a "cheap audiophile" as I will not spend more than low four figures on anything. The most expensive thing I ever bought was under 2k bucks. Most was far less than that.

One of the links the tag search brought up was guy who did not understand why anyone would buy Vinyl Records. The equipment is expensive and the media is less available than digital streams. There was one reply about the tangible nature of an album and actually owning a thing rather than just being allowed to access it. I will go further.

I have avoided high end streaming because of cost and complexity. To get good sound out of numbers you need several lumps and most are expensive. You need a computer or a server that is logged into a provider like "tidal" or "qobuz" or "apple music". Then you need a device that can store the bits on a drive either an SSD or even a spinning magnetic disc to avoid drop outs that can be the music server, but not the computer. Then you need a DAC to convert the particular stream to analog sound which is finally fed into your audio system proper. Aside from the subscription (I have apple music) you need three lumps that each cost more than a good turntable if you want audiophile sound.

In order to add a high end streaming line to my system would cost more than the replacement cost of my system as it is right now. So I have a low end solution. I plug my Iphone into my CD player with a nice-ish DAC in it. It is OK sound. But I swear if I play an LP of the same music after hearing it off my iphone to CD quality there is no comparison the LP is better.

And yes when it comes to vacuum tubes I vacillate. They are expensive and wear out. They sound nice. They have more distortion and artifacts than solid state, but it is nice sounding distortion. A big part of this hobby skews preferences to nice sounding distortion. Vacuum tubes and moving coil phono cartridges are prime examples.

My most recent experience was going from a full vacuum tube preamplifer to a hybrid with only one tube. The sound was rich and deep and involving before. Yummy like a good sticky baklava dripping with honey. Now it is detailed and frankly palpable. I can hear a singer part their lips before a phrase. You have to hear that to appreciate it.

I have been recently been tempted with two vacuum tube unicorn amplifiers for a very good price for that type of device. That price is double what a competitive solid state amplifier would be. And like I say at the local pub after my fourth beer, I want another but I don't need another. I am seriously tempted. I have a nascent love for the sound I know is in them. They have a voice and it is good. Actually this is a key aspect of the hobby. It is an emotional response to something. It is irrational.

Welcome to the irrational!

#audophile #irrational audiophile #cheap audiophile #high end audio #tubes vs transistors #audioblr #vinyl #turntables

[audio-luddite]

Pontificate

VERB

express one's opinions in a way considered annoyingly pompous and dogmatic.

Yah OK that is me (sometimes?). Though it is a common thread in the audio hobby. Tribes form and hold fast to their dogma. You know how that works. Tubes are best. MOSFETs are best. Give me Single Ended Triodes, or give me death. At the head of these tribes are annoyingly earnest people. Only they are right, all others are misguided.

My tribe is vinyl is best. Linear tracking turntables are the best. ARC Preamps ...... well you get the idea. I am pretty open about other things. Any amplifier technology that works is OK in my books as long as we have triple digit Watts on tap and some damping factor.

The most egregious pontificators are the golden ears with YouTube channels and or magazine columns. I find them entertaining especially when they miss things or just go far down some rabbit hole. That is why I check them out so often.

Take for example a person reviewing a speaker. There are so many methods, techniques, and design philosophies that your head will spin. Whichever speaker on review is very good to the best (depending). That Audiophiliac guy has had 60 year old Klipschs and bi-polar planars and baffleless cones, and boxes and well everything as his go-to reference at one time or another. He has interviewed speaker designers and praised their work while keeping completely different types as his reference.

Thing is I have a problem with contradictions. If one way is best the others are not. For example PS audio makes a speaker range that has an exotic diaphragm based treble driver that is the end result of years of work. In many respects it is the child of one of the early speaker design gods Arnie Nudell of Infinity fame. It is apparently VERY good.

BUT there are competing designs by Wilson Audio which is by many people considered the GOAT but uses fairly conventional magnetic coil based drivers. Many of them very carefully tuned but still box based.

The trick here is the position of the drivers can be adjusted to exactly align with your head-in-a-vice listening position.

Then you have electrostatics and planar magnetics and on and on.

So which approach is the best?

Those guys above are both are not inexpensive and have quite divergent design philosophies. So actually neither can be best.

I am certain they both sound very good with well matched equipment and room treatment. The room has to be "tamed" to work with these guys.

Any speaker can sound good within limits. Many sound very good even with flaws that someone from another tribe would consider fatal.

I do not like speakers that blow sound out front and back. I built those and was happy, but very much of what you hear is not in the source. It is an effect that muddles the sound. It is sound waves bouncing off back walls and other surfaces. Your brain compensates for that. I now prefer to minimize brain compensation.

Clarity and wide frequency range are my thing. Clarity means a minimum of extra sound waves coherently produced. Wide range means deep bass, and well my high frequency is not what is once was, but I have measured response way over my ear's limit.

If you sit in close to the "good" spot and cannot even identify where the speakers are that is good. You just want a curtain of sound an illusion of something or even somewhere else stretched across the room. That is the true goal. If you have that you are there already.

I recall a golden ear saying that a particular tube amplifier had very little "tube fuzz". I supposed that meant he heard it often, but forgave the other devices that flaw. "Solid State detail" was another thing he said. So SS has more detail? I recall another questioning MOSFETs as having a particular not quite right characteristic. Of course very many think that old school Bipolar transistors are fundamentally wrong for not quite clear reasons.

I could go on for hours about phono pickups. I may have once or twice, but I have some wise men on my side.

It all falls down to my mantra. There is no best. Better is what you like. If you like something more it is better.

#audiophile #audioblr #cheap audiophile #high end audio #tubes vs transistors #turntables #the best audio

[audio-luddite]

Maybe buying another disc?

The first time I heard of Willie Nelson it was when Carter became the president of the USA. WN played at his inauguration. Old country singer who likes to smoke wacky tabacky. More recently I have been musing over a 1978 album "Stardust". It is available on some high end pressings. One is at MOFI the other is on Analogue Productions. Both rather pricey with shipping.

The jungle drums say it is both good music and great sound. You know me it is best with both. The music is not country but the "Great American songbook" type stuff. Old popular music and such. I mean old even back in the 70s. Pushing a century now. There was fear and push back from the suits as WN was veering from his assigned lane, but it was made anyway.

Won a Grammy dammit!

It is on Apple music so I fire it up to have a listen. Apple streaming is not audiophile level, but I heard some very interesting stuff. The instruments are really clear and separate. The vocals laid back and it is obvious he liked the songs. I will run through it again later.

I did more digging and it was recorded in Emmylou Harris' house? Apparently true dat. WN was living in Malibu as were many of the country / folk people of the era. EH was married to Brian Ahern who had a recording truck parked in the driveway. Booker T Jones arranged and produced the songs. The harmonica was recorded in a tiled bathroom. Hey why use fake reverb when you have a tiled bathroom. There is more and it is just as much fun. Do what works who needs a big ass (expensive) studio.

The comfortable surroundings seem reflected in the performance. My big issue is which one to buy.

Mofi is $29 bucks plus $40 in shipping plus tax. A single 180 gram LP pure analogue tape to lathe. Good things said about it.

The Analogue Productions one is 2 x 180 @ 45rpm at acoustic sounds for $60 plus shipping. The one reviewed in the Stereophile item.

Either way not cheap and I am leaning to the skateboard trick. I am a geek after all.

Must

Have

Content.

#vinyl #high end audio #audiophile #audioblr

[audio-luddite]

Weird shit.

I guess Tumblr uses AI that is quite stupid. Actually I object to the term AI and suggest using SI as "simulated intelligence" is more accurate. Like simulated vanilla versus actually the seed pod of an exotic tropical orchid. Kinda similar but absolutely not the real thing.

Reason is the post just following this one. I will look at my scribblings from outside tumblr to see how it looks from there. To one side suggestions appear. Beside my discussion of phonograph tone arms appeared undertaker (death professionals) equipment, Mercedes car parts, devices to assist old people pick up stuff, cable supports and something in Arabic, and another in Thai? Not at all related to anything I write about.

I am sure my tags had nothing to do with that. So Tumblr reads the text and somehow derives that utterly random stupid stuff is related?

Maybe it just had a bad day. A cosmic ray hit a bit register and off into random land. That sure promises peace and prosperity when our computer overlords come to power.

Anyway to business.

I am being tempted. The QUAD 405 amplifier is an elegant example of iconoclastic thinking. It dated from the late 1970s and was respected by the golden ears of the time. It had its limitations which are usually attributed to the limitations of the QUAD ESL 57, and later ESL 63 speaker. Those were darlings of golden ears for decades. This amplifier could drive them which is impressive, but had current limiting and stuff to keep from hurting the ESL 57.

This amp used what they called current dumping. The main signal was carried by a Class A amplifier. When more power was needed big brawny (for 1979) transistors would pour in the amps to help. The output was compared to the input but the correction was made only to the class A part. That is sort of like Feed Forward rather than feedback.

One of the objections "some people" have to feedback is that the correction is to a signal that has already gone by so is never right. Alternatively they say the circuit is flawed so sending a correction signal back to go through the same flawed circuit will never make it perfect. I guess the speed of light is just not fast enough for them.

A new product called the Benchmark AHB2 power amplifier pays royalties on a patent by THX Inc. for a feed forward scheme that to me sounds exactly like the old QUAD idea.

So there always seems to be a QUAD 405 or two listed in various places. There is one listed in my area for $800 bucks which is generally market value. It is a Mark 1. I just saw a Mark 2 listed for $420 bucks. It has a physical blemish or two but operates. Hence I get twitchy.

There are several kits from reliable sources that offer upgrades and restoration. The current limiting can be modified. Better OP Amps are available. The power supply can be fixed and upgraded. And all that can be done for reasonable money still well under $800 market value.

I am curious. My current set of amplifiers are a similar design vintage. But the QUAD is an outlier. The design is compact, basically simple and like the song says it's a "go your own way" design. There are many out there so there is a healthy fanbase and technical support. I would like to compare it to mine. Then I could sell it. I have no actual desire to own it. I would like to hear how it sounds when it is in good shape.

Right now my system is powerful, detailed and relaxing to listen to. I can just listen to my music. That really is what this is about.

But I am a nerd.

#audiophile #audioblr #QUAD 405 #cheap audiophile #high end audio

[audio-luddite]

Four new LPs

I bought myself an early Xmas present. Four new LPs comprising 2 albums. They are both double 180s at 45. (Hmmm sounds like a skateboarding trick)

Decoded it means both play at 45 RPM and have the songs pressed over four sides instead of two. Double the fun!

The first one is a repress of Fleetwood Mac's Rumours. I have an original 1977 pressing which has been played hundreds of times. I figured it deserved a rest and a nice clean high end copy was a good idea. Also Rumours has the most iconic Christine Mcvie song on it "songbird". I fired up the system and let it run for an hour on my CD machine to get it all warmed up. Then I turned up the volume and let her rip.

Four sides means more record flipping, but get over it droogs. It does sound different. 45 RPM should bring better clearer treble, but the thing I noticed was the Bass. Huh? The drums were punchier and better defined. Yes Mr Fleetwood likes tinkling bells in his kit and that was better too. McVie's Bass was more present as well. Probably due to the cut tracks being wider at 45 RPM.

Also I always knew that Buckingham did all the lead guitar stuff, but now I could clearly separate the numerous tracks he did with I suppose different guitars as the sound was very different. They were also put in the mix across the sound stage differently. So overall noticeably clearer.

One thing I found in the lead in groove was much more turntable rumble. Yes I turned it up which makes a difference, but I have played music that loud before ( and after ) with not so much rumble. I suspect it may even have been the lathe used. Those are heavy machines and all are getting really old. They have not made new ones for a very long time.

Whatever! Once the music starts I am having fun. I know I do not have a megabuck system but my phazer TT is better than good enough.

The second album was Diana Krall's "Live in Paris". It won a few awards and this was a new mastering and pressing as well. Three of the four sides had outstanding sound. Side three had an occasional problem. There is a zipping sound in a couple places. To me it seems like there may have been a flaw in the cutting, or bubbles in the lacquer? It dominated in one channel so maybe even a thing in the mastering amp or could it have been my amp. Oh dear. I will have to play it through again to be sure. I have heard this thing before on other albums. All the other sides are FN perfect.

The music is nice Jazz American Songbook with a bit of Canadian Content. I really like live albums as the sound feels more natural to me. The crowd noise and applause gives you an idea of the real space. ( A great example of that is Simon and Garfunkle's Live in Central Park ) The recording is very good. I really appreciated the sound of the Piano. I know those are hard to mike convincingly. The Piano sounds BIG.

If you can get a nice record of music you like that is best. You have to keep the balance between the total nerding out on technical quality and the music. Some people miss the boat. I recall reading about a person with a nice stereo showing it off to another person. That other person then told him he was not an audiophile as he played whole albums through. Real audiophile will play short cuts of this and that to show off their systems. From that perspective I am not an audiophile then. Or maybe that guy need therapy.

Respect the artists who want you to listen to the whole album. That's why they made it you know.

Here I have two great albums of music I like with high end sound quality. I bought them from "Acoustic Sounds" online. They sell some nice stuff even though their name is redundant.

Feed the habit.

#High end audio #audiophile records #audioblr #vinyl #acoustic sounds #Diana Krall #Fleetwood Mac

[audio-luddite]

The Sound of Amplifiers.

A perfect amplifier has no sound. It has no character or voice and just lets the signal through. And no amplifier is perfect.

I tripped over an article or thread or whatever they call it when a person writes about what someone else wrote about. Actually what I am doing right now.

It was a person commenting on another person trying to resolve the differences between the test instrument people and the "it sounds like" people. Effectively they claimed that if you hear a difference it should be reflected in something that can be measured. Logic says it should be.

I followed the first read with a YouTube of that PS Audio guy explaining tubes versus solid state sound with the old clipping thing. So it is not one thing, but a subject from several viewpoints. I think clipping is a false target as if you overdrive an amplifier it is never a good thing. (unless you are an electric guitar player)

Skipping over the controversy of objective versus subjective the stream went why any amplifier would sound different as they do you know.

Any amplifier has three signals to deal with. One is the input from whatever is providing the low level signal. A second is the wall socket and what should be pure 60 hz AC power (50hz in many places). The last is the reflected signal from the wires and the speaker at the business end.

Just limiting to those things a host of issues can and do occur. The wires and what is at the other end is usually a highly reactive thing. The preamp has impedance and the wires have capacitive and inductive characteristics and they may even pick up RF interference or ground loops. A preamp will have an optimum load it wants to see. Is the amplifier in the right range? Same thing with the speakers only worse.

The wall current is a rich hunting ground for all sorts of conditioners and filters and surge protectors and things to spend money on. You don't have to look far to see very expensive things up to and including custom wiring in your house to deal with that. And much of those do make a difference.

I am going to extend that to the part inside the box that makes DC for the circuit rails from the wall current. My favorite tweak is to do dual mono in the box. Two channels can share a transformer, but give me separate rectifiers and filter capacitors for each side, or do not talk to me.

The speakers and the wires to them are what I think are the biggest factor. Amplifiers are tested with resistive loads. Easy peasy. Just dumb heat generators with no weird phase or bounce back. Speakers are very reactive. A woofer is a motor and it pushes back against what the amp wants it to do. Literally it generates a current from the voice coils when it overshoots or undershoots the ideal signal demands. That bounces back to the amp which should just shrug it off. Some amps can't do that.

And then you have to deal with phase shifting. A driver will demand peak current not at the same time as peak voltage. Worst in the bass near the resonance point. That can be bad, or not depending on the amp.

Amplifiers will have a different frequency response depending on the impedance and reactance of the speaker. Tube amps are worse for that than solid state. Some small tube amps with high output impedance will have huge non-linear responses with a particular speaker which makes then sound awful, but to the person who just spent a few grand on it. That is why damping factor and big wires actually make an audible difference to a system.

Big amps are best as far as I am concerned. Less likely to clip and to shrug off that recalcitrance of the speaker driver.

The differences are real. But I do not think they are necessarily a fault in a particular piece. An incompatibility is more usual. If you have an unfortunate combination of impedance and the phase of the moon a good amp will sound "bad".

If you take reviews seriously you have to be aware that everything attached to the device under review has a part to play. These are systems and everything depends on everything.

#high end audio #audioblr #audiophile #cheap audiophile #tubes vs transistors