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Aural Heaven -- iPod And Analog
Ant writes This Wired News article says there is aural magic in the combination of the very old with the very new: iPod through an old radio or tube-driven amplifier gives it a special warmth and atmosphere. '50-year-old Takeyuki Ishii insists the antique equipment creates an atmosphere that has been forgotten. The softer tones ease listeners and make them feel warm and relaxed.'"
"The softer tones ease listeners and make them feel warm and relaxed."
Considering the heat put out. That's not an unexpected result. Throw in a big meal.
... I just finished watching a _movie_ entitled Aural Heaven.
Movie's tagline: If you're bored with the rear, try it in the ear.
I thought that was my Powerbook? :-)
Click HERE
..then it's true for him. Nothing is more subjective than audio quality.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I wonder if this desire for that "warm, soothing" sound will die when those that grew up with it do as well. Is the attraction anything more than conditioning and sentimentality? Sure, a lot modern digital music could be called cold and clinical, but as a perfect representation of what the artist intended to create, is there really anything missing?
iTubes?
I dream in binary.
Not that tubes ever went away in audio, but more and more manufacturers are putting them into equipment "because it's a tube / for the sake of it". Take the Korg Triton (one of the more popular music workstations), of which an updated model released around January had a tube built in (to add "warmth")...
I beg to differ. Static and Magnetic planar speakers, as well as conventional voice-coil and paper cone speakers are vastly better today than fifty years ago. Stronger magnets, stiffer, lighter cones, better crossovers, all add up.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Why the heck is he using an FM transmitter to connect the iPod to his nice tube equipment. Its one thing to use nice tube amplifiers to get a warm analog sound from a digital source (even order harmonic distortion and all that jazz), but why limit the frequency responce to FM's 50-15,000 Hz?! Good sources (such as the iPod) and good output equipment (which would presumably be hooked up to quality tube amplifiers) would benefit greatly from a full 20-20,000 KHz frequency responce!!
- Victorian telephone (wireless version)
- Mac G5 embedded in an IBM S/36 case (to give that authentic Computer feel)
- email, delivered by the postman
- the LowCost cruise liner ($25 across the Atlantic)
- not rose-coloured glasses, but B&W glasses... gives you that good ol' monochrome feeling
- the e-Quill, looks like a quill, writes like a quill, drops ink like a quill, but runs Windows XP for Quills
- the iQuill (similar, but stores 150 hours of music)
- ye old Coffee Shoppe: double espresso machiatto served in antique copper cups, by surly wenches
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
Although I am a fan of the iPod (and Apple Computer) there is nothing new here: Some years ago (about 16) I spent a couple of days at Stevie Wonders studio (Wonderland) and was stunned to see a couple of CD players that had been custom built to have tubes hooked up to them. It was explained to me that this "new fangled CD technology" sounded too "crisp" and that playing the signal back through tubes warmed things up considerably. I never would have been able to tell the difference until they hooked them up to some seriously high end speakers and lo and behold, you really could tell a difference. Unfortunately I do not remember who build these CD players, but I seem to recall a $20k price tag.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
So you are saying that an mp3 on an ipod played via FM out of my old dad's radio sounds better than the ipod on it's own. Or maybe you are just trying to sell old radios?
Maybe this is the new era of nostalgy fans?
They take old, nostalgic objects, and combine them with new technology to make the ULTIMATE ANTIQUE!
At the rate IBM is currently (not) making PowerPC 970 processors, Apple may just have to switch to tubes to power their machines.
(Don't think it'll be a good quarter for us shareholders, though the sharemarket yet doesn't seem to have noticed Apple can't supply a G5 Dual 2.5 / iMac / XServe for love or money.)
Actually, plasma is the best driver, and that was used in commercial speakers back in the 1970s (I'm talking about Hill's Plasmatronic tweeters which use a DC glow discharge, not the crappier RF corona discharge designs you find more often). Take a look at the second set of response graphs on this guy's page for performance of slightly modified ones. With new technologies (MHCD instead of simple cathodes), even better is possible, with full range drivers not as unreasonable as might have seemed back then. Unfortunately Hill used helum plasma, so a helium tank was necessary. I'm working on DIY air plasma drivers, and the MHCD method makes a lot of difference. The only real problem is efficiency, as thermal relaxation is non-linear and that becomes a problem unless most of the power is bias rather than audio frequency modulation.
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
I think it should be possible to do the same change to the sound through a digital filter before converting it to analog. Or is there anything I'm missing?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
I've always preferred playing my MP3s through my low-end tube amp (an Antique Sound Labs MG-SI15DT, which has two small 12AX7 preamp tubes and two KT88 power tubes, and my speakers are Mordaunt-Short Music Series)... it sort of smooths out the MP3s, and I don't notice the sampling rate even if it's bad... if I play MP3s through my Sony A/V receiver the sound is either too muddy or too tinny... but through the tube amp it sounds vibrant and lively. Sometimes pure digital audio sounds too sharp and isn't easy on the ears. Analog audio tends to flow.
Some people don't like tube amps for the reason that they "color" the audio too much and it's not a perfect reproduction (fidelity)... but lots of people have a soft spot for the "warmer" sound... lots of people even like the sound of old vinyl records (even though vinyl records have horrible fidelity, the studios have to mix the audio specially for vinyl records different from how they do for CDs, because there are certain audio ranges that vinyl is horrible at reproducing -- I think it's the high end).
But one thing can't be denied and that's that tube amps look damn cool, and are fascinating technology... the tubes are out in the open and you can see inside of them how intricate they are, and they usually glow orange in the middle and some tubes have a blue haze (I've noticed this particularly in Svetlana brand KT88's once they've worn in a bit).
ESPECIALLY better than any compressed audio format. Just because you listen to everything through a crappy system instead of good studio monitors doesn't mean there isn't a difference.
For as long as there have been transistors there has been debate between solid-state supporters and tube supporters. The same two camps squared off years later in an analog versus digital debate. If you need to enjoy your music by looking at graphs created by test equipment, then solid state and digital will be the best solution for you. If you want to enjoy your music by looking at the pretty tubes glowing in your stereo rack and esoteric explanations to your friends as to your audio insanity, then tubes and Vinyl are all you. If you want to enjoy your music by LISTENING to it, grab your favorite CDs and Vinyl and head to a real audio shop. Any good (and I don't like this term, but its what most would call it) high-end audio shop will have good people to help you find equipment that will help you enjoy the music. Trust your ears.
...) they are not going to tell you that, because the Monks just signed on with the magazine for a $50k advertising deal over the next year.
Take what you read in magazines with a grain of salt. Magazines are there to sell adds, so when the new $10,000 amp that was built of unobtanium and blessed by Buddhist Monks sounds very similar to an amp made by a small but quality high end manufacturer in Buffalo (or Toronto, or LA, or London, or
Spend your money your speakers. You can invest a lot of money in source equipment, amplification, and cables, but if you have a $100 pair of speakers from Radio Shack you have a $100 system. There have been no breakthroughs in amplifier technology in about 30 years, but speaker materials and design have changed greatly.
Disclosure: I used to work in the high performance home audio industry (I've been out for about 6 years now). I got a chance to listen to a lot of great gear, and meet a lot on interesting audio engineers (some of which had there heads up the arses). I like tubes, but I agree they are not as accurate as solid state. I have often used a tube type CD player or pre amp, but prefer the better control offered by solid-state amplifiers. In my opinion this combination will get you the open and smooth soul of the tube with the slam and dynamics of a solid-state amp. I own about 1000 CDs, but if I really want to experience music, I listed to Vinyl. Digital music (weather a red book CD, audio stream, or I pod) takes the mechanical action of sound, cuts it up in to lots of little pieces, and puts it back together again. Vinyl is a direct mechanical representation of a mechanical process. Less is lost (even if it is a pain to deal with a record compared to a CD).
Trust your ears. They are the best test equipment money can't buy.
Seriously. Listen to some Myles Davis or Gatemouth Brown through an old RCA tabletop being fed a signal from an old single ended AM modulator/exciter stage (ie "three tube transmitter"). It's been so long that AM has been out of favor very few realize nowdays how very good it can sound with "honest" frequency response up into the top octave... if you have a decent AM radio.
...perfect representation of what the artist intended to create, is there really anything missing?
This is really a matter of personal preference. I am an artist (vocal and trumpet) and feel that music should be a representation of your emotion, feelings, etc. I personally do not like music that is created digitally. (Think drum machine, synthesizer, etc.) I don't mind digital recording as long as conservative compression or no compression is used.
I like tube amps because I feel that they add a certain imperfection that gives music character. The best way I can describe the difference is to compare a tube amp and a solid state amp with this example.
A tube amp is a concert hall. The seats closer to the stage hear a different sound when compared to people sitting in the back. The sound isn't perfect but you are hearing the music directly from the source.
A solid state amp is a concert hall where you are sitting in the "perfect" seat. The instruments/people blend perfectly. There is no emotion since the blending is perfect. You do not think about the music, you just listen.
Of course equipment made today can replicate sound almost exactly but for me that's not what always matters, IMHO.
In my classes of Electronic Devices, I heard (in my dreams apparently) that tubes have a linear behavior that transistors don't, this makes the working region wider for tubes than operational amplifiers. I do believe that it sounds better... but I won't pay to hear the difference. (Besides.. who will repair my grandma's stereo?).
You can check at http://www.valveheart.com/Why_tubes.html
I found at http://www.milbert.com/tstxt.htm :
Vacuum-tube amplifiers differ from transistor and operational amplifiers because they can be operated in the overload region without adding objectionable distortion. The combination of the slow rising edge and the open harmonic structure of the overload characteristics form an almost ideal sound-recording compressor. Within the 15-20-dB "safe" overload range, the electrical output of the tube amplifier increases by only 2-4 dB, acting like a limiter. However, since the edge is increasing within this range. the subjective loudness remains uncompressed to the ear. This effect causes tube-amplified signals to have a high apparent level which is not indicated on a volume indicator (VU meter). Tubes sound louder and have a better signal-to-noise ratio because of this extra subjective head room that transistor amplifiers do not have. Tubes get punch from their naturally brassy overload characteristics. Since the loud signals can be recorded at higher levels, the softer signals are also louder, so they are not lost in tape hiss and they effectively give the tube sound greater clarity. The feeling of more bass response is directly related to the strong second and third harmonic components which reinforce the "natural"' bass with "synthetic" bass [5]. In the context of a limited dynamic range system like the phonograph, recordings made with vacuum tube preamplifiers will have more apparent level and a greater signal to system noise ratio than recordings made with transistors or operational amplifiers.
Running an audio source through a tube amp creates tube-amp like sound! WHAT A BREAKTHROUGH.
What's this got to do with an iPod?
Yes, tube amps have a distinctly different sound than solid state gear. Yes, many people find the colorations of a tube amp pleasant. Most people do, in fact. I know I do.
Does that mean tubes are more accurate at reproducing sound? Not at all. But when it comes to the natural harmonics introduced by the amplifiers... tubes are much more pleasing than solid state gear.
An amp based on either technology can be engineered very thoroughly to give a flat, neutral uncolored response... but guess what.. that doens't necessary sound BETTER to the listener.
Remember, accuracy can be measured, but what sounds GOOD is *purely* subjective.
Perfect example: I have 128kbps mp3s that sound much better on my little ipod headphones than my $800 reference headphones. I know the reference cans are more accurate, and that they are letting me hear how crappy the mp3 truly is.. but the overall effect is that the shitty headphones make it sound better.
It's comparatively easy to make a low gain stage with decent linearity from either tubes or transistors. It's not so easy to make a stable tube amp with 120db open loop gain as it is a transistor amp, which means a very good tube amp might have an order of magnitude more THD (ie .02% at 1khz vs .002%) - meaningless unless you spend your time listening for sine harmonics. However, where it counts, it's relatively easy to make a tube amp with 20db or so open loop gain that, with just a tiny bit of feedback (maybe even just a db or two) will be very stable and have very good power response... and low THD (as if that was what mattered).
The seventies and eighties saw a home hifi market flooded with crap gear from japan (Manufacturers like Sansui and Sony and Kenwood and Pioneer) that boasted incredibly low THD... and provided its owners incredibly bad sound.
In general with audio, "warm" means stronger low frequencies in the sound and "bright" means stronger highs.
/.) that digital amps tend to reproduce even harmonics and acoustic (tube) tends to reproduce odd harmonics.
I've read somewhere (probably on
Can anyone confirm or deny this?
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
Cue the audiophile wars.
/. editors.
The only thing worse than an Apple/Linux vs. MS zealot discussion (a good thing IMHO) is an audiophile thread. They make beligerent Microsoft hating uber-geeks look like mongoloids when they start going at it. I swear, if audiophiles were allowed to talk in person, someone would lose an arm over whether ultra high sample rate digital is better than analog, or whether vacuum tubes should be used in amplifiers or whatever...damn, I have already read too much.
Please...Spare me oh great
Sometimes I think that they throw certain stories up on the site on purpose, just to get a rise out of some people and and to get everyone else to come and watch the train wreck.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
If someone could play some tunes through their Ipod on an old radio, record it for me, and send over the MP3's, that would be awesome!
Thanks in advance!
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
I have an old magnavox console stereo. I used to do this all the time with my ipod or whatever music playback device. The only thing was, that I had to open the back of it and look inside.
:)
TO my surprise I found aux line inputs. So with the proper cable, I was able to listen to all sorts of music through that thing. IT was great in the evening times.
Sadly, it finally blew and now just houses some old records, and is waiting for me to tear it apart and attempt to fix it.
It is SFV (stupid fashion victim) syndrome wrapped in pseudo-science language. No more, no less.
And the pseudo-science it comes wrapped in, invariably shows massive ignorance of the real science. It invariably boils down to "uh, you can't see it on any osciloscope or signal analyzer, but transistors do this and that evil thing to your signal." Well, guess what? If it's some mystical thing that can't be measured or detected in any way, it's no more than some poor man's religion.
And it's still ignoring that nowadays it's usually paired with transistors nevertheless. E.g., that signal went first through the transistors in the iPod. Whatever evil satanistic marks those transistors put on the signal, it's already there before it even reached the tubes.
And you talk about 8 bit or 16 bit or 24 bit quantization, which is a good topic to bring up, since they're still playing music from an iPod. It's still quantized, and it still has the artefacts from lossy MPEG or AAC encoding.
Or I've seen at least one mobo which paired an el-cheapo crap on-board sound chip with a tube, and suddenly it was audiophile equipment. As if there was some _magic_ in the tube that goes back on the causality line and also stops the sound chip from doing a crappy noisy job.
The whole bullshit is that passing _any_ signal through a tube magically makes it better. Suddenly it no longer matters that it's quantized at 8 bits, _and_ lost a ton of harmonics and gained new ones due to lossy encoding. The magical +5 tube knew what the sound should have been like, and erased all those artefacts. Basically turning lossy compression into lossless compression.
That's high magic, folks. ('Cause science and technology it sure ain't.) Don't try it at home. Only high elves certified by the Mages' Guild can infuse tubes with that kind of arcane power.
Which is all that this is. People wanting real hard to believe in basically magic. Magical tallismans which solve this or that by magic. Just because they're there.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Sound with even harmonic distortion is said to sound warm, that is 2f,4f,6f etc.
Sound with odd harmonic distortion sounds harsh to our ears, that is 3f,5f,7f etc.
Valves usually produce even harmonic distortion, transistors usually produce odd harmonic distortion.
Cheers
John
Perhaps the story should have been when Apple released Apple Lossless Encoder. That's the recent iPod news that makes the iPod better for audiophiles.
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
analog baby.
Yeah... like my tube preamp really appeals to my soft, fluffy, feminine side and empathised with me when my dog got run over by my ex-girlfriend... my solid state amp merely told me to get on with life or hang myself. There's no "emotion" in either of these things just different filtering characteristics... SSSHHHEEESSSHH!!!
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
..more particularly, it's the spectrum of the distortion. Tube amps usually display quite large amounts of added 2nd harmonic, which is euphonic, or 'warming' and musically concordant. However tube amps usually show far, far less odd harmonics than solid-state amps, and have a distortion spectrum that rarely extends beyond the 5th/6th harmonic at all. In contrast, solid state amps, esp. those with high negative feedback, can produce harmonics a lot further out, even though the total summed is less than the tube amp, the result has a different sound and many people can tell the two apart on this basis. BTW it is *not* due to simple differences in signal:noise ratio and the like. It appears the ear/brain hearing mechanism has a FFT component - check how the ear works, and look closely at what the cilia do. The bottom line really is that there's a *lot* the ear/brain hearing mechanism does that bald figures like 'hearing response' and 'THD' are inadequate to describe.
Tubes don't just sound subjectively differentm we can objectively measure the differences. Tubes distory the sound more than transistors, and in different ways. It gives a sound that is generally described as "warmer" and "smoother" and such. It's not as accurate, as least as compared to good transistor equipment, but that doesn't mean it's unplesant.
There is actually a DIY design for SoundBlaster Audigys (or maybe Audigy 2s, can't remember) to do a tube output stage. It is said (I've never heard it) to help smooth out harsh sound and mask some unplesantness like MP3 artifacts. Doesn't mean it makes teh sound objictevly more accurate, just subjectively more plesant.
Tubes DO sound different than transistors. Doesn't mean they are more accurate, the opposite in fact but it isn't an unplesant sound, at least not to most people. Also before the advent of delta-sigma DACs, CD players were pretty harsh. The way the output stage worked, it was a bitch to control accurately so the sound they produced really wasn't as good as it could or should be. Later converters ixed that but I'm not sure if they were around 16 years ago, or in widespread use back then.
Even now I could see someone wanting to do this. Tubes just kind of warm sound up and take the edge off. This means they are less objectively accurate and add more distorion, but that's not necessiarly a bad thing, so do equalisers. If you are listening for pleasure you are concerned about pleasing sound, not accurate sound.
Speaker design used to be as much art and voodoo as science. A company would ifnd something worked well, but not be able to explain WHY. That's really changed. Laser infermetroy was a big development, it gave the ability to analyze the dsitortion and refraction pattern on a driver, and witht hat optimise the material, crossover, etc. Better sources also allow for more accurate testing.
The advances in speakers are really quite striking taken in a 50 year timescale. New speakers sound significantly better than older ones, espically at a give price and size point.
Yes, but there are ways around that (and it's not just ozone, but oxides of nitrogen too). Here are four:
- Adjust temperature so that most of these break down.
- Cover the opening with a catalyst-coated grid.
- Use a fan or chimney effect to slowly draw air to an outside duct.
- Use burned natural gas (CO2); this is much cheaper than helium, and has the added advantage of preheating the gas without using more electricity (the gas/air must be preheated for reasons detailed in Hill's patent).
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
While I like the concept of what this guy is doing, the music will be missing some of its dynamic range by using the iTrip.
I have an iTrip. While it is a great device, the sound quality is much poorer using the iTrip than just using good head phones (not the crap that comes with the iPod).
I can only believe that the 'softness' of the old radios is masking the muted dynamic range of the iTrip.
People use analogue filters to make their music sound more seventies?
I don't know where you get this idea from...
Practically ALL electronic music uses analogue, or analogue style filters. It's a major part of the sound - in particular, the Acid House movement was practically built on the Roland TB303 'Bassline', an analogue synthesiser with big fat resonant filters. That 'Josh Wink' filter scream is all analogue, baby.
And where would HipHop be without the sound of Vinyl cracks & pops? It's an integral part of the sound (less so now, but definitely part of the Golden Age of artists like Tribe Called Quest).
In the last few years the Big Thing in synthesisers has been virtual modelling of classic equipment & sounds, but before that there was a big resurgance in new Analogue equipment - MIDI compatible keyboards that used real analogue circuitry to generate the sound (I myself own a Novation Bass Station, a MIDI-ed up clone of the TB303).
The idea that modern music is created on all-modern equipment is a fallacy - just go to the Sound On Sound forums and check out how heated the recent debates on Digital vs Analogue have been... even people who make full-on Techno are using tape-to-tape reels and claiming they sound better.
As for Tube technology - nearly every major pro-audio company has brought out a tube-based pre-amplifier in the last three years. I don't feel the need to listen back to music using tube amplifiers, but as any producer will tell you, digital modelling of Tube Distortion / hot amplification is nowhere near as good as the real thing.
Thank you, God, for giving me ears of clay :)
Tube audio ... let the jihad begin.
You CAN make a solid state amplifier sound as poor as a tube amplifier, if that's your goal. Apply current limiting to the transistors (to get that soft overhead someone talked about), run it through an iron core transformer (to limit the high and low frequency response), add some low-level 50/60 Hz to simulate the filiment hum, add a chassis mounted microphone fed to the input to simulate the microphonics tube amplifiers exhibit. Then, lets slow the response time down to round over those fast rise-time signals. Oops, forgot the random shot noise ... better add a pink-noise generator. Almost forgot the frequency-dependent distortion ... gotta have that now, don't we? Want that gassy, old-tube sound? Guess we'll have to shunt the output transistors with a high power resistor to carry some of the load. Don't forget to add a 300 watt halogen lamp inside to provide the glow, and more importantly, to bake the varnish out of the transformers, the wax out of the capacitors, and to fry any dust that gets in ... for that authentic odor. Probably ought to put the entire thing inside a cheap wooden box as well; you'll have to decide on shellac or varnish as the finish of choice (it DOES matter, you know). Add a heavy steel chassis, weigh the entire thing down with some paving bricks (cheaper and easier to get than granite slabs), and you've pretty much gone back in time to the pre-transistor era. Oh, almost forgot ... you have to overload the transistors severely so they fail after 100-200 hours to regain that thrill of yesteryear ... changing out bad tubes.
*****
I keep threatening to build a signal conditioner that will emulate all but the smell of tube audio, and add it into a simple Class-D amplifier. Want the "Fender" sound? Select from the menu and press enter. I'm sure the number of amplifier/speaker combinations will be unlimited ... so for a small fee, and some lab time with the audio setup of your choice, you'll get a non-exclusive rights to the sound of your own.
The problem is, I really hate engineering something so horrid to prove a point. It's probably much better to allow the existing marketplace to continue providing the cure for MMTB Syndrome (More Money Than Brains). That's it ... spend for the cure.
When people use optical descriptions to describe aural characteristics, you must suspect they're already part way to the cure for MMTB ... in that they recognized that they spent money foolishly, but want to have company so as to not look TOO silly.
Back to the anvil factory.
You're making too much of it, really. It's the same exact audio in two channels.
In the case of an ISDN link, you have two digital circuits. The modem is capable of doing stereo by devoting a circuit to each channel. Doing this gives you roughly FM-Radio quality audio. If you combine the two circuits, you get very high quality mono -- near CD quality, but you get that output on both the left and the right channels.
Don't get me wrong. I agree with most of your post. Just running a signal through tubes doesn't make it better.
But...
You go way too far when you ridicule people who say they hear differences that can't be seen on instruments.
It's just wrong to couch this in terms of "If it's some mystical thing that can't be measured or detected in any way, it's no more than some poor man's religion." Fact is, when someone says they hear a difference, the "thing" IS being detected. The difference IS being measured. It's being detected by the listener's ears. It's being measured on a scale defined by that listener.
The problem is that human ears are not calibrated against any objective standard. In the best cases, they are the finest detectors of subtle differences in sound available to us, far surpassing the sensitivity of the best mikes and racks of measuring equipment. They are also, unfortunately, completely non-standard in their reaction to input, subject to variation depending on a host of external and internal factors, and their results are not repeatable from instrument to instrument. That doesn't mean they are insensitive. That doesn't mean they don't actually hear a difference. It just means that the difference may or may not be obvious to another listener and may or may not be meaningful to anyone except the person listening at that moment.
I have no doubt that if you have good hearing and a love of music, you could listen to a particular orchestra play a particular piece in a particular venue many times over the course of years. That piece could then be recorded by that orchestra in that venue. As a fully-qualified judge, then, you could listen to the recordings through tubes and solid-state, planar and box speakers, etc., and be able to tell not only which ones were different and which you prefer, but which recordings and playback setups are more accurate. Just using your ears. And your results may not track in any meaningful way with the measurements produced by that bench full of instruments.
In that case, I'd consider the conclusions of the qualified listener to be far more authoritative than those of the technician who simply looks at the output of test instruments.
To translate to a more general case: By far, when everything is right, you'll be better guided in your choices of audio gear if you use your ears rather than just look at specs.
Once the mainstream went to transistors, even with analog sources, something was lost.. Sure its a matter of distortion, but to a human ear its more appealing then the raw accuracy of a transistor... Even went and built a class A tube amp myself years ago just because of this ( and my fisher tuner/amp died ). I have heard several 'simulated tubes', but they never quite sound right, prolly since its an abstract 'feel', that is impossible to completely identify..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I just bundle my iPod in a little cozy for warmth! Take a look here at 3 seconds of fame for my iPod!
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
Further to getting that sound quality (based around colouration and distortion characteristics, guitar players choose speakers that colour the sound and depending on the music or the nature of guitar tone they seek will choose a speaker that breaks up earlier. The whole guitar rig is chosen with the intent of a desirable sound. You're not after a hi-fi reproduction of what comes from the amp. It's not pretty.
I choose different tubes for my guitar amp depending on the EQ and break up characteristics that I want. A change in tubes changes my sound. An EL-34 has a different sound than a 6CA7 or a 6550 or a 6L6. One step further, there's a variance between the manufacturers of the "same" tube. Many guitar players (some referred to as "cork sniffers") seek out NOS (New Old Stock) tubes for the specific sounds they are after.
Through the guitar, effects, amp and speaker cabinet combination, I seek a desirable tone. Each element a piece that impacts my sound in a way that is desirable to me. Once I have that, I depend on the PA system (solid state) for an accurate reproduction of that tone
Try putting one of these between the digital out of your computer/cd player/what-have-you and your amplification system. Aha!
And yes, I'm a tube guy when it comes to instrument amps. My crackling, hissing 1961 blackface Fender Showman-Amp makes any speaker sound like a whole 'nother ball game. No master volume on this so it won't distort without making your ears bleed.
Something old (tubes), something new (iPod), something "borrowed" (music) ... now we just need something blue.
And yes, audiophiles do quite a bit of blind testing. Or at least scientist audiophiles do. Unfortunately, this is not true. Far too few people do blind testing, and when they do, they are often unable to tell the difference between electronics. There is a guy named Richard Clark who will give anyone $10,000 if they can tell the difference between two car audio amplifiers that have their levels and distortion matched exactly. I think you have to guess correctly 9 out of 10 times, and you can compare anything -- tube vs. solid state, $8,000 McIntosh vs. $29 WalMart, etc. Thousands have tried, and no one has succeeded yet. Stereophile magazine did a similar study several years ago, and their participants could only tell the difference between two amps 52% of the time, well within a margin of error. The Tice Clock (http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&i e=UTF-8&q=%22tice+clock%22) is a $10 Radio Shack wall clock that was sold for $500 because it was modified to control the quantum behavior of electricity and thereby improve sound. Seriously. Plug it into the room with your stereo, and your music instantly becomes more open and your soundstage gains depth. Of course, the inventors have no scientific explanation of how they control the quantum behavior of electrons. Nonetheless, thousands of listeners and professionals heard a difference. Psychoacoustics are a powerful force.
This is not to say that source units (like an iPod) and amplifiers make no difference. Tube amps provide a degree of euphonic distortion that give them their "warmth". But cables, power cords, etc -- I'd appreciate it if you could link to one blind test that shows a noticable difference between these.
- Turn the amplifier on and let it warm up for a good 30 to 60 minutes (especially if you're using a tube amp).
- Turn amp off and plug in cable A. (The amp doesn't cool down much during the 30 seconds it takes to change cables.)
- Listen to cable A
- Turn amp off and plug in cable B.
- Listen to cable B
- Go back to cable A (which you always do, to confirm whether you heard a real difference).
- Repeat 10,000 times.
- ????
- Profit!
Blind testing works the same way, except that each cycle involves a random choice between cables A and B.You control for the "thermal characteristics of the AMPLIFIER" by designing the test carefully. No problem.
And, yes, you can hear the difference between cables in blind tests. And it is very easy to do... if the cables are sufficiently different. I went from plugging in my speakers with lamp cord (don't ask) to some whiz-bang audiophile speaker cable and I fell out of my chair.
I won't get into the "scientific basis" here... except to say that, if you were to watch an apple fall from a tree, you might well conclude that there's no "scientific basis" for quantum mechanics. After all, doesn't Newtonian mechanics explain apples perfectly?
- - - -
As for the idea of selling "special" cool-looking plastic parts and claiming they improve the sound... that business already exists, and it's called "Bose". :)
Actually, that's not fair. Audiophiles love making Bose jokes (bitter jealousy, you know) but I believe that Bose has a quality product. The product is composed of (a) a box that audiophiles laugh at, but which can produce better sound then any random boom box, and (b) amazingly great marketing, such that the customers truly believe that they are hearing great sound. And so, therefore, they are.
Audio is psychology, and reproducing audio is as much magic as it is science. I've heard it said that the customers who brought the first hand-cranked record players were amazed by the realistic quality of the sound, and were often unable to tell the difference between a live band and a Victrola in blind tests.
A couple of counterpoints to speaker technology over the past 50 years. I will agree that standard speakers have improved markedly at a given price. However, some of the best speakers ever made (EVER!) were developed from the 50's to the 70's. Visionary desingers such as James B. Lansing (Ever hear of JBL? or Altec Lansing?) and Paul Klipsch rigorously developed scientific technologies and techniques to create speakers that absolutely CANNOT be duplicated today. Why? Because it is illegal. Voice coil magnets of the very purest sort are not Rare Earth magnets, like many high end drivers today. The heaviest voice coils back then were built using AlNiCo (Aluminum-Nickel-Cobalt). These drivers were massive (a driver for a 16" woofer weighed close to 20 pounds) and deliver impressive flux densities for given currents. In turn, the 2nd and 3rd order resonances within the flux are far purer than any Rare Earth magnet. AlNiCo has become hard to obtain due to manufacturing costs associated with Cobalt. Only a few speakers today use AlNiCo (the overpriced stuff from Audio Note....makers of a $25000 8-watt tube amp ). Coated paper cones are actually one of the best driver surfaces. Stiffer and lighter is only better for low frequency response, but is very poor for high/mid frequency fidelity. I have listened to many speakers, and I can honestly say that most high end, new speakers still can't hold up to the power, clarity, efficiency, and tonal re-creation of a well cared for Altec Lansing Voice of the Theatre system or a Klipschorn. PLUS, I can buy a mid 1960's VoT speaker (say an Altec Valencia) for $1000 for the pair, have them completely refurbished with new foam and cones, rebuild the X-overs with new caps/resistors/inductors, and for less than $1500 have 12" Woofers, a 8" Wide Compression horn (1" driver), adjustable X-over (standard feature on all old Altecs) that has 98dB efficiency and can run to deafening sonic levels (150dB) with NO distortion, full tonality, and only be driven by a 15 watt amplifier. No modern speaker can match that. Plasma driver speakers, Magneplanars, all of those are incrediblly good speakers, but they require too much power and offer only impressive high/mid frequency reproduction.
I used to work part time for a local computer store (mostly for the employee discount at local computer shows) and one time I was wandering through the RMA area and saw an 8' long table covered with hard drives. They were stacked 3-4 deep and covered the table so completely you couldn't see the surface. I asked one of the techs and he told me that table was exclusively for RMA'ed Western Digital Caviar drives that were waiting to be returned to WD. I said "I thought we stopped carrying WD drives?" and the tech replied "and that table shows why"...
That was a few years ago and I have heard that since then WD has got their act together and that current WD drives don't have the same problems, but I haven't bought a WD drive to check that out.
I purchased a new 250GB Maxtor DiamondMax drive this weekend to supplement the Maxtor 80GB in my primary system that has run pretty much 24/7 without a drive failure for 2+ years (knock on wood)...
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing -- Emo Phillips
i have records here that still play fine from the 1930's -- that's
about 70 years, and the quality hasn't significantly changed for
that amount of time -- i would like to see an ipod hard drive
that is still spining in 70 years.
you will say that you should transfer your data
from the one hard drive to another before that --
but then we were talking about the record lasting longer
than your ipod...
btw -- i did play some stereolab through the old
Kuba Tube FM Stereo console using an iPod and
a small FM transmitter -- works great!
it was a wonderful moment of nostalgia for me,
since i remember listening to that radio when i was
four years old (back in 1971), and it was already
an antique then. this brought the old and the new together!
best regards,
j
I took a look at this page, and while the plasma speakers are very cool, I'm not sure they make sense as speakers. Given that these units go down to 700 Hz or 1 kHz, they are in competition with a 2" horn/driver combo. The plasma is supposed to have high linearity, but it's max output is 107 dB. A 2" horn on a driver can have a sensitivity of 107. That means the horn, with 1 watt, would be as loud as the plasma, full blast. Which means the horn/driver will be pretty linear - nonlinear response occurs at higher power levels.
OK, looking at the JBL 2447 for example, I admit that it's frequency response is nowhere near as smooth as the plasma. But in practice it is usually electronically equalized, with great results. That's because frequency response can be fixed in DSP/electronics, but power limitations and distortion cannot. The horn/driver will have a lot more headroom to add punch to music.
Of course the plasma is super-cool.