Why Your Dad's 30-Year-Old Stereo Sounds Better Than Yours

asto21 writes "Cnet's Steve Guttenberg sheds light on this interesting development that over the years, actual sound quality became a secondary selling point since most people started buying their equipment either online or from big box retailers. People started caring more about the number of connections and wireless interfaces and wattage of systems. As a result, there was less money in R&D budgets to spend on advancements in sound."

Comments

Once you have discovered

[bugs2squash]

what makes it sound good. Surely there's no need for more R&D to maintain the status quo. What sunk good sound was a desire to push down the costs.

Re:Once you have discovered

[Kenja]

Good sound quality is still out there and still being improved. Companies like NAD are still in business and still developing amazing gear.

Re:Once you have discovered

[Hatta]

Quality is mostly subjective anyway. Good marketing has a much bigger influence on your subjective impression of quality than actual linearity in response and low noise floor. We got to the point of diminishing returns on audio quality decades ago.

Re:Once you have discovered

[blair1q]

You don't need it to sound good when your goal is to crank it and get baked, and you're used to shitty little earphones anyway.

Re:Once you have discovered

[gumbi west]

Uh, yeah there is. People want to change the inputs, outputs, add HD radio, blah blah blah. Now, do that while keeping the original audio quality intact. I have a stereo from 1988, 1996, and 2006.

There is a noticeable audio quality drop off when listening to CD between them as time goes on, and I paid more and more for them because I wanted to get something I could listen to and even brought a few home in 2006 that I had to return the next day they sounded so awful when I was listening to my music (and not broken FM in the store).

Re:Once you have discovered

[JamesP]

Sound quality is not a secret.

But I guess modern 'sucktitude' is attributable to several issues:

(before the deficiencies of CD mixing or mp3 encoding)
- Sound comes out of a digital player using a 1-bit DAC. A consumer 1-bit DAC can't beat a 16-bit DAC PERIOD. It's like comparing the image quality of a webcam to a DSLR (a 1-bit DAC can beat a 'proper' DAC if using a very high frequency).
- sound circuit: Most modern amplifiers use 1 or 2 chips (being one power chip). Very high gain (and very high feedback). Problem is, all this feedback mathematically woudn't mean anything, in practice it does. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_feedback_amplifier)
Of course it reduces distortion, but it adds some distortion (not mentioned in the article, because of the characteristics of the feedback line and of the amplifier itself), also it 'shoehorns' the signal to be perfect, eliminating some of the distortions in lower-gain older amplifiers.
- power stages also contribute with a certain distortion (the 'louder' it is the more distorted it is. That, or very inefficient class-A output)
 

Re:Once you have discovered

[jason.sweet]

Good point.

But maybe engineers realized further improvements would be undetectable to humans ears.

Or maybe its the quality of the sound delivered by digital media that has deteriorated, rather than the quality of the equipment.

Or maybe you dad just had better music to listen to.

Just sayin'

Re:Once you have discovered

[Anonymous Coward]

Good marketing has a much bigger influence on your subjective impression

The poster's subjective impression, or the average listener's subjective impression? Big, important distinction. What if our friend here has sensitive ears?

Re:Once you have discovered

[treeves]

Not only that , but how can a lack of R&D be to blame for a decline in sound quality?
If audio quality failed to improve, you could blame it on lack of R&D, but there's got to be more to it than that for quality to *degrade* over time.
With NO R&D AT ALL, at the least we should have exactly AS GOOD sound as "your dad's thirty-year-old stereo".

Re:Once you have discovered

[icebike]

Quality is mostly subjective anyway. Good marketing has a much bigger influence on your subjective impression of quality than actual linearity in response and low noise floor. We got to the point of diminishing returns on audio quality decades ago.

Well to a point is is subjective.
But sitting blindfolded 10 feet away from a single violinist and two very expensive speakers powered by a very expensive tube amp back in the early 80s and NOT being able to tell the difference convinced me that "its all subjective" argument is mostly an excuse.

Switching in a transistor amp was immediately noticed.
Switching in different mics was obvious.
Switching in the Moster cables, - not so much.

We have backed off so far from the point of diminishing returns since then. Of course my ears have backed off a bit too over the decades.
Never the less, you really can't compare the output of any modern digital sound chip driving earbuds from an mp3 to to analog sound
from tubes into big speakers or even studio quality headphones and waive the difference away as "subjective".

Re:Once you have discovered

[geekoid]

No, it's not mostly subjective. Good sound quality is science. Range, signal purity, response, these are all measurable things.

Good marketing will over ride reason. People care less for quality then they do for price, and when you are looking at a 2000 dollars system next to a 500 dollar system people need to ask them selves if the value they get from the better quality is worth 1500 dollars.

There is a reason the pick specific types of music to demo them with.

Re:Once you have discovered

[jellomizer]

I think it is a different on how we approach music today. Back 30 years ago, the age of Mr. Boom Box in public booming their music for all to hear and get pissed off at (Like in Star Trek IV). Today our music choice is more of a private thing, we take all our music and put it on a little device and with headphones we can listen to it. Yes sound quality of an MP3 Player is less then those old stereos but you are not trying to over power the rest of the world with your sounds, so you really don't need it. Even with better sound systems, they are only realized when placed in an area designed for good acoustics, most places are not.

Small headphones will be enough to give you enough sound detail for most people to enjoy their music.

Re:Once you have discovered

[AdamWill]

The post cites a blinded comparison. Not double-blinded, by the looks of it, but not a terrible test.

Re:Once you have discovered

[xianzombie]

Any thoughts on the difference between, say, 1W power outputs in 1970 terms, vs. 35W outputs today?

I'm thinking of the stuff I have at home that I've used fairly often:

Yamaha HTR-5940 rated at 105W per channel max vs. my old Pioneer and Sansui gear (75W and 35W ratings).

With a 1W peak output (per the meters) on the Pioneer/Sansui pieces, I can "feel" the music. With the Yamaha, it feels like I need to crank it to 11 to get a full range sound out of it, even though its technically a more powerful amp.

Re:Once you have discovered

[xclr8r]

Not only that , but how can a lack of R&D be to blame for a decline in sound quality? If audio quality failed to improve, you could blame it on lack of R&D, but there's got to be more to it than that for quality to *degrade* over time. With NO R&D AT ALL, at the least we should have exactly AS GOOD sound as "your dad's thirty-year-old stereo".

I'd have to disagree. As you add more and more complexity to a device there are power drains and voltage/capcitance/current/frequency issues to be worked out.

To put a bad analogy on it.. it's like saying "Lets add a 1000W lamp to this wall socket and not expect anything bad happen to the Audio on the same circuit." Talk to any sound engineer (read non-audiphile subscriber) and they will have tons of stories on how fickle sound set ups can be when no one knowledgeable is watching the setup and correcting things.

Re:Once you have discovered

[bugs2squash]

Yes, all criticism of modern musical taste aside I should have added to the original post; the willful destruction of dynamic range in the quest for loudness or the poor recoding of original sources due to laziness of the desire to compress them ever smaller. But you clearly get my point, it's not that these concepts are misunderstood by audio engineers or that the lessons have been lost, in fact the body of knowledge especially on digital audio coding has grown immensely in the past generation.

Re:Once you have discovered

[eldepeche]

Your dad's 30-year-old stereo was probably well-made and sort of expensive if it's still in good condition now. A cheap stereo you bought at Walmart is not. The gear being sold today has inferior components.

Re:Once you have discovered

[JamesP]

Older speakers may play a part (they're usually better as well), unless of course, you are using the same speakers for all the systems. But if you're using the old speakers on the new systems, you may lose power, since some new systems use 4ohm/6ohm spekaers.

It's probably a little bit of everything, maybe the equalization plays a part (modern sound systems are more biased towards bass)

Also, the power stage of the amplifier may be better (but [citation needed] I wouldn't be surprised if it was the opposite).

Or the Yamaha meter is lying.

Re:Once you have discovered

[Anonymous Coward]

There's plenty of R&D going on. Its focus is to reduce costs.

Re:Once you have discovered

[zebs]

Not only that , but how can a lack of R&D be to blame for a decline in sound quality?

Because the underlying tech has changed since then? The R&D focus has been on the added extras and not the sound quality (at a guess!!!)

Knew I was keeping my Dads home-made speakers dating from 1972 for a reason...

Re:Once you have discovered

[Anonymous Coward]

"Switching in a transistor amp was immediately noticed."
Of course. Since it was the one providing the most honest representation of the real life playing :D

Re:Once you have discovered

[Anonymous Coward]

Thatt's not true: in the same timespan, new technologies emerged (switch from analog to digital sound), and the switch from analog amplification to digital amplification actually degraded the sound quality (because the distortion of analog amp "sounds" better to human ears, just because is richer in odd harmonics). So the switch actually caused a reset in sound quality, but since the following R&D was more focused on features than on sound quality, the latter actually had a *degradation*.

Re:Once you have discovered

[treeves]

That makes more sense than lack of R&D.
Making things cheaper, smaller, lighter all could do it.

Re:Once you have discovered

[treeves]

So you also agree that it's not *lack of* R&D. It might be the *wrong* R&D, or a change in design philosophy, or something else entirely, but not a lack of R&D.

Re:Once you have discovered

[MagusSlurpy]

Change the inputs and outputs? I guess I'm old-fashioned, I'm perfectly happy with RCA, 1/4" & 1/8" jacks, and push-wire speaker connections. When I want to hook in my mp3 player or my HTPC, I just use 1/8" to 1/8" cables, on my six-month old Pioneer receiver (which, I'll admit, I bought for the features I listed above).

But I'm the kind of guy that disables Firewire ports on my PCs because they annoy me.

Re:Once you have discovered

[PopeRatzo]

What sunk good sound was a desire to push down the costs.

Only if you mean "cost to the manufacturer" because high end audio equipment costs much more today than it did thirty years ago, even when adjusted for inflation.

Don't believe me? Look at the back section of Gramophone magazine.

The reason audio equipment sounds worse today is because manufacturers are doing there best to give customers less while charging more.

Re:Once you have discovered

[BetaDays]

What about BOSE? http://www.bose.com/

Re:Once you have discovered

[unixfan]

Exactly. It's not like they still carry my old stereo from yesteryear. As the article says, they spend less since people are not willing to spend as much. I noticed the same decline in electronic shops. Back when microcomputers came out it was easy to find a store to buy quality components and have a good selection.
Now the only one that seem to still be in business is RadioShack. Not exactly what it was a few decades ago either.

I listened to a 5.1 system my daughter had and it was kinda OK when watching a movie. But once you turned on quality music - yikes!

It was very surprising to hear how a 5.1 system could sound so bad. Which was mostly due to the crappy speakers they included. I got spoiled with studio equipment and could never listen to anything less without being disappointed. Of course everyone wanted to know what I thought of Their stereo. About which one has to get very clever on how one answers. My reply ended up being that they sound pretty good for what they paid. Unless they actually wanted to know the truth.

If you don't actually sit and listen to a good system, or live music, it's not that easy to realize what it should sound like. With all the get everything from the comfort of your own home, that becomes harder and harder. Yeah, my 30 old system sounded a lot better (though only with two speakers) than todays average 5/6/7.1 systems.

Quality is not either subjective. How accurately can your equipment reproduce a sound? Your taste is subjective but that's another story.
Marketing does affect what people buy, especially when they can't tell the difference.

Re:Once you have discovered

[flightmaker]

I bought what was apparently a fairly standard, reasonable quality HiFi setup when I left university - Dual CS-505 deck, Acoustic Research speakers, NAD 3020 amplifier. The deck still works perfectly but is now gathering dust on a shelf in the garage. The cone suspensions of the speakers fell apart a few years ago to be replaced by a pair of Mordaunt Shorts, which I reckon produce stunningly good sound for their small size. Now, in praise of NAD, the old 3020 was still going strong after nearly 30 years and sounded great, but it had long since run out of inputs. I donated it to my son's school who gratefully accepted it, and bought a NAD C326BEE as its replacement. I don't think there's a great deal of difference in sound quality, maybe a bit more punchy bass but that's about it as far as I can tell. I've always been of the opinion that if you want great sounding HiFi there's no point in going out and spending thousands on it without first providing a room with great acoustics, because that's exactly what the HiFi store does for the demonstration room - unless you do this it will never sound as good when you get it home. Maybe the best you can do for a sensible budget is go for decent separates like NAD, then have plenty of soft furnishings and thick carpet.

Re:Once you have discovered

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll make a comment that this can be remedied by not going to the audiophile online store, but to your local pro audio store, such as Guitar Center or Sam Ash. Look for "Studio Monitor" equipment, take your favorite piece of music (in some form non-compressed like a CD), and you'll find a wide range of quality and cost, sure to find your favorite balance point. Not only that, but they will most likely have samples of all units in the store in a quiet listening room, and will happily let you play your CD and sample until your hearts content.

Last time I did, I picked up a pair of Sony headphones for about $90. Definitely a great experience for great hardware at what I would call a reasonable price.

Re:Once you have discovered

[Anonymous Coward]

Go ahead and throw that 1000 watt lamp on there, it's easy enough to add a UPS/line conditioner to the audio equipment. Electronics manufacturers already know all of this stuff, it's not like they somehow just "lost the technology" to make audio equipment as good as before.

Re:Once you have discovered

[tripleevenfall]

That's what you think. This is exactly why I spent $500 on monster cables - my cheapo system sounds amazing now.

Re:Once you have discovered

[C0R1D4N]

Meanwhile I spend 8-9 hours a day in my work truck listening to blown out factory default speakers from a 98 Ford Ranger; everything else is a treat :)

Re:Once you have discovered

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, we all know of your perfect world where everyone gives away everything for free because they are filled with love and gratitude and are entitled to everything because they were born....

Re:Once you have discovered

[bws111]

We're talking consumer equipment, not high end. And the price of consumer equipment has come down. A lot. 30 years ago I bought a Pioneer receiver for about $500. It was stereo, had an AM/FM tuner, a 'phono' input, a tape loop, and an 'aux' input. It sounded pretty good. Now, I have a Yamaha receiver I bought for about $500. Except now instead of stereo it has 7 channels. In addition to the AM/FM tuner it has an XM satellite tuner. It has digital inputs and outputs. It switches HDMI and component video. It has two zones, which can use different inputs. It has DSP built-in. It has a built-in noise generator and microphone for setting the balance correctly. It has a remote control to control all those functions. How does it sound? Well, my ears are also 30 years older, so it still sounds good to me.

Re:Once you have discovered

[bugs2squash]

Yes, I specifically mean costs to the manufacturer. The concept of giving customers less while charging them more is called marketing. But to be fair, there may be more money to be made overall making mediocre equipment for above-average pricing or even poor equipment for low pricing than there is making high-end equipment for an elite few. I doubt that the back pages of Gramophone magazine are filled with advertisements from huge multi-national companies.

Re:Once you have discovered

[Ihmhi]

True, but it's not like you need good sound quality anymore. In fact, you'd probably want the opposite considering how mastering a track nowadays seems to involve going to the sound board and jamming every slider and dial up as high as it'll go.

Re:Once you have discovered

[Anonymous Coward]

We need a +500 'making fun of morons' moderation over here!

Re:Once you have discovered

[Anonymous Coward]

Buy Other Sound Equipment

Re:Once you have discovered

[Bob the Super Hamste]

sounds like when I am driving my 88 Bronco II. I finally went and bought some speakers that would fit. Since I really didn't care about the quality, I was replacing 23 year old speakers 2 of which didn't work the other 2 were blown and hooked up to the "premium" sounds system (AM/FM radio with cassette deck) it had, I went and bought the cheapest I could. $20 or so later I had a set of 4 open box return speakers that I put in from best buy (I said I didn't care) that sounded orders of magnitude better the the old OEM ones.

Re:Once you have discovered

[cayenne8]

Yep.

But not me...I like my speakers BIG and my amp to be small and glowing (actually mine is an older model and was only $400 back in the day).

Large efficient horn speakers, and SET tube amps..to me...sound like magic.

I do need to buy a 2nd amp to have one for each channel, just to get a little more volume..but not by much.

I have other speakers and run through a processor for movies...but for just stereo...a source and what I have above is just magic.

Re:Once you have discovered

[TheGratefulNet]

its true that new mass-produced gear is using cheaper parts, cheaper manufacturing methods and in many cases, NO q/a at all. the user is left to do q/a by testing the gear on receipt and contacting the company to get working gear, again. not to even mention the fake electrolytics (or fake forumla they use) if you buy parts from the wrong vendors. blown electrolytics are the most frequently fixed item, when I repair networking, computer and even audio gear.

(ob disc: I'm part of the design team that has created a DIY open-source hardware/firmware project that addresses this very issue of design and build quality. if I may, I'll shamelessly post a link: http://www.amb.org/audio/alpha10/ )

one main goal was to allow the user to build and service his own gear and choose the level of parts quality for his budget. I would expect a system like this to last a decade or more; with only electrolytics needing replacement maybe 10 years out (none are in the signal path and are only in the PSU; and all electrolytics need a checking on at 5-10 years out, even if they are best-of-breed brand parts). on our BOM, we spec all US parts and from standard, reliable places (mouser, digikey, etc). you can choose to use import parts if you insist - its your build, afterall - or you can source from known, trusted distributors. its all your choice but when you get the choice, you will find that only a few dollars more at the parts-cost level will take your system to a new level of reliability (maybe not sound quality but definitely for longevity).

anyway, sorry for the blatant plug of my project, but it is an open-source schematic and arduino firmware-based project, and so I think it stands out quite distinctly among all the mass-made audio boxes out there, and even many of the closed-source DIY audio systems. our engine is the "LCDuino-1" and that's the part that runs the open-source firmware. feel free to check it out and customize it. that's why we release the source, afterall.

Re:Once you have discovered

[NJRoadfan]

My picked out of the garbage/purchased at thift stores/garage sales stereo sounds better then most newer systems.

Amp: Sony STR-434, sidelined due to bad caps I think but sounds better then the Pioneer VSX-2000 that in its place
Speakers: A pair of EPI 250s, 55 lbs each handcrafted in New England. My neighbor was throwing these out!
Turntable: Technics SL-1300 with Audio Technica linear contact stylus
Tape Deck: Technics M14, nothing fancy I don't have many tapes to justify something like a Nakamichi
CD Player: Sony CDP-291, its basic and it works.
I mostly use the system to play back... gasp... compressed music and it sounds very good. Enough so that I could tell the difference in the output quality between various soundcards and my iPod.

Re:Once you have discovered

[Bob the Super Hamste]

Mr. Boom Box in public still exists. Now instead of being able to carry the boom box the individual now rides in it. It still sounds as crappy as ever. Also I can still hear other people's music from their ear buds through my ear buds while I am at the gym. So there are still plenty of people who are trying to overpower the world with their music.

Re:Once you have discovered

[gad_zuki!]

Err, the R&D of how to make good sound was done a long time ago. What is being done now is figuring out what level of shitty speakers Jane Consumer will tolerate. It turns out to be quite shitty.

All the retail electronics I've seen have tinny mid-range speakers, usually paired to a bass-boost circuit that only makes things worse. These things all sound terrible to me. Jane Consumer? She doesn't notice. Heck, I just saw a budget laptop with the new AMD fusion chip that came with one mono speaker. Yep, in a laptop.

Its called the race to the bottom. Its manufacturers figuring out ways to maximize their bottom lines by making things as cheaply as possible and getting on board with retailers who will sell junk, like Walmart. This is why brands like Apple or Bose do well. People are sick of the junk, but don't want to become computer geeks or audiophiles, so they buy the next step up.

Oh, your dad's stereo? Fixed for inflation, it cost a couple of grand. Still, even today you can spend a fraction of that and get a nice basic Sony system with an amp and speakers that will bring out all this great sound trapped in your mp3s that you will never hear through shitty speakers. Same with headphones. Spend 50+ dollars and listen to OK Computer or the White Album. You'll hear things you have not heard before.

Re:Once you have discovered

[epine]

Dad still plays on his 30 year old stereo 30 year old music. Not a lot of wrong notes (or mixer catastrophes) on Dark Side of the Moon. Goes well with a 30 year old whiskey, too.

In my case, the amplifier is a NAD 7040 and a small pair of B&W S3. The NAD doesn't give a damn about driving 4 ohms. This speaker is reputed to be 8 ohms at most, and well less than 8 ohms over fairly wide sub bands.

I'd love to upgrade the caps, but my own caps are going, and dentists aren't cheap.

Re:Once you have discovered

[NJRoadfan]

The only R&D they do is in marketing. The old stuff was great, today its buzzword filled with a high price tag. No highs, no lows.... must be BOSE.

Re:Once you have discovered

[cayenne8]

If you don't actually sit and listen to a good system

I agree...sadly, a LOT of people today don't know what good home sound reproduction CAN sound like.

I constantly have people come over and when they hear my sound system...their jaws drop...and they often will just stop talking and sit and listen...going "wow...what is that??"

Seriously, I've had it happen before.

I like portable music players and stereo in my car too...but I know that isn't the best listening environment....good for the gym or travelling, but for home listening or watching a good movie, well...while no one has to buy $2020/ft cables...in some sense with audio, you DO get what you pay for....quality speakers and amps/pre-amps do cost money.

Myself and my friends I grew up with...most of us back then loved good sound systems. I've been building mine since I was about 12yrs old...starting with money mowing lawns, babysitting..etc...buying and replacing a piece at a time over the years.

About all I need now..is to finally plunk down some serious cash...and get a couple of good old McIntosh tube amps....I've got the K-Horns...so, just a matter of finding a decent deal on a 60's amp or two....

That's my preference..but there are other choices out there...but I think that it isn't just the bad economy now...but that a generation of kids has grown up NEVER hearing what good stereos can sound like....

Re:Once you have discovered

[Doogie5526]

I can't remember the specific article I read, but hopefully the Loudness War is coming to an end because of the rise of digital streaming (and their normalization and other volume adjusting algorithms), but who knows, that could start a Dynamics War.

Wikipedia has some info on it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war#2010s

Re:Once you have discovered

[Grishnakh]

Yep, lots of stereos now (esp. car stereos) use class D amplifiers, not the old class A, B, or AB amps from a couple decades ago. They do this for power consumption; class A amps had great sound, but wasted tons of power, even if there was no sound being played.

Re:Once you have discovered

[AJH16]

Sadly, many RadioShacks don't even carry components anymore. I died a little inside when I first went to a Radioshack and found the components section had been replaced by more cellphones. "You've got questions, we've got blank stares."

Re:Once you have discovered

[gad_zuki!]

Mr boombox is alive and well. I see lots of kids blaring music on their cell phone's tiny shitty speaker. Its distorted to hell and sounds terrible, but they'll sit on their front porch with their friends and "enjoy" it.

When they grow up they buy cars and stuff them with subwoofers. Now they can torture whole blocks at a time. Maybe in a nice white suburb has music become "personal" but in the suburbs it always has been. /lives in a big city

Re:Once you have discovered

[HarrySquatter]

No highs, no lows. Must be Bose!

Re:Once you have discovered

[Mindcontrolled]

Nothing high end on my side - not even 30 years old, but I love my Nakamishi IA-3 amp. Pure transistor tech, minimalistic layout, signal paths as short as possible. Rich, warm sound. The volume potentiometer started to add a crackle when being turned lately, though - so I guess sooner or later I have to break out my soldering iron and fix the thing. Oh, to complement it, just an ok-ish pair of small Mission boxes. Nothing fancy at all, but in my opinion, it still beats a lot of "home theater" setups today, which probably cost 5 times as much.

Re:Once you have discovered

[xianzombie]

Old speakers in all tests, in the same room, just switching amps. I've tested it with both AR-2ax and Pioneer HPM-1100s. The 1100s are our regular home theater front speakers, the AR's are sadly stashed away right now, but they're great for acoustical music.

Unfortunately, the Yamaha doesn't have any kind of output meter, just the volume dial. I normally get by with it being at about -30db, but sometimes as high as -5db depending on the source material. It very well could just be the equalization on the amp, though I often just use direct stereo on my systems.

Dunno, but it just seems kinda flat, like there's no real depth to it...not like with the older amps.

Re:Once you have discovered

[TheGratefulNet]

I'm one of the exceptions, I admit: I don't like multichannel audio and I mix-down all my 5.1 stuff to 2.0 (or 2.1, but I don't count bass as a discrete source channel since it should be 'naturally' in both L/R anyway; bass is a derived channel and never needed to be a discrete one. but I digress...)

the way I do audio pathing, these days, is to convert 5.1/dts to spdif linear pcm. this is a standard and no one locks down spdif. in fact, some affordable gear uses spdif up until it can't (ie, the final d/a or DAC stage). case in point, if I use a media streamer (popcorn hour was my first one) and set it to mix down from DD/5.1 to 'spdif' (but NOT raw; raw is not spdif, raw is not linear pcm and we want linear 2channel 48k pcm for movies and 44.1 for music); then I can send that spdif stream to boxes such as the behringer 1U rackmount pro audio (good for home, too) systems, like the DEQ2496 (equalizer and so much more) and then the DCX2496 (3 way electronic spdif-based crossover). I can maintain that spdif stream thru BOTH of those boxes until I get 3 stereo outs to go to my 3 tripamp sections. at that point you are analog, but you were spdif during so much of the signal chain, you get a lot of benefit from that!

this approach is impossible with proprietary things like dolby digital and dts. those are 'raw' spdif formats (opaque bit stuff in the spdif envelope, so to speak) and dacs - high end 2ch dacs - can't decode that. it HAS to be in standard linear pcm spdif format for higher end dacs to decode. the multichannel dacs you find in your AVR just are a notch or two below these dedicated 2channel dacs.

so, I gave up on having to run extra speaker wires, worry about speaker phasing with 5 of them in the room, not have to worry about carrying around extra amp sections for rear and center channels, not having to have that many extra preamp volume controls in the audio path. so many benefits to mixing down to 2.0 and presenting audio and movies in 'simple' phantom center channel 2.0 config. add a sub if you want, does not change the fact that you can do all this with a 2.0 mixdown and better quality 2.0 (what we used to call 'stereo', lol) components.

consider it. just consider it before you assume that a 5.1 or multichannel setup is what you 'need'. its not 'needed'. give it a chance and you may be surprised.

Re:Once you have discovered

[cayenne8]

Small headphones will be enough to give you enough sound detail for most people to enjoy their music.

Trouble is...MOST people just settle for the crappy earphones that come with most portable music players.....

There ARE differences in earphones...my high end Shures make even mp3's sound really great....in the gym things sound pretty good even....

Re:Once you have discovered

[AJH16]

Also, live sound quality has gone down from my perspective. Loudness is valued over quality or clarity and the market for consumer gear has largely responded to this. That said, if you know what you are doing you can still get very good sound quality out of properly adjusted gear at a reasonable price. Good speakers and speaker placement is a big part of it as a lot of the "high end" speakers are more designed to spread sound out to give ok quality from crappy placement. If you get some "cheap" (relatively) speakers that are focused towards accurate sound reproduction and place and adjust them properly they give an outstanding result. (Personally I use about $350 worth of JBL speakers before their consumer division went all retaily.)

Re:Once you have discovered

[Grishnakh]

It'll still sound like crap, unless you're using a CD that was mastered in 1985. All the new music sounds like crap (regardless of genre) because it's compressed to hell and is full of distortion. Look up "loudness wars" on Wikipedia.

Re:Once you have discovered

[SuricouRaven]

I work in IT support, and as 'the guys with the soldering iron' we get to fix anything that has a light on. We have display TVs, three of them. Two of them blew out caps.

We've also blown up six of our eight Apple G5s, but that isn't due to any design flaw in them. It's because that building is on a grumbling, smoke-belching diesel generator for power, and tends to explode anything plugged in. We're moving building in a year, and it's cheaper to rent a diesel to power the interim structure than to upgrade the substation.

Re:Once you have discovered

[Bob the Super Hamste]

Personally I would love some pro gear even if it is older and used. I once got to listen to some music played back on some really nice pro equipment at a place I worked and was really impressed with the clarity and also how it would still sound really good when cranked up. The person who showed this to me also point out that the speakers would play wall current, that was painful as he just went an connected a stripped power cable to the terminals on the back of a speaker. If any one know what kind of speakers these might have been I would love to know.

Re:Once you have discovered

[JamesP]

Holy crap!

I didn't know what a D class amp was, and I'm stunned. It's a nice idea though. For anything else other than sound.

This is selling noise, not sound. Fits the music played there, I guess...

Re:Once you have discovered

[Doctor Memory]

As you add more and more complexity to a device there are power drains and voltage/capcitance/current/frequency issues to be worked out.

Not to disagree, but I think the problem is almost exactly the opposite. Audio devices are being simplified in an effort to control cost, and a lot of the components that mitigate sonic issues (e.g., filter caps) are being eliminated or minimized to the point of uselessness. Nobody who cares about music would want a Class D amp, but they're incredibly popular (or at least prevalent) because they're cheap and to most people today they're "good enough".

Re:Once you have discovered

[arth1]

You don't need it to sound good when your goal is to crank it and get baked, and you're used to shitty little earphones anyway.

Thing is, with a good amp and speakers (or good pre-amp and headphones), you can crank it without the sound quality going down the drain. For old music that actually had dynamics, that is.

But sad to say, yes, even that $1800 receiver you have under your TV is crap for playing music compared to what a $200 amp was like a generation ago. Thanks to people like George Lucas and his horrible THX, all that matters now is how loud and precise the booms are, not how well it handles a mix of silent and loud at the same time.

Re:Once you have discovered

[TheGratefulNet]

there is a serious lack of r/d. in china, sad to say, they simply copy each others' schematics, often don't understand what they are doing (fully), throw any old pcboard layout at the pc board maker, tell them to make the copper so thin you can see thru it (can't survive even 1 desoldering) and give it non-working bug-ridden firmware.

then ship it! and run.

ship-and-run. they are not there once you have problems either now or later. want a schematic? nope! want source code or bug fixes, at least? (laughing is heard..)

ship and run. even the big vendors like sony are a ship-and-run company.

Re:Once you have discovered

[AvitarX]

But it could be expensive.

I mean, my dad's stereo which was a decent one and a value for the time cost as much as mine does, and it was 30 years ago. That's a lot inflation adjusted.

I bet I can get one that sounds as good for double, maybe triple what I payed, but it wouldn't be worth it to me.

Re:Once you have discovered

[hazydave]

It's actually worse than that -- the raw mix is probably fine. The mastering engineer has the dial cranked on the compressor -- that's how you turn a 24-bit master into a 16-bit CD or MP3 with, if you're lucky, 8-bits of actual dynamic range.

Of course, if that were true of all music, it might put upward pressure on ensuring a low THD on the amplifiers, even if dynamic range weren't important.

Some places, like HD Tracks, sell music with much better mastering... sometimes even no audio compression at all. I have a copy of Paul McCartney's "Band on the Run" mastered without compression, for example. And I guess I probably did play my original LP on my Dad's stereo... which probably did sound better. With his stereo, though, it might have had something to do with the actual stereo -- he built the tube amplifier himself (my Dad was an EE and manager in the test and measuring department at Bell Labs back in the day), and the speaker cabinets, based on 24"-or-so-inch woofers and some plans from Altec-Lansing for "Voice of the Theater" cabinet designs.

Of course, he only needed two speakers. I have seven, including the powered subwoofer. And my old man's TV was a huge 25" console... not comparable to my 71" DLP. Simple fact is that, back in the 60s and 70s, when you spent money on "home entertainment", it was probably music related: LPs, stereo gear, etc. Today, there's a wide variety of audio and video gear all vying for that same buck. And when I want the best sound, I unplug everything and play my Martin D15...

Re:Once you have discovered

[hazydave]

But really, I can't see playing a 30 year old LP of "Dark Side of the Moon" on 30 year old gear, when you can play the (30th Anniversary?) SACD edition on modern gear. I wore at least two album versions out before upgrading to the CD and eventually the SACD.

The 30 year old whiskey, on the other hand...

Re:Once you have discovered

[hazydave]

Still bothers me, occasionally, to see something like one of the uber-expensive Nakamichi cassette decks I lusted after as a teenager, at a yard sale for $20 (ok, sure, these days I have a dual drive rack mount Tascam, and don't exactly recall the last time I needed to make a cassette for any purpose). But it's pretty certain that the Wal-Mart special audio gear will get chucked much sooner, probably not even lasting into a yard-sale-afterlife. So much of the current stuff is designed to be cheap and disposable. Some of the music, too...

Re:Once you have discovered

[denobug]

Buy some lead-acid batteries and a good charger and an inverter. There you have a simple system to filter out the horrible sine waves diesel generator produce (not to mention the power factor corrections).

Re:Once you have discovered

[hazydave]

It is not correct to use "Behringer" and "Pro" in the same sentence. Well, other than one like this. They're part of the problem -- the cheapest of the cheap.

Re:Once you have discovered

[arth1]

Yes, the measurements have changed.

The US measures RMS, which is the max continuous voltage you can play a single sine wave at; your choice of frequency. The main problem is that the you can double the marketing wattage figure simply by switching the impendance of the speakers you test with, even though the amp can't drive them in any meaningful way. It's also not well suited for measuring music, which isn't sine waves. But if your Yamaha says 105W RMS, check what impendance that is at. Chances are that you can divide it by two to get comparable figures to your Pioneer.

Europe has traditionally used a DIN (Deutsche Industrie Norme) HiFi standard, which specifies the output as the max continuous output where no part of the old "HiFi" spectrum from 50 to 12500 Hz is subjected to more than 1% THD+N (total harmonic distortion + noise). That is a much lower figure than RMS.

Then, most of Europe switched to the less stringent DIN 45500 standard, where THD+N 1% is still the case, but only measured for a 1 kHz test tone. It's still arguably more reliable than RMS, though, because you don't get to cherry-pick, and noise is still taken into the equation.

To top it all off, the far east started using PMPO, which is a very meaningless figure - "peak musical power output", which is how much power it would have used if it could have sustained the loudest noise it can create continuously, instead of just for a fraction of a second.

Re:Once you have discovered

[BlueStrat]

Dad still plays on his 30 year old stereo 30 year old music. Not a lot of wrong notes (or mixer catastrophes) on Dark Side of the Moon. Goes well with a 30 year old whiskey, too.

In my case, the amplifier is a NAD 7040 and a small pair of B&W S3. The NAD doesn't give a damn about driving 4 ohms. This speaker is reputed to be 8 ohms at most, and well less than 8 ohms over fairly wide sub bands.

You should hear DSotM through a pair of McIntosh monoblock vacuum tube amps (or current-day vacuum tube based equivalents in quality) and a good set of speakers. You won't miss the whiskey if you don't happen to have any around.

There's something pleasing to the human ear when listening to well-mastered music through a vacuum tube amp that's missing with a solid-state amp.

Most electric guitarists also strongly prefer the sound they get playing through a vacuum tube based amplifier as well (I'm one of those...I even design & build them as a hobby and business).

Strat

Re:Once you have discovered

[Technician]

The cost of transistors has continued to fall as higher power devices can be had at much lower cost. The engineering department in an effort to cut costs (including Shipping weight) by using smaller filter caps, switch mode power supplies (the typical PC sound card background noise) and non standard power measurements to inflate the Watts number while providing a much smaller amp.

Which is better? A 1,000 watt 5.1 surround system or a stereo amp with 250 Watts per channel into 8 ohms with no more than 0.005% THD. In reality the second amp has much more headroom, specified THD values that are uncommon nowdays, and much more power.

By the way, I'm the guy with the 30 year old stereo.. Bought mine in 1981.

Often overlooked in a stereo is the speaker quality. The cabinet should be silent. First test of any speaker is to leave it off and knock on the back. Does it sound like a wooden shipping crate? If so, leave that one. The drivers will thump on the cabinet for you. Most big box speakers are made with the minimum size voice coil, magnet, and box thickness for shipping weight. Most of the big box stereo systems weigh less then one of my speakers. I just looked up the speck on my speakers. They are 68 Lbs each.

The light weight stuff simply does not match the fidelity or accuracy of the good stuff.

Re:Once you have discovered

[Plekto]

Impedance is highly variable for most speakers and while the average impedance is listed at 4phms, it will often dip down to 2 or 3 ohms near the lower end.

There is no substitute for mass. (this is a favorite saying of mine)

Q: Why does your Dad's stereo sound better?
A: Op-Aps and cost-cutting.

You can't tow a boat with a Prius, and you can't expect a bunch of ICs and cheap 50 cent components to properly amplify anything for any reasonable amount of time or at a decent volume. If your amplifier doesn't weigh on the order of your dad's old one, you're not going to get the same sound out of it. Everything about amplification and electronic theory was known and done as of about thirty years ago. There is no magic. Only trickery and marketing.

The biggest lie of them all is wattage. 95%+ of the time, they state wattage as maximum through one speaker. So that 200W 7 channel amplifier is actually only putting out about 29W to each speaker, maximum. But distortion and heat will limit you to about half of that continuously, or about 15W per channel. Given that typical speakers are about 87-89db efficient, that means that you net a pathetic 90db or so that's actually usable. While this is still quite loud, it's far below what you really need for good home theater. Most people try to compensate for this by turning up the volume, but all that really does is bombard them with more and more high frequency sound since the bass long ago disappeared. This, naturally, leads to listening fatigue and hearing damage. The older amplifiers were rated as typically 100W per channel or more, and could deliver about 80% of their maximum rated volume without any problems. They did not get weak under heavy loads or strong bass, either.

This also applies to the most critical aspect of the system, the speakers. You simply cannot convey a full sound through miserable little 5 or 6 inch speakers. And a single subwoofer is a poor way to fill in for a weak mid-range and missing low-end. You don't play your guitar or bass through a 6 inch cabinet, but somehow people forgot to use common sense. So often you have a decent amplifier hooked up to junk speakers. You "father's system", I bet, has 8 or even 12 inch woofers in the main speakers, as this was common back in the 70s and 80s. In order to produce a convincing sound, you need to move air and create enough sound pressure. Or else it sounds like your neighbor's stereo does from down the street - tinny and distant.

But all of this is truly ancient news. People were discussing this twenty years ago or more online.

Re:Once you have discovered

[jovius]

If the surround sound comes from a movie DVD it's already compressed to oblivion. AC3 6 channel total is about 450 kbit/s, and the codec makes the sound feel like dynamically equalized by default. I have worked at surround film sound studios and the original sound directly from the timeline is just amazing. I wholeheartedly agree with you about quality. It's appalling that we have been conditioned (marketed) to perceive poor quality sound as the best possible.

100 year of progress to have the best possible quality for the mass market has been broken. CD's have been abandoned and they have been replaced with lossy compressed sound. We are at the early stage of digitalizing everything, and the quest for the quality has started again.

Most people don't really care about the specifcs of technology. The feeling that you can have (or did have) from a great song on an old cassette playing through the small speakers inside a car while the motor is running and wheels turning is still great! The same goes with playing songs via your phone's speakers to your friends and sharing the joy. Some times crappy quality is all that is needed.

Re:Once you have discovered

[dave562]

This may be a dumb question, but why haven't you invested in a few UPS units to condition the power so that you don't keep destroying gear?

Re:Once you have discovered

[Anonymous Coward]

The goal post has changed. The major target market for a AVR today does not require huge current and wattage to support the low frequency performance of the speakers. Many setups now have a powered sub woofer for that, and a specially designed amplifier to support it. Cases that do have low frequency mains are now supported by bi-amping the main speakers - so you still get your 200W into one speaker cabinet.

Re:Once you have discovered

[Anonymous Coward]

You're forgetting that the underlying technology changed completely. It just never caught up to the old stuff in terms of quality. So it's an R&D issue.

Re:Once you have discovered

[grolschie]

Bigger power transformer in the older gear? Tubes?

Re:Once you have discovered

[DerekLyons]

Talk to any sound engineer (read non-audiphile subscriber) and they will have tons of stories on how fickle sound set ups can be when no one knowledgeable is watching the setup and correcting things.

I thoroughly understand the placebo effect - I have no need for another demonstration.

Re:Once you have discovered

[Anonymous Coward]

First of all, I can tow a boat with my Prius. Just not a very big one.

Second, my Dad's stereo is 55 years old, has a pair of giant purple glowing vacuum tubes inside its fabulous fifties bleached mahogany, and sounds like crap.

And finally, my 30 year old stereo sounds damn good, thank you very much.

Now get off my lawn you whippersnappers!

Re:Once you have discovered

[phoenix321]

Right on the spot.

A 500-dollar amp from 1980 can't possibly compare to a 500-dollar amp from 2011, since the 500 dollars themselves are worth much much less than before. Counting only the officially admitted inflation and all, you'd probably need at least 1,300 dollars to buy for the same value of goods than 20 years ago.*

They should've compared a 2011's $2000 amp with a $500 amp from the 1980s. But thinking about inflation got unpopular since the Big O.

*) source: http://www.westegg.com/inflation/infl.cgi

Re:Once you have discovered

[Phreakiture]

Talk to any sound engineer (read non-audiphile subscriber) and they will have tons of stories on how fickle sound set ups can be when no one knowledgeable is watching the setup and correcting things.

Consider that seconded. It occasionally puts me at odds with a DJ friend of mine.

Incidentally, I own a 35-year-old amplifier and a pair of 42-year-old speakers for my personal system. The amp only packs 20W per channel, but they are 20 real watts, which is to say, you can put in a sine wave on an arbitrary frequency, and expect the amp to be able to sustain 20W RMS, out of both channels, at the same time without distorting it noticeably.

Re:Once you have discovered

[Kevin108]

You just reminded me of an anomaly from my youth. As a teenager, I had 4 speakers setup around my room and the aux port of a stereo fed from my SoundBlaster Pro. At some point I altered this setup and found that my modem would only connect at 19.2k. As soon as I plugged the SB Pro back to the stereo, I could once again connect at 26.4k and 28.8k.

Re:Once you have discovered

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed.

Another point to make to this argument is that technology changes. Analog tubes are replaced with digital BJT and soon the cheaper and more perfoming MOSFET. Everytime a new piece of technology is introduced into the stereo, a large amount of R&D effort should/must be undertaken to ensure that this new technology either performs to the degree of the prior technology or surpasses it. This is not the case with stereos of today. Most companies will spend their money in marketing and finding out if the general public want the standby light to be red or blue.

Re:Once you have discovered

[gandhi_2]

Maybe the music just got shittier.

Re:Once you have discovered

[Plekto]

This is perhaps the biggest load of B.S. foisted on consumers in the last 50 years. That cables make a difference.

Fact: All copper comes from the same foundries and is smelted and refined to 99.99% pure ingots that are shipped out to all industries. Copper is copper. Some 99.999% copper is made, but it's really designed for specialized electrical work, and plating and so on.

Fact: While you can measure differences on a computer, the effects at audio frequencies are non-existent. So while fancy cables might make a difference for a microphone or a video feed, for audio, it's no different than feeding cheap apples or expensive ones to a horse when it comes to audio. It simply doesn't care, so save your money.

Fact: While some exotic cables can make a difference at extremely long lengths and stupidly high loads, humans cannot hear the difference as it's typically less than 0.2db different.(microscopic difference in signal loss, but not quality) This is easily solved, though, by going up to a larger gauge wire. Any plain vanilla 14 gauge electrical wire will beat the fanciest 16 gauge wire hands-down. Poofy insulation or plastic means nothing. All that matters is the mass and that the connectors at the ends are properly made.

How to make perfect boutique cabling for pennies a foot:
1: Get a 100ft roll of 12 gauge stranded electrical wire ($13, same as they use to wire houses). Paint one a different color at the end and use two lengths of the same wire together.. Note - $40-$50 for a 500ft roll is common at Home Depot and similar.
2: Get a 100ft roll of heat-shrink tubing.($10) Preferably close to or similar to the wires in color.
3: Slide the tubing over the wires.
4:Place the wires in a vise and the other end in a drill motor. Slowly wind the wires together until they have about one turn every 4-6 inches. This helps with EM noise if you run it near lights or electrical wires. It helps to get a friend to hold everything for you as you'll be way out of your garage and on the driveway, most likely.
5: Heat up the tubing to lock the wires in place. Do the ends first, of course. Hold the wires under tension to keep the windings in place.
6: Put on ends with a proper crimping tool. 50 cents each each X4. Optional in some cases, depending upon the terminal configuration.
$25 total for 50 ft of professional grade speaker wire.

note: A 500ft roll of heat shrink tubing is ~$40. Total cost for 500ft of speaker wire is ~100-120 depending upon the number of terminals and speakers you need to wire up.. At ~20 cents a foot, that's cheaper than Radio Shack.

You can also get 100ft rolls of 12 gauge wire from most any auto sound shop for about $20. The cheap clear insulation isn't as robust as the electrical wire and heat shrink tubing combo, though. This homemade wire is good for under-house, use in conduits, and exterior use as well. You also can't hide the clear stuff as easily as you can with a color-matched to your decor setup if you DIY. (the tubing and wires come in about a dozen colors)

Re:Once you have discovered

[SniperJoe]

Ah, the Calvin and Hobbes (or more specifically Calvin's father's) method to living life. You go on a "vacation" that is far worse than your every day life so that every day seems like a vacation.

Re:Once you have discovered

[Amouth]

Rotel + B&W = lovely..

Re:Once you have discovered

[Onymous Coward]

Phms. They rule your hi-fi.

Re:Once you have discovered

[PCM2]

But really, I can't see playing a 30 year old LP of "Dark Side of the Moon" on 30 year old gear, when you can play the (30th Anniversary?) SACD edition on modern gear. I wore at least two album versions out before upgrading to the CD and eventually the SACD.

But the SACD isn't the same thing. If they did a good job of remixing and mastering it, maybe it will sound good. But it still won't be the same thing as listening to the original, the way it was originally mastered and released. Or to put it another way ... you sound like George Lucas.

Re:Once you have discovered

[AlienIntelligence]

Really surprised no one has modded you up... good write up.

-AI

Re:Once you have discovered

[PCM2]

You sound like you know what you're talking about, but it doesn't sound like you're describing modern home audio systems, particularly home theater. I thought pretty much any home theater system you could buy these days came with a standalone subwoofer unit to punch up the bass sounds? In fact, the cheapie systems seem to consist of nothing but five tiny mids and a subwoofer.

Re:Once you have discovered

[AlienIntelligence]

Nobody who cares about music would want a Class D amp, but they're incredibly popular (or at least prevalent) because they're cheap and to most people today they're "good enough".

I use Class D for the sub 120Hz signals. But I'm sure you
mean those laughable "full range" 3000W ebay amps.

-AI

Re:Once you have discovered

[idontgno]

How far we have fallen.

The best "crank it and get baked" experience in my life was 30 years ago... lying down between a pair of Klipsches toasted out of my mind and grooving hard and horizontal. (I'll leave it at that).

Quality sound reproduction does improve the quality of the music experience, assuming the music is worth experiencing.

That said, the festering maggot pit called "major label music" nowadays deserves the all-singing, all-dancing, 500-inputs China Inc. electronics it's fed usually through. Neither can make the other any worse than they already are.

Re:Once you have discovered

[AliasMarlowe]

I'm old enough to be the dad of many here (and my older daughter counts herself a geek). My audio setup is a mix of gear, the newest being almost 25 years old, if PCs and suchlike are not counted. I replaced the amplifier 33 years ago, and the speakers are of similar vintage and slightly on the large side.

Not all that is old is good: there is a definite mix of old and new which outperforms the all-old and all-new options. For example, we never use the B&O turntable any more - all of my LPs have too many clicks or hisses from overuse. Many of the LPs have been replaced by CDs over the years, and between my wife and me, we have around 600 of them. Similarly, the cassette deck is not used much; we digitized all of the good tapes quite a while ago. However, the CD player is used heavily, as is the aux input from our media server, even if the MP3s are only at 160-192kbps.

There is a notable difference between playing the media server's MP3s over the tiny speakers in a PC (grotty), over the PS3+TV speakers (passable), over large Sennheiser headphones attached to a PC (good), and through the B&O amp + Audiosphere speakers (very good).

Re:Once you have discovered

[PopeRatzo]

But to be fair, there may be more money to be made overall making mediocre equipment for above-average pricing or even poor equipment for low pricing than there is making high-end equipment for an elite few.

Yes, even though there would be plenty of money to be made making excellent equipment at a price anyone can afford.

Another example why the "free market" is not the solution to all problems. Greed is not good.

Re:Once you have discovered

[SuricouRaven]

Because we're moving to a new site. The Powers that Be say that since we will be throwing out almost all of our current (ageing) IT assets, we shouldn't be buying anything new. It's not quite a total freeze - we did get funding to replace all the old 1.3GHz Celeron desktop machines, years after it should have been done - but they just take a lot of convincing even for a cheap UPS. In any case, the G5s are on the 'not keeping' list. Once the site closes down they go off to the recycling company, and we get new iMacs instead. And no more generator-induced failures.

Those G5s do fail quite impressively though. A very loud bang and then magic smoke wafts out.

Our temperature monitoring system for the server room consists of a 400MHz laptop, ubuntu, digitemp and perl. It works though, and built out of parts headed for the bin.

Re:Once you have discovered

[PopeRatzo]

Yes, we all know of your perfect world where everyone gives away everything for free because they are filled with love and gratitude and are entitled to everything because they were born....

Excuse me, stupid, but the article already put forth the proposition that the equipment today is of lower quality than equipment from the same price level (adjusted for inflation) of 30 years ago.

You're the only one who has said anything about "everything for free".

Re:Once you have discovered

[Plekto]

And that's exactly the problem. The bass drivers are relegated to one bass driver stuffed into a cheap box, but the frequencies that it operates at are still directional in most rooms. A real subwoofer is a totally different animal and acts as solely bottom-end reinforcement for things like deep bass, organ music, so on.

A proper sound system should have a 6-8 inch woofer in it, and some surround systems do.

Re:Once you have discovered

[Anonymous Coward]

What sunk good sound was a desire to push down the costs.

You must work for Xerox^H^H^H^H^HHCL.

Re:Once you have discovered

[Mindcontrolled]

The "not even 30 years" comment was directed at my equipment, not at me ;)

Re:Once you have discovered

[jenningsthecat]

There is no substitute for mass.

This is generally true, however with switching supplies and Class-D amplifiers, really good sound is available from feather-weight amps. A LOT of attention needs to be paid to filtering, switching frequencies, fast diodes, shielding, load compatibility, etc, but assuming these issues are competently addressed, a light-weight amp can sound good and have plenty of grunt.

Q: Why does your Dad's stereo sound better?
A: Op-Aps and cost-cutting.

Cost cutting yes, op amps not necessarily. With a correctly chosen op amp in a correctly designed circuit, sound as good as or better than discrete designs is possible. Unfortunately, too many designers assume that a TL071 or an NE5534 in a garden variety topology is sufficient. It isn't.

The biggest lie of them all is wattage.

I'd say that the biggest lie is THD. Not that the spec'd THD figure is incorrect, (that's another issue), but that THD is a poor predictor of sound quality. Distortion figures of 0.1% or more are appalling to the average audio engineer; however if the harmonic content is mostly low-order and mostly even-order, an amp with this much distortion, or even more, can sound wonderful. On the other hand, an amplifier can have a 0.001% distortion spec and sound truly awful. This happens when a circuit that is inherently highly non-linear is given a low THD spec by using copious amounts of negative feedback. This causes lots of high-order odd harmonics, which are subjectively much, much more objectionable; the THD spec is good, but the amp sounds harsh and sterile. Even in the 1940's this problem was recognized, and highly respected audio engineers suggested that THD be calculated by weighting harmonics according to the square, or even the cube, of their order. These engineers were ignored by an industry that was increasingly driven by specsmanship and cost-cutting rather than by sound quality.

You simply cannot convey a full sound through miserable little 5 or 6 inch speakers.

If you're talking about overall speaker size then you are correct, however if you're talking about just the driver size then there's an experience you've missed. A good full-range driver in the 4-to-6 inch range, (an expensive Lowther driver, or even a fairly cheap Fostex), in a nice big cabinet that horn-loads the back of the speaker, can produce surprising amounts of bass and an overall magical sound.

Re:Once you have discovered

[Anonymous Coward]

Amplification of the analog signal is all "analog amplification." There's no such thing as "digital amplification" the way you have worded it. Transistors are analog devices when used as amplification devices.

Re:Once you have discovered

[jschottm]

As a sound engineer, I'm curious what a "voltage/capcitance/current/frequency issue" is? I was mostly with you up until the frequency part.

The things that have been added to stereos (mostly surround processing, some simple source switching, and D/A converters) since the 70s aren't huge power sucks to the extent they would cause amplifiers to sound worse.

it's like saying "Lets add a 1000W lamp to this wall socket and not expect anything bad happen to the Audio on the same circuit."

As long as there's not a dimmer involved leaking into the circuit, a 1000 watt incandescent light sharing a circuit with a home stereo should have no effect unless you have a ridiculously loud and/or inefficient stereo.

Talk to any sound engineer (read non-audiphile subscriber) and they will have tons of stories on how fickle sound set ups can be when no one knowledgeable is watching the setup and correcting things.

Watching the setup and correcting things? You set up a system and pretty much just use it. You might re-tune a PA system once there's bodies in the seats acting as diffusers or raise or lower the overall volume based on the size of the crowd. But it's not like you sit there adjusting things about the amplification system itself as a matter of course during an event.

The big factor is that people just don't care about audio sounding good so manufacturers have cheaped out to save themselves money.

Re:Once you have discovered

[Plekto]

It really doesn't matter. I used to discuss this over a decade ago on Usenet and nothing has changed aside from the smoke an mirrors getting a bit more pretty looking. But I am glad to impart some basic information if it will help someone decide upon a good home audio system.

In case anyone else is reading this, basic guidelines for an amplifier today are:
1 - at least 20lbs weight.
2 - Able to drive 6 ohm speakers. The speakers optimally will be front-ported or sealed. (bouncing the bass off of the corner behind the speaker and back at you is very inefficient). The speakers should have no smaller than 6 inch woofers( 5 if it's a very good or special design). 8 for the mains is nice as it makes a sub somewhat optional. This is exactly like car audio in that 4 inchers generally sound like crap.
3 - your speakers for your surround system should cost the same as the rest of the system, at a minimum. This does not include the subwoofer. Typical pricing for good speakers is about $100-$300 per speaker. Cheaper than that and quality suffers greatly. You don't need to spend more than that, though, to get good sound. Stay away from Best Buy and big box type retailers unless you know what you are doing. B&W, Tannoy, and Paradigm are good examples of moderately priced speakers that perform very well. Even their lowest-cost lines will more than suffice for most people's needs and completely crush any "home theater" set for sale at a major retailer/outlet.
4 - the sub should be a proper dual-coil design and be at least 10 inches in diameter. It should, of course, have its own amplifier so as to not overwork the main unit. Be sure to plug it into the same circuit as the amp or use an isolator to keep ground-loop hum out of the equation. I personally like Sunfire, though YMMV.

Re:Once you have discovered

[marcosdumay]

"There is no substitute for mass. (this is a favorite saying of mine)"

That is, at the power end. At the pre-amp modern circuits evolved a lot from 30 years ago, and digital signals have a clear advantaje over analog disks. None of that makes you wrong, but it made you sound wrong as a first impression, just because you didn't specify the scope.

Re:Once you have discovered

[marcosdumay]

Most subwoofers are:

1 - Too light. That creates distortion at loud volumes because they vibrate.

2 - Too smal. Small frequencies need large plates, and modern subwoofers have the radius of things that were called tweeters just 20 years ago.

3 - Useless if your amplifier doesn't have enough power to move them. What is mostly the case nowadays.

Re:Once you have discovered

[afidel]

Phono jacks have about several orders of magnitude worse THD than Toslink to an internal DAC a few inches from the preamp even if you don't have a DAC that's eating interference inside a PC case (ie with good discrete components). I got incredibly tired with all the interference issues with PC sound cards until I finally got a motherboard with onboard Toslink and since then my HTPC has been my only audio source because digital to a chip in the receiver is just fundamentally the cleanest way to get sound to the speakers.

Re:Once you have discovered

[AdamThor]

If you're looking at AR, NAD, and Mordaunt-Short, I think you're already out of the realm of what the article is talking about. The article talks about "Denon, Harman Kardon, Marantz, Onkyo, Pioneer, Sony, or Yamaha" available at big box stores. Cheap crap has always been out there, available for the buying. Remember the '80's all-in-one stereo, that came with some big monkey-coffin speakers, and maybe a cheap stereo-rack (with a glass door, held shut by a magnet), and had one big unit with the faceplate designed to make it look like separate components? Quality has always been there for those who seek it, and crap has always been there for those who don't. The article (link to the actual article, not the gizmodo stub - http://news.cnet.com/8301-13645_3-20082026-47/how-can-30-year-old-receivers-sound-better-than-new-ones/?tag=mncol;txt) simply mistakes today's crap for yesterday's quality. As if 1980 dollars were the same as 2010 dollars...

Re:Once you have discovered

[couchslug]

"It's not like they still carry my old stereo from yesteryear."

You can still buy those components used.

Re:Once you have discovered

[Plekto]

Cost cutting yes, op amps not necessarily. With a correctly chosen op amp in a correctly designed circuit, sound as good as or better than discrete designs is possible. Unfortunately, too many designers assume that a TL071 or an NE5534 in a garden variety topology is sufficient. It isn't.
*****
Oh, man, don't get me started. I know a guitar technician/luthier who is constantly replacing these cheap pieces of junk in people's rather expensive guitars. Usually because the doofus put the battery in backwards and the designers didn't see fit to include a diode/protection circuit to keep the current from frying the thing. Or they left it on for a few days or ran it to hard and it simply overheated.

Re:Once you have discovered

[PopeRatzo]

And the price of consumer equipment has come down.

You're selective when you choose receivers.

A lot. 30 years ago I bought a Pioneer receiver for about $500. It was stereo, had an AM/FM tuner, a 'phono' input, a tape loop, and an 'aux' input. It sounded pretty good. Now, I have a Yamaha receiver I bought for about $500. Except now instead of stereo it has 7 channels.

Thirty years ago, that Pioneer receiver was probably wired by hand, using components that probably cost a good chunk of that $500. When you bought the Pioneer, you were probably getting your money's worth

The Yamaha you bought recently is probably a single printed circuit board that cost maybe $20 to make. The amp section is definitely a single chip. You overpayed for the Yamaha by about $420.

I would bet you the markup, the profit margin, on the new Yamaha is 8-10 times larger than it was on the old Pioneer. Considering the price of all electronic components have come way down, the Yamaha should really cost about $75. If it came in a really really nice cabinet with an OLED display, maybe $125. You got ripped off, friend.

You're getting less for your money.

Re:Once you have discovered

[Anonymous Coward]

. Yeah, my 30 old system sounded a lot better (though only with two speakers) than todays average 5/6/7.1 systems.

Put a same amount of money to a pair of speakers than the 5.1 set and you got better speakers. Add to that the increasingly complicated room reflections with the 5.1 system and you got a mess instead of precise sound. The Koreans just recently developed a concept for graphene electrode based static speaker which might make those MartinLogan -equivalents so much cheaper..

Re:Once you have discovered

[eh2o]

In acoustics measurement and audio engineering the criteria are completely objective, and the only thing that really matters is linearity. Unfortunately these are generally the very expensive systems because essentially nothing about loudspeakers is actually linear, in particular a loudspeaker voice coil is only approximately linear for small excursions where the magnetic field lines are approximately linear.

Sound quality on the other hand is highly subjective and people generally prefer a moderate amount of dynamic range compression which improves intelligebility in a noisy environment, and some harmonic distortion is also nearly universally preferred since it makes it sound more "rich" from the spectral smearing.

Historically the quality of amplification electronics in audio gear has gone up significantly over the last few decades, and at the same time the price of those components has gone way way down thanks to class-D amps that synthesize a time-varying voltage using high-speed digital switching. However, the quality of the actual loudspeakers has gone down dramatically, mainly because of the strong consumer preference for sound systems that are exceedingly small and/or integrated into television sets. Back in the '70s a loudspeaker was accepted as part of the furniture landscape, but no longer, and this is a huge disaster for sound quality as there is simply no way to make a full range system without a large surface area that enables the low-impedance coupling of the driver with the air. At the absolute smallest a full-range speaker cone should be at least 4 inches in a cabinet with about 6 inches depth... which certainly won't fit in my macbook... :(

Re:Once you have discovered

[Hognoxious]

With NO R&D AT ALL, at the least we should have exactly AS GOOD sound as "your dad's thirty-year-old stereo".

Over time the copper absorbs oxygen from the atmosphere, and the diurnal-nocturnal thermal cycle causes polycrystalline fragmentation.

If that's not bad enough, the marker pen ink on the CDs fades.

Re:Once you have discovered

[adolf]

I agree. A little.

Switch-mode power supplies can reduce weight considerably. (Whether they reduce audio quality is a debate with too many variables to generalize.)

And you can convey full sound through little 5 or 6 inch drivers, though not through those of the miserable sort: Dynaudio used to produce some with excellent response down to about 40Hz which sounded positively wonderful. (The only miserable thing about them was paying for them.)

Similarly, you can get absolutely paltry results from larger-diameter drivers: Surface area is only one component of a loudspeaker system. I have a pair of quite old ESS AMT-1 speakers which have 10" woofers and they're positively anemic when it comes to low bass, but they work quite well for everything above that. (They mate well with a subwoofer covering the bottom two octaves.)

And it's ancient news, indeed: Forget the Intarwebs. People have been discussing this in technical journals for about 80 years.

Re:Once you have discovered

[Anonymous Coward]

Theoretically, a free market is impervious to greed. This is because the "free market" ideal presupposes informed buyers, not mindless consumers or other kinds of sheeple.

Your beef is not with free market itself, but the people trying to convince you that you have one (or more accurately, that you can have one).

Re:Once you have discovered

[wall0159]

Maybe so, but why buy it, when 30 year-old NAD gear sounds fantastic and can be bought for pocket change?

Re:Once you have discovered

[Savantissimo]

Op-amps come in thousands of flavors, they each have hundreds of performance parameters, at least half a dozen of which need to be considered even in a first-pass design. Common types of op-amps in low-power signal paths are usually much better than transistors even when given 1/10th the component count and 1/10th the design effort of a discrete circuit. Used by a real expert, they can do things that couldn't be done at all with discrete circuits.

The problem is that many engineers simply don't pay attention to any of the important characteristics of the components, drop in a '741 or TL072, use a cookbook circuit, don't even bother to model the circuit (or don't model the actual devices they are using or the relevant circuit response measures), and don't fully test the real circuit. Heat? Details of the character of harmonic distortion? Error budgets? Phase margin? Noise? It's all a mystery to these analog script kiddies who can't use 4/5 of their SPICE simulator and may never have melted a bit of solder (except maybe by mistaking amps for milliamps.)

Re:Once you have discovered

[adolf]

1 - at least 20lbs weight.

You're forgetting the other side of the equation: Efficiency. A set of big Klipsch speakers (or any efficient PA speaker, for that matter) can be cleanly driven to eviction levels with a very small handful Watts from a very small, lightweight amplifier, for example.

2 - Able to drive 6 ohm speakers. The speakers optimally will be front-ported or sealed. (bouncing the bass off of the corner behind the speaker and back at you is very inefficient). The speakers should have no smaller than 6 inch woofers( 5 if it's a very good or special design). 8 for the mains is nice as it makes a sub somewhat optional. This is exactly like car audio in that 4 inchers generally sound like crap.

Being able to drive low impedances is good. My personal favorite amp is an old MOSFET design which is rated to drive a dead short.

But port location almost doesn't matter: It's a Helmholtz resonator, which is just an acoustic low-pass filter. A properly-aligned ported loudspeaker which can play low will have a correspondingly low port frequency, and at 30-40Hz bass is very nondirectional indeed.

And again, size doesn't matter. Suppose I present to you two different speakers, one 6" and one 8". I've measured the QES, QMS, Vas, and free-air resonance of each one, and found all of the figures to be identical. Despite difference in cone area, they will perform identically at low frequencies in a box of identical volume, at least at low power (according to Thiele and Small, anyway).

But which one is capable of cleanly producing more low frequency pressure at higher power levels?

I know you want to say that the 8" speaker is, but the fact is that it's a trick question. There is no answer: I simply haven't given enough information to make a determination.

The only appropriate response is something along the line of "What the Xmax of the two drivers?" Armed with Xmax, you can determine which one can produce higher levels of low bass, but without it you're just guessing.

4 - the sub should be a proper dual-coil design and be at least 10 inches in diameter. It should, of course, have its own amplifier so as to not overwork the main unit. Be sure to plug it into the same circuit as the amp or use an isolator to keep ground-loop hum out of the equation. I personally like Sunfire, though YMMV.

Why dual voice coil? Are you feeding each coil a different signal? Doing so works OK, sometimes, in a system using passive crossover on a budget, but there's problems with that: The parameters of the driver change depending on whether one or the other or both coils are being driven.

So, while it works OK, it's not really very ideal. Generally speaking, DVC drivers make lousy mixers.

DVC drivers are typically intended to have their coils wired together either in series or in parallel (or, I suppose, you could use just one), to allow flexibility in selecting an impedance and/or changing the Qes. Once wired up, it behaves exactly like a single-coil driver, which isn't improper at all.

If you've got an active crossover and a single subwoofer it's better to sum the signals electronically, and treat it as a single loudspeaker. My crossover lets me do this with the push of a button.

If you're just trying to use both channels of a stereo amp to drive a single sub and make the most of what you've got, there's other ways to do that, too. Just bridge the amp and use it in mono. This works the same for all woofers, whether DVC or not.

But, again: Why should it be at least 10 inches? That's just one parameter of the soup, and it's one of the least important ones...

Meanwhile: "Ground loop isolators" are inherently garbage, and represent additional complexity (a transformer) to the audio path where there needn't be anything but a bit of wire. They sometimes can hide (but will not eliminate) a dangerous situation. If you've got hum o

Re:Once you have discovered

[rev0lt]

If you play a CD on a 20 year old CD player and a modern one, it will sound different. Many older players only have a 12 or 14 bit DAC, so forget about getting the full range. Some expensive models may have some sort of interpolation (some brands advertised 20-bit players), but usually they'd have a ton of extra electronics instead of a true 20 bit DAC. On the other hand, those old players usually had excellent electrolytic capacitors.
Today 24 bit DAC are relatively cheap, but good electrolytic capacitors are somewhat difficult to find. Even if you go fully digital, with optical cable and a dedicated external DAC, you'll probably have some crappy capacitors handling the signal. You can find on the internet a ton of info about replacing electrolytic capacitors on cheap cd/dvd players so they give a better sound.

Re:Once you have discovered

[rev0lt]

Yes, but if you can buy the full amplifier as a module (like the STK modules and TDA ic's) for your design, you'll be not only saving a ton of money, but also skipping all the R&D by using a tried-and-true solution. That may drive the cost down, but also slows down innovation.

Re:Once you have discovered

[Plekto]

Heh. There are proper isolators, but they aren't cheap, either. Most people, even audio "experts" have no clue where to buy them as they are basically big ugly bricks that are designed for hospital use and similar industrial applications. Usually you have to go to a major electronics or electrical supplier to even find them. Of course, you should wire any system up correctly. But *sometimes* you have issues with your condo or apartment that you can't get around since you don't have the ability to fix the wiring/don't technically own the structure. Thankfully, everything in audio reproduction and electrical power has a solution. It just requires differing amounts of money. Of course, I won't get into how many McHomes (tract developments) are designed with wrong wiring and grounding...
(my dad was an electrician, so the stories I'd hear... )

Oh, and don't be a dimwit and fail to put a surge protector on the system. You spent likely 3K+ on the amp, TV, and other bits and pieces. Unfortunately (for the few people still reading this - heh), the junk at Radio Shack isn't really adequate. I'd consider Tripplite to be about a minimum acceptable standard. Most people can afford $60-$120 for one of these and they do work as a proper surge protector. (just like how if you need a switch or hub, especially to use as a repeater on a long run, buy a Unicom and don't screw around with consumer grade junk)

A subwoofer should be heavier built than a typical speaker, naturally,(most use dual coils working together) as it's job is to only produce sound from about 30hz to about 60hz. Assuming you have a decent setup - you your surrounds only go down to 120hz, well, you're in trouble as that's plainly directional in any moderate sized room. IME, most (but not all) small subs lack the punch necessary for home theater. I recommended Sunfire as they make fairly affordable small subs and are a good compromise for the first time audio system DIYer. B&W also makes a nice subs, though they are considerably more expensive.

Re:Once you have discovered

[Savantissimo]

Frequency issues might be switching power supply or digital noise leaking into the signal path, or microphonic feedback of the sound to the signal path when high impedance inputs are used inside the circuit, particularly if they are left floating. Digital stuff can easily pollute the power supply inside a component if some care isn't taken - not hard, and most components have great PSRR, but some old-school discrete designs that have been reused won't deal as well with a dirty power supply. Cheap capacitors in the signal path can also cause gross changes in the frequency response, especially with heating and aging. Even good caps used as DC-blocking will give some soakage (turn into electrets) and thus start turning sine waves asymmetric, but only after many hours of use. Paper speaker cones - shudder!

Yes, the sound setup core may be the same, but if people are constantly hooking up instruments and microphones and making input adjustments, all sorts of things can happen. Worn or corroded jacks, cords, pots, switches etc. can screw things up terribly; ESD and input overloads can have an immediate or cumulative effect on all sorts of things, new electrical stuff not even hooked up to the sound system can cause interference. And it's rare for one person to have complete 24-7 control over a venue setup. Some idiot might mess with practically anything when you're not looking. It always works just fine - until it breaks - so sound engineers really need to document what should be there, how it's supposed to be hooked up, how it is supposed to perform and make sure that it's all still working right before every performance.

Re:Once you have discovered

[HornWumpus]

I was about to make a snarky comment about not being able to get an original quad mix. Despite Alan Parsons being unhappy with it...

Good thing I checked TPB first.

Re:Once you have discovered

[Plekto]

Nice. I got a real laugh out of that one. As I stated, it's a combination of cheap parts being so readily available *and* cost cutting idiots who don't understand why sometimes you really do need to spend the extra 20 cents on a component.

If I was hiring an engineer, I'd be more interested that they know how to solder than what their GPA was.

Re:Once you have discovered

[mug funky]

contact cleaner will sort out the crackle for a couple of years...

i'm all about the vintage amps though. i can't afford 5 speakers and a sub, so i'm making do with my very nice 2 speakers (that i've had since high school, 12 years ago).

that said, the internal amps in my near-fields seem to sound pretty good.

my 1970s yammy CA-810 is nice, but not accurate. and it draws more power than all the lights in my house, plus the TV and computer. in contrast, my MSP5's draw about 100 watts each at full output, and most of that ends up in my ears or annoying the neighbours. much more efficient and more accurate sound, but the yammy just looks better and shakes the walls a tad more.

Re:Once you have discovered

[mug funky]

i got the SQ version (well, i stole it from my Dad, but then he never uses his turntable anymore).

i break it out about as often as i'd break out a whisky of comparable age (38 years!). it wont wear out any time soon, and if it does, i have a 24 bit transfer i did some time ago.

the crackles are good though - they make every copy a little different. if i wanted perfection, i'd do my best to score some 24 bit masters

SACD can eat a bag of dicks. stupid, useless, cynical attempt from Sony to relive the good old days before cassette recorders. no amount of forged impulse response diagrams will convince me i can hear a positive difference from a 44/16 bounce of the same master).

Re:Once you have discovered

[Savantissimo]

A little bit fancier way is to use CAT5 cable the same way. Or use 3 cables and braid them rather than twisting. Nylon braid instead of heat-shrink tubing also works well (with a few inches of heat-shrink on either end to hold it together and provide some strain relief). Old-style computer ribbon cable with alternate wires connected at either end (conductor A = wire 0,2,4,6...; conductor B = wire 1,3,5,7...) also works great and allows running behind baseboards or under carpets.

Re:Once you have discovered

[Plekto]

True, but you do need to properly calculate the gauge of the wire into the equation.

Cat 5 as an example, is 8 strands of 24 gauge wire.
Resistance per strand at 10ft: 0.25670 Ohms. 0.25670 / 24 (3 pieces of cat-5) = .01695 ohms. Slightly better than 12 gauge wire. But 6 cables (stereo, of course) is a lot of wire, and unless you have a big crawl space and a box of the stuff lying around for free, you're always better off with standard electrical wire.

Computer cable, OTOH, is junk. It takes an absolutely insane number of the strands to equal a simple wire. They do make flat wire for the purpose of going under carpets and it works far better.

Re:Once you have discovered

[Savantissimo]

It doesn't matter if every component is great if they don't work well together.

My dad in the late '70s had: a Nakamichi casette deck, Linn turntable, Technics (IIRC) receiver, dual Ampzillas, Magnaplanar speakers, and a 12" subwoofer with custom crossover and a professionally balanced (with a calibrated microphone and frequency analyzer) parametric EQ. It sounded barely OK. Why? I blame the Magnaplanars and to a lesser extent the Ampzillas, but mostly the components just didn't work well together.

On the other hand, a few years ago, comparing a $5000 solid state system to a $40,000 tube system (both playing at the same monitored level through the same $1000ea. Linn bookshelf speakers) it was like night and day, it was as if two extra musicians had joined in. Sometimes the differences are profound even when the cheaper system would likely test better (or at least practically perfect as far as the numbers go) and the more expensive system likely had more measurable distortion, the extra money can buy a dramatically better experience if spent wisely.

(OTOH the $25,000 ea. speakers sounded lousy. Caveat auditor.)

Re:Once you have discovered

[cynyr]

Well If i want to send my blue-ray player audio anywhere in 5 channel audio, then i need something new. The plug/unplug also will not pass "the wife" test.

Same goes for my tv, i'd need a HDMI port on my receiver. I guess i could try and find a receiver with SPDIF/analog pre-out, and send that into 3 NAD amps, but that sounds really pricey.

Re:Once you have discovered

[metallurge]

The volume potentiometer started to add a crackle when being turned lately, though - so I guess sooner or later I have to break out my soldering iron and fix the thing.

Might want to try contact cleaner spray first.

Re:Once you have discovered

[Anonymous Coward]

A lack of market emphasis on sound quality as a selling point could have two potential results: First, a reduction in R&D intended to produce better sound quality, and second, the freedom to improve margins by reducing costs. In the presence of the first, the second leads to a reduction in available sound quality.

Re:Once you have discovered

[Targon]

It's too bad that so few people here in the USA are familiar with these two companies. I have a great pair of B&W P6 speakers that I picked up ten years ago and it will take an upturn in the economy before I can even think about upgrading them(as if it's needed). Rotel is one of those companies that also makes a product that really is GOOD, and not watered down.

Re:Once you have discovered

[Lord_Jeremy]

The G5s have had some capacitor plague issues that originated from a bunch of manufacturers turning out huge numbers of bad caps. The first gen and ALS iMac G5s had huge extended service plans for bad caps on the mainboard, though I've heard many PowerMac G5s suffered the same problem with PSU caps.

Re:Once you have discovered

[bws111]

Sorry, but you are going to have to explain how I got 'ripped off', or in what way I am getting less for my money.

The things I value in a receiver are: sound and features (inputs, etc). How does 'hand wired' add any value to the product (it doesn't). If it doesn't add value, then taking it away does not give me 'less'. How does the component cost affect the value of the product (except to the extent that it changes the sound or features, it doesn't). How does lowering the component cost give me 'less'? How does the profit margin to the manufacturer affect the value of the product (it doesn't). How does an increase in the profit margin give me less?

As to the 'ripped off': to me, ripped off implies some sort of fraud. Where is the fraud here? Does the amp perform as advertised (yes). Does the amp have the advertised features (yes). Did they sell it for the advertised price (yes). Where is the rip off?

How much would it cost for me to have a similar amp custom built? I am guessing several thousand dollars. Paying $500 doesn't seem like such a bad deal.

I will never understand people who equate production cost to value. If going to an indie movie that cost $1M to make costs you $10, would you pay $5000 to see a blockbuster that cost $500M to make? If not, why not, since you equate production cost with value.

Re:Once you have discovered

[adolf]

I wasn't considering isolating things on the power side of stuff. This, indeed, works fine. The bench geeks at work used to use them when working on CRT TVs, back when people still cared to fix such things. But it takes a fair bit of copper and iron to put any real current through one, which tends to make them expensive. If you own your house, I submit that it's still better to fix it right. :)

Surge suppression is a mixed bag. I use a fancy rackmountable Tripp-Lite unit for my AV gear, and a full online sinewave UPS from the same company for my computer gear.

But amusingly, I tossed a Tripp-Lite surge suppressed plug strip just today. The power switch was -hot- and stinky, and it eventually opened up completely. (Could've been far too interesting if not for that latter part.)

I'm allergic to anything touched by Bob Carver, so I'll never know how his Sunfire subs work. I've listened to some very small subs from Velodyne recently which were rather awesome, though...

But at my house, I build my own subwoofers. It's too easy to get it right, and it's fun to over-engineer the enclosure. My favorite sub weighs 105 pounds, has primary structural components made entirely from cardboard, and went together in about 2 hours. It needs replaced because the driver is beginning to fall apart after 15 years and I'm getting tired of fixing it, but I've always been abundantly pleased with it.

It's crossed over at little bit less than 80Hz, so it disappears rather well.

Re:Once you have discovered

[Anonymous Coward]

Clearly, a response from a very young, ignorant user. How do you think knowledge (about achieving maximum quality analog sound reproduction - or any older technology) sticks around. Think it's all documented? Gee, mate, you're a bit naive. Very few companies retain their leading edge knowledge properly - it's mostly in people's heads. This hasn't changed much in decades. As newer generations of 'engineers' replace older (retired) ones, lots of good knowledge (and interest in certain quality objectives) is totally lost. Newer technologies are blindly trusted as being better. Worse, It's all about eye candy and convenience these days. Compare the sound of 2009 $350 iPod with the sound of a 1984 $350 higher end cassette deck. Apart from a bit of hiss and noise (reduced by digital recording technology these days) the sound in that 25 years older device was so much fuller and more dynamic. Let's mot even get into CD players with decent D/A converters (not the cheap Chinese rip-offs), which still are light years ahead of the portable music emanating from the leading fruit company's devices, and consumer grade CD/DVD players these days.

Re:Once you have discovered

[Indigo]

I'm no audiophile, but I would have married my college roommate's NAD 2200 if the law allowed it. That thing was fine.

Re:Once you have discovered

[Anonymous Coward]

Good sound quality is still out there and still being improved. Companies like NAD are still in business and still developing amazing gear.

Yes, I have NAD320BEE amp. It's plain looking outside but good quality inside.

Re:Once you have discovered

[Anonymous Coward]

Sucker! monster cables are the biggest rip off that exists! For speaker cables use normal heavy duty cable, mains cable works nicely. You do not need all this low O2 BS cable etc. For your low level signal cables you can make your own using good quality shielded cable or buy reasonable priced cable, not the very cheap stuff.

Only audiphile subscribers buy the rubbish like monster cables.

I've been trained as an electrical engineer and worked in RF and that is much fussier than audio and in years gone past I've designed and built audio amplifiers including valve (tube) amps. Give me solid state any day! The so called valve (tube) sound comes from distortion, I want my sound coming out the same as it went in.

Re:Once you have discovered

[PopeRatzo]

I will never understand people who equate production cost to value.

I'm not "equating" production costs to value, I'm equating production costs to some reasonable fraction of price. If the fraction is too small compared to how much you are paying, you're getting ripped off.

I suppose if you really like hershey bars, you don't mind paying $500 for one. But I would think you got ripped off.

Attitudes like yours is what makes marketing work so well. You are an A number 1 consumer. Congratulations. I don't choose to live that way, but I respect completely your desire to do so.

But I'll still think you got ripped off. I hope you can respect that.

Re:Once you have discovered

[dave87656]

I went to a boarding school for High School (as a day student) and some of these kids had amazing stereos (this was '72 to '76) that, IMHO, sounded clearer and had better base than today's. I have an earlier 5.1 surround sound from Panasonic that costs about 700 € (I now live in Germany), so it wasn't one of the cheap ones, but it just doesn't have the clarity and the quality that the older stereos did. The sub-woofer gives it a a lot of base, but it sounds overdone somehow.

Re:Once you have discovered

[juventasone]

My grandfather was throwing out his NAD 7030 (30+ years old) so he could replace it with something newer and smaller. I took it home, sprayed the tuner, and now own a beautiful, high-quality amp. Article title irony.

Re:Once you have discovered

[smellotron]

SACD can eat a bag of dicks. stupid, useless, cynical attempt from Sony to relive the good old days before cassette recorders. no amount of forged impulse response diagrams will convince me i can hear a positive difference from a 44/16 bounce of the same master.

Emphasis mine. I can't hear the extra bit depth, but the fact that the target audience actually cares about sound quality means that mastering engineers will be encouraged to do a good job instead of a cheap job.

I guess the big question is whether the SACD/Hybrid discs use the same mastering source for the CD channels (since the DSD DRM blocks fair use). If they do, that means you can rip lossless audio from a good master. If the CD version is a different master, well then I guess you're right, SACD can eat... uh... a bag of dicks.

Re:Once you have discovered

[xtracto]

This brings me to a comment from GP, he said that companies do not make good equipment because people are not willing to pay for it. Nevertheless, the expensive equipment you can buy nowadays only costs a lot because of brand recognition (e.g. Bose( and not because it has better sound quality...

Re:Once you have discovered

[maRwilli]

I'd agree up to a point with some of this. However, I'd have to take issue with "Everything about amplification and electronic theory was known and done as of about thirty years ago." I did electronic engineering just less than 30 years ago and 100% of what I was taught about high-power semiconductors has been obsoleted, and most of the stuff that obsoleted it is now obsolete. So, while the analogue theory may not have changed all that much, what can be achieved has been revolutionised about twice. If you look at commercial systems that get used in venues, studios, etc. then it has been furter revolutionized by DSP, active speaker technologies, computer control, adaption to environmental factors, etc. And when I was studying electronics, the 70s seemed like the stone age because they had almost no FETs and SCR stood for saturable-core reactor. When I studied amplifier theory, Class A and Class B amplifiers were reality and Class D was a new development just coming in and certainly not suitable for audio. These days I think you'd be amazed at the quality that comes out of 6" drivers. I sure am. I used to own "your father's system" and it had 12" woofers, only because I couldn't afford 15". These days I have a pair of speakers that has 6" drivers and they are pretty flat down to abut 35Hz - about what you got out of 15" drivers in the 70s. They sound great (much better than my father's speakers) and don't need a sub for any music. (But the sub is great for movies.) I tend to agree with the article that what people care about has changed. Sound systems are used to watch movies and listen to ipods. So naturally you want 6, maybe 10 channels rather than 2. That is a lot more amplifier. And the source material has degraded, at least for the average person who is prepared to shell out a 1980 $500 for a receiver. How many people on this list actually sit down on a regular basis and listen to an album right through? I know I do it rarely (although I am trying to change that) these days, but 15 years ago I did it regularly.

Re:Once you have discovered

[Anonymous Coward]

a badass cable on a cheapo system does not a good system make. You can add all the shiny-ass gold connectors you want, but a cheap system will still sound like a cheap system to those who know what there listening to... oh just out of curiosity now that i think about it... when last has anyone seen a phono in on a system they bought recently?

Re:Once you have discovered

[Anonymous Coward]

I woudn't buy from people who believe the world "monster" belong to them !
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monster_Cable_Products#Trademark_and_patent

Re:Once you have discovered

[der_joachim]

Word of advice: you probably just have to clean the potmeter. It accumulates dust and dirt over time. Clean it out and you're good again.

Re:Once you have discovered

[egork]

Check out the Altec Lansing inMotion series or Creative d200 for new amplification technology. While this is no hi-end stereo, it sounds better than some 30 years old hi-fi even as mp3 over bluetooth.

Re:Once you have discovered

[Anonymous Coward]

Not neccesserly, over time the shrinking of components and the increase of options may have lead to the degradation in quality. The R&D fail in the way of driving down cost and increasing output (production that is).

Re:Once you have discovered

[zwarte piet]

I'm still amazed how good my 10 year old philips (tube) tv with built in 5.1 sounds for both music and movies. It was bluddy expensive though.

Re:Once you have discovered

[Anonymous Coward]

My sentiments exactly. All kidding aside, it's amazing the money people spend on cables, thinking that the cables make the sound quality better.
I buy all my HDMI cables at the local dollar store.

Re:Once you have discovered

[Anonymous Coward]

I listened to a 5.1 system my daughter had and it was kinda OK when watching a movie. But once you turned on quality music - yikes!

That's because these systems were specifically intended for movies, TV programming and maybe a few video games, NOT music!! The electronics departments of Sam's Club and Costco seem to be littered with home theater systems like this, and if they do have any 'actual' stereos, they're the el-cheapo shelf type which aren't really that powerful. The good stuff is at whatever local stereo retailers are left.

Re:Once you have discovered

[TeknoHog]

To me, these cheap 5.1 systems look like the direct descendants of 90s "computer speakers". Back then, most people had a perfectly good sound system, but the computer was a different world. Especially the multimedia computer, which apparently needed its own plastic boxes for playing sound samples from CD-ROM encyclopedias. What kind of quality can you expect, if you have this appliance mentality of every sound source needing its own speakers?

Re:Once you have discovered

[Pf0tzenpfritz]

Four years ago, I tried to get a new amplifier, as my old Technics device gave up. No chance. There are no classic stereo components available anymore, just "recievers" with not even the most basic features as bass/treble, monitor or speaker pair selection. They might be OK for "home cinema" and other things, imbeciles use to waste their lives with. I learned that such an elementary thing as a simple Hi-Fi amplifier is available only from "High End" (say: audio-esoteric) suppliers, nowadays. So I bought two used AKAIs at eBay.. Price € 15.- each. Analog VU meters with real needles on the front panels, decent sound, 60 Watts, three times as loud as any phantasy-number-of-Watts device from the toy store :) They are still running fine, I just had to replace the volume potentiometer of one of them. Simple analog technology for a simple analog task. Ten minutes of work, € 2.50 for the parts. A friend of mine bought a new consumer class reciever about at the same time which went out of work last year. Repair? Ha-ha. Not worth the effort, anyway.

Re:Once you have discovered

[Pf0tzenpfritz]

Yes. But the question is, what the complexity is good for, if it doesn't improve sound quality.It's not that amplifying an incoming signal has become more complicated in the last 30 years - and that's what a stereo does, no matter, if it's a CD-player, an iWhateever or a computer the input comes from.

Re:Once you have discovered

[AmiMoJo]

Everyone seems to be forgetting one of the most important aspects: the listening environment. A really good system is still going to sound terrible if you don't have the speakers positioned correctly, or the room is the wrong shape, or furniture messes it up, or you sit in the wrong place...

Houses are getting smaller and smaller as people move into cities. That is one reason why I mainly listen on headphones, I just don't have the space to properly set up some speakers. Modern low-end systems are designed with that in mind so while they lack accuracy they still sound "good" to the untrained ear. In fact I am thinking of getting some of those Bose 2.1 speakers that emulate a 5.1 system after hearing them at a friend's house. He is lucky enough to have the room for a proper hifi set-up too.

Re:Once you have discovered

[JamesP]

My modern sound system has a big power transformer (in fact it's about 70% of the weight of the system)

Output amplifier uses around 40v.

One of the reasons some amplifiers sound like crap is, you guessed, a switching power supply. (even with proper filtering I'm a little bit skeptical, unless it runs at a very high frequency)

Re:Once you have discovered

[Plekto]

I unfortunately see four things wrong with that statement. First, Creative. I'm sorry, but they aren't really doing anything much different than the same audio trickery that Bose is famous for. Crappy fiberboard boxes. Paper drivers. Bandpass designs. Fake accentuated bass. Holes in the frequency response that you could drive a truck through. Thin and nasty sound that lacks impact. Altec Lansing is similar. I can get better sound out of a bare 7 inch Kenwood car stereo speaker. One. Sitting in my hand, not even in a cabinet or enclosure. Now, if we were talking about a large NXT flat panel technology or similar (or perhaps some of the newer in-wall speakers that are out now), you might have a point. But the inMotion is a complete joke. I have a pair of little 20 year old Roland practice/feedback monitors that will crush these pieces of junk.

Second, MP3. Most MP3s are compressed to the point where while it might be fine to listen to in your car due to the background noise pretty much killing your ability to really hear high quality audio, but they are terrible compared to a good CD. Mostly because the typical person who does the encoding doesn't know how to properly set it up and what program (as well as codecs and similar) to use. With the right settings, you can recreate CD quality with MP3s, but the file size is 30-50% the size of the original. (or you can use a lossless compression format as well). The 128bit encoded crap foisted off on us by Itunes and other stores for years was a tragedy. Now that they've upped it to a somewhat usable (if barely) 256bit, you still have to re-download most of your songs to weed out the old junk. At that point, you might as well just go out and buy used the CDs. I've played old records of the same songs and my son as commented how he didn't even know that that part existed. (and vinyl isn't a great format, either) Simply put, MP3s are the modern equivalent of cassette tapes for your walkman. And just as underwhelming when it comes to serious listening.

Thirdly, Bluetooth. It might work fine for you, but putting a compressed audio file through a further compressed and prone to losses wireless link is asking for trouble. At that point, you might as well be listening to FM radio. I feel a bit sorry that you've either lacked real audio experience so far in your life or have been led to believe over all these years to honestly think that settling for one of these little pieces of junk actually qualifies as a good use of your money. Or even as acceptable audio.

And, lastly, I don't know about you, but my old stereo(s) still work fine and can shake the room I'm in if I ever feel the need to do so. "Sounds better" is highly debatable. Maybe better than a boombox from 30 years ago, but that little piece of junk in no way meets the standards set of any reasonable setup. Even one that's 30 years old.

Re:Once you have discovered

[Plekto]

Yeah, Bob Carver as a person is a whole truckload of ass, but the subs are acceptable if you're on a budget (I think it's that a sub is simple enough that even he can't screw it up - heh). Of course, you're right, if you have the money, build your own or get a better Velodyne or similar. It's surprisingly easy to actually make a speaker as most of the math and hard work has been figured out years ago and you can even get open-source software to do much of the work for you.

The metal Tripplite ones are good, but, yes, something's gone a bit off lately. I was looking at them for my son's computer a bit over a year ago you could tell that they'd jobbed the thing out to China or somewhere else to cut costs. Poorly formed plastic and pretty much hollow inside (no real weight to it). I suppose it will work, but I miss the days of overbuilding something so it never breaks. Everything is getting so sub-standard and cheap. And don't even get me started on the third-rate overseas rubbish that they call capacitors. (while other problem area lately - you know they are flat out lying and using substandard materials)

One of my uncles works for a defense contractor and half of their job lately involves taking components that they get and either upgrading the sub-standard parts in it or testing them to verify that they actually are built to spec. More than half simply isn't these days and they have to make it themselves or spend more time ordering the exact parts and reassembling the components properly. You have to even go to a specialty store these days to get simple things like well made nuts and bolts, because the junk you get at places like Home Depot and OSH, simply isn't the quality of what you are replacing most of the time. (case in point, I had to replace the exhaust on my truck a while back - the OEM bolt I had to cut off. The other two were replaced at some time in the past by a previous owner and were typical Home Depot stuff. I simply twisted them off with a wrench (exactly like taffy, just with metal (!)) Same specs and symbols on both of them. One was obviously properly treated and designed new steel and the other was recycled steel with a fancy coating to pass inspection.

Re:Once you have discovered

[Mindcontrolled]

Aye, thanks - compressed air and perhaps contact spray like the poster above suggested first, before I break out the heavy gear ;)

Re:Once you have discovered

[Anonymous Coward]

I think what is meant here is lack of research to maintain or even improve sound quality but at a much lower price.

Re:Once you have discovered

[badkarmadayaccount]

Preach it brother - I'm sick and tired of sissy designed for the dump el cheapo trash - what happened to making real products?

Re:Once you have discovered

[tripleevenfall]

whoooooshhhhhhh

Re:Once you have discovered

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. Looks like hollywood movies: great effects (house trembles when bass is playing) but no scenario (nothing thrilling in the no-furniture-moving sounds)

quantity over quality?

[VolciMaster]

Who would've *ever* guessed?

Seriously, though - I think part of it, too, is the use of tubes 30 years ago vs now. My dad's old Teac stereo he bought in 1970 still sounds better than 95% of what I see in stores nowadays :-\

Re:quantity over quality?

[Anonymous Coward]

'see'? i guess you listen too it too? :p

Re:quantity over quality?

[Hatta]

Solid state is much more linear and low noise than any tubes could hope to be. You might think they sound "better" because you like the characteristics of the distortion they produce. But that's unrelated to what we normally consider audio quality.

Re:quantity over quality?

[gumbi west]

Solid state is really linear until you hit the top hat--then it is incredibly non-linear.

Re:quantity over quality?

[icebike]

Solid state is much more linear and low noise than any tubes could hope to be. You might think they sound "better" because you like the characteristics of the distortion they produce. But that's unrelated to what we normally consider audio quality.

You could start a flame war with that assertion. Its been raging on for 40 years on audiophile sites.
Slowly over those years your assertion is becoming true. But it was far from true for many years.

Only in recent years (say 10 or 15) have the solid state amps caught up to the sound quality of tube amps. Mostly they did it by building in enough reserve capacity to mimic the massive and instant changes in volume that tubes always handled better.

Re:quantity over quality?

[dragon-file]

That might not be entirely true, while it is true that solid state amps may be more low noise than tube amps, They tend to inadvertently filter out more of the high and low range of audio. Where as tube amps, albeit a little noisy, perform better in all ranges of audio, hence "better" sound.

Re:quantity over quality?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've always had older stereo stuff. If you shop around craigslist and ebay, you can piece together a very good sounding system for far less than new. My 18 year old son always made fun of my dated stuff and always got hung up on the reviews from amazon, deal sites, and stuff his freiends got from BB. Most seemed to be bandwagon jumpers, not people that were experienced with good sounding euqipment and qualified to give unbiased reviews.
After wasting a lot of his own money on mid priced stuff that still sounded like junk, he finally switched to older stuff.
He now has a middle of road 5 year old 7 channel Yamaha receiver but only using the onboard amps for the rear and center. The front speakers are BIC Venturi that I got at garage sale for $20 which are driven by a Yamaha M-80 amplifier ($250 ebay) and the subwoofer (15 in driver in a 5.5cuft ported box we made) is driven by an even older Yamaha M4 (ebay for $130). Total cost was about $700 including the center and rear speakers. It blows away anything I've heard under $3500. I don't have exotic wiring or $300 power cords, my RCA/HDMI/optic cables are all from monoprice or stuff I had laying around in the drawer.

If you plan on going the "old" route, I would suggest getting a used underpowered receiver that has the features you need and look for some older Yamaha/Adcom/Onkyo amplifiers on ebay. For speakers? Well that is the most important piece and very subjective, you will have to find a good set based on price and performance yourself. There are tremendous deals if you are in the right place at the right time. I often see Infinity SM series floor speakers around for cheap if you want something to start with (I have two pairs and they are decent) and Cerwin Vegas are always out there if you are really need something.

Re:quantity over quality?

[Anonymous Coward]

oooh. oooh. I know. ..don't hit it?

Re:quantity over quality?

[w_dragon]

Or because the people who liked the distortion caused by the tubes started dying off....

Re:quantity over quality?

[TheGratefulNet]

keeping the amp in linear range and keeping the signal inside the clip window is NOT hard.

not sure why you think it is (?)

this has nothing to do with solid state vs tubes, btw. you can clip any amp if you over-drive its inputs OR set its gain factor too high (or both).

Re:quantity over quality?

[sustik]

This distortion angle reminds me of a similar phenomenon: "film grain". Some like that so much they
actually want to mimic it in their digital recording to make it look like classic films. I personally care not much for this blur. I also wish that films would be recorded with 60fps instead of 24fps, because with the latter comes the choppiness when the camera spans. (I admit some people do not notice this at all. I am bothered by it in almost all movies. Maybe I am more sensitive to this. If you do not know what I am talking about, watch a 10fps movie.

Re:quantity over quality?

[sjames]

Interestingly, there is some evidence that tubes sound better because of the way they behave with transient overloads compared to solid state devices. The harmonic distortion produced by hitting the ceiling in a tube amp make the sound seem louder to the human ear. The different harmonic distortion from a transistor amp just sounds like distortion to the human ear.

The upshot is that solid state design has the potential to sound much better as long as the design makes sure no component saturates under any conditions, but any cost cutting compromise at all will degrade solid state much more than tube amps.

Re:quantity over quality?

[Doctor Memory]

Actually, tubes weren't that common even as far back as 30 years ago. I started college in 1980 and almost nobody had any tube gear (except my roommate, who had a McIntosh pre-amp). Interestingly, my old Carver amp from that era sounds better than most of the stuff I hear today too.

Re:quantity over quality?

[VolciMaster]

Actually, tubes weren't that common even as far back as 30 years ago. I started college in 1980 and almost nobody had any tube gear (except my roommate, who had a McIntosh pre-amp). Interestingly, my old Carver amp from that era sounds better than most of the stuff I hear today too.

Most of what I've seen pre-1985 is all tube-based, but that could just be the folks whose old gear I'm seeing were into that kind of stuff over solid state.

Re:quantity over quality?

[CompMD]

I take quality every time. My sound system at home includes a mid 80s Yamaha receiver/amp driving two mid 80s Bang & Olufsen RL35 speakers up front and two late 70s Bang & Olufsen Beovox S75 speakers in back. The CD player is a Bang & Olufsen Beogram CD X from the early 80s, and there is an old TEI 10 band stereo graphic equalizer that components hook up through. The whole rig cost me about $100 from garage and rummage sales. I haven't heard anything that sounds as good for less than 100 times the cost.

Re:quantity over quality?

[Anonymous Coward]

Solid state is much more linear and low noise than any tubes could hope to be. You might think they sound "better" because you like the characteristics of the distortion they produce. But that's unrelated to what we normally consider audio quality.

Photographs are much more detailed and color-accurate than any paints could hope to be. You might think [paintings] look "better" because you like the characteristics of the distortion they produce. But that's unrelated to what we normally consider picture quality.

"quality" -- I do not think you know what that word means.

Re:quantity over quality?

[Hatta]

Amplifiers are audio reproduction devices. Quality is fidelity, nothing more.

To press on your analogy with painting, consider if Van Gogh's Starry Night was destroyed. Would you rather have an accurate high resolution photograph to remember it by, or are the works of imitators sufficient?

Re:quantity over quality?

[Doctor Memory]

That, or it was built better. I had a couple of old receivers from the early- to mid-80s, and they both developed grungy pots and eventually died when (I assume) the electrolytics faded. Nothing you couldn't fix, but they didn't offer anything I couldn't get new for a reasonable price. OTOH, I do have an old Fisher 400 that still works (and would be worth the money to fix if it didn't). I also have a Carver integrated amp from the early 90s that's still pulling its weight, but I'm wondering now how much longer it's going to last.

Re:quantity over quality?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not as straightforward as it first appears, because:

1)Human hearing is weird. We find certain kinds of distortion more audible and unpleasant than others. So even if a solid state device measures better for THD, it's not necessarily going to sound better, as the distortion products are different, even when both devices are in their 'linear' power range.

2)You can do more with less devices with tubes compared to transistors. Simpler circuits + no opamps = better fidelity.

3)The speaker loading of a transformer coupled valve power amp is different to a directly coupled transistor one. So the speakers react differently, and it sounds different. Not always better, but different.

Re:quantity over quality?

[Savantissimo]

The original price was 100 times the cost. (About 2x what it should have been.)

Re:quantity over quality?

[gumbi west]

Because I've worked with audio.

Ask any audio engineer and they will tell you that you always have some stuff past the max, and digital is a PITA because you have to make lots of stuff too quiet to make headroom.

Re:quantity over quality?

[Anonymous Coward]

That is a given, The old stereo's and sppeakers have a much fuller richer sound to them. The CDROMS have taken that away and you cannot coax anything close to what your could do 30 years ago with a good system.

The *ONLY* thing that the new systems have over the old is that the sound down not deteriorate after x many plays. BTW the speakers produced today are far inferior than what was produced 30 years ago. I have an great set of Klipch speakers that will out door most of not all speakers made today.

As far as technical specs the big box people truly do not have a clue. I challenged one and tore him to pieces. While I did not have the person breaking down in tears he was shown how little he really knew and couldn't understand why he didn'y know that going into the conversation.

HPM-100

[Anonymous Coward]

I still use my dad's set of HPM-100s that are a decade older than I am, but connect them to a $50 amp.

TFA

[Translation Error]

Shouldn't the article say more than the summary?

Re:TFA

[oneiros27]

Well, the article does ... unfortunately, we have Slashdot linking to Gizmodo linking to CNet, where the actual article was:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13645_3-20082026-47/how-can-30-year-old-receivers-sound-better-than-new-ones/?tag=mncol;txt

Re:TFA

[ColdWetDog]

Shouldn't the article say more than the summary?

Since no one reads either one, why should it?

Re:TFA

[MagusSlurpy]

Shouldn't the article say more than the summary?

The castrated Gizmodo article didn't, but the original CNET article did (though not by much).

Re:TFA

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be new around here. You actually read the articles??? What's wrong with you?!

Or maybe there's a different sound quality

[Anonymous Coward]

There are people I know who like that old school radio hum, who like the pops and scratches of a record, even if the fidelity isn't complete.

Sometimes the error is deliberately sought, such as in Fallout 3. I've actually had people say "I like that sound, why don't they make music that sounds like that any more?" and no, I don't mean the songs, but the sound of them.

It's all in the encoding

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually I'm pretty sure everyone's stereo is crappy because we switched to digital recordings that have absolutely terrible fidelity. Hello 128k MP3s!

Re:It's all in the encoding

[gumbi west]

CD's are digital and are very, very good audio quality. The one issue is what happens when you are out of range. CD's just cut off the audio while analog media tend to just attenuate it (i.e. twice as loud as represented as 1.8 times as loud, 1.4 times as loud).

Re:It's all in the encoding

[hedwards]

The other major issue is speakers. Most folks didn't notice the quality, or lack of, with the iPods mainly because most folks listened with the bundled ear buds. Leading to among other things an inability to distinguish the various sounds being produced and permanent hearing loss.

I noticed when I moved up to a decent set of Sennheiser headphones a few years back for at home that I was missing most of the music previously as the headphones and speakers just couldn't adequately replicate the sounds.

Re:It's all in the encoding

[xianzombie]

True, but I think the mastering, more so than the encoding, has damaged alot of popular music.

If we take a look at how most people listen (cheap earbuds) and master to make that sound "acceptable" in order to get record sales, then those who would listen on quality gear are going to hear something completely different. The low end is overly emphasized in certain ranges, to compensate for the inability of the speaker to actually replicate that sound.

In the past, when people had dedicated stereos, the desire was there for full range sound and it was mastered as such. It modern times, music is more back ground noise, so it's mastered to be catchy and stand out at the sacrifice of overall quality.

Re:It's all in the encoding

[Bob the Super Hamste]

So I am not the only one who noticed this. I don't listen to my ear buds overly loud (frequently I can hear other peoples crappy music from their ear buds with mine in) but since I mostly listen to music at the gym on a mp3 player I was shocked at how much I missed when I connected the mp3 player up to my car system on a long road trip last year.

Re:It's all in the encoding

[hazydave]

No one's mastering audio to either CD or analog media with levels over 0dB. Just not going to be done.

And in fact, when you're making an LP, the mastering engineer has to apply the RIAA equalization curve. This boosts highs by about 20dB, so they don't vanish, and cuts lows by about 20dB, so the tracks don't get so wide they send your tone arm into your 8-track player. LPs are just plain evil... even the trendy ones they sell today.

The recording process is where digital and analog have to be treated differently. Unless you're recording though a compressor/limiter, go past 0dB VU on your digital recorder and you will in fact clip. On analog tape, you get a natural compression effect which is fairly pleasing to the ear. Some of that's simply that most of grew up on music recorded with the occasional bit of tape compression, so we have a bit of nostalgia for it. Digital recording engineers can get plug-ins that use analog modeling to replicate that sound, but with more control. And of course, the analog guys didn't necessarily run into tape compression accidently.. it was often done in the studio, intentionally, as an effect. Just like overdriving your tube amp, guitar feedback and distortion, etc.

Re:It's all in the encoding

[CycleMan]

Very true. And even most classical stations play only "hits" nowadays -- the movement or two of the piece which is most familiar to the average audience, and which keeps a minimum noise floor to remain heard over all the background noise. Mastering audio for earbud headphones and car stereos (road noise!) distorts it enough that sometimes I feel I'm up against a wall of sound. The point of music, like the point of art, is to have focal points that get your attention, and to do that you must create negative space in your work. When the mastering process compresses everything upward, the focal points disappear. But rather than turn this into a "get off my lawn, unappreciative and uneducated young'uns" comment, I'll say I've started buying older music because I can get the broader dynamic range that I'm looking for in music from before my time.

Re:It's all in the encoding

[qubezz]

It is very possible to have sound levels above +0 db in digital recording, even though the individual samples are not clipped. CD mastering where the volume is digitally maximized can truncate individual clipped samples without regard to the analog output level, so your statement is false.

Its what the consumers want.

[Kenja]

Sound quality is still a selling point to people who want it, and those people will still find a wide selection of good quality components. However most consumers dont want to deal with setting up expensive speaker systems and finding the 'sweet spot' in the room etc. They just want a box that noise comes out of, and thats what they purchase.

Re:Its what the consumers want.

[X0563511]

They just want a box that noise comes out of, and thats what they purchase.

You could stuff an angry badger in a box and get the same thing. Thankfully things aren't that bad... yet.

Re:Its what the consumers want.

[operagost]

Instead of a sound system, box contained a angry badger. Would not buy again.

Re:Its what the consumers want.

[UnknowingFool]

I see it more as the cost of multipurposing. Today's stereos simply have to do more than 30 years ago. Back then the stereos had take analog inputs from radio or vinyl and tapes and output 2 channels of sound. Today they have to handle analog and digital (in different forms) audio and video from radio, tape, CD, TV, DVDs, and sometimes Internet (wired and wireless) etc and them output them to 5.1 or 7.1 or 2 or 2.1 channels. So engineers have been focusing more on getting the damn things to work. Making them sound will cost more if you are willing to pay for it, you can get better quality. The majority of people are fine with good enough.

Re:Its what the consumers want.

[Chupathingy]

In case you're looking: http://xkcd.com/325/

Re:Its what the consumers want.

[Anonymous Coward]

I also think that in this day and age, most music sounds just as bad on good speakers as it does on bad speakers. It's not a hardware problem, it's a software problem.

Re:Its what the consumers want.

[Doctor Memory]

But with the badger, at least you can run Linux on it!

Re:Its what the consumers want.

[Bo'Bob'O]

I think the blame is as much on manufacturers. There is no reason you should have to buy a top-end system to get decent audio. Particle board and even plastic speakers with mid-priced drivers can sound better then most of what you find at best-buy if properly designed. I honestly think manufacturers purposefully "Dumb down" their low and mid-range systems in order to be able to charge more for the high-end stuff.

Want to shop around? Good luck with the lack of decent reviews of mid-range audio systems, utterly useless specs, and the crap audio setups at any retail store where you can give them a listen.

Re:Its what the consumers want.

[grolschie]

Nice xkcd reference. :-)

And this obsession with bass

[Anrego]

I’d also like to throw into the pile the complete obsession with bass in the current generation. It seems to have become the major selling point of speakers at the expense of the mid and high ranges. I like to feel my rib cage rattle as much as anyone else, but I also like those sharp, crystal clear highs.

And it’s of course mandatory to point out that current music sucks, and kids these days only listen to low quality mp3 versions of it anyway and no one has an appreciation for proper sound reproduction and other such “get off my lawn” arguments ;p

I’d also like to note that modern speakers aren’t big enough! I don’t care about volume (personally I don’t like stuff ear-bleeding loud) but my dad’s huge (up to my neck) floor speakers have a presence that you just don’t get with the modern stuff I’m guessing because they just move more air due to their size.

Re:And this obsession with bass

[steveg]

Um. This isn't new.

My parents compalined about all the bass in my music. This was in 1974 or so.

But yeah, I always liked the highs too.

Older speakers also sound better because they're *denser*. They are made of heavier materials, so the speaker body doesn't flex like newer ones.

Re:And this obsession with bass

[dwater]

if you like great sound on the move, i recommend the Nokia N9 (or N950). really excellent sound(imo)

Re:And this obsession with bass

[Anonymous Coward]

...This was in 1974 or so. But yeah, I always liked the highs too.

Was that just when you were listening to the music?

Re:And this obsession with bass

[SensitiveMale]

"Iâ(TM)d also like to note that modern speakers arenâ(TM)t big enough!"

That's the truth. Sound is nothing but changes in air pressure and small speaker simply can not move enough air. I'm completely baffled how the 4" subwoofer was accepted by the public.

Re:And this obsession with bass

[AdamWill]

it's not so much about more air, it's frequencies. The ability to reproduce low end frequencies is directly dependent on the actual size of the speaker, which is why subwoofers have to be so effing huge. But we didn't used to have subwoofers; we had tower speakers, which are big enough that they can incorporate a woofer capable of decent low frequencies. All things being equal, a single speaker producing a full range of frequencies will sound better than two separate speakers (bookshelf plus separate subwoofer). So a pair of floorstanders is going to sound better than two bookshelves and a smallish subwoofer.

These days the real high end setups use a couple of floorstanders for everything down to about 50Hz, and a real bigass subwoofer for 10Hz through 50Hz, which is truly non-directional. But most people (including me) use a couple of bookshelves for 100Hz and up, and a 10-12" subwoofer which can probably do about 30-100Hz. (Or, they have bookshelves and a subwoofer and completely mess up the configuration of the cutoff point, which is probably more common and the reason lots of people's systems sound crappy). The bookshelves plus subwoofer setup can sound pretty good if you're careful about the cutoff point and the phase and everything, but never quite as nice as a good pair of floorstanders.

Re:And this obsession with bass

[Yaa 101]

30 years ago most people were not into great HIFI equipment sound either, it always has been a minority.
One of the reasons is that the majority of people does not listen to the music that a band is playing but to the lyrics that are being sung.
So their definition of a great song is connected to the text, don't ask me why as I am puzzled because most lyrics are not really original, but then, I also wonder why lot's of people watch soaps.

Re:And this obsession with bass

[Twinbee]

Yes. If a tune requires more bass, then that should be the job of the original signal, not the speakers. All speakers should ideally sound the same in this case (one can always alter the treble/bass with knobs on the side). There should be something like an SRGB standard for audio.

A speaker than hasn't any bias towards low or high end will emulate anything perfectly. However, a speaker that biases towards low/high end is like a monitor always having a red tint (even for what's meant to blue or green colours), and people saying "I like the warmer rich red tint of this monitor". It's completely ridiculous.

It reminds of the compression/loudness/over-clipped wars for music actually.

Re:And this obsession with bass

[evil_aaronm]

Are your dad's floor speakers actually filled with speakers? I've noticed that a lot of "tower" speakers are nothing but a couple of 6" jobbies with a large enclosure intending to -appear- big.

On the other hand, my Carvin PM-15's are actually big speakers. They're not tall, but those 15" drivers will shake your pant-leg, if you're standing next to it. I like Blood Hound Gang's "Bad Touch" for just such effect. Turned to "11", of course. They also very nicely mimic the effect of a movie theater: where there's a low rumble, you feel the low rumble.

Re:And this obsession with bass

[X0563511]

I think that has more to do with the stereo field being larger, meaning the "Sweet spot" is larger.

Ignore the audiophile bit. I know of that very same idea from my own time behind a mixing console.

Re:And this obsession with bass

[Anrego]

Are your dad's floor speakers actually filled with speakers?

Yup! The woofer extends to a few inches from either side of the cabinet.. dunno the exact dimensions, but it's a beast. The remainder of the cabinet is filled with 4 or 5 other speakers ranging in size to a few inches to about half the width of the cabinet.

Definitely familiar with the penis extension style speakers you refer to though.

Re:And this obsession with bass

[j33px0r]

Not the current generation but the past two. The heavy bass from rap had gone mainstream back around 1990. My friends who graduated in 1992 have just had their kids start graduating from HS.

Re:And this obsession with bass

[fortfive]

Your comment is only true at a given wattage. Small speakers can produce phenomenal sound, it just takes more watts and proper mounting. It's also way more expensive to build a high-wattage quality speaker, although not as expensive as it used to be.

For an example, look at boston acoustics speakers from the 90's.

Re:And this obsession with bass

[Anonymous Coward]

I’d also like to note that modern speakers aren’t big enough! I don’t care about volume (personally I don’t like stuff ear-bleeding loud) but my dad’s huge (up to my neck) floor speakers have a presence that you just don’t get with the modern stuff I’m guessing because they just move more air due to their size.

The larger the diameter of the speaker, the lower the frequencies it can produce. It makes more sense to have small speakers plus a subwoofer, instead of one huge speaker for a wide frequency range, which inevitably blows out or gets damaged by kids.

Re:And this obsession with bass

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd recommend you check out Aperion Audio if you like floor speakers that sound good. I've got a set of them myself and have been quite happy with them the past several years. Nice thing is, they do free shipping and give you 30 days to decide if you like the speakers. If you don't, they pay shipping back. Oh, and they come in purple velvet bags. Can't beat that!

Re:And this obsession with bass

[Grishnakh]

Density doesn't help with sound quality, if you're talking about the driver cones. For those, you ideally want an extremely lightweight material that's extremely stiff. Lightweight because it's more efficient (needs less power to move it), and stiff so that it doesn't distort physically and change the sound, and moves a volume of air linearly proportional to the electrical signal.

In high-quality speakers, I would imagine that today's speaker technology is quite a bit better than in the past, due to superior materials being available today rather than just paper. Of course, you're not going to get high quality at bargain-basement prices, which is what most consumer gear is.

Re:And this obsession with bass

[rapturizer]

A good sub-woofer allows for crisp clean bass - not loud and thumpy. I build my own speakers, primarily because I don't like black boxes and can build something out of my woodshop for substantially less money. I can demonstrate good base by using the Titanic soundtrack - My Heart Will Go On - not a favorite, but part of the feeling in the movie was they used a pipe organ in the piece that gets down to the 15 - 16 Hz range to represent the feeling of the ship moving through the water. If you compare the exact same music from the CD, in MP3 (256K), AAC (256K), Apple Lossless, and FLAC, you only hear it in the CD. But as it has been mentioned, people like me are the exception rather than the rule when it comes to audio. Most people will be happy with their downloaded compressed music on an iPod with $2 earbuds. Also, my primary music system is $600 worth of homemade speakers hooked up to a 1974 Pioneer Quadrophonic Receiver with a pair of 1975 McIntosh amps and equally high end turntable, reel to reel, CD player (1986), tape deck, EQ, and for a humorous conversation piece - a component 8-track deck.

Re:And this obsession with bass

[cayenne8]

30 years ago most people were not into great HIFI equipment sound either, it always has been a minority.

I dunno...most of my friends I grew up with were into great audio equipment...and still are.

Re:And this obsession with bass

[Anonymous Coward]

The N9 hasn't even been released yet.

Maybe you're thinking about the N900, which is a brick and underpowered for today's standards.

Re:And this obsession with bass

[markov_chain]

You hear it on the CD but not on the other 2 lossless formats? How???

Re:And this obsession with bass

[JazzHarper]

The obsession with bass, combined with speaker enclosures that are an order of magnitude too small, results in pathetic "sub-woofers" that are incapable of reproducing the waveform presented to them. They simply take the energy and resonate at whatever frequency they're tuned to. Personally, I prefer a speaker that can reproduce more than one bass note.

Incidentally, a few years ago, I had to convince the neighbors that I really don't mind if their kids play on my lawn.

Re:And this obsession with bass

[Anonymous Coward]

I've found whenever I'm in a bar/club, the speakers usually can't handle the volume, and the high notes become extremely tinny and painful to listen to.

Most people are too wasted to care (North East England), but it's something that really grates on me, especially when we're expected to pay to go into the damn place...

Re:And this obsession with bass

[Grishnakh]

The problem is that most people don't actually like realism. Look how many people complain about fluorescent or LED lighting being "too white" instead of "warm" like their traditional incandescent lamps. You see it in photography too: people like saturated colors. Show someone a nice photo that hasn't been retouched, and then the same photo after having the colors saturated a little in photoshop, and see which one they prefer. Same goes for sound: stereos have had "loudness" buttons for decades, which boost the bass and treble and not the midrange, and people like the sound better that way.

People simply don't want accurate reproductions of anything.

Re:And this obsession with bass

[LearnToSpell]

If you compare the exact same music from the CD, in MP3 (256K), AAC (256K), Apple Lossless, and FLAC, you only hear it in the CD. But as it has been mentioned, people like me are the exception rather than the rule when it comes to audio.

Thank fuck for that, because you obviously have no idea what you're talking about. *plonk*

Re:And this obsession with bass

[CannonballHead]

Ever been to a symphonic concert? Or wind ensemble concert? Or any "classical" music concert (non-amplified)? Or a pipe organ in a cathedral?

I think I know what the bass-obsession people are after. There's a certain energetic feeling to a strong, powerfully present bass. It gets the air ... and your chair, and you ... vibrating.

Unfortuna

Re:And this obsession with bass

[CannonballHead]

Ever been to a symphonic concert? Or wind ensemble concert? Or any "classical" music concert (non-amplified)? Or a pipe organ in a cathedral?

I think I know what the bass-obsession people are after. There's a certain energetic feeling to a strong, powerfully present bass. It gets the air ... and your chair, and you ... vibrating.

Unfortunately, I don't think most sound systems can do what the large group of acoustic instruments can do. I think you hit on one part of it - the modern speakers aren't big enough. My dad also has some old speakers... not quite up to my neck, but enough to fill a cupboard or use as an end table. They sound good, have good lows, and generally have a nice presence.

All that to say ... I think there's something to be said for trying to replicate the sound you get in live acoustic concerts. You can really get a large and energetic sound that just doesn't get easily replicated with the modern sound systems.

Re:And this obsession with bass

[Anrego]

Ever been to a symphonic concert? Or wind ensemble concert? Or any "classical" music concert (non-amplified)? Or a pipe organ in a cathedral?

Oh definitely not hating on bass... I love bass.. I just want my mid and high range with it!

And I agree that bass you "feel", and to the average Joe mp3 player, it's the first thing that jumps out (probably why they use it as the selling feature.. and why you walk into best buy and hear some bass test track every 10 minutes).

But (or at least I find) it's the mid and high that your mind follows. I'm a huge Pink Floyd fanboy... and can lean back in my chair, close my eyes, and just let my mind follow the music (and yes I know that sounds _ultra_ lame... but try it.. you almost zone out). Muddled mid and high really gets to you when doing this. It's like your mind is following a sound waiting for it to peak.. and it doesn't.. it just kind of roughly rounds off.. and your brain goes "ick".

Pro tip: if you do this, don't put "time" in the play list .. that ungodly noise at the start will probably take a few years off your life ;p

Re:And this obsession with bass

[couchslug]

"And itâ(TM)s of course mandatory to point out that current music sucks, and kids these days only listen to low quality mp3 versions of it anyway and no one has an appreciation for proper sound reproduction and other such âoeget off my lawnâ arguments ;p"

To be more precise, there is nothing in current music which takes advantage of audiophile systems. It's "mixed to be listened to as an .mp3". Music now is nothing more than a "video soundtrack" so quality is secondary. It's not that it "sucks", it's that it need not be particularly "musical" to please its core audience.

There is also the "disposable income" issue. Thirty years ago if you lived in a dorm, your stereo was your entertainment. Your turntable let you upload to your reel-to-reel "server", rip to cassette tape, etc.

That's been replaced by MORE CONVENIENT devices . Tape decks and vinyl records were a hassle to use, even CDs are a hassle to use, so the computer wins. I still have my thirty-year-old system and record collection. It's not worth the effort to dig it out and set it up.

Re:And this obsession with bass

[Twinbee]

Again though, the speaker itself should remain neutral and the composer can still make the original waveform to have more bass if they wish that's how it should be heard, and if the listener is STILL not happy, he can still adjust the bass control to their liking if they don't like the composer's intentions. Heck, the listener can have the bass knob permanently switched to 100% if they really like bass.

My point is that the default position should give a standard sound output across all speakers. Otherwise, it's just a loudness/bassness war game all over again.

By the way, regarding the fluorescent/LED light, have you ever considered it's not the whiteness of the LED lamp they're moaning about, but rather the abnormal spectral spikes (particularly green) in them which can distort colors? How often do you hear someone moan about sunlight? That's much whiter than incandescents.

Re:And this obsession with bass

[Miamicanes]

I think the "30 year" figure is off by about a decade. I'd personally say the early/mid-90s were the high point of audio fidelity -- CDs were universal, the loudness war hadn't begun, and every upper middle-class high school student in Miami had a 10-15" sub with 250+ real RMS watts behind it to make the neighbors hate him ;-)

Re:And this obsession with bass

[Agripa]

I tend to think of it more as an obsession with intermodulation distortion. All other things being equal, small speakers will have more nonlinearity than big speakers at a given power level because of larger displacement. That yields more harmonic distortion and with the lack of a good crossover a lot more intermodulation distortion and the later makes for the boomy sound that is popular.

Listen to the Aliens soundtrack on the typical underdamped small speakers which are popular today and you will have to turn it down because excessive bass overwhelms the rest of the soundtrack and makes it difficult to listen to. Play it back on a critically damped set of bass reflex speakers and you will have to turn it down so the windows do not crack.

Re:And this obsession with bass

[Anonymous Coward]

The Loudness button is actually supposed to equalize the frequency response to match the different frequency response of your ears at LOW volumes. Why someone decided to call it a loudness button when it's only supposed to be on when you turn it down is beyond me.

Re:And this obsession with bass

[Grishnakh]

What would be better is if they made it progressive (or would that be regressive?), so that the effect is reduced as you turn up the volume. That way, you could just leave it on and have good sound at low, medium, and high volumes.

Re:And this obsession with bass

[smellotron]

Look how many people complain about fluorescent or LED lighting being "too white"

Fluorescent lights typically have a very uneven spectrum, producing unexpected discolorations on lit surfaces that aren't perfectly white/gray themselves (e.g. sickly green skin). Full-spectrum fluorescent bulbs solve most of the warmth complaints, but they are still a very niche product. I believe LEDs are much better in this regard, but the astronomical up-front cost has prevented me from investigating them personally ($60 vs. $3 for a PAR 38 bulb last time I looked).

I've noticed over the past few years that many fluorescent bulb providers started advertising color temperature, but almost none of them advertise CRI ("similarity to full-spectrum sunlight"). Nobody knows, and sadly, nobody seems to care.

Re:And this obsession with bass

[qubezz]

That's how it works. Or how it's supposed to work if the receiver designer knows it's not supposed to be a bass-boost button. It's tied to the volume, although it should really be a loudness knob instead of button, because different speaker placement and efficiency and different source levels make for a different reference level where your ear needs compensation for the 'live concert' frequency response at lower volumes.

Re:And this obsession with bass

[Soluzar]

I still use a pair of four-way floorstanding speakers in my 5.1 sound system. I wanted to have only one sound system in the house that served for all purposes, and these provide for high quality stereo music reproduction as well as acting as the front pair for movie and game surround sound. The difference between these and my previous pair of bookshelf front speakers is immense. Most especially in the upper range.

Re:And this obsession with bass

[Vegemeister]

I’d also like to note that modern speakers aren’t big enough! I don’t care about volume (personally I don’t like stuff ear-bleeding loud) but my dad’s huge (up to my neck) floor speakers have a presence that you just don’t get with the modern stuff I’m guessing because they just move more air due to their size.

Hear, hear! I can't help but snicker every time I walk past the iPod dock section in Walmart.

Re:And this obsession with bass

[Stuarticus]

Thank fuck for that, because you obviously have no idea what you're talking about. *plonk*

Surely that was immediately obvious when he mentioned that he listens to Celine Dion. I had the same feeling about a former flatmate who sold stereos when he told me the best tune to demonstrate with was "Wind beneath my wings". Everything you say after that doesn't even have to be listened to.

Re:And this obsession with bass

[dfghjk]

"All things being equal, a single speaker producing a full range of frequencies will sound better than two separate speakers (bookshelf plus separate subwoofer). So a pair of floorstanders is going to sound better than two bookshelves and a smallish subwoofer."

This is not true, "all things being equal". If all things weren't equal, which is actually the case between "a pair of floorstanders" and "two bookshelves and a smallish subwoofer", then who knows. That depends on the speakers in question and room they are in.

Subwoofers don't have to be used as singles and there's no such thing as "truly non-directional". You can see very quickly that the single, large box versus multiple box comparison is only a matter packaging convenience, the real issue is speaker placement and the flexibility multiple boxes affords. It's actually common in finer floorstanding speakers to have separate boxes within the enclosure anyway, making the comparison superficial and silly.

Re:And this obsession with bass

[CannonballHead]

Yes, you do follow the highs more... you might call it "melody." :) (I know, melody is not always in the highest part...)

But, at least culturally, western music seems to enjoy a full and robust sound. We seem to always have bass instruments... even in a lot of folk music.

Re:And this obsession with bass

[steveg]

Nope, I wasn't talking about the drivers, but the cases.

Last time I looked at new speakers (admittedly a decade or so ago) even "high end" speakers were in plastic boxes. I concluded at the time that new speakers would be a step down and just got the speaker surrounds replaced on the Dahlquists.

It's possible that there might be new materials that might be stiffer and lighter, but a lot of that was being used in 1975 when I bought these. They were in pricier speakers than what I was willing to spend (Magnapan, Quad Electrostatic, etc.) but they were available.

Re:And this obsession with bass

[Grishnakh]

I haven't looked at speakers in ages; my current speakers are a pair of Genesis Physics speakers from the early 80s, which have been rebuilt with new drivers from Human Speakers (a one-man company run by one of the speaker technicians from Genesis) after the cones rotted out.

I imagine there's some high-quality cabinets out there if you look for them, but I don't think you're going to find them from many of the name brands that make their stuff in Asia. All that stuff seems to be about marketing glitz, not real quality or performance, like many things today. Bose is a great example of this. You need to find some really small, American company that makes stuff in low quantities.

Of course, you can always just build your own using some plans found online. There's lots of people with websites detailing their speaker cabinet plans. If you have some woodworking skills, it shouldn't be that hard, as it's mainly just MDF or fiberboard (used not because of cost, but because of mass and most especially dimensional stability, which real wood doesn't have).

Re:Digital Data Compression: Music's Procrustean B

[YodasEvilTwin]

Where'd you copy-paste that from? Oh wait, let's ask Google: From http://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/digital_data_compression_musics_procrustean_bed/. Nice work, very classy.

That's right.

[Gunkerty Jeb]

I'll keep my old-school Cerwin Vega's thank you very much.

Re:That's right.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll keep my old-school Cerwin Vega's thank you very much.

The trouble with great sound systems is that after listening to an artist's recording, they are very disappointing live. I don't care if it's Van Halen or your favorite symphony: live music has horrible sound quality compared to the recording. Actually, I'd say the same if you're comparing an mp3 with a live performance.

I used to have this big bulky Fisher 100W systems. I got rid of it and put in one of those all in one nice and small fits on one shelf CD/MP3/Radio job and I can't tell the difference - I never cranked the music so loud that the neighbors could hear it because if I really wanted it loud, I'd use headphones.

Re:That's right.

[oh-dark-thirty]

Poor sound in live recordings is almost always due to the shitty mix that includes all the audience noise and some omni stage mikes to get that 'live' sound. Direct soundboard recordings can sound very good.

Re:That's right.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll keep my old-school Cerwin Vega's thank you very much.

I agree! I am still rockin' my Cerwin Vega VS series (10"Woofer + a mid + Tweet) from the 80's and, along with the Klipschorns in the surrounds pushed from my Denon mid-priced Receiver, fed out of a multi-function inexpensive SACD/DVD Audio player, I have an excellent listening experience when compared to any of my younger friends (I am 51), and they always come over to listen to my tunes or Movies or even bring their own tunes (even mp3 s burned to a disc) and enjoy the sounds better than on their home systems! I am lookin' to upgrade to an old AR1 speaker pair if I find em', though.

Re:That's right.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hehe, the sales people used to say you can plug them in to the main without blowing them. Someone I knew tested it and I think they coped.

Re:That's right.

[mbkennel]

"I don't care if it's Van Halen or your favorite symphony: live music has horrible sound quality compared to the recording."

It depends on your musical style.

I've heard the Vienna Philharmonic, 3rd row center Carnegie Hall.

No recording or 2-channel playback will sound as good.

However, even with classical music, a high quality playback system (budget >= $5000 USD) can sound better than many seats in average listening halls. It will not sound better than the best halls.

Re:That's right.

[sdguero]

Hell yes! I just spent $750 getting my 380SEs rebuilt after getting tossed around garages and backyards for the last 15 years. They sound awesome again. And the bass cannot be matched by any 10" home theatre subwoofer...

Almost

[steveg]

Sorry not true.

*My* 30 year old stereo sounds better than yours.

Re:Almost

[not-my-real-name]

Ha! I fooled you. I don't have a 30 year old stereo.

Re:Almost

[camperdave]

My stereo sounded better 30 years ago than it does today. Stupid cookie cutter pop star autotuned noise. Where is the good music? Like the song says: Today's music ain't got the same soul. Start playing old time rock and roll".

Re:Almost

[cshake]

My dad's 30-year-old stereo is what I'm listening to right now, ever since he replaced it and I "inherited" it, complete with nice speakers with real wooden cases from the early 80s. So no, his 30-year-old stereo sounds exactly like mine!

I also bet that if I bought a new one today that wasn't all the way in professional grade it wouldn't be still working in 30 years, but this old silver-faced Kenwood receiver/head unit (KR-710) that's older that I am has my mixer board plugged into one of the tape inputs and still works like a champ. Well, except the radio tuner carriage that doesn't like to move all the way to the right, but that doesn't matter. And sometimes I have to jiggle the volume knob so that the right channel comes back on. And the EQ knobs don't really do much except make fuzz when you turn them. But just using it as an amp while playing FLAC or CDs on the computer and controlling the volume on my mixer board, then it's rock solid and sounds great.

The older units may not have remotes, fancy digital displays, or let you play your surround sound DVDs through them with optical TOS-Link cables, but for an amp that sits in the corner that you pipe your audio to with RCA jacks, there's not much to complain about because they do the important part right.

Re:Almost

[Anonymous Coward]

My modern stuff is better than both of yours. Mine goes up to 11 - that's eleven, not three!

Re:Almost

[El_Oscuro]

Canceling moderations to reply to this. But I must: xkcd.com

Pink Floyd Justin Bieber

[Anonymous Coward]

That's all you need to know

Re:Digital Data Compression: Music's Procrustean B

[Anrego]

Christ...

That's not a post.. it's a damn homework assignment!

in other news

[burris]

Most people buy wine to catch a buzz and are primarily concerned that the product contains sufficient alcohol and isn't totally repulsive. Some people can, or think they can, taste a difference and will pay more. Some people are concerned with impressing their guests and buy expensive stuff with a famous label whether it tastes better or not.

Re:in other news

[Anonymous Coward]

I buy expensive Vodka cause the cheap stuff makes me gag. I can taste the difference so I imagine it's just as easy for someone to taste the difference in wine.

Re:in other news

[Dryanta]

mod parent up i lold :)

Re:in other news

[madhatter256]

cheap vodka = bad hangover, while good top shelf vodka = no hangover.

Spend the extra $20 on that bottle of Grey Goose...

Re:in other news

[sribe]

I buy expensive Vodka cause the cheap stuff makes me gag. I can taste the difference so I imagine it's just as easy for someone to taste the difference in wine.

Yes, there are vast differences in wine. (Of course quality does not increase monotonically with price.) As for you vodka, you can take the cheap stuff, pour it through a Brita filter 3 times, and the result will be the premium stuff. No lie.

Re:in other news

[hedwards]

I'd mod you up if I hadn't already posted.

A large part of it has to do with training and the effort one puts into it. That being said, few people really need pro audio gear that aren't professionals and nobody needs audiophile gear. You very quickly reach the point of diminishing returns even with amazing hearing.

The folks who spend more are frequently more interested in appearance than actual use.

Re:in other news

[sandytaru]

Even cheap wine can taste "okay" but the difference between a $5 bottle and a $40 one isn't so much a matter of taste as it is complexity. Cheap wines have no personality. They have one note, one flavor, and while that flavor may be a good one, it's the only thing you're going to taste. A good wine, on the other hand, has a very complex taste that changes over the course of ten to twenty seconds, with at least three distinct change in flavors (nose, body, finish), and which may or may not have anything to do with the bouquet (the smell), which can also be quite complicated in its own right. As for expensive vs cheap vodka, I've learned I can drink expensive vodka neat, whereas cheap vodka tastes like gasoline on the pallatte.

Re:in other news

[Mister Whirly]

I agree with everything but the Grey Goose. Sorry, but the French cannot make decent vodka. Belvedere is my favorite - the Polish sure know their vodka.

I like vodka the best because the idea is to distill out everything as much as possible. No flavorings or aging in flavored barrels or any other gimmicks to cover up the taste. Just make it as pure as possible and enjoy.

Re:in other news

[ShavedOrangutan]

I buy expensive Vodka cause the cheap stuff makes me gag. I can taste the difference so I imagine it's just as easy for someone to taste the difference in wine.

Expensive vodka has less impurities than cheap stuff. So buy the $5 jug and run it through a Brita filter. I know people who've tried this and say it works!

Re:in other news

[BJ_Covert_Action]

I know! Some people will even argue over which pictures of Joe Biden are prettiest!

Re:in other news

[Gilmoure]

Yup, the cheap vodka doesn't stand up next to the expensive stuff.

Re:in other news

[Baloroth]

There is an age old adage. "You get what you pay for." It has been true for, well, thousands of years, and it is still true today. Yeah, most people are fine with the iPod Nano with stock earbuds listening to 128kbps CBR MP3s. Quite often, that person is a 15 year-old girl listening to Justin Beiber or Lady Gaga... but I digress.

Now, that is all well and good for them, if thats what they want. It isn't what I want, at least not normally. I want 320kbps VBR MP3 at a minimum, preferably FLAC, and over good headphones. Part of this is the fact that I am a musician: I've played classical violin for about 17 years now. I know what good sound is like. I'm certainly no audiophile: I care about the quality of the sound, but more about the quality of the music. I happen to have a lossless vinyl rip of a few songs, and the difference between that and your standard 256kpbs MP3 of the same song is... amazing. But I don't need the high quality to listen to it. I can listen to a low-quality audio stream just fine. I just prefer the higher quality, and am willing to pay a bit (but not much) for it. Most people don't even know or realize how much of a difference there is, and many of those either can't tell or don't appreciate it. This isn't snobbery: it's just fact gained from experience of music. Not just listening to it, but playing it.

So yeah, most people drink wine to catch a buzz. So do I (2-buck Chuck FTW!). But, if you know what you're looking for, and you actually have some taste acquired by experience in the field, then you really can pick out genuinely better wine, not just more expensive. And you will appreciate it more.

One field that even surprised me how quality can make a difference was cigarettes. Everyone knows good cigars are expensive, but before I started smoking in college I didn't even know there was such a thing as a high-quality cigarette. But there is, and they taste and smell much better than the cheap packs you find in gas stations. Comparison: ~5$ pack of Camels, vs ~9$ pack of Nat Shermans. The Shermans are leagues better. Would most people, even smokers, know this or care? No. Smokers prefer one brand over another, but its pretty rare to find one that actually cares about quality and class. I do, and so do many other people. Again, not snobbery. The expensive ones genuinely taste better. (smell a hell of alot better to.)

Re:in other news

[Anonymous Coward]

The audiophile market is full of scams, many of which have been documented here extensively.

Having said that, I also have to say the current state of audio quality sucks. I never considered myself an audiophile, but gradually over time noticed myself getting pissed about the lack of quality of sound everywhere. It started with audio in games, which was always getting shafted relative to video (although game music has had some of a turnaround) then moved to audio formats (mp3 versus CD, FLAC, etc.), and now it's just some general sensitivity to the issue.

mp3s, the loudness wars, connections versus output quality, mobile headphones, you name it. It's just gradually declined over time.

The average listener now has a ways to go before they get to the point of diminishing returns. You don't need pro equipment to notice a difference. All you need is equipment designed to be used with sound pre-iTunes-era and you'll notice a difference.

Re:in other news

[geekoid]

You can taste a difference. No, I'm not a wine snob; however I am in an interesting position where I end up tasting different wines with almost no knowledge of history or cost. Bad wine tastes like alcohol.

I never understood the buying of wine to just get a buzz. A few shots of vodka in OJ will do the same thing, cheaper.

Re:in other news

[hesiod]

No, the result will be better, but it will NOT be premium vodka.

Re:in other news

[dbet]

Or just run the cheap stuff through a Brita filter (courtesy of Mythbusters).

Re:in other news

[Denogh]

MythBusters to the rescue!

The result was that it got better with each subsequent filtration, but the top shelf stuff stayed at the top of the list.

Re:in other news

[Xacid]

And actually stay hydrated.

Re:in other news

[hamburgler007]

This may be off topic but by far the most informative post I've read so far.

Re:in other news

[benhattman]

Even if you can, it doesn't matter. The enjoyment people get from drinking wine is strongly influenced the label. People like expensive wine better, and it has nothing to do with what's inside the bottle.

Re:in other news

[benhattman]

Actually, the old adage is false. You don't get what you pay for. You pay what the market will bear for a given product. Perhaps, a car analogy will help.

If you bought a new car in 1993, perhaps you decided between a Chevy and a Toyota. On average, the Toyota was of higher quality, and cheaper. But, perceptions take a long time to change, and you might have been basing your perceptions on the quality of a Toyota built in 1978, rather than one built in 1993. So, you may have purchased the more expensive Chevy because "it's better, after all it's more expensive", and you would be wrong.

Or, what if I offered to sell you one of two identical paintings. One, I told you was painted by Van Gogh, the other is a knock-off I produced. Which would you pay more for? Keep in mind, these are identical paintings on identical canvases.

There have been many studies done on the wine thing, and while your perceptions convince you there is a difference, it mostly doesn't exist. The expensive wine tastes better to you because it is expensive, not the other way around.

So, yes if you insist that between two essentially equivolent products, the spendier is obviously better, it is probably the result of snobbery.

Re:in other news

[Zebedeu]

I once tried Gorbachev vodka, which is supposed to be kind of shit, against Russian Standard, which is supposed to be one of the best you can get on normal supermarkets around these parts.
I couldn't tell a difference.

At least the RS has a nice bottle which looks good on my shelf (don't shoot, there's no point in keeping two bottles on the freezer, and I only use the vodkas for cocktails anyway.

O the other hand, I once bought a really cheap vodka, and it froze partially in the freezer, so I guess, that even I would have been able to tell the difference.

Re:in other news

[Nimey]

And then there are those of us who drink single-malt Scotch and can tell the differences between different expressions and where they came from.

Laphroaig FTW.

Re:in other news

[SuricouRaven]

Mythbusters actually tried it. Busted. After multible filterings, the apparent taste of the vodka was slightly improved for the professional taster judge... but still nowhere near the quality of a more expensive vodka, plus it cost a lot in filters.

Re:in other news

[SuricouRaven]

The average listener doesn't care that much. No-one just listens to music any more - it's something you have in the background. As long as the beat comes through, it will do.

MP3 should be obsolete, but it stuck now as the only format with universial support. There are several potential successors, but as every company involved is desperatly trying to promote their own patented codec over all others there is little prospect of any one reaching the critical marketshare needed to trigger a transition.

Re:in other news

[oldmac31310]

bullshit.

Re:in other news

[Baloroth]

Let me tell you a story about a taster of vodka. He was given, blind, and in random order, 10 shots of vodka. 9 were from a cheap bottle, 1 unfiltered and the other 8 passed through a water filter (this improves the smoothness of vodka) a respective number of times (1 once, 1 twice, etc.) The other shot was from a 60$ bottle. He was able to place each shot in precise order of smoothness by how many times it had been filtered, and the 60$ bottle shot was at the top. So, the unfiltered shot ranked a 1, the once filtered ranked 2, etc. I am by no means insisting that, between nearly identical products, the spendier is better. Well, obviously there can be psychological effects, but those will never pass a blind taste test.

The case of the cigarettes I mentioned offers an example. The Camels are not pure tobacco: numerous other chemicals are added to make them cheaper, so that the producer doesn't need to buy as much actual tobacco. The Shermans are, of course, pure 100% natural tobacco. Or your example of cars: the Toyota may be better, despite being cheaper. But it certainly is nowhere near as good as, say, a Lamborghini. For the uneducated (I am aware how snobbish that sounds), they will typically say that expensive=better automatically. This is not always true, as you say. But the more expensive can be made better than the cheaper. Sometimes the maker will rely on his name or the perception of difference to sell at a higher price. But usually, for an open market in an educated area, pricier=better. Not always, but generally. I.e. if you buy a $20 "iPod", you can expect crap. If you buy a $300 iPod equivalent, chances are it will be better. This is also why I said that learning is key. Most audiophiles can't really hear the quality they pretend to, and simply enjoy it more because they spent more on it. (In fact, this is a valid psychological reaction that really does increase enjoyment, so don't downplay it). But some really can hear good-quality sound. These rarely spend nearly as much as the "audiophiles" do, because they actually can tell that $1000 speakers are about the same as, say $400 ones. But no $100 speaker can match those $400 ones. (prices for illustration only, not meant to reflect actual real-world prices).

So you definitely have a valid point. But if you want real quality, expect to pay extra. And a little more extra because so few people can actually tell real quality.

Re:in other news

[sjames]

The problem with wine is that while the quality plateaus at some point, price tends to increase exponentially. There is a VAST difference between Mad Dog and a table wine. There is an appreciable difference between a table wine and fine wine. From there to the wines costing your monthly rent for a bottle, practically nobody can tell the difference in a blind tasting but some people sure do like to pretend that they can.

Re:in other news

[hesiod]

That was my source :)

Re:in other news

[markov_chain]

If you want pure, just buy undenatured ethanol. No gimmicks, just add water!

Re:in other news

[hazydave]

I used to believe it really didn't make a difference with Vodka. Until a Russian friend brought by two bottles of Stolichnaya Gold. Or maybe it was just because we finished one of them. These days, Penn 1681 is another great Vodka... and made in Pennsylvania.

Re:in other news

[hb79]

No need to impress me as a guest; but you don't need to serve me rotten food either. Or in other words, having YouTube videos played from your laptop as the main source of music for your party is worse than no music at all. And don't get me started on Spotify, with its ludicrous ad breaks.

Re:in other news

[serviscope_minor]

Even cheap wine can taste "okay" but the difference between a $5 bottle and a $40 one isn't so much a matter of taste as it is complexity.

Quite right. Those $40 bottles are missing lots of stuff compared to the $5 ones. The lingering afterburn, for one.

Re:in other news

[Mister Whirly]

I really like Sminoff, and buy it when I can't afford the more expensive stuff (which is often these days). It is very smooth and tastes good for the price. But I drink more expensive vodka for the hangover factor - I get hangovers with Smirnoff that I would not if I drank the same amount of Belvedere. Taste is not the only consideration when choosing vodka.

Re:in other news

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, the old Slashdot favourite: since "high end" cables don't make a noticeable difference to audio quality, nothing does. Logic and knowledge does not matter: spouting prejudiced nonsense is good enough for everyone.

Re:in other news

[Anonymous Coward]

... and obviously your hidden agenda with that post was to passive aggressively state that there's no difference.
LOL

Re:in other news

[loufoque]

I take it you also can't tell the difference between different type of grapes, yet most people can.

There is a lot of variety in red wine around the world, and even within a single region you can see a lot of differences.

Re:in other news

[Anonymous Coward]

We are discussing fidelity, which is obvious to anyone and can be technically analysed, rather than wine, which is a matter of taste.

Re:in other news

[burris]

My point still stands that most people just want something to play movies in surround, and maybe some music, and don't want to pay too much. That's why most of the audio gear sold is inexpensive, has lots of features, and has very little money put into the sound quality. Exactly the same reason why most wine sold is inexpensive, has a nice bottle and label, and has very little money put into the juice.

Re:in other news

[burris]

Actually, I'm quite the wino with over 500 bottles in my cellar, including a bunch of barley wines!

Re:in other news

[burris]

Of course you can taste a difference. I attend double blind tastings regularly (when I have the money.) Still, most people are interested in a cheap bottle that will give them a buzz and tastes like wine. Just like most people want a cheap receiver that has all the features they want and can produce sound.

Re:in other news

[burris]

I just went to the California Audio Show and heard some amazing systems like an MBL one that costs $500,000. Let me tell you, you don't need any training to tell that they sound remarkable. They grab you by the front of your shirt and say "LISTEN TO ME!!!!!"

Re:in other news

[DMUTPeregrine]

Yes, but scotch actually has very distinct differences in flavor. No one with any sense of taste is going to think Laphroaig tastes the same as Oban or MacCallan... Whereas most wines are far closer in taste.

Re:in other news

[Kittenman]

Perhaps, a car analogy will help.

Always.

Re:in other news

[mbkennel]

Try tasting decent red wines from various worldwide vineyards & styles. The dispersion is at least as large as fine whiskeys.

Re:in other news

[Savantissimo]

Re: cigarettes.
Nat Shermans are not a good example. They're dry, and not very good tobacco IMO. For a good pre-rolled cigarette, the Davidoff Magnums are (were?) in a different league. Dunhill Internationals are pretty good, though they used to be better. The old Three Castles rolling tobacco was far better than anything else - it was like blond hair. It hasn't been available for a long while but there are some imitations out there. Even Bugler rolling tobacco is far better than anything you can get in a regular pre-rolled cigarette, and it''s cheaper, too. American Spirit has some good rolling tobacco, it's worth trying the perique, but as a regular thing it's not really worth the extra price over Bugler .

On the other end of the taste spectrum, were the old Balkan Sobranie tobaccos. The unfiltered cigarettes came ten to metal tin and smelled something like burning goat dung (100% Turkish tobacco strains). The pipe tobacco was exactly what a pipe should smell like. Both still sadly unavailable since the last Balkan war, though there are alleged replicas of the pipe tobacco.

Re:in other news

[Vegemeister]

Just go for the 95% lab ethanol.

Re:Uhhm, I don't put much stock in this guy..

[Anonymous Coward]

Say for instance you have a $400 budget, if x goes to apple for the ipod dock, y goes to dolby for surround sound, z goes to frohnhoeffer for mp3 playback etc. The budget for your components is $400- x - y - z. as you add more and more royalties, you have less money for components. using lower quality components affects your design budget. Included in the $400 budget is probably advertising, profit etc. So if you continue to add more royalties, the materials and design degrade quickly.

Money is fungible

[pavon]

The patent royalties decrease the profit margin of the device, which affects all aspects of the company's budget, including R&D.

Re:Money is fungible

[X0563511]

Fungible. Such an interesting word, with such an uninteresting definition.

Re:Money is fungible

[Anonymous Coward]

More directly... He says most people will only pay $300-500 for a good stereo. 30 years ago, those 300 dollars had to cover the manufacturing, logistics, R&D & etc costs, plus the company's profit. Now, it has to cover the same expenses, PLUS tech licenses. So there's not so much money left, and they need to cut costs; a good chuck of those cuts will come from using lower cost components and reducing sound quality.

My dad's stereo is nothing compared to this $6k..

[madhatter256]

..CD Player

http://www.stereophile.com/he2006/060206dynastation/index.html

I bring you the dynastation. A CD player that produces sound like no other... and it's only a measly $6000

Monster cables

[Anonymous Coward]

People started caring more about the number of connections and wireless interfaces and wattage of systems.

I think it's more likely because my Dad was using his Monster cables; the poor bastard I am, I was using some Radio Shack ones.

Re:Monster cables

[Bob the Super Hamste]

You are still doing better than I am. I use an old steel coat hanger to make the connection.

Re:Monster cables

[Anonymous Coward]

You are still doing better than I am. I use an old steel coat hanger to make the connection.

Indeed, I guess you don't want to try your luck stealing some copper?

You can still find good quality, but you'll pay

[Anonymous Coward]

JBL S412PII - Found them at an online clearance shop... $300 for both.

If you've missed mids and highs... Get these 2 towers and you'll be in heaven :)

my dad had pioneer

[Anonymous Coward]

My dad had that pioneer they have as the picture for the article

chipamps produce distorted sound

[babai101]

The excessive use chip-amps in small home theatre systems reduce quality of sound in specific frequency ranges, whereas older vacuum tube amps don't.

Re:chipamps produce distorted sound

[geekoid]

not according to my test. I get the same freq. in each type. and my test, I mean testing the chip v. tube in a lab. Not, 'my bro brought over his dads stereo, and it was way better.' type of test.

Bad production

[ubergeek65536]

99% of popular music sounds like crap on any audio equipment. Engineers severly compress the audio dynamic range in order to make everything louder. The result is crap sounding music. You may also want to disable the virtual tin can mode on the DSP settings.

Re:Bad production

[Lifyre]

Apparently this is changing finally. http://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/11/07/22/1831229/The-Loudness-Wars-May-Be-Ending

The rise of cloud music seems to be a major factor.

Re:Bad production

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't feel arsed to go hunt for it, but wasn't there a slashdot summary about a week or so ago about how production is FINALLY (and it took them way to damn long) getting away from the 'loudness' battle and more towards sounding good? Perhaps in a few years or even a decade, music might sound like music again.

Re:Bad production

[Anonymous Coward]

Even classical music runs through a dynamic range compressor algorithm before it hits the airwaves. Some stations, such as 96.3FM in Toronto, broadcast their classical music with almost no dynamics. Classical music for the mainstream masses.

I don't listen to that station anymore. 94.5FM in Buffalo is much better.

Re:Bad production

[fermat1313]

99% of popular music sounds like crap on any audio equipment. Engineers severly compress the audio dynamic range in order to make everything louder. The result is crap sounding music. You may also want to disable the virtual tin can mode on the DSP settings.

That's true, and there have been many discussions here (and on other sites) about the "loudness war". Let me give you a counter-argument about why dynamic range compression is happening, and a use case for it.

35 years ago, if you listened to music, you were probably listening to it at home. There were almost no portable music devices, and most cars had radios. Home is a great place to listen to nuanced music, as you have a lot of control over the ambient sound levels. You could enjoy both the softest whispers and the loudest crashes just fine.

Now the situation is very different. I'd guess that most music listening is done in cars or using portable players. Now these recordings with great dynamic range are harder to listen to. Take, for instance, my SACD of the Mahler 2nd Symphony. When the choir comes in in just a whisper in the 5th movement, the effect at home is simply chilling. However, when I play my CD of the same recording in my car, I'm constantly having to adjust the volume up or down to be able to hear the soft parts without the loud parts causing my brain to explode. While the overall effect wouldn't be as awesome as it is at home on the SACD, listening to the recording while mobile would be actually easier (and probably more enjoyable) if there were some dynamic range compression thrown in.

Re:Bad production

[ubergeek65536]

I'm guessing you don't get that same chilling effect when the chorus kicks in when you are stuck in traffic.

The radio station could easily apply compression, there is no reason muck up the source.

Re:Digital Data Compression: Music's Procrustean B

[icebike]

Plagiarizer and home work are not the same thing.

Goes for cameras too.

[cvtan]

After working at Kodak for 26 years in electronic imaging and hearing nothing but "IMAGE QUALITY", I am now faced with a world where everyone is taking crappy pictures with crappy cell phone cameras. Why did we bother?? As in the stereo world, cost and convenience trump what used to be important.

Re:Goes for cameras too.

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be silly. A decent camera is a decent camera. You can't compare today's cheap digital sensors to SLRs with decent lenses. Try comparing today's cell phone cameras to the shit of the day, like 110s, disk film, and those utter awful "instant" camera, made by your beloved Kodak I believe?

Most people what to take a snapshot, and lots of them. They are not looking to send their photos to professional image labs and have them used in print. You can do that perfectly well with any half decent DLSR and a non-budget lens, which is what professionals use today.

Re:Goes for cameras too.

[AdamWill]

everyone? In my circle, ownership of DSLRs seems to be going up quite rapidly.

I think there's more a spreading of the market to extremes; medium-quality compacts are getting squeezed out by cameraphones at the low end where you really just want a rough reproduction of some event, and DSLRs and interchangeable lens, large sensor compacts at the high end. (Boy, I can't wait for the NEX-7).

Re:Goes for cameras too.

[cvtan]

Not silly, but maybe an old-guy rant. Never worked on film cameras, just solid-state stuff. You could get a decent photo from 110 format, but disk had no redeeming value except, well, nothing. I remember going to a talk where the benefits of the disk system were explained. Lots of theory about how the system covered more of the photographic space. When I finally got one, I realized that every picture was of uniformly mediocre-to-poor quality. At least with a 110 camera you could get pretty good photos part of the time. My "beloved" Kodak no longer exists.

Re:Goes for cameras too.

[Anonymous Coward]

My sister-in-law is a pro photographer, with a degree in photojournalism, and I agree with the grandparent post. It extends all the way up the quality continuum (or most of it).

The newest DSLRs, especially with video recording, are really impressive. The convenience of digital is incredible, and I am thankful for it. I would never want to go back to film-only.

But watching my sister-in-law transitioning from all film to mostly digital with some film, I've been acutely aware of what's lost. The colors with film are orders of magnitude better than with digital--incredibly vibrant and crisp. Digital--even the best digital--seems washed out in comparison. Her newest camera is amazing as digital cameras go, but in terms of image quality, it's only roughly approaching film. The DSLR movement has been picking up in my mind mostly because it's a start toward recapturing what people had with film cameras--like reinventing the wheel. My guess is that sometime in the not-too-distant future digital will be on par with film, or better, but we're not quite there yet.

I think something analogous to the DSLR push in photography hasn't happened with sound yet. It's all there, but hasn't quite taken off in a coherent way quite yet.

Re:Goes for cameras too.

[AJ Mexico]

.. everyone is taking crappy pictures with crappy cell phone cameras. Why did we bother?? ...

Maybe they *like* their photos that way. Hell, they're taking photos with (fairly decent, now) smart phone cameras and deliberately injecting the flaws you saw in 30-year old cheap film cameras using software like Retro-Camera and Instagram. The look of such photos is actually a novelty to kids who've always had their photos taken with DSLRs.

Re:Goes for cameras too.

[kangsterizer]

we'd like smartphones with good quality.
that issue is rather obvious, one cant always have a DSLR in his backpack, in fact, rarely even have a backpack, but always have the tiny slim phone.
its pretty similar for the audio world, that's why many people actually are using good quality headphones but dont have good speakers and seldom have good amps.
That said some mobile audio devices have a really nice audio out.

Re:Goes for cameras too.

[Anonymous Coward]

You can have both a DSLR and a cell phone camera, you know. You can't and won't carry a DSLR everywhere, but you probably will a cell phone.

Re:Goes for cameras too.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Why? A beautiful smile can compensate for pretty awful image quality. Image quality is not just some technical thing with contrast ratio and dynamic range and pixel count. I want a camera at that time when that kodak moment happens. And I am not going to be lugging around an slr all the time. Yes, there are times when I know I have to take pictures. At that time i do lug my SLR and the tripod and the external flash too.

Re:Goes for cameras too.

[Kevin Stevens]

Cell phone cameras do a pretty good job. They take just as crappy a picture as any of my old crappy point and shoots. And the biggest reason that they are so popular, is that you can only take pictures when you have your camera on you. Your cell phone is always on you, so you can capture every moment. I bought a DSLR a few months ago that takes absolutely incredible pictures, which is great for family events and other planned outings, but I would never want to lug that thing around all the time. A cell phone works just fine for some 4x6's you want to put up in your home.

And to get back on topic a bit, stereos are in the same place. I dropped a few grand when I got out of school on a home theater. It's nice, but I moved to an apartment in the city, and now its so overpowered it isn't even funny. I am looking to replace the receiver, and yeah I am looking for features I can actually get use out of, like DLNA supprort, on-screen menus, plenty of hdmi connections, pandora, etc, as opposed to a 135 watt per channel amp. Also, audio enthusiasts are a special breed of nutcase. They will spend thousands on all kinds of crazy stuff with no scientific evidence it sounds better.

Re:Goes for cameras too.

[repetty]

everyone? In my circle, ownership of DSLRs seems to be going up quite rapidly.

Nice circle you have! A little hyperbole on his part but basically he's right.

If you just count the pics, DSLR-originated images probably account for much less than 1% of the total images recorded in the US or worldwide.

Re:Goes for cameras too.

[mttlg]

everyone? In my circle, ownership of DSLRs seems to be going up quite rapidly.

And there's the problem - forget camera phones, DSLRs are becoming the new low end. DSLRs are the new big thing, but people want to use them like they use their cell phone cameras (point in the general direction, mash a button, post on Facebook). As a result, there's a big race to see who can make the cheapest DSLR, at the expense of quality of course (the reputation for higher quality is based partly on reputation from older models, so the perceived quality will remain as actual quality falls). Better quality is available, but the gap between the top of the low end and the bottom of the high end will grow, just like it did in the case of stereo equipment and every other piece of commodity hardware that started as a niche product. Most people who purchase a DSLR these days will seldom, if ever, change the lens. Few will ever use a mode other than Auto. And composition? Even among professionals, composition skills are far from a given. But megapixels? Everyone loves more megapixels, so just cram them in, image quality be damned! Manufacturers will design their products with this in mind, trying to woo customers with fancy gizmos, big numbers, and low prices. This will erode sales in the mid-range and stagnation in that product class (upgrading to the fancy doo-dads of the low end without actually making any improvements) will drive customers to the next tier up (typically full-frame for the prosumer crowd), further reducing the market. Mix in how the current economic conditions result in price increases at the high end (due to the strength of the Yen against the US Dollar) and you get the same scenario described in the article - crap quality for the masses and a high price tag for anything better. This has happened countless times before and will happen again many more times. The moral of this story is simple - buy quality while you still can.

Re:Goes for cameras too.

[Nimey]

More like they've got their cells with them and don't have to remember to bring a nicer camera.

Convenience.

Re:Goes for cameras too.

[Anonymous Coward]

You use cell phones for crappy photos where you don't care about quality because they are throw away photos or the conditions are piss poor like at a concert. You use a real camera for pictures that matter to you like on vacation or family/friends.

Re:Goes for cameras too.

[Anonymous Coward]

And there are an awful lot of DSLR "kits" being sold with a kick-ass, feature-laded body and a cheap, optically poor lens.

A $600 28-80 f/2.8 lens on a $300 body can take awesome pictures in all sorts of conditions. A $100 28-80 f/4 lens on an $800 body will turn out crap whenever the conditions are less than perfect. Same cost. One takes good pictures. The other has 27 shooting modes and a flip-fold LCD.

Canon and Nikon have both realized that there's a huge market of people who want something that looks and feels "professional", but don't have the skill or the desire to learn the skill needed to make use of such a camera. They'll pay for it, though, if it has enough buttons and features- and you can keep your profit margin up by shipping it with a shi* lens, since these folks won't know the difference.

Re:Goes for cameras too.

[Bob the Super Hamste]

If it makes you feel better I like my Hasselblad with those nice fast Zeiss lenses on a tripod. To convert to digital I load the film into my scanner which will do up to 19??? by 19??? per inch hardware resolution at 16bits per channel. I don't develop my own film as I don't want to do that so I take it to a place that caters more to the pro and prosumer market that can actually develop the file and follow instructions. I just get the developed film back and scan it at the max hardware settings save it and go from there. I will also pay for proper printing of digital files. I also have an old Pentax SLR with that takes the M42 screw mount lenses and a bunch of Honeywell or Asahi Pentax lenses that I take everywhere. That camera seem to be damn near indestructible.

Re:Goes for cameras too.

[cfalcon]

That's really not fair. When I go out to take pictures, I use a digital SLR. It's not top of the line, but it was damned close a couple years back, and it takes excellent pictures.

But, do you think I have that with me now, at Starbucks, over lunch? Hell no. But I do have my phone.

I doubt very much Kodak could have made tiny little pocket cameras in the 70s, 80s, or even 90s that would get the same market penetration as a smartphone, because the camera is just one of many features. We like to go fast, but I'm not always in a car. Same thing.

Re:Goes for cameras too.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you just count the pics, DSLR-originated images probably account for much less than 1% of the total images recorded in the US or worldwide.

That would be an interesting figure to see, though it would be impossible to determine. Even sales figures are hard to pin down, but it looks like DSLRs accounted for 10% of the total camera market (~140 million units) in 2010 compared to 7% of the ~130 million unit market in 2009 (based on a quick Google search). Sure, there are a lot more non-SLRs already out there, and this doesn't count phones, but when you factor in how most people who take tens of thousands of pictures each year are probably using DSLRs (and how many of those older cameras are sitting around gathering dust), 1% seems a bit low.

Re:Goes for cameras too.

[Anonymous Coward]

Most people what to take a snapshot, and lots of them. They are not looking to send their photos to professional image labs and have them used in print. You can do that perfectly well with any half decent DLSR and a non-budget lens, which is what professionals use today

That's the whole point of this article: People don't actually care about quality. Most people don't even wan the 'half decent DSLR and non-budget lens.' They want the 1 MP camera and the injection molded plastic lens that came with their cell phone. They don't want bass so true it's like CPR nor highs so clear they'll shatter glass. They want something that makes a general representation of their whole music collection available whereever they happen to be at the moment.

People may say they want a great sound system, or great pictures, but this article is saying first that people care more about non-sound parts of their stereo and second that the manufacturers have figured this out and begun skimping on the sound in order to put in more bling

Re:Goes for cameras too.

[cvtan]

Sorry, maybe not everyone. I've been hanging out with the grandchildren too much!

Re:Goes for cameras too.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a pretty good example of the trend outlined in the article. A SLR is a lateral move, at best. The cell phone camera is backed by more processing power and battery power, and doesn't have extra glass to deal with issues caused by needing the rear elements to clear a moving mirror. That tiny lens in your smart phone is likely much, much higher quality that any over-complicated, huge SLR lens! Lens are like diamonds--the smaller they are, the easier it is to make a perfect one.

Re:Goes for cameras too.

[dogmatixpsych]

Before this, people generally either had poor quality film cameras (e.g., Polaroids) or no cameras. Even cheap digital cameras now take far better quality pictures than those taken by cheap cameras in the past. We can't compare nice SLRs to cell phone cameras. In any case, very few people had high quality film cameras. I'd argue that the average picture quality has increased dramatically from the past.

Re:Goes for cameras too.

[ksd1337]

The majority of people aren't interested in the best quality; most of them don't even know what megapixels are, just that "more is better."

Film cameras are still the way to go. Even a disposable camera can trump the image quality of a DSLR.

Re:Goes for cameras too.

[Lost Race]

I have a big bulky DSLR ... in a camera bag ... at home. I also have a camera/phone in my pocket, ready to take a picture any second of the day. Guess which ones takes more shots? Image quality is far less important than image content -- interesting things happen suddenly and rarely wait around for me to run home and get my good camera. Cost isn't nearly as much of an issue as convenience. Remember: the best camera is the one you have in hand, ready to shoot. Of necessity that one is usually going to be small, fast, expendable, and therefore relatively low-quality.

Re:Goes for cameras too.

[afidel]

Your work was probably instrumental in making the $2 chip behind the tiny lens capable of taking pictures as good as a 35mm point and shoot and making a $500 DSLR take *better* pictures than any 35mm film camera.

Re:Goes for cameras too.

[afidel]

Huh, you've obviously not seen HDR which captures significantly MORE color information than any film could. You can also capture more *accurate* color than you could with film (each type of film distorted the color information in their own way with some people preferring the vibrant (exaggerated) color of Fuji film and others preferring more subdued films. I know that I'm sometimes disappointed by lack of punch in the sky in pictures taken on a cloudy or hazy day but that was reality and if I want to exaggerate it I can with a simple blue push in post processing without changing my raw photo, try that with film!

Re:Goes for cameras too.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ding ding ding, we have a winner!

Re:Goes for cameras too.

[ShakaUVM]

I think there's more a spreading of the market to extremes; medium-quality compacts are getting squeezed out by cameraphones at the low end where you really just want a rough reproduction of some event, and DSLRs and interchangeable lens, large sensor compacts at the high end. (Boy, I can't wait for the NEX-7).

Oddly enough, my photographer friend feels it's going the other way, with the need for DSLRs going down as the quality of P&Ss goes up. There's some shots that P&Ss will never be good at, due to the inherent limitations on lens size and sensor size, but they can take some damn good photos these days AND fit in your pocket. Slap CHDK on your camera, and you get RAW format and automatic exposure bracketing for HDR shots.

I just went hiking in Yosemite a couple weeks back, and felt sort of bad for my friend lugging around all his heavy and very expensive stuff as we went up the side of a cliff.

Re:Goes for cameras too.

[Zorque]

I think you underestimate the value of convenience. Having a picture is about keeping a memory of a moment. If you can capture those moments wherever you are without fumbling around for equipment, then the purpose of having the camera in the first place has been fulfilled. Higher quality would be nice, but we're quickly getting there. My phone takes better pictures than a lot of the film cameras I used to have.

Re:Goes for cameras too.

[jrumney]

I think these two factors are related. Where before, the average consumer might not be enough of a photography hobbiest to justify owning two cameras, and they don't always want to lug around a bulky and heavy SLR so they go with the compact, now they have a crappy camera on their mobile phone for the occasions where they don't need quality photos, so they are more likely to choose a DSLR for their only real camera.

Re:Goes for cameras too.

[dbIII]

making a $500 DSLR take *better* pictures than any 35mm film camera.

It's still not at that point, but since I can't be bothered to blow things up to a large size from negatives I'm happy enough to take inferior photos with a DSLR. I don't really care so much about the barely noticable noise either. Many amateurs (I'm no pro) that really care that film still delivers better quality are probably on medium format anyway. Even the cheap 1950s Czech Leica knockoff I have lurking in the back of a cupboard potentially produces better photos than a DSLR in normal daylight with ISO100 film, and in dollar terms when it was purchased that's the equivalent of a bottom of the range Chinese point and shoot (it's not an SLR) today. With good film and low light the gap actually widens.
I don't use it or a far better 35mm camera much anymore simply because having what is effectively an unlimited polaroid without the massive film costs is far more handy.

Re:Goes for cameras too.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't want to hear anything about "image quality" from the company that both killed the K-processes and introduced the Bayer sensor.

Thanks for the ability to instantly preview my image. Otherwise, I want 1976 back.

Re:Goes for cameras too.

[dfghjk]

but Kodak got killed in electronic imaging and the companies that whooped them are still doing well in the area of image quality. Kodak's last attempt at a DLSR was a horrible POS with a sensor designed by idiots (though full frame long before the D3). The demise of Kodak wasn't caused by everyone transitioning to crappy cell phone cameras, it was caused by them sucking at their business. The market they failed in is flourishing now.

Re:Goes for cameras too.

[dfghjk]

"The colors with film are orders of magnitude better than with digital--incredibly vibrant and crisp. Digital--even the best digital--seems washed out in comparison. Her newest camera is amazing as digital cameras go, but in terms of image quality, it's only roughly approaching film. The DSLR movement has been picking up in my mind mostly because it's a start toward recapturing what people had with film cameras--like reinventing the wheel. My guess is that sometime in the not-too-distant future digital will be on par with film, or better, but we're not quite there yet."

Absolutely none of this is remotely accurate and says more about your personal ignorance and bias than about the technologies involved. It is difficult to find a metric where digital doesn't exceed film already and that's been true for some time.

"I think something analogous to the DSLR push in photography hasn't happened with sound yet."

What? The exact analogous event happened to "sound" long before it happened to photography.

Re:Goes for cameras too.

[Anonymous Coward]

umm, yeah Kodak still makes the sensors that people pay 40K to put behind their Hasselblad or Rollei. y'know, like the one they used to shoot the D3 product photos.

Re:Goes for cameras too.

[smithmc]

After working at Kodak for 26 years in electronic imaging and hearing nothing but "IMAGE QUALITY", I am now faced with a world where everyone is taking crappy pictures with crappy cell phone cameras. Why did we bother?? As in the stereo world, cost and convenience trump what used to be important.

I guess that depends on how concerned you are with the center of the market vs. other segments. If it makes you feel any better, the company I work for certainly benefits from the KAI series (20xx, 40xx) CCDs used in the cameras we deploy in our machine vision products.

Paradigm

[TehCable]

My Paradigm speakers sound pretty damn good. With the prices they charge, they have plenty of money to put into R&D. Well worth the price, IMO.

Re:Paradigm

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree my Paradigms sound incredible, good sounding equipment is still out there you just have to not go to best buy to find it.

Re:Paradigm

[Anonymous Coward]

what model? i have the phantom .v3s very good set

Re:Paradigm

[Lectoid]

I'll see your Paradigms and raise you my B&W's. I was the only kid in college with respectable speakers. I had (still have) some Paradigm Titan bookshelf speakers that blew away what most others had.

And the Cost Reflects This

[eldavojohn]

From the original CNet article:

Right up through most of the 1990s power ratings differentiated models within a given manufacturer's lineup, but that's barely true anymore. In those days the least expensive models had 20 or 30 watts a channel, but now most low- to midprice receivers have around 100 watts per channel. For example, Pioneer's least expensive receiver, the VSX-521 ($250) is rated at 80 watts a channel; its VSX-1021 ($550) only gets you to 90 watts: and by the time you reach the VSX-53 ($1,100) you're only up to 110 watts per channel! Doubling the budget to $2,200 gets you 140 watts per channel from their SC-37 receiver. Denon's brand-new $5,500 AVR-5308CI delivers 150 watts per channel! The 31-year-old Pioneer SX-1980 receiver Butterworth wrote about was rated at 270 watts per channel. He tested the Pioneer and confirmed the specifications: "It delivered 273.3 watts into 8 ohms and 338.0 watts into 4 ohms." It's a stereo receiver, but it totally blew away Denon's state-of-the-art flagship model in terms of power delivery!

Emphasis mine. So I noticed that you didn't adjust the SX-1980's price into 2010 dollars so let's ask Wikipedia about the cost of an SX-1980 in today's dollars:

Its retail price in 1978 was $1295.00. According to the average historical price of gold, it would have listed for an equivalent of $8199.42 in 2010.

Okay. Show me that industry wide receivers that cost in excess of eight grand are vastly inferior to the SX-1980 and we'll have a conversation. What's the Yamaha RX-V1800 cost these days? One grand? Am I surprised your blind listening test found something that costs over eight times that amount sounds better?

Here's what you're noticing: the market of people who want to sink ten grand into a receiver (just the receiver alone!) isn't big enough for them to waste their time making the absolutely perfect everything just in the name of sound quality. You're going to design the circuit board and power output entirely devoted to sound quality? Not if you're only going to sell a hundred units.

I have a lot of audiophile friends but I don't often hear "Gee, I wish they sold an eight thousand dollar receiver devoted to sound quality so I could really blow some money to climb from the 90th to 98th percentile of sound quality."

Re:And the Cost Reflects This

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, if you do the more standard Consumer Price Index adjustment, 1295 dollars worth of goods today would cost around $370 in 2010 (3.5x). Therefore, the stereo would be around $4532.50 in 2010. Therefore the older SX-1980 is, if anything, cheaper than the newer AVR-5308CI.

Re:And the Cost Reflects This

[Anonymous Coward]

Lol. You have a good point, but you're pricing things against the historical price of gold? Not really the best thing to do.

Other estimates are quite a bit less than $8200:

E.g., if you go to http://www.measuringworth.com/uscompare/ you'll get a range of estimates, most of which are around 4000-4500:

That $1295 in 1978 becomes:

        $4,330.00 using the Consumer Price Index
        $3,550.00 using the GDP deflator
        $3,900.00 using the unskilled wage
        $4,410.00 using the Production Worker Compensation
        $5,940.00 using the nominal GDP per capita
        $8,280.00 using the relative share of GDP

That's still pretty pricey for speakers, but not $8000ish. More like $4000ish.

In any event, I still agree with the original article. That SX-1980 sound should cost less than what it cost then (in inflation-adjusted dollars), not more, because they should have improved the efficiency of producing that quality.

Re:And the Cost Reflects This

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, if you do the more standard Consumer Price Index adjustment, 1295 dollars worth of goods 2010 would cost around $370 in 1978. Therefore, the stereo would be around $4532.50 in 2010. Therefore the older SX-1980 is, if anything, cheaper than the newer AVR-5308CI.

There, fixed that for you. However, you rounded on multiple occasions, so it is actually closer to $4330. Regardless, I think your point is intact.

Re:And the Cost Reflects This

[NJRoadfan]

The Pioneer SX-1980 is lauded as one of the best transistor amplifiers ever made. It should deliver its rated power, the capacitors are the size of soda cans!

Re:And the Cost Reflects This

[Anonymous Coward]

According to the official government calculator of inflation (http://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm) that $1295 in 1978 is equivalent to $4,483.28 in 2011. Using gold as your standard is interesting, but not necessarily indicative. However, a nearly $4500 receiver today had dang well ought to be competitive, assuming you can find one that actually pays attention to audio quality, and isn't just devoted to marketing checklists.

Re:And the Cost Reflects This

[nabsltd]

Okay. Show me that industry wide receivers that cost in excess of eight grand are vastly inferior to the SX-1980 and we'll have a conversation. What's the Yamaha RX-V1800 cost these days? One grand?

I'd also like to point out that the RX-V1800 is rated at 170W x 7 channels for a total power output of 1,190W, compared to the 273W x 2 for the SX-1980. How much more would the SX-1980 have cost if it had to output twice the wattage at the same other specs (frequency response, THD, etc.)?

Re:And the Cost Reflects This

[Anonymous Coward]

While I absolutely agree that this would be a more interesting and relevant comparison, I would hope that 30 years to improvement in materials, processes, and manufacturing would mean that you could produce something of the same quality for less (inflation adjusted) money today.

Re:And the Cost Reflects This

[Anonymous Coward]

The point is that after X years, you would think sound quality for even low end devices would have improved. Does it have to cost 10k to provide consumers with a system that sounds as good as as a 1K system sounded 30 years ago? Compared to the way other technologies have progressed, it's disgusting. I recently shelled out $550 for the cnet choice award Pioneer, which is weak compared to a 20 year old $300 Kenwood that just went out on me. Blame the consumer, it's the victims fault.

Re:And the Cost Reflects This

[codesherpa]

Since when do we calculate prices adjusted for inflation based on the average price of gold? $1295 of 1978 dollars is around $4300 today using the generally accepted approach.

Re:And the Cost Reflects This

[Anonymous Coward]

But there are amplifiers/receivers available at $8k.
Maybe not from Yamaha, but there is no problem finding equipment that cost approx X thousand dollars where 1 < X < 10. After that the gaps between available prices are probably bigger.
Yamaha probably moved out of the high-end niche market and focused on mass market, but others moved in and took its place in the high-end market.

Also, comparing power of amplifiers by reading specs is really tricky. The key is at what distortion they can deliver the advertised power. Crappy stereos typically advertise high power but don't say that it is at really high distortion. High-end gear focus more on delivering low distortion.
Another pitfall is if one maker advertise continuous power, and the other advertises peak power.
Finally you need to see if power is measured at 4 or 8 Ohms (or possibly some other impedance as well).
This info is never available in "the quick facts", but usually you can find it in the technical specs.

Re:And the Cost Reflects This

[Anonymous Coward]

Emphasis mine. So I noticed that you didn't adjust the SX-1980's price into 2010 dollars so let's ask Wikipedia about the cost of an SX-1980 in today's dollars:

Its retail price in 1978 was $1295.00. According to the average historical price of gold, it would have listed for an equivalent of $8199.42 in 2010.

Hilarious. Now we have metalhead gold bugs converting prices into gold equivalents as their preferred measure of inflation.

You may have noticed that the prices of electronic components have declined rather steadily since 1978, so your inflation adjustment is methodologically insane.

Re:And the Cost Reflects This

[Born2bwire]

I don't know about you, but I don't buy my speaker equipment using gold, I use USD (when in the proper country). If we look at the change in the strength of the dollar due to inflation, the price in 2011 is only 3.5 times the 1978 price. ($4571.35). So it's actually cheaper than the current flagship model. Seriously, given that the rate of inflation is usually around 4% on average, do you really think that after 33 years the dollar would drop to a seventh of its value?

http://www.dollartimes.com/calculators/inflation.htm

Not that I totally trust the above but if we allow 4% constant inflation it's not too far off.

Re:And the Cost Reflects This

[nikanth]

Isn't RMS a better unit than watts? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_power

Re:And the Cost Reflects This

[Anonymous Coward]

Price of gold is not a proper way to compare purchasing power.

!000 watts of nothin'

[Anonymous Coward]

The usual bs..... now highfi is sold by morons in stores that have no idea what a watt is. If you actually had a 1000 watt program power home entertainment system then you could easily become as deaf as a brick. Speaker tech has not improved since the 1960's give me a good old set of 25 watt warfdales from around 1969, a Macintosh power amp with a super pre-amp and really good vinyl on with a great turn table with a really sensitive magnetic cartridge with great transient response and it will make your ipod driven mega watt drivel look like a getto blaster in a cow barn.

I remember the first time I heard a setup like that playing a DDG archive recording of Bach's B minor. Just wish I could have afforded to do more than just shop.

Re:!000 watts of nothin'

[Anonymous Coward]

Two words: Laser Turntable.

Huge Gap

[softWare3ngineer]

I think one of the biggest issues is the gap in price between good products and low end stuff. I want my music to sound good and I'm willing to buy something that is 3x the cost of the everyday / low end equipment. But instead I'm given the choice between low end equipment or pro-awesome-blow-your-mind stuff that is 10 times more expensive, with nothing in between. I would love the more expensive stuff, but I just can't afford a 10,000 worth of stereo gear.

Re:Huge Gap

[rm999]

I'm no expert on this stuff, but I've found there's tons of choice in the price:quality spectrum.

I like the low end of the brands that actually care about quality. SVSound, Axiom, Ascend, etc - they all make great speakers in the 200-300 USD/pair range. Tack on a barebones 150-300 USD receiver and you can have a decent setup for under 400 dollars.

The nice thing is a lot of these brands are internet direct with a lot of reviews/discussion online.

Re:Huge Gap

[Anonymous Coward]

I think Marantz and Denon both serve this in between market pretty well.

Re:Huge Gap

[Zebedeu]

I used to like Denon, until I lost all respect for them because of this: http://mniec.wordpress.com/2010/11/13/bullshit-of-the-week-denon-ak-dl1-ethernet-cable

Re:Huge Gap

[kimvette]

I think one of the biggest issues is the gap in price between good products and low end stuff. I want my music to sound good and I'm willing to buy something that is 3x the cost of the everyday / low end equipment. But instead I'm given the choice between low end equipment or pro-awesome-blow-your-mind stuff that is 10 times more expensive, with nothing in between. I would love the more expensive stuff, but I just can't afford a 10,000 worth of stereo gear.

Seriously? That wasn't the case when I bought my current Elite receiver (I like receivers - slightly less rat's nest, and fewer components to fit in limited space). The DSP board in my VSX-26TX finally gave up the ghost so I sent it out for repair, and will be retiring it in favor of the SC-37 in the near future. I've gotten prices between $1200 and $1800 and note that there are far more expensive receivers as well as much, much cheaper receivers (starting around $100.00?!?!). There is not this big huge gap between crap, okay, and really good receivers. Maybe there is for preamps and amplifiers, but I won't go with a fully separate system until I can afford to build my dream house.

Also I am looking at Klipsch speakers - they have a full range of offerings between $100 each (Synergy series I think?) and $20,000 each (Palladium series). I bought some Reference speakers already and will be buying at least five more after I decide which vendor I'm buying the Elite from. I was very skeptical of class D amps rather than Class A but after hearing it, I'd have to say that if it's a step backward, it's not even noticeable, and it will save a heck of a lot on the electric bill (and on HVAC load)

At any rate, there is no 10x gap. Sure the receiver I am looking at does cost 10x the entry level stuff, but there is at least 12 other offerings at every imaginable price step between the entry level POS and the SC-37 in the Pioneer line alone. When you include other brands in the comparison (Denon, Onkyo, Yamaha, and so on) the selection is immense and covers the full price spectrum.

Also I'll probably never spend more than $1800-$2500 on a receiver; after all, it doesn't earn me money, and by even $2,000 you have arrived at a point of diminishing returns. I also can't see choosing Palladium series speakers over the Reference series, except bragging rights. Maybe if my day job were sound engineering I could see it, but otherwise, no.

Funny thing though; ever talk to anyone who drones on endlessly about hi fi gear? Try this sometime: pick a tone generator app for your iPhone or Android - even a dog whistle app will do, and put it on continuous, max volume, and start around 20kHz and work your way down. Chances are, you'll get down to 4.5kHz or 5.5kHz before the self-proclaimed audiophile can even hear it, then you inform them that it's been on all along and they can hear only to 4500hz, and it makes no sense for them to spend thousands on tweeters (It's funny to see their reaction, especially if you've already told them you're not interested in hearing about their $12,000 speakers!). I've taken care of my hearing and can hear to 17.5kHz, and yet I won't go overboard on a system. I just want to hear DSotM and Meddle at their finest, and have a decent home theater, and an entire system totalling under $5K will do that just as well as a system retailing for $100K in an average living room, as far as I am concerned.

If you can't find gear at a price point between $100 and $1,000, or between $1,000 and $10,000, I'm afraid you haven't bothered to shop for audio/AV gear in a very long time. The selection isn't lacking.

Re:Huge Gap

[cayenne8]

I think one of the biggest issues is the gap in price between good products and low end stuff. I want my music to sound good and I'm willing to buy something that is 3x the cost of the everyday / low end equipment. But instead I'm given the choice between low end equipment or pro-awesome-blow-your-mind stuff that is 10 times more expensive, with nothing in between. I would love the more expensive stuff, but I just can't afford a 10,000 worth of stereo gear.

Well, here's the thing. You DON"T have to buy all the components at once.

As I've mentioned in other posts here..I've been building my stereo since I was about 12yrs old...every few years...replace a piece with a new one...upgrade over time.

Doing that..I have a great system I love....but heck, I couldn't possibly afford what I have now all at once...

Pick something or wait for a deal..save up...invest in some quality speakers...I like things from the Klipsch heritage series. The little hereseys are good to start with...I have the K-Horns. But invest in something with real quality..speakers are a natural place to start as IMHO, they are pretty much the weakest link.

In a few years...research and get a quality amp...etc.

Re:Huge Gap

[houghi]

Not only the price difference. Also the times I actually want to listen to high quality music.

Most of the times music is just there in the background.

And the quality I have now is the same as I had 30 years ago for a MUCH lower price.

Re:Huge Gap

[hey!]

I don't know about mid-range audio, but I think it's generally true in the last 20-25 years there's been a huge growth in the low end of everything. It'd be easy to say it's because everything is made in China, but that's an oversimplification. China is giving our retailers what our retailers think they can sell to us.

It's a complicated story. One thing that strikes me as a middle aged person is how much more *stuff* there is in our lives, and how much of that stuff isn't very well made. Yet cheesy as it is, it is both cheaper *and* better made than the lowest of the low end of 1981. We never see crap like that old stuff, because China can make much better crap for less. And then... there's cars. Even accounting for technology, a cheap crappy car of today is far better built than all but the very best cars of 1981.

So this is my conclusion: There's been a general improvement in quality across the price spectrum, but marketers have figured out that for most purchases the easiest sell is something that is cheap but good enough to be going on with. In response, we have shifted our purchases towards cheaper (but now acceptable) goods and consequently own more stuff, the bulk of which is mediocre. Cars are an exception because breakdowns are a pain in the neck so we actually *do* care about quality. And if we get injured by a design or production flaw, we'll sue.

If that's true, then the conclusion has to be that most people don't care much about audio quality. I think that's true. Most people don't listen to music like they used to. How many people do you know who put on a CD and sit down in a chair to listen to it? People use music as background noise as they go about their tasks, working, jogging, or exercising at the gym.

Re:Huge Gap

[TheGratefulNet]

I'm about ready to test the market for this, in fact. I have done some DIY audio work (see my other posts) and I'm about to start light manufacturing (very small scale) of some affordable but not high end 'with the attitude'. it will be competantly designed and built gear, done in the US by some older, disposed of (by the industry) engineers. built here using good publicly vetted designs and built using trustable known sourced parts.

but, it will cost more. if the ebay china box that does something costs $199, our box might be double that. will people see the value in a system that was designed to be fixable and repairable (and hackable) and last 5-10 yrs vs the sony crap that burns out in short time and has custom parts that you can't get (or won't be able to get in a few years) ?

are people willing to pay for old school design and build quality?

this is what I'm about to test. I'll make a small production run of some custom metal boxes (its an LCD-controlled audio controller/preamp/phones amp) and see if the price point is just too high to be practical or not. I really don't see that many vendors doing this; they all are cost-reducing things at the expense of the owner/buyer. I want to try to NOT to that, and see if people think there is value enough in that approach to offset the cost of actually doing it, IRL.

to see what we do have now, search on 'lcduino' and that will give you a hint as to what we have in mind. if we are successful, look for a small size (desktop box) that will have the lcduino it, as a turnkey (not DIY) box.

Re:Huge Gap

[Anonymous Coward]

I think one of the biggest issues is the gap in price between good products and low end stuff. I want my music to sound good and I'm willing to buy something that is 3x the cost of the everyday / low end equipment. But instead I'm given the choice between low end equipment or pro-awesome-blow-your-mind stuff that is 10 times more expensive, with nothing in between. I would love the more expensive stuff, but I just can't afford a 10,000 worth of stereo gear.

It's called *Bay, where you can buy NOS or used high end gear for cheap.

Re:Huge Gap

[tlhIngan]

It's probably because the 30 year old equipment was pretty high end.

Sure it may be $200 now used, but when it was new, it was probably over $1000. Adding inflation it's probably a $3000 system.

If you're comparing a today's $300 system with yesterday's $1000 system, the old one SHOULD sound better.

Try repeating this test with modern higher end equipment...

Re:Huge Gap

[Corf]

For you, sir or madam:

http://www.orbaudio.com/

Re:Huge Gap

[softWare3ngineer]

I would gladly pay more for three things, higher quality materials(no more of that fake wood shit), U.S. made, and a trustworthy company. That last one is a bit tricky. I trust a company when they continue to improve, instead of sitting back and when they think something is 'good enough.' i also need someone who i can call, communicate with, and treat me like I'm a reasonable human being.

Re:Huge Gap

[triffid_98]

It's probably because the 30 year old equipment was pretty high end. Sure it may be $200 now used, but when it was new, it was probably over $1000. Adding inflation it's probably a $3000 system.

Surely, but there's really a lot more to it than that.

Speakers were generally much better because there was no 7:2 surround sound. You had two rather large speakers, and that's where the music came from. Contrary to what the guy from the BOSE store may tell you, adding a sub-woofer to 4" speakers does not equal high fidelity sound.

Likewise, stereos had two channels called left and right. Even if cost was no object (which of course it is) if you need to pack lots of different amplified channels and decoders into the same sized box there will be compromises. I have a higher end (ES) Sony receiver (DA333ES-$800 new) at home, and I have a HK730 (circa 1976-$400 new). They're both nice enough to listen to, but guess which one sounds better?

Re:Huge Gap

[Anonymous Coward]

Try get a pair of professional studio monitors - it won't cost you $10K. May be $3-4K like these http://www.mercenary.com/focalmonitors.html. Think about it - professionals use them to produce the music themselves. Why in the world would anyone need a "better" systems to reproduce something that isn't there??? They are really more expensive systems :) Mind that audiophile doesn't like accuracy, otherwise they'd just get the exact same monitors the producers use.

Re:Huge Gap

[PCM2]

The difficult part these days is that the cheap, entry-level systems tend to be all-in-ones. The amplifier has a built-in DVD player, etc. I doubt you could drive a pair of Klipsch speakers with one of those, so you're back to buying everything all at once.

Re:Huge Gap

[adolf]

I conversed back and forth with TheGratefulNet in email about, of all things, volume controls. He's a good dude, and really seems to approach things the right way, with high technical competency, good communication, open-source ideals, and a firm goal of keeping things in the US.

Just saying. There's a few (very few) other audio vendors I've dealt with who, irrespective of size, were good at two or three of the above, but never all four. It stands out.

I'm really looking forward to seeing the finished product.

Re:Huge Gap

[afidel]

Vandersteen 2CE Sig II's, $2000 list, can be had on Audiogon used for ~$1k. They sound incredible, one of the most transparent speakers I have ever heard (in the listening room if you were sitting in the sweet spot they seemed to completely disappear, unfortunately my living room is not a listening room and so I only get WOW instead of OMG). I have mine paired with a $500 Onkyo receiver which I feed from my HTPC. $1500 to me was chump change for a system that will probably last me decades (people ask Richard Vandersteen about repairing 20-30 year old speakers all the time).

Re:Huge Gap

[Miamicanes]

> Speakers were generally much better because there was no 7:2 surround sound.

I think you've hit the nail on the head. The total speaker budget has been remarkably constant over the years (roughly a kilobuck), but the number of speakers you're expected to buy has roughly doubled, and the quality & real lifespan of those speakers has gone down the toilet in the meantime.

The sad part is, the high-end audio industry got things TOTALLY wrong. Why do we even HAVE speakers with passive filter networks, instead of speakers that combine the same multiple drivers that they did 20 years ago... but give each one its own pristine digital amp and DSP, all networked together & tuned to perfection with zero phase distortion (buffer them long enough to allow the "slowest" DSP operation in their collective pipelines to complete, then reclock the output with a separate clock signal shared by all the speaker drivers to bring them all back into sync again for the actual audio output).

Re:Huge Gap

[Frosty Piss]

I like the low end of the brands that actually care about quality. SVSound, Axiom, Ascend, etc - they all make great speakers in the 200-300 USD/pair range. Tack on a barebones 150-300 USD receiver and you can have a decent setup for under 400 dollars.

Yes, with your proposed system, you get shitty audio ("...tack on a barebones 150-300 USD receiver...") accurately assaulting your ears through reasonably priced decent speakers?

Re:Huge Gap

[Savantissimo]

This. And closed-loop servo speakers. And a built-in facility for room balancing, with an included microphone.

Re:Huge Gap

[hitmark]

Easier to sell hardware that looks "impressive" in the living room then stuff that is actually good at what is doing. Surround sound was the 3D of the 90s.

Re:Huge Gap

[Anonymous Coward]

not entirely true.

for example: Alesis M1 Active Mk2 - biamplified monitors.

for 200$ you've got an studio quality of sound. entry level - but studio entry level ;)
the problem is that people look for "audiophile sound quality" - not real characteristics - responsiveness in all frequencies etc.
for an audiophile, most probably these monitors would sound "dull and dry" :/

Re:Huge Gap

[cynyr]

just to do a bit of math for you...

SC-37: $1500
6 speaker(including the sub): $100*6 = $600.

So you are at $2100 for that.

You can find gear between all of those prices, what you can't find is a simple system(i don't need 2 hdmi outputs and 5 composite inputs) that sounds good with some advanced features(assignabe auido/video mapping, a "night mode" so i can watch action movies at night without waking my kids) with 6 decent speakers for $750-$1500. Well I might be able to do it for 1500, but just squeak by.

Re:Huge Gap

[cynyr]

there is kind of a minimum to go from tv with speakers, to "home theater" though. namely 6 speakers, and a receiver.

Re:Huge Gap

[kimvette]

I got last year's model sub at 69.7% off off, or $350.00

I'm still debating options but the other speakers won't be $100. I'm going reference series - this year's model, so it's going to be a minimum of $250 each (so 6*250), and more like $350 or $450 (the hold up on my decision is finding someone who has the RF-42 II, RF-52 II, RF-62 II and equivalent RC and RS models in stock so I can do an A/B/C/X comparison)e. Mid-range in the market place.

All the same, there are options which are vastly cheaper and still sound pretty decent, so I still say you are not looking hard enough. I was at Best Buy to check out Mangolia today (of course as I suspected they don't carry the top Elite receiver, nor the higher end Klipsch lines, just energy. Even lower end than Synergy - in their Mangolia section. WTF? They've taken the Mangolia name and trashed it) and there were plenty of cheap 5.1, 6.1 and 7.1 options. There are a lot of cheap options that sound good for the money especially if you're willing to forgo features.

Re:Huge Gap

[cayenne8]

Actually Klipsch's are some of the most efficient speakers in the world.

I"ve seen my Khorsn run from a jam box in the old days...about 109db sensitivity...

Re:Huge Gap

[Anonymous Coward]

I do not see that problem. Take look at the Logitech speakers for example, they are between $15 and $130 for 2 speaker systems. They have a lot of low cost versions but there is never a gap of more than $20 up to the $130. Or you can buy a 5.1 system for $100 or $350. There are other manufactures that also sell mid range speakers that aren't 10 times more expensive than the low range but if you take a look at amazon and see what people buy, you will see that most people buy speakers in the $10-50 range. It gets even sadder if you read the reviews of the $10 speakers. People write how great the sound quality is and how loud they get (small 2.3 watt speaker).

The test in the article that they did also wasn't very good. They asked people what sounded better to them but there was a year ago or so a test where low bit rate mp3s were compared to higher ones (or was it comparing to FLAC?) and people preferred the sound of the low bit rate mp3s. What would be more interesting is how much those new A/V receivers and speakers get the sound close to the original sound of the recording comparing to the older equipment.

Cheap crap vs...

[Freddybear]

Cheap crap 30 years ago sounded just as bad as cheap crap now. Good quality audio gear wasn't cheap back then and it's not cheap now.

Re:Cheap crap vs...

[sandytaru]

I can tell the difference between $3 and $6 headphones. The sound distortion on the cheapest ones is horrible and they're not worth using. But I can't tell the difference between the $6 and the $20 headphones. I'd need to jump up to the $100 range to get another radical improvement in quality. Since I don't have that sort of cash lying around, I am content to use the $6 headphones. They work, that's all they need to do.

Re:Cheap crap vs...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm picky enough to not be able to stand cheap headphones/earbuds.
I own a set of Sennheiser HD-600 for home and a set of Shure SRH440 for work.
The Sennheiser's sound better but are totally open to noise around you and the Shure's are much better at blocking out ambient noise.
When looking for isolating cans for work I even went to a specialist store with a bunch of in-ear canal isolating earbuds. To me they all sounded awful including the Etymotic mc5 & ER4 and the Shure SE535. I tried all the different foam and silicone isolators and they made no discernible improvement on the sound quality. I have no idea what's different with my ears but they were BAD. Oh well, I'll stick to over-ear cans.

Re:Cheap crap vs...

[Anonymous Coward]

I was in the same boat for a long time. I used the headphones that came with my cellphone (Nokia xpressmusic, so it's used primarly as my mp3 player rather than a phone), which were fine. When those died, I just picked up some $15 headphones (in Canada, so $3 or $6 headphones don't exist... it's more like $10 to $20, unless you count the dollar store ones that are lucky if the even survive being removed from the package). Those got lost somewhere, so I decided to spring $50 on some Skullcandy Titans ($80 here in Canada, but I bought online... screw buying in stores when the cost of the product AND shipping is far less than the product itself... moreso with our dollar being higher than USD). Sweet holy damn, those blow that $15 crap clean out of the water. I get awesome bass, I get relatively decent treble (nothing spectacular, but still a fair chunk better than the $15 headphones).

The primary negative of them online is the wire connecting the headphone would work itself loose and you'd lose sound. I can't even fathom why people don't just fix that problem before it starts like I did. Some GOOP glue over the wire where it connects to the headphone itself, and BAM, that joint is no longer capable of pulling in and out of that slot.

So yeah, I think I found a decent in-between of the $20 medeocres and the $150 ultra-awesomes.

Re:Cheap crap vs...

[Anonymous Coward]

I can tell the difference between $3 and $6 headphones. [...] I can't tell the difference between the $6 and the $20 headphones [...] I am content to use the $6 headphones.

Bad consumer! Stop finding your perception limit and shopping in your own best interest! Obviously, you should buy some Dr Dre Beats headphones. I know they sound good because they have flashy marketing.

Re:Cheap crap vs...

[pronoblem]

Cheap crap 30 years ago sounded just as bad as cheap crap now. Good quality audio gear wasn't cheap back then and it's not cheap now.

Yeah, but the difference is that the good gear made 30 years ago can be had for cheap today. I have a bunch of gear, some for different rooms, etc. These are in my main system:

1987 Polk SDA Speakers cost $1800 a pair when new, cost to me: Free. My neighbor was moving and bought them used, never to set them up. Did not want them. These actually have a frequency response of 15Hz - 26kHz. Try finding speakers like this made today, it will cost over $10k a pair.

1964 Sansui 1000a - 100w tube amp might be an exception, these still do sell for $500-800 but I was given one by somebody that did not know or care to know its value. Tube, loud and heavy. I also have a nice 1974 Pioneer QX 4000 in my bedroom. Got this for free at a tag sale, dude said it did not work. I took it home and switched the switch on the back from "pre" to "main" and it was "fixed" - actually, looks like it never was used. Sold new for $400.

Deals are out there. Free stuff that sounds better than what stores call "high end" today.

Re:Cheap crap vs...

[DMUTPeregrine]

I have 2 pairs of headphones, both about $40-50 range. SteelSeries Siberia (pretty nice sound, VERY comfortable), and VModa earbuds (good sound for earbuds, quite comfortable.) I've used Grado SR-125s before, and while the sound is a bit better than either of my $40 sets they're $125+ and nowhere near as comfortable for long periods. I'll stick with the headphones I can actually wear.

Re:Cheap crap vs...

[Anonymous Coward]

_Thank you._ Please mod Score 5 Reality Check.

Thirty years ago, Tainted Love and Turning Japanese were released. Sweet Dreams was still two year away, and was about the time everyone was getting Walkmans and thinking those sounded pretty damn good compared to our decks.

I was twenty. I was all over the club scene in Toronto. Half the people I knew were in bands. The new music circulated on FM radio and homemade mixed cassette tapes.

You think we had Nakamichis for decks? Hell no - nobody could afford that stuff. We had crap - there was virtually no difference between playing those tapes and playing vinyl on our systems.

Re:Cheap crap vs...

[perryizgr8]

i've noticed that the xpressmusic phones actually do have quite decent sound. and i'm surprised. even high end phones and mp3 players do not have this level of sound quality.
also, i use sennheiser noise blocking earbuds, they sound nice. but i am sometimes ashamed to admit that i liked the sound of my older sony better (which cost about half as much). lesson learned, sound quality is highly subjective. i just like the kind of sound the cheap earphones produce.

Re:My dad's stereo is nothing compared to this $6k

[blair1q]

It "produces sound like no other" because those tubes are filtering things out.

Click jacking for gizmodo, lookup original on CNET

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's give credit where it's due. That gizmodo article is just quoting the original article on CNET: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13645_3-20082026-47/how-can-30-year-old-receivers-sound-better-than-new-ones/?tag=mncol;txt

I know why my dad's stereo is better.

[GodfatherofSoul]

It was taught to respect it's elders, not like these young punk stereos you see walking around with their pants hanging off their butts. And, MY dad's stereo mowed the lawn every week without having to be told. Don't you know that builds character??

Re:I know why my dad's stereo is better.

[ilsaloving]

Posting this to remove an incorrect moderation.

of course

[Anonymous Coward]

Most people don't care about quality for anything, just look at walmart. Anyway, TUBES baby, way better sound.

Re:Digital Data Compression: Music's Procrustean B

[Anrego]

I meant reading it .. but yeah.. I assumed it was copy+paste from somewhere.

His Girlfriend Is Hotter Too

[Anonymous Coward]

My Dad's 30 year old girlfriend is hotter than mine too.

the decline started with the audio CD

[spirit_fingers]

Mass market digital began the decline in audio fidelity with the advent of the audio CD. At a sampling rate of only 44.1 KHz, it's incapable of resolving enough detail at the upper range of human hearing to sound natural. Coupled with the dithering added in the D/A conversion process to mask inherent sampling noise you have a format with harsh sounding highs and a severely constrained soundstage. Even when factoring in all of the obvious faults of analog vinyl records, a top-end analog system with a decent turntable, moving coil phono cartridge will always produce a warmer, more lifelike and far more immersive sound than a top-end system built around a CD player that employs the same amp and speakers. And when you consider that MP3 is a lossy format that is typically ripped from CDs or the same masters used for CDs, it's no surprise that the result is a source that sounds even less impressive.

Re:the decline started with the audio CD

[Anonymous Coward]

The human ear can hear up to 22KHz. Shannon’s Law says that a digital signal is indistinguishable from an analog signal at double the frequency of the analog signal, thus 44.1 KHz is more than enough to resolve the highest range a human can hear.

Re:the decline started with the audio CD

[Anonymous Coward]

That might change if people would distribute higher fidelity music online. CDs and MP3s have become standard, but there are lossless audio formats that support sample rates above 44.1KHz.

Re:the decline started with the audio CD

[syncrotic]

I too have read some of the drivel that "audiophiles" spewed forth on their forums. I was, however, able to resist the temptation to regurgitate it for everyone to read today.

Re:the decline started with the audio CD

[u38cg]

Balls. I doubt your ears can hear over 12kHz. The only thing wrong with CDs is the lack of a standard dynamic level. There's nothing wrong with well mastered compact disc, even if it does sound different to discs.

Re:the decline started with the audio CD

[perryizgr8]

and vinyl records give reliable sampling @ >44khz?? i doubt it. anyway, the adult ear can only hear upto ~15Khz, so 44KHz should be more than enough.

Re:the decline started with the audio CD

[Savantissimo]

That's the audiophile ur-myth.
You can hardly hear anything over 10kHz, even with good, young ears, and virtually all of that is hiss and cymbals. Sure, 96kHz is a little better with phase and nuances, but only a little. (And most phase matters not at all.) The sampling noise at 16bits is not audible (higher bits give more headroom, not less audible noise), and the corners are shaved off anyway by the low-pass filter and the ears' frequency response. "Harsh" highs are a factor mostly of more accuracy and a flatter high frequency response than is comfortable, but partially of odd-order harmonic distortion which is more a factor of bad filters or amplifier design than of the CD medium. The sound stage has more to do with phase relationships from the mid-range to 10kHz than in the top octave, and that usually gets erased by bad recording, bad mastering and inadequate (overly directional) speakers.

The truth is, there is a certain kind of gross distortion vinyl and tube "audiophiles" like, and the CD isn't giving it to you. Run a CD through an analog RIAA equalization and back and a tube amp (even after a decent solid state stage or two), match levels, add a bit of hiss, crackle and pop and you won't reliably be able to tell the difference in a blinded test between that and vinyl. If we use very clean vinyl, correct its distorted EQ and run it through an all solid-state amp, you'd get it wrong nearly every time trying to guess which is the CD when comparing with the system above.

Re:the decline started with the audio CD

[real-modo]

The human ear can hear up to 22KHz.

The young, female human ear can hear up to 22 kHz. (Off topic: why can't people use SI prefixes properly, goddammit? "Kilo" is "k", not "K". Mega is M, not m.)

The male ear over 20 can't hear much more than 19 kHz, considerably lower if it was brought up in an urban environment. And it's all downhill from there. By 50, you're lucky if you can hear much over 9 kHz.

Shannon’s Law says that a digital signal is indistinguishable from an analog signal at double the frequency of the analog signal

No, it doesn't.

Shannon's law says you can recover a sine wave from a sample at double the wave's frequency. Music and speech are not sine waves.

Hint: in professional sound recording, sampling is done at 192 kHz because sound engineers can hear a difference between that and 96 kHz, let alone {shudder} 44.1 kHz. They don't do it for fun: the files are double the bulk, so the engineers have to truck around more storage and wait longer for files to transfer. Time is money. But they use 192 kHz nonetheless.

Re:the decline started with the audio CD

[Vegemeister]

Perfect reconstruction under the Nyquist-Shannon theorem requires the summation of scaled and shifted sinc functions, or the application of ideal Dirac impulses to an ideal low pass filter. Needless say, actual DACs don't work that way. The Wikipedia article on the zero-order hold function suggests attenuation of 3.9224 dB at half the sample frequency.

Re:the decline started with the audio CD

[iainl]

Since "warm" means a louder mid-low end, how do you pair that with blaming CD's lack of frequencies above 22kHz as being responsible for lower sound quality?

I mean, I get that vinyl has a warmer sound; I have enough of it. And I get that some people prefer the sound of vinyl. But I can get a sound that replicates that (to the point where I can't blind differentiate) by recording my vinyl to CD and playing that back. You can even break out the graphic EQ and roll off high frequency response and boosting the low end, to get a similar outcome.

So feel free to say you don't like CD sound. But the problem almost certainly seems to be one of mastering - far from CD's frequency response being lacking, it seems to be its superior high-end response that has led engineers to pile everything in the mid-high frequencies in search of tiresome, but attention-grabbing mixes.

And then there is Bose & Greensound Technologi

[deadcrow]

New technology is available from companies such as Bose and Greensound Technologies. They are expensive, but do produce superior sound, from modern technologies derived from R&D. Sure, the bulk of equipment is low-cost and not superior, but cheap equipment has always been available. To claim that all stereos are inferior to a 30 year old systems is clearly an exaggeration.

http://www.bose.com/
http://www.gstspeakers.com/

This is news?

[Anonymous Coward]

Audio frequencies are an extremely narrow band to worry about. Since they are relatively low frequencies, they've always been easier to measure. There's not much R&D left to do on the analog side. It's not that R&D is lacking, it's that makers are choosing from a different set of designs where efficiency, cost and modularity are more important than overall quality of sound. The designs are quite old--the packaging (in terms of semiconductors) is what is changing. The trend toward greater efficiency started in the early 80s with cheap Class-B integrated amps. Speakers were always poorly made, with peaky, rattle-y closed-box or ported designs. Why is this suddenly news?

...and why you don't care!

[afex]

more importantly, i'd like to see an article on "why your data's 30YO stereo sounds better than yours....and why you don't care"

Ever since the loudness war started, fidelity doesn't matter since the source material has been compromised.

3 points

[rickb928]

1. In an age of digitally compressed music (MP3s, Ogg, even ATRAC, and others) true fidelity is a wast of money. The source is so relatively awful that good gear cannot fix the problems. And actually, if you are listening to most pop/rap/hiphop/etc music, it's been so worked over in the studio that you're wasting your dynamic range. Headroom for these genres is measured underneath your steering wheel. That audience doesn't care.

2. Much gear is build with integrated power stages, which just don't compare to well designed circuitry. Again, why bother with the front end if the power stage is so messy...

3. Speaker technology is truly impressive today, but give me a set of JBL L100s or their 4xxx brethren, since I don't have room for a Paragon system. Or a set of Klipschorns, even some Belle Klipschs would be nice for me. Speakers were damned good in the 70s. I rarely crank it up to concert level, but the Paradigms I have are adequate, since i now live on a concrete floor. Give those babies a wood floor over a basement and hold on to your glasses...

Re:3 points

[bratloaf]

I have to agree.The most impressive thing I ever heard in my entire life was in 1988. A set of K-horns at a very very high-end audio place (that sold mainly pianos, and very high end audio gear). They had them in a listening room with two huge monoblock amps, and a very high end preamp and CD player. They played Phil Collins, "I wish it would rain down". I swear to god it sounded like he was standing RIGHT THERE singing. The two guys that were with me still, to this day, agree that was the most impressive thing we've ever heard audio-equipment-wise. This place also sold magnaplanars and Ohm, Paradigm, B&O etc. Sadly this place finally went out of business last year... Sad indeed. People just dont care for quality like they used to. Give me my old Klipsch over most of the new junk at chain stores anyday.

To the other points - figure the inflation adjusted cost of some of the "mid range" gear from the 70's and 80's, and you can still get good gear for THAT price. Its just that people dont want to pay $2K for a set of speakers anymore. They want to pay $500 for an entire home theater (7.1) setup. Heck, my old Infinity's cost over $1K a pair in 1989 and they are definitely just mid-range for that time. (Although, with new surrounds last year they are still really kickin...)

Re:3 points

[serviscope_minor]

2. Much gear is build with integrated power stages, which just don't compare to well designed circuitry. Again, why bother with the front end if the power stage is so messy...

This is beginning not to matter. High speed, medium power switching MOSFETS can now reproduce 16 bit, 44KHz audio at typical hi-fi power levels, using PWM. The audio is digital from end to end, so no noise is introduced anywhere. The final conversion to analogue is performed by the speaker itself.

The systems are also astonishingly easy to design. You need some digital input, some way of doing PWM (a microcontroller is easiest) and four MOSFETS per channel for an H-bridge.

Don't just blame cheap equipment

[Sentry23]

Sound recording quality has only decreased in general.
Most audio comes at the same sample rate and bit-depth as CD or DAT, while there is no excuse whatsoever why this should not be increased to 192kHz/24bit or higher, and is stored with lossy compression.
What is generally available now in lossless high quality is movies (DTS-MA, and Dolby HD) but hardly any music.

On the other side, the loudness war has further taken quite a few bits out of the available dynamic range of 96 dB (CD quality s/n), decreasing perceived quality even more.
The other point completely missed is the fact the modern receivers have to drive 5,7 or 9 channels in standard AV receivers, compared to the 2 in the old equipment.
(odd point in the article is that it complains about buying specs, but does a simple Wattage comparison against old receivers to make his point they are better..)

So don't just blame cheap equipment, blame the listeners who don't seem to care.

Then again, if nobody cares, is it really a problem ?

Re:Don't just blame cheap equipment

[Rising Ape]

Most audio comes at the same sample rate and bit-depth as CD or DAT, while there is no excuse whatsoever why this should not be increased to 192kHz/24bit or higher,

Other than there's no need, as the human ear isn't sensitive enough to tell any difference between that and 44 kHz/16 bit. That already gives better frequency reproduction and much better SNR than the vinyl that audiophiles seem to love. The problem is that most CDs aren't mastered well enough to take advantage of the medium's capabilities.

Re:Don't just blame cheap equipment

[cashman73]

The quality of the singers and musicians make a difference, too. Rebecca Black's Friday isn't going to sound good whether it's played on cheap, low-end gear or expensive, high-end stuff,. . . Garbage in, garbage out.

Re:Digital Data Compression: Music's Procrustean B

[Chruisan]

They are only different once you get caught.

But my ears are shot (serious)

[Danathar]

I'm 41.

Years of listening to Rush, Van Halen, ACDC, Iron Maiden, Def Leopard, Metallica ,Yngvie Malmsteen and Joe Satriani (among others) at ear splitting volumes has probably reduced the audio reception fidelity of my ear drum to that of a crappy mid 80's Krako speaker set bought from radio shack.

So while I lament with you about the loss of speaker quality I seriously doubt I'd be able to hear the difference.

Re:But my ears are shot (serious)

[Megane]

Wait a few more years and HDTV won't seem so impressive to you anymore, either.

Re:But my ears are shot (serious)

[drooling-dog]

Heh heh... Reminds me of a theory a friend of mine has. We went to several of a series of free outdoor concerts recently, and for every one - regardless of genre - they had the volume turned up so loud that we had to move back 50 yards from the stage just to hear it properly. Seriously, a folksy singer/songwriter? Turn it up to 11! His theory was that the sound guy's hearing was shot from decades of working rock concerts, and he was just setting the volume to what sounded good to him.

Re:But my ears are shot (serious)

[AntEater]

That's not funny!

Re:But my ears are shot (serious)

[Anonymous Coward]

I also like how people don't take into account that the original recording process, transfer, and manufacturing process all might involve less than great sound quality. You be spending thousands of dollars to accurately reproduce mediocre sound.

Re:But my ears are shot (serious)

[Anonymous Coward]

Excellent choice of music (but not keen on Def Leopard). Add Fates Warning, Dream Theater, Deep Purple and Steve Vai to your mix to complete its awesomeness. And some Planet X, Mike Keneally and some odd Zappa stuff for a complete audio adventure.
I'm 27. Wear ear plugs to live gigs! They sell them with the beer these days.

Re:But my ears are shot (serious)

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

This is something I've wondered about for a long time. The "High End" enthusiasts, the Absolute Sound types, give more credence to their ears than to instrumentation.

So if they're using ears as instruments, shouldn't they publish calibration curves from an audiology exam?

Even healthy ears vary in frequency response from person to person.

Re:But my ears are shot (serious)

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, a friend of mine asserts that most roadies are deaf and that's why the sound at gigs often sounds sort of muffled, missing the high end as they cannot hear it.

Re:But my ears are shot (serious)

[evil_aaronm]

It could be worse. I listen to many of the same - I'm 44 - but I lost my hearing at 17 (spinal meningitis) and got a cochlear implant 13 years later. It's not bad - I'll definitely take it - but it's not as good as it was. At the same time, I can now listen to my music at ear-splitting levels - don't need to, but I _like_ it :-) - and I just turn down the volume on my CI until it's clear. My car's thumping, but it's not like I'm going to damage my ears - not any worse, anyway...

Re:But my ears are shot (serious)

[Danathar]

I'm already getting there. Except I'm far sighted so the TV actually looks fine. It's READING which is getting harder. Time to jack up the fonts. Thank got for ereaders!

Re:But my ears are shot (serious)

[Danathar]

Of those I recognize Dream Theater and Vai (the sticker on Satriani's first LP was an endorsement from Vai which was why I picked it up). Dream Theater is awesome....every 2nd or 3rd album but technically it's crazy. I still can't figure out how they manage to stay in time for a 14 min song with three seperate sections. Heard of Deep Purple but never listened to them. Zappa is another era.

Kings X - Good every 4th album and then only half the CD. (oh..you meant Planet X...never heard of em)

Re:But my ears are shot (serious)

[KozmoStevnNaut]

Heard of Deep Purple but never listened to them

Dude, you've been missing out. Machine Head is probably one of the top 3 hard rock albums ever recorded. Everyone knows Smoke On The Water, but I prefer Highway Star and Space Truckin'. Jon Lord's organ work is absolutely magnificent.

Amusingly, considering we're commenting on an article about sound quality, it was recorded in a hotel hallway after the fire at Montreux Casino when an audience member fired a flare into the ceiling during Frank Zappa and The Mothers' concert.

Even better, get the In Rock album and listen to Speed King. Then listen to Child In Time, and listen to the same song from the Live in Japan record. Absolutely brilliant stuff.

Re:But my ears are shot (serious)

[Stuarticus]

Maybe the sound booth was 50 yards back as well? It usually is. The sound rarely sounds good right at the front of a gig, loud, yes.

actual article(s)

[demonbug]

Since apparently linking to the pages with the actual content in the summary is a no-no, here they are:

First, the Cnet article talking about the test that someone else did.

Next, the actual source article.

10w good enough

[whitelabrat]

One of my favorite amps is my 40 year old Marantz 8b and and 38 year old Tannoys. Just a volume knob and a good music source. My diy daily-driver amp is perhaps 6w and folks are generally surprised it's not a lot of power.

Most folks don't use much more than 1w for normal listening. In any case, the speakers matter far more than the amplifier as far as sound quality goes.

Police Academy

[treeves]

Steve Guttenberg was amusing in the Police Academy movies (though not nearly as good as Leslie Nielsen), but why should I trust him for advice about audio gear?

Re:Police Academy

[Dahamma]

In all seriousness, I'm not sure why anyone should listen to this Steve Guttenberg, either. He's one of those Stereophile kooks who loves to go on about how much better things sound once you add that $1000 speaker cable to the system.

Besides, if he really thinks 30 year old stereo systems sound better, what is he doing raving about modern ultra-high end electronics, speakers, and *cables* in his reviews, anyway? I'm pretty sure my Dad didn't pay $1000 for his speaker cables, and I'm pretty sure someone trying to sell $1000 speaker cables back then would be categorically laughed at, if not worse.

Re:Police Academy

[Anonymous Coward]

Why shouldn't you?

Re:Police Academy

[u38cg]

I recently moved a stereo installed by Simon Yorke (who makes turntables that cost up to £20k). The speakers were wired with electrical cable.

Re:Police Academy

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, Leslie Nielsen was not in the Police Academy movies.

Re:Police Academy

[dkleinsc]

Besides, any fan of Police Academy knows that the best audio gear in existence is Michael Winslow.

Re:Police Academy

[DerekLyons]

I'm pretty sure someone trying to sell $1000 speaker cables back then would be categorically laughed at, if not worse.

No, there were people around back then who'd happily sell you $200 ($1000 in today's money) stereo cables - and fools who'd buy them. Audiophiles have long been something of a sucker market.

Re:Police Academy

[treeves]

Of course he was. Obviously, you used inferior RG-5 cables. Had you used better ones you might have avoided the intermodulation distortion which blurred your picture and made him look like George Gaynes.

Re:Police Academy

[Anonymous Coward]

I would guess Michael Winslow would be more of an audiophile, being able to make all of those sound effects.

Also, I'm surprised it took 20+ comments for someone to make the point that Steve Guttenberg is a D list actor, and probably overwhelmingly unqualified to be giving advice on audio gear.

Re:Police Academy

[perryizgr8]

wire=electrical cable
is there any difference?

Re:Police Academy

[Anonymous Coward]

Leslie Nielsen was in Police Squad. You're probably thinking of George Gaynes.

Re:Police Academy

[treeves]

No, I was thinking of Leslie Nielsen in Police Squad (a funny police movie) being much funnier than Steve Guttenberg in Police Academy (another funny police movie). Also, see my other comment (http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2353746&cid=36915366).

Re:Police Academy

[Dahamma]

I think his point was that electrical cable = cheap wire (cheap but large gauge). ie, one of the most respected custom turntable builders uses standard wiring, not esoteric "audiophile speaker cable".

Finally a chance to brag!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm still using a '68 Pioneer receiver with a '70 Dual turntable and a pair of custom built speakers from around that time (all much older than I am). They sure sound great, and I can't complain too much about the sound of an iPod running through the AUX input. The setup will not be replaced until something dies...

Re:Digital Data Compression: Music's Procrustean B

[petermgreen]

mmm and 10 years old, lets take a look and compare it to what actually happened

In addition to Philips's Digital Compact Cassette (DCC), which uses PASC, a type of data compression (see "Industry Update" in April, footnote 2),

dcc never took off afaict. DAB doesn't seem to be doing that well either.

OTOH online sales of music with lossy compression have really taken off...

Even more disturbing is the prospect that data compression may be used in professional applications to make master recordings. It's conceivable that the majority of recorded music will be subject to some form of data compression in as little as ten years. Consequently, data compression is not merely a mass-market mid-fi system avoidable by the serious listener. Like it or not, we will all be subject to bit-rate–reduced digital audio.

Afaict this may have happened for a while with minidisc but more recently the trend has been towards doing everything on computers in uncompressed 24/96 or 24/192.

The large frequency-response irregularities found in car stereos, for example, could skew the spectral content of the signal, thus revealing the enormous errors hiding beneath the wanted signal. I wouldn't be surprised if there were an official mandate banning graphic equalizers on Digital Audio Broadcasting car stereos!

This fear seems to have been unfouded, the general consensus seems to be it's easier to detect lossy compression on high quality kit.

Harmonic Distortion

[Anonymous Coward]

A big part of the reason also is the Harmonic distortion. It's proven that even order distortion, even at high level, human brain perceive it to be much better than a small amount of odd order distortion.

Just like a music note, Minor keys always evoke "sad/scary/mystery.." quality in human brain regardless of the composition. Whereas Major keys deliver "bright/positive/cheerful" quality. Why? There are no scientific explanation (so far), but it's universal and no sane person can argue with that.

We have yet understand even a small portion of how our brain function, and we clearly have not yet fully understand how it perceive sound.

Old equipments, alot of them use tubes, which emit only even order distortion (some with quite high amount), just sounds better than any Transistors-based equipment nowaday the big manufacturers make.

Great transistors gear exist (goog Nelson Pass, John Curl...), and they deliver great sound at a much...much...higher price, because they use topology that's high-biased to class-A. While an old tube gear (or new tube gears mimic old design) yield fluid, 3D sound that's pleasing to human ears for a lower price, even on paper they're worse.

70-80% of ALL good guitar amplifiers are tube-based, and that's the reason, because when they clip, the distortion is "spectacular"

Imagine if a type of gears (tube-based), with all the great new technologies coming out, can survive and thrive after 50 years, there must be something right about it. And we still do not have a full explanation for it BECAUSE we do not fully understand our brain. e.g. So how can we design new software, when we do not fully understand the underlying hardware, and at the same time the old software that's design 50 years ago that works so well is still a blackbox to us.

Clearly we need to go back to the drawing board and re-eval the design.

P.S. I have a modest full tube system, and it's to my ear sounds better than ANY system in any big retail store regardless of price.

Steve Guttenberg, the Actor?

[XxtraLarGe]

Cnet's Steve Guttenberg sheds light on this interesting development that over the years

So that's what happened to his career after "Three Men and a Baby"!

Re:Steve Guttenberg, the Actor?

[Anonymous Coward]

He was in Cocoon after that.

But yeah, it's been downhill since then.

Re:Digital Data Compression: Music's Procrustean B

[aevan]

Use one:plagiarize.
Use many: it is research.
Don't forget footnotes.

Considering that people can be made to buy LPs...

[Anonymous Coward]

...I think there might be a problem that has nothing to do with technology, number of inputs and wattage.

Very True.

[RotateLeftByte]

I designed and built a Class 'A' amp (30w/channel) in 1972. It is paired with some 1970's era Quads. The sound is beautiful and rich.
I made the case, etched the circuit boards, machined the heatsinks and turned the knobs out of Stainless. It was my apprentice piece.
Todays systems are just awful by comparison.Far too much emphasis on distored Bass (IMHO).

You don't need 1Kw to make music sound nice.

Re:My dad's stereo is nothing compared to this $6k

[Megane]

Does it come with a wooden knob that dampens the micro vibrations that affect the sound?

(missed the link in preview)

[Megane]

The $500 Wooden Knob

Doubt It

[TheNinjaroach]

I highly doubt that stereos made 30 years ago sound nearly as good as my pair of B3031A active monitors. Screaming loud with clarity throughout the sound spectrum.

Re:Doubt It

[geekoid]

"Screaming loud with clarity throughout the sound spectrum."

hahaha.. oh lord. That would mean they are terrible speakers. Yo should be able to play a paid of high quality speakers load AND be able to hear the person talking to you. Because good ones won't be in the same range

Re:Doubt It

[element-o.p.]

I own quite a bit of Behringer gear, too (mixing board, compressors, direct boxes, etc.). While their stuff is a great value, I wouldn't really classify any of it as being particularly high quality. It's good enough to get the job done, but seriously lacking in longevity, and nowhere near as good sound quality as any of the higher-end brands.

Re:Doubt It

[QJimbo]

Indeed. If people want quality they can pick up a couple of studio monitors. KRK are my personal choice right now.

Re:Doubt It

[TheNinjaroach]

I own quite a bit of Behringer gear, too (mixing board, compressors, direct boxes, etc.)

I know the reputation that Behringer has earned for quite a bit of their hardware, but their latest speaker series were all designed and built in Germany. This is different from almost all other electronics that they have manufactured in China at the cheapest prices available, where their quality is known be hit or miss.

If you ever get a chance to listen to these monitors, take it. I think you'll be surprised.

Re:Doubt It

[TheNinjaroach]

KRK's are very nice, but they were priced just a bit out of my range. I can't find the matching reference sub for my speakers though, so I've had my eye on the KRK version instead.

Re:Doubt It

[the eric conspiracy]

The good pro gear is stuff from Genelec, Seaton Sound, Mackie, JBL etc. Behringer is not at that level at all.

Re:Doubt It

[JamesTRexx]

My current DIY active speakers are powered by Behringer amps and the crossovers are the DCX 2496's. No problem on audio quality here. I started out by modifying my old Tannoys to active after learning about Emerald Physics using the DCX for their speakers.

Re:Doubt It

[Anonymous Coward]

berhringer? Are you serious?

Re:Doubt It

[slifox]

I have a KRK set (2x Rokit 5" G1 + 1x 10S G2) which is awesome but pricey.

However I also have a pair of M-Audio BX5a, which are $200 for a PAIR, and sound extremely good for the price (way better than other M-Audio gear I've tried -- I was very surprised). They don't have as flat frequency response as the KRKs, however they nonetheless sound very good for just listening (not necessarily for audio mixing, though). I like them so much that I use them as my main system on my computer desk (the KRKs are a bit too big and powerful for being 2ft from my head!)

Of course the BX5a lack the extreme low frequency range, so a subwoofer (preferably with built in crossover) is definitely recommended. I have mine paired with a KRK 10s G2, which is overkill but sounds great. If I could find a smaller sub, I would've gotten it. However it seems like all the studio monitor subs are 10", and the M-Audio & Behringer subs are just as pricey as the KRK (so there's no competition -- the KRK is the best deal by far).

How to tell good speakers from bad

[Anonymous Coward]

I had the privilege of listening to a pair of $15k a piece speakers attached to a god knows how much $$ receiver about a year ago at a rich customers house. He demonstrated you can turn the speakers way the hell up and still carry a conversation in the room. This is because normal crappy speakers and amps put out so much white noise and extra sound where it shouldn't be that the spectrum is filled up with noise. Whereas quality speakers only put out sound where it should be on the spectrum leaving room to hear the person next to you.

It is a bizarre experience to be able to blast music that loud and still be able to talk normally and hear.

Re:How to tell good speakers from bad

[wisnoskij]

That is really interesting.

One reason the old stuff sounds better

[Wansu]

... is the power supplies in the old gear. They had big stiff transformers and soup can sized capacitors which supplied a big reservoir of energy for bass transients. When they rated something at 50W per channel, they weren't fudging the specs.

The mid 70s was the high water mark of home audio, in so far as sound quality is concerned. Those beautiful Pioneer, Marantz, Kenwood, Fisher and Lafeyettes were the receivers to have. Many are still in the hands of collectors. I'm particularly partial to Pioneers made in '74-'75.

See http://www.silverpioneer.netfirms.com/

Re:One reason the old stuff sounds better

[Mr. Awesome PG]

So true. The type of amps that give the best sound quality can be very in-efficient, 20 to 30%. If the output efficiency is 75 to 90% there is no way the system is producing the sound clearly, for a power outlet that has 1500W available the best stereos produce only 200 W, per channel because that is all the power that they can convert to sound. So when someone states they have a 2000W stereo they are quoting instantaneous power. The true marker of power is Total Harmonic Distortion at a given power rating, unfortunately there are several different power meaurements, peak, RMS, instantaneous, all which vary based on the limit of THD. Also most power ratings are at 1000Hz so that is much higher than the base frequencies that should be considered. I deal with newer PA power amps and the name brand QSC and Crown amps deliver power and sound quality, but the main thing limiting sound quality for most good equipment, that I see is source quality, MP3 are no comparison to CD and high quality records, which are harder to come by now, so "Get off my Lawn!".

Re:One reason the old stuff sounds better

[JamesTRexx]

output efficiency is 75 to 90% there is no way the system is producing the sound clearly

So what about the high end brands that have been building so called digital amplifiers for a while (Naim, Linn, NuForce, Sharp SM-SX100 from the year 2000 even)?

Re:One reason the old stuff sounds better

[serviscope_minor]

One reason is that they had soup can sized capacitors is that capacitor technology has improved mazzively since then. Seriously, find a 50,000 uF, 50V electrolytic capacitor from the 70s and compare it in size to a modern one. The modern one will be probably 1/10 of the volume or less, and probably have considerably lower inductance and internal resistance as well.

Re:One reason the old stuff sounds better

[AshtangiMan]

Bryston makes an amp today that rivals the best amps of any age, precisely because they use bomb proof transformers and caps. If you can afford $4K for a 3B it is well worth it.

I think the answer is simpler

[Voyager529]

The article's general argument (I know, I know) is that adding in all the whizbang features like Bluetooth connectivity and HD Radio, and the licensing fees involved has eaten up all the money to the point where there's little left for R&D for clearer audio. I think the problem is simpler than that, and twofold.

First, people by and large no longer actively listen to music. We listen while doing something else. Whether that 'something else' is driving, jogging, cleaning, working, or whatever else...it's no longer a sit-down activity like it was in the past. I'd argue that the most common audio output device is the iPod earbuds. They sound pretty decent for bundled earbuds, but that's like congratulating Apple for making the prettiest Terminal window for OSX. Point is, even a $500 Sony receiver with its bundled speakers is going to sound better than /that/. It's actually going to sound a LOT better than that. The floor is much lower than it was 30 years ago, therefore, it doesn't take the same amount of audio quality to greatly surpass it.

Second, most people when stereo shopping are looking for something that sounds "very good". Being as the majority of said consumers are pretty easy to please in that regard according to point #1, now Sony has to distinguish itself between Yamaha and Denon and Onkyo when they're shown next to each other. How do you do that in a way that prints well on shelf tags? Answer: good luck. That's where the arms race of having 1,001 connectors, bluetooth, XM, Pandora, laser light shows on the front, spiffy animations, 1,000,001 EQ settings, pseudo-surround from the stereo speakers, etc. all comes in to play: Bluetooth vs. no Bluetooth is very easy to distinguish. Wattage numbers are very easy to compare. "Sounds better than..." is both subjective and difficult to determine, so fighting over it would ultimately put everyone on a similar playing field. While the Slashdot Cynicism would say that it's because no one wants to have next quarter's numbers suffer on account of "doing it right", to be fair to them, how many Best Buy employees - even the ones in the home theater department - would YOU trust to accurately showcase the difference between how the different receivers sound? Have you EVER been in one where the routing panel buttons actually routed the signal properly? I haven't.

I'll use myself as a perfect example. I spend enough time in my car to replace the perfectly working stock stereo with an aftermarket one. When it came time to shop, I at least went to a store that specializes in auto and marine audio and skipped over Wal-Mart and Best Buy. I got Boston Acoustic speakers and a Kenwood deck. What attracted me to the deck was its price tag ($200 was about what I was looking to spend; the higher priced units were closer to $500-$600 and had the in-dash flat panels and navigation, etc), and its feature set. It was really nice to have a USB port and an aux in; I could charge my phone and recognize music stored on it, and I could play Pandora and make hands-free phone calls with the aux in jack. It was beautiful. A friend of mine who is one of those "Boom Car" owners - you know the type, the ones who you wouldn't exactly want leading the charge in a "surprise attack" that give you a back massage at a red light, even though you're in the opposite lane and three cars back. He had a Pioneer deck that he sold me for $60, and even did the installation for me (I installed the Kenwood, I just couldn't be bothered this time around lol). It doesn't have the USB port, the FM radio reception is mediocre on a good day (I swear that Kenwood could pick up a transmission from Mars), and I still haven't figured out how to set the preset stations for which it has no buttons (the presets are cycled through the general purpose knob, which can require a bit extra nudge at times). Every time I'm in my car I debate going back to the Kenwood deck because the Kenwood does basically everything I want it to do (except bluetooth, but neither does the Pioneer). I still haven't

Link to actual blog post

[jkua]

What the heck, Slashdot? Can't you link to the actual blog rather to a summary of the blog post? I know no one actually RTFAs, but still!

Link

The R&D does continue

[Sycraft-fu]

It is actually amazing how good modern speakers can sound. If you buy higher end hardware these days it is damn impressive. However it costs more. Not more than it used to, just more than the cheap stuff.

This article is stupid because it is looking back and pretending as though 30 years ago HiFi sets were common and cheap. Not hardly. They were expensive and rare. Take the price you'd pay for one, adjust for inflation, and then see what you'd get with your money today. You'd probably be pretty impressed. Please remember that $500 in 1980 is $1,305 today. You can get a pretty heavy hitting receiver for that kind of cash.

Also 5/7.1 has to be taken in to account. Receivers are asked to do more these days, not even taking in to account the stuff he's whining about. Time was they were just amplifiers and preamplifiers for two channels, and maybe a tuner. Now they do all that for 5, 7, or more channels and handle decoding of digital formats, crossovers, maybe room correction, and so on. For all that, they still sound good, amps are not often your problem in sound quality (speakers are).

He seems to be whining that they can't make quality cheap. Well, too bad. That is a frequent problem. Quality costs money. You want quality sound? Go buy it. I love my system, it is extremely good sounding. However it did run me like $6,000 for a 5.1 setup. Don't want to spend that much? I totally understand, but you can't then cry that a $600 system doesn't sound as good.

Re:The R&D does continue

[domatic]

10 times the price seems a mite excessive just to get reasonable build quality and engineering. So I can expect the $1200 system to sound like ass too?

Re:The R&D does continue

[NJRoadfan]

See: http://www.humanspeakers.com/human/oldnews.htm
Speakers really haven't changed all that much in 25 years. Many audiophiles wouldn't even consider cone drivers in a box for speakers, they all go for huge electrostatic speakers, designs of which remain largely unchanged since the 50s-60s.

Re:The R&D does continue

[cayenne8]

So I can expect the $1200 system to sound like ass too?

Well...you aren't gonna 'hear' much at $1200...that's about what a decent integrated amp/receiver will start to cost you.

I'd save and first start laying out cash for GOOD speakers..that will run you about $1200-$2000/pair.

Re:The R&D does continue

[SethJohnson]

I'm probably one of those people.

My ideal setup:

• 15" Cerwin Vega! speakers
• Marantz receiver

Done.

And when your friends come over checking the system out, they might ask, "Why does the speaker manufacturer's name have an exclamation point at the end of it?" You tell them, "Because when you're throwing a party and someone asks, 'What kind of speakers are those?' you're going to have to yell, 'CERWIN VEGA!'"

Seth

Re:The R&D does continue

[afidel]

No, I built a $1000 Onkyo and Infinity Primus 5.1 system that sounded quite good. I added a pair of $2000 list (paid $1100 for lightly used) Vandersteen 2CE Sig II's to the front, dropped the crappy center channel and went phantom center and now it sounds incredible.

Re:The R&D does continue

[Anonymous Coward]

I am an old audiophile and I feel that today CD+mp3+headphone are a wonderful cheap way to get a fairly good sound, far far cheaper that the old times stuff. I feel happy about the LOW DISTORTION and good S/N ratio at very modest price.

Re:The R&D does continue

[Anonymous Coward]

It is actually amazing how good modern speakers can sound. If you buy higher end hardware these days it is damn impressive. However it costs more. Not more than it used to, just more than the cheap stuff.

This article is stupid because it is looking back and pretending as though 30 years ago HiFi sets were common and cheap. Not hardly. They were expensive and rare. Take the price you'd pay for one, adjust for inflation, and then see what you'd get with your money today. You'd probably be pretty impressed. Please remember that $500 in 1980 is $1,305 today. You can get a pretty heavy hitting receiver for that kind of cash.

Also 5/7.1 has to be taken in to account. Receivers are asked to do more these days, not even taking in to account the stuff he's whining about. Time was they were just amplifiers and preamplifiers for two channels, and maybe a tuner. Now they do all that for 5, 7, or more channels and handle decoding of digital formats, crossovers, maybe room correction, and so on. For all that, they still sound good, amps are not often your problem in sound quality (speakers are).

He seems to be whining that they can't make quality cheap. Well, too bad. That is a frequent problem. Quality costs money. You want quality sound? Go buy it. I love my system, it is extremely good sounding. However it did run me like $6,000 for a 5.1 setup. Don't want to spend that much? I totally understand, but you can't then cry that a $600 system doesn't sound as good.

As an EE and audio nut for as long as I can remember I gotta say you completely sum this up. This is also a perfect example of the engineer's plight. You add features to something but can't add cost.

We have a phrase at work: "Cheap, Fast, Correct. Pick any two."

[rant]
This isn't rocket science, it's simple math. 5 / 2 = 2.5. Ignoring all the new tech in modern receivers, your driving 3 more speakers. This requires a bigger power supply, in addition to the hardware and heatsinks to drive those channels. And now when you throw in all the new fun stuff your Dad never even dreamed of 30 years ago, like HDMI switching, digital audio inputs, separate room volume and source controls, ipod docks, etc, I think anyone complaining about a sub $500 receiver shows just how ignorant they are. [/rant]

Re:The R&D does continue

[Anonymous Coward]

The only envy you have inspired in me is for your one handed typing skills

Where's the RIAA

[Synerg1y]

Clearly they should fund the R&D and speaker replacements to remedy this problem and ensure we are hearing their artists at optimal sound quality :P

Another reason

[phorm]

PLASTIC speakers.

IMHO, there's nothing that sounds quite as nice as wood for a speaker enclosure. I picked up an old pair of Sony "bookshelf" speakers, which - even on an el-cheapo crappy amp - sounds *much* better than the lame plastic-enclosed speakers (similar rating other than the enclosure). In many cases, the high-watt blah blah blah system with plastic-enclosed speakers doesn't compare to the cheap system with decent wood speakers.

Plastic is cheap and good for molding into special forms, but when it comes to audio it can't compare to wood.

Re:Another reason

[real-modo]

IMHO, there's nothing that sounds quite as nice as wood for a speaker enclosure

Concrete is better -- it has very little in the way of resonances at the energies and frequencies experienced in speakers. Your speakers sound more like the design calcs say they should. But we're way into DIY territory here, lining the insides of our speakers with an inch of concrete all 'round.

You're right that the speakers are far and away the most important determinant of the sound. The rule of thumb is, half your budget on the speakers, and the rest for everything else.

The digital parts have gotten much better though

[Anonymous Coward]

I had a revelation back in the late 90s when I got a new Yamaha "home theater" receiver and kept using my early 90s Sony CD player. I felt like the new receiver's amp didn't really sound any better than my old 70s receiver that got replaced.

That is, until I switched from the RCA jacks to use a Toslink (fiber optic) connection. Suddenly, my CDs sounded much better! Some combination of the analog-out and/or the D/A converter on the old CD player sucked compared to the D/A converter onboard the receiver. I then started buying little USB audio devices with Toslink output, and found that computer audio through my Yamaha could also sound wonderful. Suddenly I could clearly hear the difference between different lossy codecs, sample rates, etc. when I could barely hear the difference through mushy computer audio jacks before.

Most People Dont Care

[wisnoskij]

The biggest concern to most people I know is only how loud it will go.

It doesn't

[Lumpy]

My dad's 30 year old McIntosh System with Kilpsch LaScalas sounds like crap compared to my Anthem setup with RBH speakers. Honestly the mid level stuff like Anthem and others are far FAR better than the mid to high level stuff from 30 years ago. Problem is most people own utter crap because they freak out at spending $4500 for just the preamp and another $3800 for the amplifiers.. instead they buy $800 crap and maybe splurge and get upper low end speakers that are under $1000.00

Buy good stuff instead of crap and it sounds fantastic. Mostly because the drivers are better and the speaker design has real engineering in it. Granted, you can go insane and waste money on stuff like Richard Gray's power conditioners that do absolutely nothing but are the darling of Audiophiles.... as well as $30,000 speakers that are more art than speaker...

You CAN get a very good system for under $5500 complete.. but you cant buy it at best buy.

Re:It doesn't

[the eric conspiracy]

Agreed, this article is baloney if you actually spend some time researching your purchases. And it doesn't take $5000 either. I have a bedroom system with a Krell integrated amp, a pair of Revel M-22s and a Squeezebox which I paid about $2000 buying used on Audiogon. It is better by far than what I owned in the 1980s, and that was top shelf for the time.

I have a larger system with Theta monoblocks and Revel Studios that cost me about $20000 as well. When I use that one it is like having the performers giving me a private concert in my living room. For movie playback, no theater I have visited can match it.

The main improvements in sound come from digital recordings and the improvements in speakers which are the result of better driver materials and computer modelling of the drivers and enclosures.

It is terrific stuff these days.

Re:It doesn't

[wiggles]

Honestly, those numbers are completely ridiculous. I should be able to get quality receiver and a pair of speakers for under $500. The point of the article is you used to be able to - the high end gear was mainstream.

Re:It doesn't

[Lumpy]

Keep telling yourself that...

a skilled speaker cabinet maker wont build you a single unfinished DECENT cabinet for $500.00

No need for quality when it s compressed

[petes_PoV]

Most music systems these days are only designed to play MP3s - sure they can handle FLAC, but nobody cares much about that. Well nobody who's going to buy a music system over the internet, that they haven't auditioned, themselves.

So, since people are willing to listen to lossy compression and enhanced loudness, frequently on the tinny little earbuds that cost cents to make, there's little point in spending any more to faithfully reproduce the already distorted source.

In fact, there's little point buying high-end gear if all your music is encoded at 128kbps

Mostly true, but it depends ...

[Aging_Newbie]

Within its limits (40 watts per channel) my 1972 Dynakit stereo sounds better than most common systems. Given sources such as CDs and DVDs, the audio is great. Of course, the speakers/equipment are huge and portability is kind of lacking. On the other hand, FM radio has definitely benefited from improvements in the past decades and old FM receivers are rather deficient compared to even portable units nowadays.

Now, all of THAT said, a pair of Koss PRO-4AA headphones and a fraction of a watt of clean audio from a good audio card, MP3 player, CD player, or laptop is hard to beat and I cannot tell the difference between a good amplifier and a good portable device driving the headphones......

Hmm...

[screwzloos]

Am I reading this right? Is the author of the article really comparing $300 to $500 receivers from 10, 20, and 30 years ago with $300 to $500 receivers from today? Of course you won't see improvement if you ignore inflation. A $20K car from 1980 is certainly higher quality than a $20k car from today, too.

Compare a new $1000 receiver with your dad's thirty year old $300 receiver and you'll be more likely to see the improvement you'd expect with technological advancement. You can get high quality audio equipment without all the iPod docked XM-radio bluetooth garbage, too. The companies that recognize that those will be antique technologies in ten years are able to put the bulk their development costs into developing higher quality components. These are the companies that serious audio enthusiasts are buying from. NAD Electronics was mentioned earlier - yep, that's one of them.

Re:Hmm...

[real-modo]

A $20K car from 1980 is certainly higher quality than a $20k car from today, too.

Actually, no. A vanilla Honda Civic of today has vastly better suspension, brakes, steering, and headlamps; it has side-intrusion beams and airbags; it's much slower to rust or fade; and it's much more reliable than a $20,000 luxury sports car of 1981. Its acceleration isn't quite as good, but it's not as far back as you might think.

This is leaving aside frills like electric windows, air conditioning, sound damping (so that you can actually hear the stereo), and remote central locking, some of which the older car may have had, briefly. The Civic won't have leather seats, a chrome-plated ashtray or a walnut knob on the stick shift, but I know which I'd prefer to use daily.

Extrapolating from cars, we should have much better value from sound systems than we do. The fact that we don't have any improvement is because most people don't care.

Raising the quality of the low end

[joeflies]

I think that an arguement could be made that while there may be no improvement or even a decline in quality at the high end, I think there's been a dramatic improvement in what you can get at the low end, and the amount of space that it takes. A home stereo in the 70's usually was an all-in-one cassette/phonograph/radio that didn't do any one thing well, or it was a rack of crappy components that were sold in a valuepack with a fancy EQ. And all of that worked with gigantic floor standing speakers to produce poor quality sound. There was a big gap in quality between consumer level equipment and high quality stuff, and it was easy to be blown away at the difference.

The modern systems made consumer level equipment a lot better, and you can get a lot more affordable quality at entry level prices. Even speakers/sub sitting next to your computer could produce better sound than the floor standing plywood speakers from the past. That's not to say there isn't junk in the consumer market, but rather the average system is a lot better than it was 30 years ago.

Yes. And they're chick magnets.

[Anonymous Coward]

When I tell the girls I have huge NADs, they are all intrigued.

Re:Yes. And they're chick magnets.

[egork]

No wonder for they use the rare-earth superstrong magnets in there. https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Rare-earth_magnet#Common_applications

Re:Yes. And they're chick magnets.

[bLanark]

Maybe I should post this anonymously, but it's only karma, yeah?

Relevant Sluggy comic (read parent comment subject)

I doubt it

[element-o.p.]

I guarantee you, my dad's 30 year old stereo system does NOT sound better than mine. My dad always appreciated quality components, but he never had enough money to buy the stuff he dreamed about owning, and my mom wouldn't have been willing to pay that much even if he could have afforded it, so my dad's stereo equipment was always the mid-grade Walmart quality stuff.

I, on the other hand, dabbled in audio recording a few years ago, so I've got a rack full of entry-level pro gear, with tube preamps, studio reference power amps, studio reference monitors, and some really big honking 18 inch PA mains. I can shake the house if I want pure volume, or I can connect the reference monitors and get pristine sound if that's what I want. Without a doubt, any serious audiophile will have equipment that is orders of magnitude better than my gear -- I did say "entry-level pro gear, after all -- but what I have as still orders of magnitude better than your run-of-the-mill consumer grade gear.

My stereo sounds better than my Dad's

[hawguy]

My dad had (and still has) one of these cabinet stereos (except his has an 8-track player on top plugged into the "AUX" input):

http://www.antiqueradios.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=122551

My TV speakers sound better than this stereo.

For every dad that had a true Hifi system 30 years ago, there were a dozen dads that had a crap stereo. It's the same today, the dads that care about audio will go into their audio retailer and listen to various systems to find the one that sounds the best.The rest of us that don't need the ultimate in sound reproduction will just buy whatever is on sale at Best Buy and has the right inputs for our other A/V equipment.

There are still companies that focus on sound (NAD comes to mind), but you have to pay a premium and to be honest, most people with a stereo in their livingroom aren't going to notice a difference between a $200 Sony and a $2000 NAD receiver with $2000 speakers.

AR3a Speakers

[derspankster]

I still use a pair of AR3a speakers that I purchased new in 1971. While amps, tuners, turntables and the like have been upgraded or replaced over the years I have never heard a par of loudspeakers that I like better than the AR3a.

Because it played better music?

[Anonymous Coward]

n/t

Digital Distortion did its part...

[Sir_Eptishous]

to dumb things down regarding the average audio consumers expectation of quality. The 'loud' sound quality of most records that have come out in the last 10 years or so, combined with ear buds, combined with lossy audio formats have created a witches brew of shitty(let me rephrase that, SHITTY!) sounding music. The music itself may be great, but the medium it is communicated to the eardrum has devolved... See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war for more details. I used to love being able to turn up my stereo to get a rush from 'loud' music. Now it's already LOUD...

Here it's P-E Leon and lossless source...

[Anonymous Coward]

The Mac mini's output is very good although I plan on buying a cheap DAC.

My speakers are a pair of good old Pierre-Etienne Leon ($$$) and the music I care for isn't mp3 nor ogg encoded, but lossless.

That surely sounds better than a cheapo-speakers + MP3 setup.

So it's "my dad's speakers" but with a modern source.

My Dad's 30 year old radio glowed in the dark

[Cliff Stoll]

Sure - I remember my Dad's 30 year old radio, a Philco model 60 from 1936. Those thirty years were the the golden age of radio I caught just the tail end in the late1950's.

His cathedral radio glowed in the dark, thanks to 5 vacuum tubes and an incandescent dial lamp. Took a minute to warm up (boot?) thanks to the 6 volt filaments and sagging line voltage (the thing drew 60 watts just idling). Superhetrodyne tuning of the AM broadcast band gave it a response from perhaps 50 to 2000 Hz, give or take 10 db. Stereo? Naw it didn't even have FM (though you could tune in shortwave broadcasts from Moscow)

Fidelity? Well, the Lone Ranger theme came boomed in just fine, as did Jack Benny, Elvis, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper. Nothing like staying up late to tune the latest releases from WKBW, CKLW, or WABCs Cousin Brucie. Or joining the Night People to catch Jean Shepherd on WOR after midnight.

I've heard plenty of music since then, on vinyl, cassette, 8-track, CD's and mp3 -- great stuff! But I miss the excitement of stalking the elusive Rock and Roll station...

Backwards

[Anonymous Coward]

What you meant was "Why your thirty year old steroe sounds better than that crap your kids listen to."

Benefits of bigger drivers

[Burning1]

Bigger speakers are generally going to have more presence because the speaker drivers themselves have better impedance with the air at low frequencies, and the heavier drivers tend to be more efficient at that frequency range. A good 10-12 inch driver should be able to get all the way down to 20hz, which is about the limit of human hearing; (though frequencies below that can still be felt.) With a modern speaker using a smaller 6 inch driver to produce low frequencies, the bottom end of the range will either be lost, or it will have to be normalized to the midrange; doing so tends to induce distortion.

More or less the top-of-the-line in consumer grade speakers is the Klipschhorn, which horn loads the tweeter and midrange, and uses the interior of the cabinet and your wall to horn load the woofer. The horns again deliver better impedance with the air, making it one of the most efficient speakers on the market. It's capable of producing 105db of sound from one watt of input power.

For what it's worth, I'm in my late 20s and grew up listening to a lot of the classics. I love Zep, and a number of others. There's good stuff coming out now too, but if all you do is listen to the radio, you're unlikely to hear it.

Re:Benefits of bigger drivers

[Grishnakh]

The "good stuff" coming out now isn't as good as the good stuff from back then, and it's not because of the musicians, but because of the incompetent fools who call themselves "recording engineers" or "sound engineers", who over-compress everything and add distortion.

Re:Benefits of bigger drivers

[sdguero]

I've actually tried blind testing, and I can tell the difference between 10" 12" 15" and 18" woofers connected to the same signal. The 10-12s" are punchier, but the 15-18s" make your chest feel like it might collapse. If you can only have one woofer size, I'd go 15". Otherwise, mix up some 18s, 15s, 12s, and 10s if you can. The more the merrier!

Btw, I like all kinds of music but think dynamic bass is almost as beneficial to classic rock as it is for modern hip hop. Mids and highs are key too, but without that deep rumblepunch you get from a solid woofer arrangement (NOT a surround sound 10" bandpass sub POS) I'm not satisfied. ;)

Re:Benefits of bigger drivers

[Burning1]

I understand completely where you're coming from.

If you can find modern music you like on SACD or DVD-A, it's entirely worth a listen. The clarity of the mix on a modern stario blows everything you've heard before out of the water. Unfortunately, most of the music available on those formats is classic stuff from the 60s, 70s, and 80s; targeting the 40 year old guys who have disposable income to spend on high end audio equipment. I figure in 10-20 years, more of my generation will be hitting midlife, and the stuff I grew up listening to will become available.

A few years ago, I purchased a pretty high end Klipsch/Pioneer setup, and discovered to my dismay that the speakers were far better than most of the music I owned in my library. I found that some music (rap especially) benefited from the noisy distortion friendly environment of the car. Other music, like my old MP3 collection and a number of my CDs sounded fine on a more reasonably priced system, but really didn't take advantage of the Klipsch speakers. I ended up spending a lot of energy finding music I liked on high-fidelity media.

Sadly, some of my favorite music from the 60s and 70s never made it to that format. I was only able to find one DVD of Zep, and that was from a live concert (still sounded great though.)

Some of the better mixed CDs are very listenable. Not everything is mixed like crap, and (perhaps not) surprisingly the stuff targeted more towards DJs seems to have more sane leveling (techno.) Some of the less mainstream modern rock also plays fairly well (tool is one of my favorites; mix is OK, but not great) where others is pure crap (Californication by Red Hot Chilli Peppers comes immediately to mind.)

Nobody prints pictures

[HalAtWork]

Nobody prints out their pictures anymore, they stick them on [social_network], and they're happy if their images are crappy quality because that means they don't have to resize them to make them small for such purposes, and for email as well.

I know someone that takes all of their digital camera pictures, makes them 640x480, fiddles with the contrast/brightness/saturation until it looks nice on their screen, saves it as a JPG @ "85% quality", and then DELETES THE ORIGINALS. Sorry for caps.

Once we get high DPI screens on the desktop, they'll be wondering why their pictures look so fuzzy.

It's all about the demand

[mathimus1863]

Maybe this has something to do with people not actually noticing the difference in sound quality from their equipment. If a critical proportion of people could hear the difference and cared, then there would be demand for it, then there would be more options for it.

Instead, you end up with something like the "Hi-Def TV" revolution that had something like 30% of people with HDTVs, but they weren't watching in HD because they were using the wrong cables, and they didn't even know it

Re:The digital parts have gotten much better thoug

[afidel]

I agree 110%. I went to the dealership to check out a pair of low end HiFi speakers ($2200/pair list) and he showed them off with a variety of amps and inputs, the older equipment using RCA sounded way worse to me than the CD player using digital inputs and forget about the popping and other artifacts on the record player!

oblig. xkcd

[Anonymous Coward]

http://xkcd.com/915/

Amar Bose anecdote

[snsh]

Sometime in the early 20th century RCA did an experiment where they had people come into a room where opera music was playing. They had the test subject adjust two dials until the music sounded 'best'.

The result was half the subjects turned both dials all the way down. The other half adjusted the dials to the midpoints.

The two dials were for treble and bass. Half the test subjects were people who went to a lot of live opera performances. The other half where people who listened mostly to the radio. The live listeners adjusted the dials to the midpoint, matching the sound they usually listen to. The other half listened over the radio. They adjusted the dials all the way down because that's how radio sounds.

The moral of the story- what "sounds best" depends a lot on what you think "sounds best", and is not necessarily a measure of accurate sound reproduction.

Re:Amar Bose anecdote

[Bo'Bob'O]

Perhaps that is true, but that is an experiment on the same speakers no doubt. So yes, some people might like a flat response, others might like a bump in the middle, that's true of even professional audio engineers, and every one I've met sets up their EQs slightly different in non-reference environments (such as live sound). That isn't necessarily what makes sound systems good or bad. Poor insulation, mechanical noise, distortion and clipping at normal playback levels. These are all real, measurable differences in speakers that I don't think I know anybody that hasn't preferred the speakers that lack these sorts of flaws.

One of the worst offenders is in these X.1 systems where you have massive gaps in the frequency response, especially in the mids. A simple listen and they sound "OK" and you can make a sale at Bestbuy. Listen to the same material on a pair of reference speakers and you realize how much of the audio had been missing, and it sounds like you'd taken a wad of cotton out of your ears. Again, this is real, measurable stuff, not some audiophile BS. I think I can confidently say that most people would on that kind of A/B comparison consider the truly full range speakers to be the better sounding.

Re:Amar Bose anecdote

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know if it was the same study or a different one from the early 20th century, but the study I recall had similar results, but the cause was thought to be that the technology at the time was reproducing extended bass and treble at higher distortion levels than the drivers developed after the middle of the 20th century. The test subjects weren't turning down the bass/treble so much as they were reducing distortion. But the (cost-saving) conclusion industry made is that the public didn't want extended bass/treble.

Re:Amar Bose anecdote

[Anonymous Coward]

Harman/Kardon continues to produce quality sound. A little expensive but the R&D is constantly being done and the quality has continued since I bought my first receiver.

Re:Amar Bose anecdote

[Anonymous Coward]

The result was half the subjects turned both dials all the way down. The other half adjusted the dials to the midpoints.

What about the people who pulled the dials off and jammed them into their ears to avoid having to listen to opera?

Re:Amar Bose anecdote

[Anonymous Coward]

It's funny but you are actually making the opposite point from what you think you are making.

They adjusted it to sound like what they were used to hearing so it's all relative. While correct in one sense --people will go with what they are comfortable with. It is incorrect in another sense. Because "radio quality" =! "live quality".

Basically you're saying that people can and do learn to live with crap audio. Audiophiles knew that 30 years ago too. Nothing has changed.

30 years ago people were interested in gear that hit a certain price point. They are not interested in the best sound. Now or 30 years back.

You can spend a lot of money on audio gear. You can also get good sound on a budget. Most people won't notice or care either way. It's always been that way and always will be that way.

Re:Amar Bose anecdote

[tony1343]

I thought it was a joke and the poster was going to say that the dials were for volume --- and half said it sounded best completely off.

Re:Amar Bose anecdote

[Anonymous Coward]

Surprised that the people who didnt like opera thought that adjusting the dials all the way down was preferable?

Re:Amar Bose anecdote

[Anonymous Coward]

Sometime in the early 20th century RCA did an experiment where they had people come into a room where opera music was playing. They had the test subject adjust two dials until the music sounded 'best'.

The result was half the subjects turned both dials all the way down. The other half adjusted the dials to the midpoints.

The two dials were for treble and bass. Half the test subjects were people who went to a lot of live opera performances. The other half where people who listened mostly to the radio. The live listeners adjusted the dials to the midpoint, matching the sound they usually listen to. The other half listened over the radio. They adjusted the dials all the way down because that's how radio sounds.

The moral of the story- what "sounds best" depends a lot on what you think "sounds best", and is not necessarily a measure of accurate sound reproduction.

Indeed. I used to read high-end hifi magazines many many years ago, and one published a really interesting double blind test. They invited a set of "high profile" (within a rather limited community) people who claimed LP sounded better than CD. And, these "golden ears" were quite accurate in distinguishing LP playback from CD playback, and prefer the LP sound. In double blind test, where many people who are 100*% sure they can hear/smell/taste a difference will fail.

But what got them was when the testers recorded CDRs from LP source. This they still liked as much as LP. Because then all that "warm, natural, analogue sound" that they prefered was transfered over from LP playback to CD, because it is an artifact and distortion characteristic of LP playback. Nothing wrong with preferring that, but it has nothing to do with digital technology not being able to convey it.

Re:Amar Bose anecdote

[dfghjk]

Yes, but the goal of sound reproduction itself is to be accurate. The goal of sound creation is to "sound best". A test of human behavior does nothing to illuminate that, but it does illuminate the idiocy of Amar Bose's reasoning. He thinks a loudspeaker is a musical instrument with the most elaborate cabinate imaginable but with the cheapest, full range driver he can get away with using. All the better to simulate the sound of those old radios. He's going to turn those dials all the way down whether you like it or not, and there's nothing you can do to get it back.

Once the food has gone rancid you can spice it up all you want but all you are doing is making it possible to choke down.

Sound quality is...

[blahplusplus]

... more difficult to detect then picture quality. Imperfection in sound that aren't obvious pops' clicks and hisses are not going to be heard by the majority of the population. Often the only way to tell the sound quality is to train your ears and do back-to-back comparisons.

There is such a thing as "good enough" sound quality, which digital music and the popularity of MP3 players have shown.

Re:And then there is Bose & Greensound Technol

[Anonymous Coward]

Bose, yeah... A lot of marketing and "comparing" different things that are not really measurable. Did you ever sit in on a Bose demo or watch the infomercials? Everything is about the impressive sound per the size. They put big covers over their speakers and sit you in the room, when they remove the covers, everyone says, wow, all of that sound from such a small speaker! The demos are not about comparing different speakers from different companies or the actual sound quality and determining which one sounds better, it is comparing their speakers to nothing but your imagination or how big they might be? They have actually switched it up recently because all companies have satellite speakers so the wow factor is no longer there. If you can, sit down and compare Bose products to to other companies products directly in an apples to apples comparison and you will not be so impressed. Notice I said compare Bose "if you can" because Bose displays are always segregated into their own display away from other equipment and general sound testing rooms. That is on purpose and strictly enforced by Bose. You think comparing would be something they would encourage.

Tubes Were Better

[oakwine]

All predicted when the switch to solid state and mp3 quality began. Stereo quality went south. Same is true in amateur radio. Rich friend has complete set of tube based Collins S-Line equipment plus most of the current elite solid state gear. So he can A/B. Tube gear always wins both for reception and for online transmission reports. Sadly, most of the engineers who knew how to work with tubes are deceased or retired. Welcome to the solid state slum of modern life.

Re:Tubes Were Better

[scharkalvin]

Not a fair comparison, since you would need to compare a Collins tube radio with a Collins solid state rig. I bet the 651S-1 will blow the 51S-1 away.

Sounds the same

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the difference? Tubes perform the exact same function electronically, why would they influence the sound differently?

Re:Sounds the same

[Anonymous Coward]

The different types of harmonic distortion each creates.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tube_sound

Subjective but seems to be the generally accepted theory. Not technically related to tubes vs transistor but distortion related. I can hear a pretty big difference between a good class A amplifier compared to a good B or A/B amplifier.

Re:Sounds the same

[flahwho]

Talk to any skilled guitarist ~ 35 or older and they will most likely have 1st hand experience of the use of tube-d amplifiers. Mesa Boogie still delivers some of the best tube amps with true rich tone that solid state can only hope to emulate. They are not the same, I assure you!

Re:Sounds the same

[qubezz]

Talk to any guitarist and they know that guitarists use tube amps because of the sound of the distortion when they are pushed far beyond the rated power. Guitar amps have nothing to do with accurate sound reproduction.

Well

[trum4n]

No Shit. i DJ large parties with home theatre speakers from the 80's. technics, sony, accusound, fisher. Nothing like that stuff these days. Those Accusound 12's sound bigger than ANY portable PA speakers i've heard. Other DJ's ask where my subs are. hehehe

Testing just 1 receiver doesn't make it all so.

[JamesTRexx]

I don't think this test really shows anything as the comparison was just between the three and only one was new.
The differences in sound can be contributed to the frequency response as a change of 0.1 dB can be noticed by the human ear. Take three receivers with identical frequency responses and I doubt there'd be a clear winner.

Modern == Cheap parts, SMDs,built to a price point

[x0]

Being a bit of an audio junky, I have number of audio components and receivers of various ages. One of the most obvious changes from my oldest pieces of equipment (a Pioneer SX-1250) and my newest (an Onkyo TS-XR876) is the change from nearly point-to-point wiring on the Pioneer, to flex ribbon wiring, SMDs, and digital components on the Onkyo.

Both receivers are beasts at about 45-60 pounds each, but the Pioneer has vastly lower parts count, and all of the parts are big, beefy, and through hole soldered. I'd bet that the Pioneer was also hand assembled versus the Onkyo.

On the plus side, the Onkyo is *vastly* more capable than the Pioneer -- it is nearly forty years newer. But that capability comes at a cost: Stuffing all of that digital circuitry, video processing & switching, and five extra audio channels creates a much more complicated circuit path and adds more possibility for crosstalk.

Hell, the most complicated the Pioneer gets is the Phono curve...

The Onkyo doesn't really sound inferior to the Pioneer, likely due to the fact that the Onkyo isn't the typical big box store receiver. Comparing the Pioneer to anything in Best Buy, the Pioneer is hands down superior. To my ears, at least.

m

Re:The digital parts have gotten much better thoug

[egork]

one more thing to try is to change your card into 24bit/96-192kHz (depending on what your receiver supports) For instance it is possible with M-Audio USB card.
The result was eyes(ears)opening even for usual mp3 files.

Deregulation during the Reagan years did it

[Animats]

FTC amplifier power rule history .

For several decades, amplifier advertising had to use a power rating defined by FTC rules. The power rating was RMS power, per channel, continuous sine wave input, and maintained for half an hour without overheating. No "peak power" or "music power" ratings. The industry hated this, because they had to put in power supplies sized for the worst case. But they complied, and amplifiers from that era have solid power supplies.

Post-deregulation, power supplies became undersized again.

Harumph!

[Anonymous Coward]

You kids and your fancy new-fangled gadgets...

I'll take my 53 year-old Harman Kardon TA-230 anyday.

Now get off of my lawn!

Stereo system?

[frank_adrian314159]

What's that? Is it a new kind of iPod?

Yes, I'm being facetious... but only a little bit. Really. How much music today is actually listened to on stereos? How much is listened to on crappy little computer speakers and ear buds? I'm beginning to think it's actually a detriment to mix on monitor speakers at all...

Size matters

[michaelmalak]

30 years ago, the culture was all about showing off how much stereo equipment you had. "Component" systems were held in higher regard than "all-in-one" systems. The emphasis was on bigger, more in number, and most especially, the most number of blinky lights. "Bigger" especially applied to speakers, which each had to have at least one woofer (subwoofers were esoteric).

Now it's all about miniaturization. It's all about making the equipment disappear entirely, if possible. Access a fileserver in the closet from your cell phone with the music piped to two miniature computer speakers placed on a bookshelf, desk, or mantle and a small "sub"woofer (really what would have been called a mini-woofer 30 years ago, and a mono one at that) hidden behind a piece of furniture.

A lot of technogical advances have minimized the impact on sound quality, but the impact is still noticeable.

Re:Size matters

[Anonymous Coward]

30 years ago, the culture was all about showing off how much stereo equipment you had. "Component" systems were held in higher regard than "all-in-one" systems. The emphasis was on bigger, more in number, and most especially, the most number of blinky lights. "Bigger" especially applied to speakers, which each had to have at least one woofer (subwoofers were esoteric).

Wrong wrong wrong and wrong again, well not from the perspective of someone who actually bought mid-range consumer equipment. You see, for the mid-range audio consumer, people bought amplifiers for 2 reasons, looks, and perceived audio quality (also known as marketing bs), back in the 1970s and most evidently in the 1980s when Pioneer and the like wanted to market an audio amplifier system for the home user, they chopped it all up into component systems, even transistorised amplifiers were component, but there was apsolutley no need for it, because component systems are a relic idea from the valve era. I'll explain. Component systems actually played a vital part in good-to-excellent audio reproduction /back in the 1950s and 1960s/, when valve amplifiers were all the rage, you see, when a valve amplifier audio stage shares the same chassis as its power supply it would introduce things like ground loops, power supply noise, unfiltered transients from that noisy vacuum cleaner on the 2nd level of your apartment building, and noise introduced from valve rectifiers or primitive Selenium Rectifiers (the thing around before Silicon Diode Rectifiers were invented, btw Selenium Rectifiers are explosive and dangerous in curtain circumstances, especially when really old) but when you seperate the audio stage and power stage, you remove even the possibility of power supply noise affecting your audio circuitry. And then it all just snowballed from there and corporations used it as a marketing ploy to say to the consumer, "hey, waste your money on this amazing looking but really shit quality audio system, it sounds better JUST BECAUSE IT LOOKS BETTER!."

Now it's all about miniaturization. It's all about making the equipment disappear entirely, if possible. Access a fileserver in the closet from your cell phone with the music piped to two miniature computer speakers placed on a bookshelf, desk, or mantle and a small "sub"woofer (really what would have been called a mini-woofer 30 years ago, and a mono one at that) hidden behind a piece of furniture.

A lot of technogical advances have minimized the impact on sound quality, but the impact is still noticeable.

Your right, people are having less and less room to build larger and larger audio systems, but thats not what drives the market towards miniturisation, thats just an off-shoot of the rich person culture in pop culture = invisible amplifier crowd = better looking = definatley not better sound quality, not unless you are talking about theater setups where the room you are installing the speakers in is as big as a Texas garage.

I think this is actually a chicken & egg thing, the more miniture you get, the lower your costs, but what came first, the desire for more miniturisation (style, portability, integration into walls and roofs) or the desire for lower costing amplifiers?

I can assure you that marketing has nothing to do with sound quality,

No one keeps crap around for 30 years

[guspasho]

There's a bit of filtering going on here. There is a wide range of qualities of stereo equipment available. This is as true now as it was 30 years ago. But the reason "your dad's" stereo equipment sounds better is because, after 30 years, the cheap crap ended up in the dump. The only stuff that's worth over keeping and lovingly caring for over 30 years is the good stuff. The crap gets filtered out over time.

The difference between now and then is that now manufacturers try to cram more stuff in to your receiver. If you want good audio, get a straight stereo receiver, don't get an A/V receiver. A/V receivers try to do too much and the manufacturers are likely to neglect good quality sound components when they are trying to cram in support for 7.1 Dolby Surround and multiple video inputs/outputs, iPod integration, etc.

If you want a good sounding stereo you are just as likely to find a good old one for under $100 at a garage sale or on Craigslist as you are to find a new, moderately expensive one at the store - if you can find a store that sells stereo receivers that don't cram in A/V and everything else.

Re:No one keeps crap around for 30 years

[itsdapead]

The only stuff that's worth over keeping and lovingly caring for over 30 years is the good stuff. The crap gets filtered out over time.

Ding!

Plus, how much did that decent HiFi system cost 30 years ago? Now allow for inflation*. I'm betting the answer is yikes!!!

Working the other way, your cd/MP3 micro system may not sound as good as your vintage HiFi but it sure sounds a hell of a lot better than the crappy portable radio/cassette that would have been its price/size/weight equivalent back in the day.

*Or maybe not. Electronics are dirt cheap today. In the case of computers, you've been able to get a computer for £300 and a fancy computer for £1500 since 1979 and I guess much the same applies to audio (except the effect of the number of transistors increasing by 10^6 isn't so noticeable in an audio product).

Balance

[Anonymous Coward]

Like any engineering endeavor audio is attaining a balance between a number of factors. This includes cost, quality and features. Every penny thrown into animated displays or HDMI switching is one less penny into the power supply or output stages.

While I think some of the audiophile bits are snake oil there is a discernible difference between most high end and standard consumer gear. Take a look at the measurements section of reviews in magazines like Stereophile and you will see some pretty big differences between the equipment. Measures different==sounds different . There is more to good sound than nyquist.

Sound out of the computer

[Anonymous Coward]

I use the soundcard the computer came with to play most music. Most of the music is mp3. I have two el-cheapo (Labtec) speakers hooked up to 'front' and have car audio hooked up to 'rear'. Nothing is hooked up to the subwoofer output. "Car Audio" is provided by a single 60 watt amplifier bought for $20 --brand new-- at a liquidation place, four $15 speakers also bought at the liquidation place, $5 for 50 feet of speaker wire, and $40 for a 50 watt 12v DC power supply designed to power portable beer fridges. So $80 for my car audio --and it sounds great--. I can turn it up loud enough to have the neighbors complain. No, I don't think the sound is as good as your $15000 per pair polk audio speakers, with at $20000 amplifier, and a $10000 digital input CD player or (much much better yet) a $15000 turn table for your retro vinyl. Most audiophiles won't agree that my $80 car audio sounds as good as your $75000 sound system; its only about 95% as good. I've heard people complain about 'lossy mp3s' as well. Back in the 50's people played records on a crappy turntable. They have scratches, hiss, rumble, and don't track properly after being played 3 or 4 times. And somehow people lived. MP3's sound like a record thats been played 2 or 3 times already. But they sound that way when they are played the 100,000th time too. Somehow I will live.

Modern audio quality stinks

[Slugster]

Yea but if it was what people preferred, then it was better. And it was what people preferred except for portables and car radios.

Up to about the 1950's, radio companies did not care what % distortion an amp had; they experimented with different amp circuits and depended mainly on polls of ordinary people listening and choosing which one sounded better. It is possible to design a tube audio amp with a very low amount of distortion {--tube amps are still used as the final stage of radio broadcasting systems, because no transistor can handle that much power--} but the low-distortion tube audio amps were not the ones most people preferred the sound of. The distortion is there because (similar to guitar tube amps) most people liked it better that way. And many commercial studio recordings are STILL mastered on tube equipment and analog tape, even now. Didja ever wonder why?....

The only reason tubes got forced out of the market to the extent they have is because transistors got cheaper. If the cheapest home-stereo tube amp was as cheap as the cheapest transistor home-stereo amp, I'd be willing to bet that most people would choose the tubes.

I consider myself a semi-audiophile; I am old enough to recall when TVs and non-portable radios had tubes. Tubes just plain sound right,,,,, and modern solid-state amps aren't the same. I haven't shopped much for high-end home stereos, but I've seen a few rather expensive ones and a few monsters and you can't get the tube sound by messing with an EQ.

Another factor however is that music production today is generally shit. Commercial songs are put on albums (CDs) compressed just so they'll play louder on the radio, and it takes all the life out of them. They do not sound real anymore. :>|

As much as I'd like a tube amp setup, I don't own one (they cost $$$$ considering that I have not much time to listen really) and no record collection (most music I like is post-1980)

If you ever get the chance to do a side-by-side listening test of a tube and transistor amp, I highly encourage it. Even if all you have to listen to is a modern CD, you can still hear the difference.

Re:Modern audio quality stinks

[Hatta]

Yea but if it was what people preferred, then it was better.

I've got to disagree fundamentally with this statement. When it comes to audio reproduction quality is accuracy, nothing else.

Re:Modern audio quality stinks

[zwarte piet]

>And many commercial studio recordings are STILL mastered on tube equipment and analog tape, even now. Didja ever wonder why?.... I wonder why they haven't developed a digital filter yet that mimics that nice sounding distortion.

Sugar

[tverbeek]

We didn't use that high-fructose corn syrup garbage. We made ours with real cane sugar. Or honey.

The reality

[Anonymous Coward]

We are talking about an amplifier. The job of an amplifier is to output the same signal as is input, just larger. If the amplifier does anything else, this is called distortion - that's what we don't want.

30 years ago, the technology was such that amplifiers could amplify a signal and add very little distortion. These days and amplifier can amplify a signal and maybe add even less distortion. The difference between very little and even less isn't very big, so there just isn't a lot of room to improve the sound any more.

I inherited my dad's stereo

[JazzHarper]

Most notably, a pair of 1967 Altec Valencia 846As. 15" bass reflex, radial horn. Solid.

Now, these speakers are far from perfect but, a few years ago, I went shopping to try to find something that would look better in our living room (nothing else in our house is '60s Mediterranean). I was appalled by the sound of virtually everything (except a pair of Martin Logan electrostatics which were way outside my budget).

Bottom line, if you know what to look for, you can get vintage equipment for less money than you would pay for new stuff, and it sounds better and lasts longer.

Pidgeons...

[DarthVain]

That's right. You have to be willing to spend the big bucks on those platinum tipped, reverse osmosis, gold wired, double ferrite shielded, blessed with holy water from sister Mary's tears, counter twisted pairs, with composite shielding sleeves made from ground unicorn horn and faeries wing dust.

Now at WorstBuy for only 599.99$ /ft

Alternatively you can get the exact same cable in 100 ft lengths from China for 50 cents.

Call it what it is, Greed.

Mmmmm Rummy!

[DarthVain]

My favorite, is people that buy high end stuff and then mix it.

Like wine, sure there are some subtle differences between "normal" and "high end". However all that is lost when you mix it with coke, juice, or whatever you favorite is. If you don't like to drink straight up, then don't bother wasting you money making Grey Goose Screwdrivers or Patron Margaritas...

WOOD SPEAKER-enclosures

[Anonymous Coward]

The only reason older speakers sound good is because they are assembled into wooden cabinettes a,d thus don't have the hollow rattle that plastic-encased speakers exhibit. The same issue correlates to vinyl records having "warmth" in their sound. When you can hear that same "warmth" from an old speaker, it engauges your eardrums to acclimate the harmoney of the approaching noise, whereas plastic-encased speakers simply jump-out at you that your body dislikes not having a cue to resonate towards.

If there was an analogy to compare, it' like comparing a same lecture between Bill Cosby and Chris Rocke next to a sound wall in a bowling alley: you will want to roll Chris Rocke down the lane since he sounds so-bad

Sound was usenet flame bait

[shoor]

Ahh, in the old days on usenet there used to be these fantastic flamewars over issues of sound quality. Tubes vs solid state, digital vs analog. Also, people would have their favorite manufacturer that they would rave about. It was kind of like debates about wine. People would denigrate double blind listening tests (just like they'd denigrate double blind tastings for wine.)

I have a pair of speakers I bought for $100 back in the 70s. They were home made by a guy who used components from a famous English manufacturer, Rogers. I had actually gone to his house to buy something else, (I didn't know the guy, I'd seen an ad in the paper) but he had all these speakers lying around and I just casually listened to this and that and said, hey I like the sound of these speakers. They were uncanny, I was looking around for the musicians because I heard them there in the room! He nodded and said those particular speakers were made to sound 'natural' but he didn't care about natural anymore, he wanted 'detail'. He sold them to me because his wife wanted him to get rid of some of the stuff that was crowding up the house. They weren't big speakers, just bookshelf size, but very heavy for their size.

I've had 'golden ear' types come visit me and played something for them, and their eyes would go wide over the sound of those speakers, without me even saying anything about them.

Re:Sound was usenet flame bait

[ekesis]

I see a pattern turning here. Rogers ... lovely, my brother gave them to me as they'd become an inconvenience. Now they're in storage, replaced by the Celestions, which are truly indescribably etc. I got these on eBay for a song, sold by a man in his mid 30's caught in an interminable loop quest for 'detail'. His wife had pointed out an unusual number of boxes obstructing the lifestyle and had demanded he clean up his act. There is a lot of beautiful old sound gear out there. -- What goes around

A/D and D/A converters

[petsounds]

The major reason is the shite A/D and D/A converter chips used in cheap (and even most not-so-cheap) modern stereos. Most of these chips mangle the sound when converting back and forth from a digital to analog signal. Transients are stomped out, digital distortion is introduced, etc. The old tube stereos were an all-analog path, no signal conversion necessary. Most of them are 44.1/16bit as well, so a pure audio signal like a turntable will have a thinning of its sound. And yes, people can hear the difference between 16bit and 24bit. It's quite apparent, if your ears aren't blown out. It's very equivalent to monitor bit depth. 16bit bit depth only gives you about 65 thousand levels to represent the audio sample. 24bit gives you about 16 million levels. The difference between 44.1 to 96k sampling rates is harder to hear; you really need the "golden ears" of a good mastering engineer. I would agree that 96k to 192k is virtually impossible to discern.

Another reason is Big Iron Transformers. People talk up and down about the Glory of Tubes, but the real magic is in the old transformers. Modern stereos use wimpy little power and output transformers. You need Big Iron so that you have power reserve for signal fluctuations. The small guys end up with distortions in the sound because the transformers can't handle the signal. Generally with a bigger output transformer you'll get more bass and more headroom (this applies to guitar and bass amps as well). There's also been speculation that Big Iron transformers add harmonics to the signal that people find pleasing.

'Course, if you send a compressed mp3 or a song that's had its levels pushed to infinity, none of that will matter much. Using good A/D D/A converters will still help, as will good transformers, or at least they won't make it sound *worse* than it already is. Tubes can add analog distortion which our ears find pleasing ("warming up" a brittle digital signal as people like to say), but that's really just putting a fake horn on a donkey and calling it a unicorn.

Vacuum Tubes?

[DarthVain]

Seriously. I saw a motherboard years ago that was supposed to target the audiophile audience. It had vacuum tubes on it. Seriously. Installed on a modern integrated chip/circuit board... vacuum tubes... awesome. I recall they were not cheap, something like 400$ for what is normally a 150-200$ piece. Still pretty cool. They probably only sold 4 of them. Be interesting to know how many are out there.

Re:Vacuum Tubes?

[Anonymous Coward]

It was this motherboard: http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Reviews/aopenax4btube/ And it wasn't anything to write home about. Sure it looks impressive, but it used an AC'97 chipset for the D/A conversion stage, and it used a cheap russian tube (Model number: 6922 Google for "6922 datasheet" for more info.) To top it off it was driven in Class-C mode, not Class-B, not Class-A, but C, which for anyone not in the know, adds to the signal a rather pungent smell to anything you feed into it. So to top it all off, you've got a woefully underpowered vacuum tube, running on a motherboard that is rife with computer generated RFI noise (real-time clock, oscillators, PCI Bus noise, PS/2 bus noise, CPU noise, Memory noise, Graphics card noise, etc, etc I could go on..) AND to top it all off, its powered by an AC'97 audio codec from the dark ages. What really ticks me off though is that everybody believed the marketing hype, hook, line, and sinker... I quote: "So really, why a Vacuum Tube? Aside from looking mighty cool, AOpen and many audiophiles believe that music is... well more musical, more breathtaking, and more soulful. Yes, the harmonic distortion is higher with a Tube system then with a solid state amplifier, but many many people will pick the higher distortion Tube amplifier because they feel the music just sounds BETTER." GIVE ME A BREAK! "I thought I would give you some information about AOpen's vacuum tube, to curb the curious audiophiles and hardcore enthusiasts alike. AOpen didn't just go and stuff a tube onto the motherboard and push it out the door, they wanted something that would stand up to some scrutiny. In fact, they think they've succeeded in making the the AX4B a pretty good product: "Yes, the AX4B-533 Tube is not quite a true "Stereophile" C-class recommended group of components. Yet, given its original fusion idea and meticulous journey to fruition, we believe it is Class-A for certain." AOpen's "meticulous journey" to bring this fusion to fruition involved carefully choosing components. They use a 24K plated ceramic 9 pin socket for the tube, Cardas Audi cable, Vishay resistors, and a Maxim 668 DC-DC power supply for the tube." Even the manufacturer knew the design was crap (Class-C = Crap), but in the exact same sentence they state that "We believe it is Class-A for certian." almost as if Class-A means that you buy $4,000 cigars and sip fine expensive wine, THIS IS NOT AUDIOPHILE! This is just marketing BS!, Audiophile sound quality can come from anyone with the knowledge to build their own audio system, MONEY DOES NOT MATTER AS MUCH AS YOU THINK IT DOES!

Re:Vacuum Tubes?

[Anonymous Coward]

And to top it off: "The AX4B-533 Tube is a superb board for the audio enthusiast. There are a number of reasons for this: The Vacuum Tube pays off with higher quality audio, greater sense of realism, and musical tonality, for those who care You can't get Vacuum Tube like sound on the computer ANY OTHER WAY. You certainly can't buy a Sound Blaster with a mini Tube sticking out of it. The aesthetic design of the board makes it an ideal centerpiece for an audio enthusiasts' modded case. " "You can't get Vacuum Tube like sound on the computer ANY OTHER WAY? Are you for real? EVEN BACK THEN we had soundcards from Turtle Beach that had little ports on the back of them called a Female 3.5mm Stereo Headphone socket, or they also came in RCA socket flavour, What part exactly is hard from taking the output of this soundcard, or any soundcard for that matter (I myself had a Creative SB Live! hooked up to a cheap shit 1950's Amplifier for quite a while, and it kicked everything else transistorised in the butt) and putting it into an external valve amplifier? All you need is a $5, 3.5mm stereo to 2x RCA cable... Basically, this is exactly what true audiophiles hate, consumer purchased equipment claiming to be Audiophile and CONSUMERS buying the rubbish!, or even considering calling itself audiophile, they slapped together a poor little out of place 6922 onto a motherboard, stuck an AC'97 codec chipset up its bum, then starved the tube to the point that it operated in Class-C mode!, ugh, You know what they usually use Class-C for? Shit jobs, jobs involving shit work, like powering PA Amplifiers, Guitar Amplifiers, and signal generators and such.

duh.

[lostmongoose]

It's 30yrs old. Everything sounded better in the old days. Haven't you ever listened to old people talk?

30 years ago?

[Anonymous Coward]

My dad never had a CD player 30 years ago, and his tapes and 8-tracks sounded like crap.

Doesn't matter to douchebags

[Anonymous Coward]

When they crank it so loud everything vibrates and nobody can even recognize what song it was supposed to be, do you really think that douchebag ever cared about the music?
No, he just wanted to be a public nuisance and proclaim his alpha douche status for the entire 6 block radius.

It's all about specs and price

[MikeMo]

Everyone just buys to the "specs" without really knowing what they mean. A 100-watt amp must be better than a 50-watt amp, right? A PC with 3GHz must be better than one with 2.8GHz, right? Build quality, component quality, even motherboard quality don't come into play. Sound quality doesn't come into play when comparing two amps with a list of features. It just comes down to specs and price. Somehow, these days, we assume that everything is as good as everything else with the same specs, and paying more for something must be stupid, because it can't be any better.

But, of course, there is a real cost to better designs and better components. Since no one pays attention to these things or sound quality, it all comes down to specs and prices. So, amp manufacturers add stuff (more specs and features), but they have to keep the price the same. Something has to give, and it's the amplifier itself that suffers, since no one notices or cares - as long it is louder than the other box at the same price.

Coincidentally, I just hooked up my 30-year old Pioneer QX-949A quad amplifier that I've had in the basement for years to my 35-year-old Fisher XP-7K speakers, and the sound was not just better than my 5.1 system, it was jaw-droppingly better, even to my not-so-good ears. The Pioneer is 40 watts/channel, and the 5.1 system is 120. So.

Re:It's all about specs and price

[freaxeh]

Coincidentally, I just hooked up my 30-year old Pioneer QX-949A quad amplifier that I've had in the basement for years to my 35-year-old Fisher XP-7K speakers, and the sound was not just better than my 5.1 system, it was jaw-droppingly better, even to my not-so-good ears. The Pioneer is 40 watts/channel, and the 5.1 system is 120. So.

You know what would work perfectly with that quad/matrixed decoder surround amplifier? A Laserdisc player, I'm serious, most Laserdiscs are encoded for "CX" 4 channel surround sound, and that amplifier hooks right up to it! All you need to do is use the 2x Analog audio outputs of the Laserdisc player and plug them into the quad amplifier and flick the setting on the front of the amplifier over to "Matrix" decode, and it will magically convert 2 channels of audio into 4-channel surround sound.

Hold onto that amplifier with your dear life, they are becoming very very rare nowdays and complement the Analog audio soundtracks of a Laserdisc player perfectly!.

Personally, I have a Marantz 2275 re-capped with modern capacitors to make the high frequencies more responsive, I've got that hooked up to a Panasonic Laserdisc player (Best picture quality for a cheap LD player in my book), and I'm serious, whenever someone comes over they go "OH my god, I've never heard Aliens (or Blade Runner, 1982 Original Directors Cut Release) sound so good!"

The best part about laserdisc too is that most times the Laserdisc has been manufactured 1 year or less after the Movie was actually released in the theaters, so you get the film in its original format, with Wideband Analog FM audio to boot too!

Laserdisc looks best on a good Grundig 83cm CRT television set, or any Rear Projection tv set, or an actual Projection system, this takes care of the picture. But if you want to go a step further you can also collect PAL format Laserdiscs too.

I for example just purchased Blade Runner from Tokyo, Japan, off a seller on eBay, and as IMDB can tell you the movie was made in 1982, but the Laserdisc was manufactured in 1983, And its in 4:3 format, I don't have to worry about losing resolution with crappy Letterbox format either!.

What really makes it unique though, is that its actually got real genuine hairs falling down the screen, and Cigarette Burns in the top right hand corner whenever a reel change is made (Think Fight Club)

People's Jaws really drop though when I tell them that the copy of Blade Runner on Laserdisc they are watching is 29 years old though, lol, I'm actually planning on having a party for it once it reaches 30.

Re:It's all about specs and price

[freaxeh]

You know what would work perfectly with that quad/matrixed decoder surround amplifier? A Laserdisc player, I'm serious, most Laserdiscs are encoded for "CX" 4 channel surround sound, and that amplifier hooks right up to it! All you need to do is use the 2x Analog audio outputs of the Laserdisc player and plug them into the quad amplifier and flick the setting on the front of the amplifier over to "Matrix" decode, and it will magically convert 2 channels of audio into 4-channel surround sound.

Note you also need to have a Laserdisc that says "Matrix encoded" or "Dolby Surround" or post-1987 "Dolby Pro-Logic" written on it to get the benefits of 4 true channels of audio, not just CX encoded! CX encoded is just a noise reducing technology, which is basically available on every single Laserdisc manufactured out there since the late 1970's until 2001 when all Laserdisc manufacturing ceased.

Re:Pink Floyd Justin Bieber

[Grishnakh]

Wrong. There was plenty of crap music back in Pink Floyd's time. Remember "disco"? There's still some good music now too, but it's either old bands that are still playing, like Rush, or new bands you'll never hear on the radio. Good music isn't popular any more, because the media companies want you to listen to crap like JB.

The one thing that really is different between then and now is recording quality: it was better back then, because they didn't over-compress everything.

Its what they were listening to.

[Anonymous Coward]

Real bands, real music, no American Idol, X-Factor manufactured over marketed pop crap in those days.
That's what made it sound better

Even harmonic distortion can "sound" better

[Anonymous Coward]

Makes me wonder if the Pioneer receiver sounded better because of even harmonic distortion.

Still research, just not from the big names

[Jeek Elemental]

Theres excellent gear available from small vendors that specialize, in all price ranges.

A system with

2 small stand speakers
1 powered sub (must play bass, not 1 frequency)
DAC hooked to your pc running mpd or something (make sure it doesnt resample)
1 decent 100W-ish integrated amp

can sound fantastic and doesnt have to cost much.
You DO have to take the time to position the speakers, as it affects the sound enormously, but the sub makes it a lot easier.

Re:Still research, just not from the big names

[MikeMo]

You, sir, are exactly the guy they're selling these junk - but high powered - systems to. Any system that has small stand speakers and a sub sucks. Where's the midrange?

I have my Dad's 30 year old system

[stubob]

you inconsiderate clod! No, really, he gave my his Sansui QRX 4-channel receiver and 4 custom speakers as a graduation gift (then went out and bought new stuff for himself). The surrounds on the speakers were shot after all those years and I gave them to a friend who wants to repair them. I bought a pair of Ascend bookshelves for better Wife Acceptance Factor and drive the whole thing with a Denon CD carousel. Sounds great, doesn't take up a lot of space.

My Dad is Deaf

[Anonymous Coward]

you insensitive clod!

Re:Modern == Cheap parts, SMDs,built to a price po

[Anonymous Coward]

SMD parts are not going to affect audio quality just because they don't go through the PCB. Audio frequencies are low enough that there isn't an advantage from surface mount parts directly (although more room for solid ground planes should help) but there isn't going to be a detriment to going with SMD parts. The problem in modern receivers is the quality of the parts, particularly with the output stages.

We design equipment that can talk to satellites in modes that would not have been achievable even a few years ago because the parts were not available and because the signal quality could not be achieved. The quality of the supplies and output stages are critical and yet when designed properly these items can run from what is basically an ATX power supply.

When it comes to audio or even RF we are past the need for enormous power supplies to achieve a good signal as long as the system is properly designed. However the output circuitry cannot be skimped on, and this is exactly where the audio amp people skimp because good components are expensive even in large quantities. I guarantee we have access to better quality parts today, and we can put those parts into a much smaller package, but it will cost a lot of money.

Re:Digital Data Compression: Music's Procrustean B

[Ossifer]

Journalistic research maybe, not original research.

Small size, loud, accurate bass.

[Anonymous Coward]

Small size, loud, accurate bass.
Pick two.
You cannot have all three.
Modern aggressively resonant ported designs attempt to have all three, but fail as they end up with 'one note bass'. That is why most modern speaker designs sound pretty terrible.

Re:Small size, loud, accurate bass.

[LynnwoodRooster]

Small size, loud, accurate bass. Pick two. You cannot have all three.

Oh, you can have all 3 - I design such systems for a living (yes, I am an acoustics engineer, and earn my living designing transducers of all kinds). It just costs a lot. But I've done small, 170mm woofers that mount in 10 liter boxes and will reach beyond 110 dB and plumb down to 25 Hz with less than 3% THD. Yes, it takes a lot of power and it's not cheap, but it can be done.

Modern aggressively resonant ported designs attempt to have all three, but fail as they end up with 'one note bass'. That is why most modern speaker designs sound pretty terrible.

That's not a factor of the presence of a port; that's a factor that the designer didn't have a clue how to USE the port. Check out the Event Electronics Opal monitor - it's renown for deep, massive, accurate, TIGHT levels of real bass, and it is, in fact, ported. Of course, it has a great woofer and port system - designed by yours truly. Having 700W of power on tap for the woofer helps a lot, too...

Re:Small size, loud, accurate bass.

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting stuff.
I must admit I have not listened to a modern high fidelity small ported system yet. I assume you are using some kind of electronic feedback to keep the woofer linear with a large excursion, and a very carefully designed cabinet. It can't have been easy or cheap! I guess there is no physical reason why cone area can't be swapped for excursion, and I'll certainly be giving them a listen.

Wattage Ain't What It Used To Be...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm surprised no one mentioned this:

Thanks to the all great all knowing Dubya & crew, the retail standard for audio wattage (since 1973 or so) was eliminated. The old standard for rating power was:

Both channels had to be operating (requires beefy power supply), the frequency range for the rating had to be specified (if it wasn't the full audio range of 20-20khz you knew something was flakey), the highest distortion recorded had to be displayed ( you couldn't get 2% total harmonic distortion & claim that it was .1%), and the power value claimed was the Root Mean Square (RMS) value of the recorded power, meaning .707 or so of the peak power. So a 120 watt a channel amplifier was 120 watts even when the volume was at 10 (or maybe even 11...).

Nowadays a manufacturer can claim 120 watts per channel (or MORE) when the old rating system would call it a 45 watt amp. This is why the 120 per channel amplifiers sound like crap when pushed. This is also why some companies are claiming they have 1000 watt amplifiers, which is pure marketing crap-speak.

As someone who sold that gear for 10+ years I could go on and on and on. But I have to tell you, purchasing Vintage gear on Ebay has been alot of fun this last year or so. So much quality for so little money.

Not terribly accurate

[JerryLove]

The basic article is rather rife with false assumptions and simply wrong information.

Much of the article seems about power (the amplifier)... and I've got gear at my house spanning the past 30 years.
Though he discusses power; let's start with the actual sound quality... a well built amp will work with no discernable loss of soundquality. Period. Decades of testing by basically everyone (not to mention a simple oscilliscope) show that a properly built amp, driven within its limits, has no audiable diviation from "perfect".

It was true 30 years ago. It's true now. If there's "a sound" to your amp either
1) It's deliberate.
2) The amp is junk
3) There's a problem.

So what about power? Well, McIntosh (my 35-year old is 120Wx2) makes amps up to 2,000W right now; and there are others that go higher. Peavy has a class-H amp at best-buy that's 1200W @ 2ohm for a couple of hundred dollars.

But any discussion of power is just stupid without a discussion of load. As we've moved to self-powered subs and smaller mains: the needed power to drive speakers has gone down. Sure you can get a set of B&W800s or such... and for you the high-end store still carries huge amps.

There's so much that can be said but the short of it is, unless you actually screwed up, it is the speakers, not the amp, that determines the sound.

Judging from my experience..

[Paracelcus]

All people want is VOLUME!
Why would you care about sound quality when you are listening to Dick Shaker and the car thieves, chanting atonally in an incomprehensible subset of broken English "Ahm walkin in duh guttah wif mah dik in mah hamnd, ahm duh biggest mutha fukkah in Chicagolamnd" Yes, I can see why an audiophile might be frustrated by the lack of sound quality!

Usually this din occurs at 3AM, just long enough to wake the dead, but not long enough to call the police!

30 years ago...

[ProfanityHead]

30 years ago... was before the heinous effects of Reaganomics had destroyed the middle class and people were more likely to spend the money on top dollar electronics. These days it all about making it cheaper, not better. I still have my Infinity Qb speakers from 1978.

I also still hate Reagan and the ridiculous "trickle down economics" theory that eventually brought this country to it's knees in the fall of 2008.

30 Year old stereos that are still around

[imuffin]

30-year old stereos that are still around are still around because they were expensive and high quality when they were purchased. The cheap crap bought 30 years ago broken down or was upgraded 5 years later and is no longer around, just like cheap crap bought these days is tossed out in a few years.

So 30-year old stereos that are still around to be listened to sound better because they weren't cheap crap to begin with.

Also MP3's and surround sound

[scharkalvin]

Stereo equipment used to be pure analog without any digital processing. Turn off the digital surround sound and even today's equipment can sound decent. My Onkyo home theater receiver has a pure audio mode that bypasses the surround processor. CD's and LP's sound good though it in this mode. BTW I built my own speakers from raw drivers too.
MP3 audio files SUCK. There is nothing wrong with digital recording as long as you don't throw away some of the data to shrink the file size. CD's were an improvement over LP's once the recording engineers figured out how to properly master the damn things.

Reproduction is bullshit.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the reason I'm not an audiophile. They always go on about perfect reproduction... It's bullshit. Complete bullshit.

Go see a band perform a song live, twice. I guarantee you there will be differences in the music.

The only thing that really matters is, "Does it sound good?"

Anyone telling you otherwise probably has a $1000 uranium-plated cable to sell you.

Re:Reproduction is bullshit.

[TemporalBeing]

Go see a band perform a song live, twice. I guarantee you there will be differences in the music.

Of course there will be. They're timing will be slightly different; they may have a different operator on the audio board; etc.

But I would also say a band - at least anything non-classical - would likely be the worst use of testing the sound systems primarily b/c they all tune the systems towards bass and overblast the volume.

So really, you have a really really bad comparison. Conversely, take a symphonic such as Beethoven's 5th or the William Tell Overture, or one of J.S. Bach's organ pieces - like Toccata & Fugue - and you'll really see the speakers hum through the various ranges. About the best you can do for bands is a big band/marching band (e.g. John Phillip Sousa's Stars and Stripes Forever), but again - that's more towards a symphonic. Even Metallica's S&M performances are lousy for testing speakers with comparatively as they just don't do the same ranges, or keep volume within well balanced meaning.

Re:Reproduction is bullshit.

[perryizgr8]

i agree that it is useless to pursue perfect sound reproduction. any speaker in the world cannot produce exactly the same waveform that comes out of a real guitar. just because of the difference in shape.

Re:Reproduction is bullshit.

[m50d]

But I would also say a band - at least anything non-classical - would likely be the worst use of testing the sound systems

Yes and no. Testing should reflect usage. If what you're going to do with your sound system is listen to bands, then the best way to test it is listen to bands, and see if they sound good to you on it. Ultimately that's all that matters.

This probably ends up with people getting low-quality sound systems to match the one in their car, because that's what they're used to listening to and people prefer familiar distortions over accurate reproduction. But ultimately subjective enjoyment is what matters - there's no inherent virtue in having an accurate sound system.

Amps are easy ... it's speakers that are hard

[niks42]

I don't mind modern cinema amps .. I use sony STR-DB830, DB930 and so on around the house (all recovered from *Bay as faulty, not working). I have a pair of KEF Concerto and a pair of KEF104ABs and a pair of Mission 700s. With modern program material, delivered digitally to the cinema amp they sound so good it is scary. I just know I would have been successful pulling girls in my youth if I had this setup then.

I AM that dad...

[DrCode]

... you insensitive clod! And I still have my phonograph and speakers from 40 years ago. The phonograph is still quite good, with a 3 Kg platter that's hard to find on anything reasonably priced nowadays, and a recently upgraded cartridge. But the speakers, old KLH 17's, really weren't that great new, and probably should be replaced. I'd assume the right way to go would be to visit a real audio store like Magnolia and listen to different speakers using the same sound source. But as the article pointed out, we've become spoiled by the convenience of modern gadgets, and it's too easy to pick up something cheap at Best Buy or Frye's.

Re:Look harder.

[thegarbz]

No really do look harder. There's a very wide range and something to suit every budget. In the low end you got you cheap arse chinese crap from a brand no one's ever heard of, then you got your Panasonics and your Philips, go up a bit you got your Onkyos and your Denons, spend a bit more you get in the likes of NAD and Harman Kardon, and only then do you start hitting expensive stuff like Electrocompaniet, Pass Labs, etc.

There's pretty much a very smooth transition in price and quality from the bottom all the way to the top. The same applies for speakers. You just need to look harder, and maybe shop in a different store. ...

And if you're that way inclined the same applies for speaker cables of dubious quality :)

Regressing the state of the art?

[iliketrash]

"As a result, there was less money in R&D budgets to spend on advancements in sound."

OK. But how much additional R&D money is needed to maintain the state of the art? Either it is mysteriously greater than zero or companies are deliberately making less-than-state-of-the-art equipment at many price points.

Vacuum Tubes

[Anonymous Coward]

Vacuum Tubes. EOS. Nothing digital or modeling can cover the frequency response range of a vacuum tube. Up to 3.0GHz. Microwave range. More amps should be brought back that use vacuum tubes. In-efficient or not. The sound is amazing.

"The 'price of gold' comparison is 100% crap"

[GPS Pilot]

"The 'price of gold' comparison is 100% crap" -- so says "Crotalus horridus," who just deleted that information from the Wikipedia article.

And Crotalus is right; using the Consumer Price Index to calculate the SX-1980's price in 2011 dollars would give you a much better answer than using the price of gold.

Computer Speakers declining

[locopuyo]

klipsch stopped selling their high end computer speakers. Creative stopped making their high end Cambridge speakers. Logitech peeked out several years ago with the z5500 which they don't sell anymore, their new model is worse.

Speakers form the 70's still rolling

[Anonymous Coward]

I love the band Underworld, and for those that know them, know that their songs are filled with layer upon layer of little sounds, noises and vocals. My dad has two Tannoy speakers from the 70's, nothing particually special but they are good, hooked up to an amp he purchased around 6 years ago that is of good standard (around £300-£400) and the music on those sound better then anything I've heard thus far from so called "decent" head phones, hi-fi systems, or even worse, speakers that people have bought that they *think" are good, but really they are not. They are over 35 years old and still give me some of the best sound I've heard and are probably worth very little in today money. The funny thing is, I know my dad didn't have a lot of money back then, so they couldn't have cost a lot....

Dad and the Stereo

[khr]

Well, my Dad just mailed me my 20 year old stereo a couple of weeks ago (after ten years overseas, I didn't return to the part of the country I lived in before)... And it sounds like pure shit...

A nice, Carver integrated amp that used to sound beautiful. Now sounds like ten years of storage in the damp, salty air of the Oregon coast didn't leave it unscathed... Buzzz.... Hummmm.... Lots of crackle from the speakers when turning any of the knobs on it... Visible corrosion on the line in connectors... Probably more inside, judging by the sound...

*sigh*

But it still sounds nicer than the B & W desktop computer speakers I've been using for the last ten months, so I guess it could be worse...

Noise

[Anonymous Coward]

My acid test is either Kodo drummers or church organ music at church volume levels. Drumming has a nice big low frequency (almost) square wave and when you get chest compressions like sitting in the concert hall 50 feet from the stage it is not too bad. And yet I remember listening to some jazz years ago on a high end studio system and it was beyond belief. Since so much music comes at us in low data rate mp3 I am not sure that as a group we even remember what a good recording sounds like. And it seems that the engineering of modern recordings flattens the sound. I have old recordings that when played one can close eyes and hear all the performers arrayed in space. A much rarer experience with newer stuff. I am inclined to think that we have forgotten what good sound is like.

I just spent $750 rebuilding 22 year old speakers.

[sdguero]

Cerwin Vega 380SEs. And it was worth every penny. They were $2000 new in 1989, so around $3500 in today's dollars. These things have enough bass to shake the house down and they also have GREAT mids and highs. I just wish I had a legit amp to push them with... For now my old Pioneer reciever is still doing the job.

When my roommate dropped $1500 on a 7.1 system for the family room I was all for it, but that system doesn't come close to the fidelity I get from my old Vegas, or the bass. Especially the bass. It's brutal. :-D

That said, these speaker are huge, ugly, and weigh 95 pounds each. Not exactly a sleek audio system... Ok I'm done bragging. ;)

Speakers, Compression, DAC

[billstclair]

Good sound doesn't have to cost a lot. I first upgraded my computer sound a little over a year ago. Bought some M-Audio AV40 powered monitors for $150. There are lots of choices in that price range, all much better than the cheap speakers you get from your computer dealer. The next important thing is to replace your compressed music with FLAC or ALAC. That means buying CDs and ripping them, or downloading from HDTracks or one of a few other places that sells uncompressed downloads (there are also plenty of FLACs available as torrents, if you swing that way). I've been accumulating CDs since 1984, so I already had plenty, and just had to re-rip them without compression. Once you've done that, you can make a third improvement by buying an external Digital-to-Analog convertor (DAC). I use the NuForce Icon uDAC, for $100 (or a little more for the HD version), but there are lots of choices there, too. An external DAC routes your music through your computer's USB port, routing around the cheap DAC inside most computers. That $250, plus ripping time, brought my computer music up to very near the level of the $2,000 system I bought in 1984.

The next step up is to buy $400-$500 speakers, an HD (96KHz/24-bit) DAC, and HD music (from, e.g. HDTracks.com). But most people won't care enough to go that extra step. That made my computer music much better than I ever had in the eighties.

Most people don't have the ears for it

[billcopc]

As a harsh golden-eared nutjob myself, I've learned over the years that most people don't care for what we audio geeks call "quality sound". They don't notice when a singer overshoots a run, or the guitarist is slightly off-tempo. They mostly know that their home and car stereo are "good enough", and that live music is magically better, presumably because it is louder. The "smile" EQ curve has been beaten into their skulls since the very first time they heard a radio. Why ? Because the high and low end of the spectrum are what gets trashed by the electronic gauntlet that is analog radio transmission. What seems like an excellent stereo to the average person is fingernails on a chalkboard to an audio enthusiast. This is why guys like me walk around with giant expensive goofy-looking headphones and portable amplifiers for our iPods, because we'd rather look like dorks than be subjected to those nasal-sounding white earbuds. It's also why people tend to favour extreme bass at the expense of all else - they can feel the bass better than they can process the audible stuff.

Manufacturers love this, because just about any idiot with a soldering iron can create a "good enough" audio device. It's cheaply made and easily sold. Actually what they like to do is take the cheap crap, spend a fortune on marketing, and steadily increase the price over time. This is what you'll find in just about every big box store: MTX, Rockford Fosgate, Polk Audio. You'll even find similar corner-cut products sold to musicians, who are often no more discerning than laypersons unless they're well versed in recording and mixing. Then they can improve it, still not the proper circuitry, just a few extra dollars on bigger caps and gold-plated whatever, and call it their prosumer range.

The end result is that audiophiles who want properly designed and built gear either have to shell out small fortunes to extortionate specialty shops, or learn the craft and build it themselves. Anything designed for mass market appeal has to be the result of extreme compromises. If it pleases 80% of the market at 1/10th of the cost, the usual business strategy is "fuck the other 20%".

My

[Anonymous Coward]

My mid-70s amp still sounds great!

Because "music" is just "*BOOM* *BOOM* *BOOM*"

[walterbyrd]

Who needs high fidelity for that crap? It's all about being loud.

Re:Because "music" is just "*BOOM* *BOOM* *BOOM*"

[Zorque]

I bet all those kids on your lawn get really tiresome, too.

Old gear does sound better than new.

[Anonymous Coward]

I currently have a 7.1 setup with a Onkyo Reciever TX-SR705
Yamaha C-80 Preamp
Harman Kardon CD491 cassette deck
Harman Kardon CD301 cassette deck
Yamaha Eq-70 EQ
Yamaha T-550 Tuner
and Audio Technica turntable
the HK gear just sounds so good, and cant compare to the stuff made now. the only new stuff i have on my setup, is the reciever, and the speakers except the fronts, which are Paradigm Phantom .v3's
My father used to own a Harman Kardon setup from the 80s and some Infinity RS 1.5 speakers ( with the watkins woofers ). some of the best sound i've heard ( i was a kid ) I'd love to have that setup again, and always check craigslist, ebay or wherever for items like that. the HK cd 491 deck i have used to cost $900 when it was made new. Tube amps also, have a very warm sound to them...

Sow's ears /= silk purse

[Whuffo]

Those of us who were around back then remember what the "mass market" stereo systems were like. With famous names like Electrophonic, Soundesign, and even Capehart.

They were terrible. Cheap BSR record changer with a plastic platter and a ceramic cartidge that tracked at seven grams (more or less). I still remember seeing them with pennies taped to the headshell so they wouldn't skip grooves. Bookshelf sized speakers made of 1/4 particle board - and with perforated plastic backs. Awful sound, really awful.

The electronics were awful, too. On a good day, they'd produce 3.5 watts per channel - don't ask about the distortion. This is the kind of system that was common when DSotM came out.

The current "mass market" systems are FAR superior to that old crap; if you compare like to like there's been a lot of improvement.

Re:Sow's ears /= silk purse

[Miamicanes]

Er, well, if you want to talk about "stereo" gear sold at K-mart... maybe. But if you stepped up even slightly (say, to Service Merchandise and Circuit City, late 80s) and considered Technics to be the low end baseline, things were much better.

Plus, let's not forget the coffee table sized monster subwoofers DAK used to sell and ship by motor freight. I still have one upstairs in the bonus room ;-)

Re:Digital Data Compression: Music's Procrustean B

[Anonymous Coward]

Plagiarizer and home work are not the same thing.

That'd be "plagiarizing", not "plagiarizer".

bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

My 10 year old NHT/Marantz/Adcom system sounds almost as good as a 20 year old stupidly expensive meridian system. I got all my stuff for under a grand used.

Anyone who is actually interested in audiophile level music quality knows that this article is simply; bullshit.

I don't even use a receiver to power my speakers I use a stand alone amplifier and a processor which is way more powerful than it even needs to be for any reasonable stereo system.

Anyone who measures a sound system by its wattage is as narrow minded as someone who judges a car for simply how much horsepower it has.

Speakers

[Vecanti]

Not even taking electronics into account, speakers back then seem to have been better. Everything was had at least 2 10" woofers, mids and tweeters. Now you get this crap subwoofers, and then two crap cubes for the rest of your sound? Hard to find good speakers without spending a lot of money. I remember being able to by even Sony big box speakers at regular stores ~15 years ago.

Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Modern audio has very little in common with 30 yrs ago, and actually, the price/ performance of current audio gear totally blows away anything made then. For one, the rise of digital audio, and cheap but high quality dsps, has enabled even the cheapest audio devices ( eg, ipod ) to have a virtually flat frequency response. The age of radio is rapidly turning into digital streaming, and internet radio. With the higher bitrates, the audio quality massacres any radio device of 30 years ago ! What about amplification. Think about this. For about $1400, I can buy a pair of Mackie 824's. Add an $300 netbook, or any device with an 1/8 jack, a $10 cable,and even a $10,000 sound system from 30 years ago cannot better the sound quality, if you happen to use high bitrates, or lossless codecs. Better yet, just get one of those cheap standalone dvd players. Even the $50 model boasts a frequency response at the phono outs, that engineers of 30 years ago could only dream about. Add a set of any $1000 + studio monitors, ( but I like the Mackies myself ), and prepare to be amazed. Particularly on classical music.

My Dad's stereo is 50 years old ...

[RockDoctor]

... and it's mono, not stereo.

Whether or not it has better sound than mine, I don't know. Or care. I don't have adequate hearing to tell.

The only way that I know it's mono is because I had to disembowel it to work out how to wire a tape recorder (cassette, not reel to reel) into it about 30 years ago. And the age is a guess from how much dust was in it's guts then. It was certainly older than I was, because it's tuning glass display panel named stations that were turned off before I was born.

I just remembered - the record deck could play at 78RPM as well as at 45 or 33_1/3. My stereo can't do that - it can only play CDs. Or memory cards.

My Ears have Changed!

[CaptainChuck]

Back in 1959 High Fidelity meant being able to play an entire side of a record without the needle skipping or sticking. A rich neighbor had a Klipschorn driven by a Scott 121 Dynaural preamp and Mac 60. It was fantastic on organ music. But horn type speakers, even very expensive ones, sounded terrible on choral music. I lived through the early days of transistor amps, many of which sounded terrible. By the 1980s DBX LPs and good audio amps allowed classical music lovers to enjoy music with virtually all the expressiveness it was played with. Enter multimedia and the sound was challenged until Laserdisca got digital audio. The listening acoustics have yet to recover from having that big screen dominating the room.

Different

[Anonymous Coward]

Does it sound better or just different. How many times I've heard the "warm/fuzzy/cool/retro" when describing sound. Especially when everything sounds the same in Hi-Fi, some fuzzy buffers are added to sound different from the rest and "best in the block".

Well sound it mostly subjective anyway and has too many variables to be measured scientifically in population. There is no Body Mass Index equivalent to measure sound bestness in population.

Nothing new

[wye43]

Quality was ALWAYS a secondary selling point. Not just in audio, in everything. And it will always be.

The article is just another "when I was your age" thingy, same shit I've heard 20 years ago.

Leach Amp

[EmagGeek]

I built a Leach Amp (did my own PWB for it as well) and it has served me well for nearly 15 years.

It's all about perception

[zwarte piet]

I was totally into hifi 25 years ago. Built my own speakers and amplifyer. Now I am happy with computer speakers because it's not so important any more how the actual sound sounds, I listen to it in my head and there it always sounds super duper.

Thankful for this article

[supercrisp]

I'm packing for a move and had listed my HUGE 1970s-era Fisher "Studio" series speakers on craiglist, planning to keep only the two bookshelf Bose (yes, with Monster Cables) that I bought 20+ years ago as an ignorant college student. I think I'll hang onto the Fishers for now, no matter the whining from my lower back.

wrong point

[hesaigo999ca]

>As a result, there was less money in R&D budgets to spend on advancements in sound
this statement would conclude that at the very least, they would have stayed at the same level as previous....so the quality would not be worse, but not better either.

Why your dad's stereo....

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been building amplifiers for about 40 years (i am a "Dad"). I have had equipment from the top manufacturers since I bought my first Pioneer 10W amp in the 60's and a Garrard Lab turntable. The simple answer to the sound issue is two parts (mentioned in other responses). First- cost. This forces the manufacturers to shrink the parts and unfortunately cut corners. I went through 5 top-of-the-line HK receivers before I finally got one that worked correctly. Amplifiers have changed rom high quality discrete devices to integrates modules, and at the same time, switching power supplies (long story here) were added rather than the slightly lower efficiency but much better standard AC supplies. Also, there is the push to integrate all of the functions, again generating compromise. Then, with the exception of brilliant work by Bob Carver, the quality of these modules has steadily deteriorated. Amplifiers that i have constructed will produce a 100W output into 8 Ohm loads with distortion of 0.008% (measured by several professional labs)- far below that which is generated in the speaker itself (look up the original work of Klipsch in the 1940's to understand how to make sound with low distortion). I have built units up to about 1kW (impractical if you really want to crank it up- the wall only supplies about 1500W on a typical circuit, but if you keep it down it does not need 208V lines!). I just looked at a modular switching-mode amplifier with a "100W rating"- it was tolerable at 1W, but at half-power the distortion was above 30% and climbing! Sounded horrible. Oh well, it is smaller than my amplifiers.
Another issue is the speakers- people want small and invisible, but unfortunately, the physics does not support this direction. Roughly speaking the smaller the cone diameter, the higher the cutoff of the low frequency coupling to the room air mass. The only way to "move the air" with smaller speakers is to make the cone move in and out over a longer distance- this increases the distortion in proportion to the distance moved, which in turn is affected by the cone suspension and more importantly, the voice coil and the magnet structure. Try increasing the bass drive on your typical PC speaker set- the bass will crack up quickly even if the volume does not increase much- this is the issue with tiny drivers. There are many ways to get around these problems- horns (best from an efficiency standpoint and lowest distortion), various loading methods (c.f., Bose's designs), and similar approaches. The key is go back to making real speakers- check designs like Klipsch, JBL, ALTEC, ElectroVoice and others in the 1950's through the 1980's to see how to assemble a high quality sound reproduction system.
There are many high end manufacturers that have not stopped their R&D work, and produce really high end high quality products, at high prices due to limited markets- but these units are not at the local big box.... See for example, McIntosh, or NAD, or... do a quick search on "high end audio" for links to lots of specialty equipment houses that turn out fantastic electronics and speakers to return to the days of "Dad's Stereo"- maybe even with improvements...

Well made indeed

[helios17]

I still have, and use daily a complete Phase Linear system I bought while in Germany. Sure, there are many components and it takes up a ton of room but man, when I sit stereophonic center in my listening room, I couldn't tell you where any one speaker is and the sound is so clear and bright, it does justice to the artist...it is reproduced the way it was intended. And yeah, I'm someone's dad who has better equipment than his kids...and they know it.

TK421

[csb]

The old stereos sound best because they had the TK421 option. You did pay for TK421, yes?

include all variables

[Anonymous Coward]

a crappy source will often sound better on a crappy system than a hi-fi system.

cant hear the difference between 16bit 192kbps vs 24bit lossless on those stock apple earbuds? dont fret.

have a kick ass system? source becomes important all of a sudden.

of course people themselves have their own idea of what sounds 'good', but damnit, explore.

Times are a changing

[Anonymous Coward]

The quality of the audio is a trade off between the usage governed by the file size. In the present context of cross platforms and mobile devices and streaming, the guys who can offer the best possible audio quality at the least possible file size will be the winner. It is wrong to say there is not much R&D happening when there are companies like http://www.codeccorp.com doing pathbreaking work.