To recap, all of the electronic components, which includes the cables used to connect them, are at the bottom of the list. The list I'm referring to is the list of factors that you can change that make the biggest difference in sound quality. This is about sound quality that you'll get listening in your room. All competently made components will sound alike, and any differences will be too small to hear. This does not include equipment that has been "voiced" to sound a certain way, as in amps that have been designed to have more harmonic distortion or cables that intentionally degrade the signal. Both of these instances can result in SUBTLE differences, but do so by actually putting out a technically worse result. However, the ear likes what the ear likes, so "worse" in this instance can be a matter of taste and opinion. And remember that the ear is connected to a brain that interprets what it's getting and is therefore heavily influenced by what that brain wants to hear. What really drives the truly subjectivity based audiophile to buy these products is the reputation of the products and the idea that in order to be in the club, you need to have it. The club I'm talking about is the one where all the coolest audiophiles hang out and brag about the gear they have and talk about how wonderful it sounds, and look down on anyone who isn't in the club. Of course this "club" isn't (usually) anything official, as in an organized association of members, but you know you are in if you buy the right things. Next up is the recordings and they can range from terrible to amazing. Even though the quality of the recording is largely out of your control, you can decide to be selective and not listen to the ones that sound bad. Or, and this is what I do, you can try to ignore how bad they are because you love listening to them. Speakers are where you'll find a lot of variability in how they can sound and the differences can range from subtle (for models in the same price range, typically) to very wide. Speakers that measure the "same" can sound much different, depending on a number of factors. For example I've always preferred the presentation of larger speakers to smaller ones, even when they mostly sound the same. To me, and I'm not completely ruling out a psychological influence, the larger speaker with larger drivers delivers the sound with more authority and presence. Presence being the "it feels more real" - note "feels", not "sounds". Other factors are how the low end is handled, whether the speaker is sealed or vented or dipole. This is why any attempt to judge the sound quality of speakers with measurements alone is a fool's game - you have to listen to them to really know how they sound. Lastly at the very top of the list of factors that impact sound quality is the room you'll be listening in. And it's ironic that even today, it's the one factor that is ranked the least important to most audiophiles. In fact most completely ignore it (and that includes the lab coat objectivity based ones) and will go to great lengths to deny its significance. Instead they'll spend money on things from the bottom of the list thinking the greatest differences can be realized there. The room is the biggest wild card because there is so much about it that can affect sound quality. From the size of the room to the shape and the makeup of the walls and what's in the room - all will have orders of magnitude more influence on sound quality than all of the electronics put together. And , also ironically, it's the one that you have the most control over, yet is almost universally ignored. I spent nearly a full year treating my listening room and I can say without any doubt that the year spent was one of the best investments I've ever made. Since completion I've been using that room every single day. I spend all of my evenings there, from 5 in the afternoon until 10 at night, and sometimes longer. So I have that to compare - treated to untreated, unlike most audiophiles. They THINK they know what it's like, mainly because they heard (and look for) someone else say that it isn't needed or that it "ruins" the sound, being "too dead". I will say that a treated room is something you need to get used to, but when you do you'll never want to go back. I know I haven't.
Not if each are done properly. Balanced is used to reduce noise that can be picked up by long cables, but if your cables are short enough and shielded properly (and your equipment is competently made), there won't be any difference.
I designed cable risers to feature in a parody video, and also to sell for some ridiculous price to see if there would be any takers. I would say I had my doubts to begin with, but was completely blown away when I actually tried them. And as a result I'm going to be making a limited, numbered and signed run of them to sell to discerning audiophiles out there.
Polarized thinking is a problem in our little audio community and certainly in the world today as a whole and it tends to lead to tribalism. Great video, John. We couldn't be more aligned. Thanks.
We are tribal by nature as a species. That’s not debatable, unless you can’t define what is a woman? Regardless, it’s a matter of dialogue and debate in which “truth” is found. IMO. Lol
Not true. Expensive or exotic speaker cables always appeals to non critical thinkers who don't have the technical aptitude to understand what problems it actually solves !!
Two other components (no pun intended) of audiophoolery: 1) “my senses and hearing are so advanced that I can hear things that are too subtle to be detected with plebeian hearing abilities like yours” and 2) a straightforward ego/testosterone male competition over who has the most fancy crap or more money.
So you think everyone has the same hearing ability? I don’t personally have a great ear, but for me to think that if I can’t hear it no one can is simply wrong. I recently had a professional race car driver take me for a lap on the racetrack in my car. After just one lap he told me my right rear tire was about 1 psi low, he was correct. I am unable to detect such sultalties, but clearly others can. I design and build speakers as a hobby, I have had people listen to them and be able to tell my the crossover point of my mid to tweeter, I can’t do that and I know the crossover point.
High-end expensive cables definitely make a difference... a negative difference to the pocketbooks of the people buying them and a positive difference to the pocketbooks of the people selling them. That pretty much covers all the differences.
You actually "went there" on cables! When I first set up my system I used 18 gauge "alarm wire" as I had a lot left over from my CNC build. When I was ready to start tuning my system and room I made up "proper" cables with Canare 4S11 cable and "Speakon" connectors. The sound was slightly different and to my ears, better. Cost per cable ( about 1 m long ) including connectors was under $15. I think that this was a good balance between the two camps. BTW I came across a gem that I was not aware of, "Where Hides Sleep" by Alison Moyet. I really enjoyed her stuff while she was with Vincent Clarke as Yazoo ( Yaz on this side of the pond ).
Very true about great equipment in bad rooms = a lackluster experience. Treating a room is usually not cheap (done properly) but is still a better investment than in outrageously expensive gear that disappoints in a poor listening environment. As always, a very honest perspective on “delicate” controversial audio narratives.
Hi John, I was wondering when are we going to hear your new equipment? Regardless of how you think it sounds it would be great to still hear it. Thanks and keep up the great job
My next video deals with that a bit, and then the one after will actually have a recorded sample of the sound - my open baffle speakers with the new active amplifier.
Thank you John for your tips, tricks, and perspectives. The elephant in the room of each and ever audiophile is the variability in their biological system compared to the standard of a person with perfect pitch and perfect 20 -20000 Hz hearing. Add to this the structure of the outer ear audio collection into the brain circuitry the yields the audio perception we all call music. I believe that to achieve audio file quality in today's level of engineering and available tools makes the difference between budget and uber high cost systems quite narrow. It is a great time to be alive as an music lover!
Never restrict yourself to the 20-20000Hz range. I can demonstrate the difference between a system designed within those limits and a system that goes from 10 to 30000Hz. It's not only to do with what the listener hears. It's a lot to do with what they feel. Using sub-audible and ultra-audible sound is not new, certain artists have been using it for decades. The problem for us techies is, have you got enough power to move enough air for the audience to feel it? Down around 10-12Hz that's a tough one. Go to a show at Ushuäia, Ibiza and tell me if they got it right or not. Just sayin
No one has perfect 20 - 20,000 Hz hearing (F-M curves) rather each persons FR hearing response is different depending on the factors described above - outer ear geometry, inner ear bones, ear drum, et al. One easy test is to take your ear lobes and push them out from your head and hear the increase in midrange - this is real as the ear now gathers in more sound in these frequencies. So if the person "next door" has ears that stick out father naturally, he/she may well hear sound differently than you.
Spot on... there's lots of caveats in between (like impedance matching between equipment and also speakers, well-designed/made equipment)... Cables can have very subtle differences, and sources/amps do have sonic signatures, but as long as the fundamentals are in place, the big differences are in speakers, speaker placement and the room itself (and also matching a system to your typical listening volume). Like you, I'm a diyer and in the middle.
John Dunlavy got raked across the coals for basically saying the same thing 25 or 30 years ago. He knew how to make incredible speakers, but saying cables made little or no difference was audiophile heresy. He decided to make his own cables that measured about as perfectly as you could ask just to show the doubters, then they accused him of trying to have it both ways.
What cable would you recommend for 232 trs balanced monitors being hooked into a interface? I’m only finding 14 foot ones and I keep reading about how bad it’s is to use cables 20+ feet.
Amplifiers: The controversy over tubes vs solid state presists. When response, modulation distortion and transient intermodulation distortion are below certain levels (< 1%) there should be no audible difference. Speaker wires: It can be solid, stranded, copper, oxygen free copper, silver, etc.--or even "magic" wire--as long as the resistance is kept to be less than 5% of the speaker impedance. There is no listening difference as long as the wire is of adequate size. Bear in mind, a well-designed amplifier will not have a problem with any of these wires. CD players: In the 1980's, people spoke of experiencing "no air" and "aggression" while listening to digital recordings. Today we understand the principles which are fundamental to this phenomenon, we name it Jitter, we test it, calculate it and dress it with numbers, systemize it and describe it entirely. Jitter has always been and still is the worst enemy of the digital audio format. And today it is understood. Fact: Digital audio data is 'just' 0's and 1's. There may be many formats (.wav, .aif, CD-audio) but the information is still digital. There is no loss during format conversion, provided the formats don't utilize compression. Fact: Copying CD's (if they aren't damaged physically) is a lossless procedure. You can extract CD-audio with your computer and generate a file on your hard disk. Compare this file with the file created when you extract the same audio using a $30,000 player, the resulting two files are identical. The question which naturally arises out of this paradox is: why does the $30,000 player sound better? Before we answer that question, let us first understand that at the Digital Out of a $100 CD-player we have the same 1's and 0's as we do in the $30,000 player. The only difference is in the Jitter content. Jitter only means that the data (the 1's and the 0's) is not perfectly time-aligned, but is transmitted either slightly earlier or later than it should be in the ideal case. However, this time flaw is not as great as to cause a digital error (data fallout). Now if you know that, then you must ask: so why does one CD-transport cost much more than another? Ah, Jitter. The cheap ones shake and the expensive ones don't. Well, that's true. The entire audio business of CD transports and DACs is built on the totally backward setup of the CD player containing the Master Clock and the DAC being the Slave. This results in the entire palette of innovations to lessen Jitter, starting from air drives to expensive digital cable technologies with complex math to reduce line-induced Jitter, to very carefully filtered power supplies, to all sorts of very necessary things when you want to achieve the least possible Jitter. So we have the worst possible digital scenario bringing in the most possible amount of money, because it is extremely difficult to annihilate Jitter when the CD player is the Master Clock. If you're looking for quality, this is stupid, to say the least! The whole setup should be different. As is the standard case in any pro-audio studio, it is always the playing device, the DAC, which is the Master Clock. The clock is located right next to the converter chips. That way, no line induced Jitter can appear. This clock signal is then taken from the DAC device and is used as the clock input of the signal source device, say the computer, the DAT player, or the CD player. Yes, in that setup, the CD player is receiving a more jittered clock than the DAC is, but that doesn't matter, because the DAC is doing the audio playing. When the Jittered audio signal arrives at the DAC, it is quantized into place temporally and is then played, in perfect synch with the clock oscillator, which is right next to it. But oh! In that case, you can use a $100 CD-player with a very poor power supply, a digital cable made from your average household extension cord, and still get a better sound than you'd be getting if you spent $30,000 on the best transport and digital cable! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, this is the naked, uncensored, plain truth about CD players and DACs. Their Master/Slave relationship is BACKWARDS and their prices therefore HIGH. If you don't believe this, then all you need to do is record digitally your favorite tune from a $100 CD player into your computer (provided you have a soundcard and software that doesn't add yet more lies into the equation, which is often the case, so beware!) Then borrow the most expensive CD transport you can get your hands on and repeat the experiment. The resulting sound files aren't just similar, they are identical! But the $30,000 player sounds better! How do you get them to sound the same? You only need to slave the transports to a DAC in Digital Master Mode. That's it. Identical sound, guaranteed. The least possible Jitter. The least loss.
John, since you did so much work on the sound treatment in your place, and the truth about rooms from that conference, I have a favor to ask... If you've got time, please take a look at the couple videos I've got with my new listening area/studio in it and let me know if you spot anything I can do to improve it. Thanks in advance!
My recent video titles "Why did I buy this crap" goes through the basics of room treatment, and also gives a link to a channel with good, dependable info on the topic.
Spot ON!!! I believe in everything you say in this video. I like your philosophy regarding audio and I have seen a lot of content from you. I try to stay in the middle as well, but there are difficulties to stay sober when you start to watch raving reviews on YT... As you put it and to my ears: No1 = Speakers/room and listening position. No2 = Decent electronics and cables =====> Done! Most sadly is that I cannot listen to badly recorded music anymore regardless of how "good" the actual song is. Bad recording techniques suits the car or radio in the kitchen, but not in my main rig where I listen carefully :) Keep up your good work in bringing balance in this crazy Audio industry.
Just saying 'this works' and his doesn't work'is not very scientifc. Just saying ; difference are just your bias'is actually a very biased, unscientific statement. I do agree that a cable can only 'damage' the sound. It cannot create what is not here.
Lets see if people will hate the video because they have just read the title without looking the video. lol I think your "room treatment guide" in the second half of the video is really on point. I think a lot of people including me have argued with you under the last videos because you gave the simplified opinion:"speaker directivity unimportant but room important" or at least it felt that way. I will make another argument even though i think i fully agree with what seems to be your opinion on room treatment speakerplacements and so on. In the lower midrange say 300hz there really are two problems which ad up. One is the room reflections and the other is the omnidirectional directivity of almost all speakers at these frequencys. A great way of improving this in an untreated room are cardioids. 15db rear rejection makes a huge difference and by building a d'appolito constrution with 2 woofers per side you essentially get 4 cardioid subwoofers with different path lenghts so even less room modes and increased horizontal directivity while still beeing a point source. The german manufacturer ME Geithain does this since 40 years and today there are several highly regarded manufacturers using it. Here is a review of one of their speakers unfortunately in german but there are inroom measurements with and without cardioid: www.me-geithain.de/de/assets/media/products/studio/RL901K/RL901K-Einlageblatt.pdf Of course this can not replace room treatment but its a whole lot easier to do than putting 40cm of rockwool on your walls. The audio industry really is weird. The most useful things like speakerplacement or room treatment are never talked about but cables, dacs and amps are all the rage. There are hundreds of threads on audiosciencereview where people "argue" about dacs while beeing of the same opinion but nobody really can explain how to place a certain type of speaker. It really is like: "all speakers with good spinorama will always sound good" which also is not the case.
You seem to be a bit fixated on "directivity" and the idea that I said it isn't important. I didn't say that. I said that it isn't as important as it's being made out to be. That doesn't mean it isn't important at all. It's supposed to be more important in a highly reflective room, but if you are truly serious about getting the best sound quality possible, you need to start doing some effective room treatment that will limit how much those reflections affect the sound. In a treated room, you are hearing much more of the direct sound from the speaker and off-axis response becomes less important. As for cardioid speakers, this is a concept that's been taken from the world of pro audio that's highly effective in large venue sound, and may not be effective at all in a small room. Since I haven't personally tested it, I can't say for certain. But I do know that large rooms behave MUCH differently than small ones, and the things that work in a large room may not work at all in a small one.
I just think today distortion is mostly a solved problem at hifi levels and the most important factor for speakers in it self is lets just say a radiation pattern fitting to the room. So i think we are on the same page as far as "speakers and the room need to be considered as a system" I mentioned cardioids because i think they are a great way to tinker. It really is just small box with slots in the back and rockwool or preferably basotect to dampen the rear wave of a dipole. The slotsize and amount of dampening determines how much sound is radiated at the back. The box acts as a folded baffle so your base rolloff works similar to a dipole but it goes lower. Its not the wizardry people in audioforums make it out to be but i think its a small step in improving speakers which are placed in relative proximity to walls because roommodes will always be a problem even in treated listening room, but of course lesser so.
You are right on John! The great thing about Audio today is, you can audition a piece of gear or a cable from a reputable dealer and if it doesn’t work for your room send it back. I just auditioned a pair of Maggie’s LRS + and they did not sound even closely as good as my GR Reseach DIY NX Studios. So I sent them back and got a refund. No matter the hype or the measurements just try stuff in your room! Room treatment is half of the battle for good sound. I have a 10 by 12 small listening room and I played around with diffusers, absorbers and combinations of both and now my little room sounds like I am in a castle! Treatment costs less than gear. Thanks John
It's like many politicians: tell lots of generic truths and sneakily slip in something you want people to agree with you, and they will nod in agreement without realizing. In the face of emotions, no amount of reasoning or logic has any meaning. Audio equipment and setup: in the hands of a capable and experienced audiophile the same equipmemt sounds a lot better in the same way a good photographer can make better use of his/her equipment compared to a rooky. In the end, it's you yourself that makes the biggest difference.
Too true. HiFi and audio hobby is probably the one with the highest amount of placebo compared to any other hobby. And yet, we still have so called “reviewers and influencers” who ‘listen to the DAC’ for comparison purposes. The amount of bullsh*t they come up with is mind-numbing. I twitch a little every time I come across a post or a video about that. :-(
I listened to a review of my original Pioneer receiver that I bought in the 1970's and found out it didn't have a good "sound stage" now I'm questioning 40 years of life decisions...
I can see a speaker cable riser build video coming in the future. Now I expect a comparison between at least 10 different species of wood for the speaker cable risers, including North American, South American, European, African, and Eastern woods. Joinery of the cable riser will be a determining factor as well. We need dovetail, half laps, and bridle joints comparisons. Heck I believe there could be a significant difference in the sound of a speaker cable riser constructed from your finger joint jig versus Matthias's jig. So lets definitely do that comparison. With your woodworking skills this shouldn't be a difficult video to create.
@@martinlindberg1983 I can assure you that I'm being a total smart-ass. I thought that would be easy to discern reading my ridiculous comments. Although it might be difficult to differentiate between my ridiculous comments and an actual audiophile's. If I had the time and resources to provide the public with the proper data that debunks most of the audio file jargon I would definitely pursue it. Starting with Speaker Cable Risers, possibly the most ridiculous claims from Audiophiles.I hope everyone that reads my comment had a good laugh at the thought of cable risers.
Your honesty and directness are much appreciated. I have a budget system leveraging used equipment values and located in a vaulted 19 foot ceiling 25 foot square room. Very happy with the results. I can experience 3 dimensionality and can hear a good recording from an inferior one. This from a 70 yo carpenter. Denon AVR 125 watt pc running in stereo from the goodwill for $25. Energy Connoisseur C8 $500 Craigslist. JBL 12” Sub. $100. Substantial cables and wires from Amazon $40. Spotify streaming. No, I haven’t upgraded my electrical service from aluminum to copper as seen in some audio nutter’s TH-cam.
Ah, sense prevails! (By the way you "conducted" this video magnificently.) I find the blather that some audiophiles come out with, is like listening to an art critic mistaking a litter bin for a masterpiece and then trying to justify it. Your stuff is great John
Good video John. I have actually stopped people in my room in RMAF from switching magic cables in and out for dollar store cables. A good cable conducts an electrical signal with fidelity. That is not rocket science. Been done for many decades. The rest is spot on. Learn how to treat your room is number one. ANd it need not be expensive. It is doable as a DIY project. There are great online resources as to how to do it. Mark
I get the impression from some people that they think that the science behind audio reproduction is something that was discovered growing on the side of a tree somewhere, and that we still haven't quite figured out how it works, yet. They don't grasp that it was built completely by man from the ground up and is thus fully understood.
@@IBuildIt Audio is quite worked out. We know what does what, and with a little intelligence we can do it. With a little applied math we can reproduce what we can record. And a little attention paid to the details, and we can create a rather convincing image of people playing music for us. Mark
When I was first getting in to audio 30 years ago, I thought I could make a better cable for cheaper. I heard from work the benefits of twisted pair, so I made some twisted pair cable out of industrial shielded twisted pair cable with RCA cable ends. What I did not understand was that the audio I was connecting was single ended and twisted pair is better when driven differentially. Boy was I surprised, it sounded awful ,the sound was choked down. I threw that all away and bought some nice cables, and heard no difference than what was in the box. Then got a better cd player and heard so much more faint audio than I could hear with my run of the mill Sony. That was the only time I heard a difference in cables going from good to bad with homemade cables.
Always appreciate your practical commentary, and also your actual experience and background on things like this. In regard to 'possibly degrading the signal': that is a measurable AND audible function? I use to work in commercial photography, and would tether the digital camera to computer via USB (older days with mini-USB A). We had to use a specific BRAND usb cable to avoid the tether program from dropping out/no longer seeing the camera connected. If we used a generic cable, the program wouldn't see the camera; plug in the special $65 10' cable and the camera/computer worked great-never an issue. This lead me to believe that there 'could' be a difference in audio tonal qualities from at least inter-connects and digital cables. But in audio, the same thing would basically happen (at least with digital cables) things would either 'work' or not, like the camera-computer connection?
The whole interconnect thing was not a thing until the hifi industry figured out it was a new opportunity to peddle overpriced trinkets to customers who don't understand electrical engineering. The interconnect thing is not really a thing in professional audio including the recording studios where the recordings originate which audiophiles then claim are vastly modified by their hyper expensive cables. Of course there are miniscule changes to the signal from interconnects but in any decently made interconnect they will be way below the threshold of audibility. I do suspect that some interconnect companies may be including components into their interconnects to create passive filters with the aim of giving some kind of tone control. And that seems to be what the audiophiles are after - tone controls without actually having tone controls on the amp, because tone controls are evil.
I have always been one to lean on the science, but sometimes my ears tell the “truth!” (*our own perceived objective truth) Thanks for always being subjective and objective in your videos!
'Don't take it so seriously: it's only audio' 🙂. Substitute audio with a whole list of topics and this would still be the best possible advice. That, and keeping an open mind. Love these videos 👌👌👌
This pretty much aligns with my my experience in domestic audio playback. Listening is an art that you can master like any other craft but what I would emphasize is that always question your brain when critical listening. Sometimes you hear what you want to hear 🙂
You totally got me hahahaha. I was about say I totally hear a difference on my guitar to amplifier depending on quality and length of cable. The longer the cable the more high end is lost unless you use buffers. Great video per usual!
Also compare the thickness of those magic speaker cables with the thickness of wire used on the voice coils ? What problems are these cable manufacturers trying to solve ?
Do existe a couple of brain "different capabilities" that exemplify why some people can and others cannot hear minimal diferences in cables. One is called "amusia" who are people that cannot understand music besause their bran is uncapable of decoding music and they feel as noise the music, and the other condition is "cortical deafness", a problem when the person have normal pheriphereal hearing but his or her brain is uncapable of decoding languaje and the person is uncapable of understand spoken words. As well there good dancers, photographers, composers, violinist, etc. There are another with no talent, and simply sucks on these activities. Then Not all brains are the same, not all brains are well suited to hear differences in audio. I can hear differences on audio cables, for good or for bad, some very expensive cables like shunyata sound awfull for me, some others no. But I try to play violin or take good pictures with camera (I take photo a violin clases) and no talent there. here is the mesage: If you cannot hear differences in cables, do not invest on them your brain is not helping you. If you can the differences and like the audio hooby, is up to you to spend the money you earn as you like. greeings.
The only problem I ever found with cables is poor resistance on the ground shielding. It can cause interference and hum between audio equipment because of the voltage drop across the grounds.
Having watched your presentation, there are a number of comments I would like to make. However this is one of those oh so rare occasions where all that really needs to be said is: Yes, agreed and thank you. Oh and subscribed!
It’s a ton of confirmation bias. Audio pervs are a great example of it. When there’s complexity and lack of critical thinking then things like astrology and alt medicine start to grow deeper. Same w sound. It’s pretty sad plus doing science on super subjective experience is a huge task but, might not be quite possible, so measurements really do creat a more objective guid.
Hi John, Very well put. Your feelings/explanations make perfect sense. I listen to music. My recording of Quicksilver Messenger Service "Just For Love" is not a good recording, harsh. But it has been a favorite, and I listen to it often. Thanks
A good power amplifier setup would include the speaker wire in it's feedback. Better yet, if the speaker is included in the said feedback. Only the cable capacity to pass current is left to be dealt with. Unfortunately, I have never seen either of these up to now.
Very much depends on the system you should experiment with a naim system particularly the older ones unsure if they require a particular capacitance from their cables but poor cables really can strangle the sound on these systems.
I agree with your assessment on cables, as the actual conductor upon which the Electrons travel/flow as in dq/dt=I, allows the Electric and Magnetic Field components to establish in the Space outside of the conductor and the musical signal propagates, in what We would perceive as empty Space, via said Fields. NEVER mentioned is that the Electrons, NOT the signal, essentially drift, oft Times moving backwards as the conductor's crystal lattice is at room Temperature, vibrating constantly, and not being a Superconductor, Cooper's Pair formation doesn't exist, and said Electrons bounce off the vibrating crystal lattice. But, "Manufacturers", DO charge exorbitant prices for their conductors, some, in the tens of thousands of dollars. They're lousy at Physics but their marketing departments effectively wage PsyOps, on the unknowing public. As to all amps sounding the same I must whole heartedly disagree. I've built Class A amps with Hitachi MOSFETs in the output stage. Prior to long term listening, was required to place my multimeter in series with the output stage rail, set to Ammeter, and bias the Current from Zero, so the amp was running in Class AB initially. It didn't sound all that great, as I had music playing through the amp, while undergoing the biasing procedure. As the bias Current was adjusted upwards, 2 Amps of Current being the threshold for Class A operation, the music became much more palpable, focused, the high end airy and delicate, the Bass more timbrally correct, deeper, and midrange was holographically realistic. It was operating as the TopoIogist had designed it to, as a Class A circuit, sans transistor crossover distortion. The amp, being my first Class A amp, I had owned and listened to, as I refused to pay the 10,000 1970's dollars for a Stax Class A amp, and not being the most expensive Class A product either, had me disbelieving the quality, of sound, just by eliminating the extremely short Time span of ON/OFF operation and said ,"Notch distortion", associated with the Time required to turn off and then turn on, the output transistors of Class AB Topologies. Later learned this was why the more expensive Class AB designs operated at Class A at low levels. I had designed the power supply for the output stage to operate at a bias Current of 4 Amps to attain greater Power, with requisite alterations to heat sink surface area, filter Capacitance size and robustness, as the output stage PS was unregulated and with the capability of the toroid's, one per channel, to source Current, some 16 Amps, without issue. The input and driver stage had a separate toroid, and tightly regulated PS/channel. So, from mine and other's observation, would unequivocally state that Topology of the circuit is crucial and that all amps do not sound the same. Since, I have been building kits from Transcendent Sound, valve OTL's which are quite inexpensive compared to retail, pre built, OTL's. The sound of the Cathode connected directly to a loudspeaker terminal without the output transformer to match Impedance is on another level. I've performed blind testing for friends to observe their input and all have agreed with my assessment. At times I've lived in smaller houses where rooms become a definite issue. I've employed nearfield listening to help mitigate the effects. Sitting within about a meter+, of a 6 foot tall, push pull, dipole, line source, planar may seem counterintuitive, but surprisingly mitigated the image smearing of more conventional placement. Yet it is the music which is paramount, for me. I've thoroughly enjoyed BBC Concerts played through a table radio, back in the Day, especially the Pink Floyd's Hyde Park Broadcast from the early '70's and more recently Deep Purple's bootlegs captured from the same Time frame and listened through my laptop.
Crossover distortion is universally agree upon to be unpleasant, but does not occur in a properly adjusted AB amplifier. Biasing farther into class A can cause issues that can be interpreted as sounding better to some, and that includes higher harmonic distortion. Did you measure the harmonic distortion of the amp before and after increasing the bias?
@@IBuildIt No, I read what Nelson Pass wrote about the subject of increasing power in Class A designs. His recommendation about the amp, called the, "Lang Amp", still available documentation on line, published in the Audio Amateur, stating it was "The most advanced and elegant design, published so far including his own at the Time. I bought the PCB's and sourced parts and followed J Peter Moncreiff of TRT/Wonder Cap and Nelson's writings. My planars are rated at .1% THD @ 2 Watts, 1KHz for 92db, SPL and .35% THD at 200 Watts, 1 KHZ. My object was to build a loudspeaker/amplifier combination that would yield the same kind of experience as my Stax earspeakers. In that I succeeded. Contrasting the two transducers, I don't sense any euphonic 2nd Harmonic. Not saying its not there, but I grew up in a house with a Steinway Grand and play both acoustic and electric guitars, so I do have some ear, "Training", as to what to look for. Also took a year of Music Theory as my lightweight course at University, for my Applied Math/CS undergrad. But your point is extremely valid.
I should add the first iteration I built was biased at the 2 Amps bias Current and I didn't experience any noticeable difference in sound quality. But with the later iteration I employed the boutique circuit elements that cost minimum 10X as much and didn't experience any difference. Its why I now believe that Topology is the most important criteria in amplifier quality.
As much as I like and respect Nelson, he is more biased (see that?) toward the subjective side of things where amp design and performance is concerned. Which is, in my opinion not at all a bad or wrong way to be, but definitely has an impact on what he prefers to see happening. For example, he prefers to design amps that have very little feedback and class A bias makes that a lot easier to pull off. High idle current amps don't need as much feedback to help linearize the output stage. His argument against feedback is that it takes something essential away from the music, or at least throttles it in some way. I've had both classes of amps and haven't heard a notable difference in the same room through the same speakers. I've also ran amps at a higher idle current to compare directly and didn't hear a difference. But then there will always be a break - a delay in between the changes and audio memory isn't as reliable as many assume it is. The only truly reliable test is one that's immediate and blind, where the listener has no idea what he's listening to.
@@IBuildIt I agree about Nelson, vis a vis simplicity and euphony. Not always making for superior performance. Yet there are the kits that DIY Audio sell from Him that many find mesmerizing. Also, blind testing too, but I can remember note progression, pitch/ Frequency, the Fundamental. Timbre being the Harmonics, to a lesser degree is also a learned skill. Blind testing does require others become actively involved, and their experience/knowledge may not be adequate to the task. Especially when I'm laying out the bucks and Time to assemble hardware and my eyes aren't so great anymore. Point to point wiring to tube sockets, and lugs is becoming more difficult, even with magnification. My T-16 monobloc OTL's have 16, 6C19 PI (American designation), miniature triodes/channel, operating in Class AB with about 22 db of negative feedback. So, I'm not bound to any specific paradigm in this addictive, "Hobby". The tubes have a minimum 5000 hour lifespan, were manufactured at the Ulyanovsk factory, as voltage regulators in Soviet Military Avionics during the 70's. I bought 320 for $2.05 apiece delivered, from Russia. The monoblocs are superior in every respect to the Lang. The amps don't immediately jump out as better, but over Time, I can recognize that bandwidth, timbral accuracy, and to a lesser degree the soundstage, for me, offer a more musically satisfying performance. I'm done looking for the next best thing with regards to amplification, except TS's, 300B based Pinnacle monobloc OTL's. I'm driving the Stax with a Single Ended OTL, also from Transcendent Sound called the Mini Beast employing JJ Electronics, EL 509's(3/channel). My preamp is the 300B based Masterpiece kit. Before the Ukraine/Russian conflict the EL 509's were some 42 bucks and the Gold Lion 300B's were maybe 125 bucks. I haven't bothered to look at the costs since the EL 509's went to almost 80 bucks. I grew up with my Father's tube electronics but myself was indoctrinated by marketing departments and to some degree my first undergrad's coursework, into the BJT then MOSFET. Yet I find it interesting that I'm now using tubes so many years later, albeit in a vastly different topology.
Nice! So many items to discuss! Certainly not the most important, but re: Balanced, or Single Ended - Balanced exhibits strengths vs external noise, and single ended may exhibit superior internal noise characteristics. Also, balanced seperates the grounding avenue from signal avenues ... whereas single ended does not. Bottom line, as John suggested, execution is key, either approach can facilitate superb performance.
Hi John, yes hi fi cables they make some companies a lot of money with all the magic talk but if you look into it scientifically the cables that will make the most difference are the ones from your turntable to your pre amp if they where extended or the wrong type of cable used with a higher capacitance say of several hundred pF, as you know most moving magnet cartridges look for about 200pF loading so if you add a couple of hundred pF or more by extending cables or using the wrong type this will make the overall sound duller. As for loudspeaker cables generally the only thing that will effect them is the forward resistance causing loss, as for any added capacitance this should not effect any well designed power amplifier with a decent damping factor as the amplifiers output impedance will be very low so putting say hundreds of pF in parallel with this you would not notice. Most amplifiers have what known as a Zobel network across it's output anyway usually consisting of a 10ohm resistor in series wit a 0.1mF capacitor so that's a lot pF, so a few extra more won't make any difference to the sound quality. Anyway rant over for today, keep up the good work. Cheers Dave.
Hi Eric, all good quality turntable manufactures like the makes you have generally use low capacitance screened cable which has a thinner inner conductor with a wider dielectric material, this keeps the overall total capacitance down to a minimum, it is as I said only a problem if you try to extend them with normal screened cable like the stuff you find used on cheap interconnect cables. I measured the capacitance of the cables on my old Pioneer PL12D (without a cartridge fitted) and found it to be 56pF so I added another 150pF with the switches on my Quad pre amp to get to the 200pF recommended by Shure for the V15 that I use. Hope I didn't confuse you with my earlier message. Regards Dave. 😀 @@ericschulze5641
my audio dealer joe said he has some $1500 dollar cables that sound ten times better than my $200 cables and he can hear the difference immediately. he said they will transform my $800 speakers to sound like speakers costing thousands more. i think he is right i trust him and im going to give these cables a try wish me luck.
With analog signals, it's important to not be using garbage cable(cheap =/= garbage necessarily here) but there's not much point in using 100.00% molecular gold cable, if the wires inside the speaker/amp/etc that lead to the connectors on the back are garbage aluminum and not even copper.
i can agree with this, i do not looks for camps so i have little idea that it was this intense. seems like an invention of the internet. i do have some ideas about things that do not are commonly accepted. but it not that serious in the end. it is not like this hobby is serving any good on this planet, it is actually the opposite to a small degree.
I think what often happens is a person will have interconnects in their system. The interconnects will be in the same position for a year or more. They have not been cleaned, and neither have the jack's. So when those interconnects are removed, the contact point is broken. The dirt and possibly corrosion are displaced or removed. Then when you try the "new" interconnects, it is proclaimed "hey I can hear a difference"! You would have heard the same differences had you just cleaned the original interconnects and jack's. The Amazing Randi had a challenge with a big cash prize to anyone who could tell the difference between properly designed cables. Needless to say no one ever collected the prize. Of course the guy who hears his new pair of $5,000.00 interconnects is going to swear he hears a huge difference. Confirmation bias at its highest! I have been at this hobby over 40 years, I have not heard an expensive cable that was worth price, or a $50,000.00 amplifier that delivered performance commensurate to its price.
I saw a documentary once where a guy took the camera to the top of the CN tower. The communications hub of Ontario with just about every kind of amp, transmitter, repeater, receiver, etc is used. He pointed out that there was not one gold plated cable in the whole place despite high quality being demanded in there. Also see, the great Monster Cable scam....lol. Also another show where an electronic engineer measured the quality of signal going through HDMI cables. Seems the expensive fancy cables were no better, electronically, than the inexpensive generic ones.
I agree with your general philosophy for sure. Objective performance metrics are valid; we live a world, galaxy, universe that operates by the laws of physics as we observe them. The limitation and where potential discrepancies can exist is our limited ability to observe those objective performance metrics. So its within those limitations that people get polarized and take an entrenched stance and frankly people don't want to be moved from either camp. As in other politics people like their current tribe just fine and its all too easy to abuse statics or use dismissive cognitive dissonance to selectively choose which facts you choose to believe to reinforce the narrative you align with. Personally when it comes to audio I have no experience with cables but I have heard differences in amplifiers and DACs when really there shouldn't be based on what the known objective characteristics are. The first few times this happened it was as disappointing and confusing outcome but now I just roll with it and take a balanced view point that both subjective and objective matter and at some point objective measurements will catch up with our perceived subjective experience.
One slight disagree, I'd say in-between the two views rather than in the middle. In the middle you get dragged around by the extremes on both sides It's weird that it applies so much less in other areas. No one would argue that applying a filter to a picture can't increase the subjective enjoyment of the picture. But equally no one would argue that you can see difference in a picture that you can't measure. A picture is a literally only a set of measurements of light and recorded sound is literally just measurements of sound pressure
Comparably made amps sound different. I listened to many amps, all "high end" with similar specs and distortion figures and I can 100% say they sound different. Some had subtle difference while others were night and day. It would be intesting to see the IMD figures among various amps under the same load. I also would like to see all measurements under a real load (no speaker stays 4ohm over the freq range, complex impedance [magnitude and phase change]). It's my belief amps handle varying complex impedance differently, hence the sonic differences among them
Comparably made amps that EQ the signal might sound different (as I said in this video), but it most definitely can only be enough to be called subtle. To get a night and day difference it would have to be absolute junk, or broken.
Of course its worth it, your halving the cables impedance and separating the drivers frequencies at the amps output, on long lengths of cable of 12ft and over biwiring is the way to go, same principle as adding dropper wires to a model railway, without them the train will slow down after about 20feet therefore you need to push more voltage to make the train run properly, yes model railways run on AC today to carry the digital information to the decoders the rule is simple: copper cable for bass silver cable for treble when one cable tries to do everything thats when the problems arise silver cable carries high frequencies way more efficiently than copper copper cable is pretty hopeless at frequencies above 14khz biiring will cut distortion by half, thats its whole purpose. oil and water do not mix speakers work on AC not DC thats why biwiring works, if it was DC then yes it would be pointless. basically 2 sets of cable doing their job that theyre intended to. Its pointless biwiring on mini systems like the denon stuff because their speakers are not biwire compatible as theyre designed to be used no more than 5feet away from the amp, but for long lengths its a definate YES, in any case just do it, speaker cable is cheap even on mini systems inside the speakers will be both silver and copper cabling going to the drivers (if its a high quality hifi that is) In fact bi-amping is useless and destroys sound quality unless you have 2 finely tuned identical amplifiers with their volume levels and DC offsets set up 100% perfect. bi-amping is a complete pain in the backside and rarely gives good results.
Electrolytic copper (99.9% pure) is what it is, no difference if it is used in a cheap or an expensive cable. Oxygen-free may have a tiny bit better conductivity, but that´s easily achieved with a slightly thicker wire. I run 12-15ft of home-improvement-store-dirt-cheap 9 AWG between the screw terminals, that´s more than enough for 130WRMS (Yamaha RX-V473 to Indiana Line DJ 310).
usain bolt does need propper shoes to win a run. f1 needs propper tires matching to the race… i get your rating from what has the biggst affects. but let me tell you, the more quality your hifi system has, the more cables can make ALL the difference. such as any other equipment… i hear so many people „debunking“, talking about such effects, but many never really heard that effects on really really upper end systems. it will show u imeadiatly if the cable doesn’t work on it. it is so important! that doesnt mean a cable has to be dead end expensive. but they are so different…. in affecting the sound of your system. if you can afford it. go with propper cables! - always.
i measure product differences in a very simple way. If the only way to show something is better than something else is with expensive electronic measuring equipment. Then if you only want one, it make no sense to purchase the one you need a mortgage to purchase. Reason, with only one there is no comparison, only the "should I have bought the other one" syndrome.......The grass is greener........
a properly designed speaker is made for any normal room, somewhat flat on-axis and smooth off-axis. so this guy saying that a 50k speaker is affected the same way by the room as a $300 speaker is often not true. then you can go into horn or dipole`s that are even less affected by the room than any box speaker.
Before people spend a bunch of money on expensive cables, they should ask themselves what could possibly be added inside a cable to change the sound for the better and warrant the ridiculously high price? Is a cable really worth $5000 because a $2 component (basically the 3 components used in speaker crossovers) was added to the cable to degrade the sound (tone down your overly bright system which gives you listening fatigue)? Anyone with a modicum of electronics knowledge will tell you that a $500 power cable can't possible do anything to change the sound of your device. The only way expensive cables can make your system sound better, is if you don't buy them and rather spend the money on better gear.
Totally agree about the truth laying somewhere in between both extremes and not to take this hobby so seriously. Great Vid and sense of humour in the comments. Glad I found your channel. Subscribing! 🍻
I work as an industrial Maint tech i work on Multimillion dollar machines and Automated robotics systems and cables DO MATTER ' ESPICALLY THE SHIELDING ALL CABLES ARE BASICALLY a 📡 Antenna ' picking up lots of RF ' I do use cheaper cables but with hell of shielding and Oxygen free copper ' Or OCC ' Resitance condictance impedence matters ' Want an example of shielding🛡? I have wifi torque drills that operators use to incert metal threaded flanges into plastic substrates so part can be screwed into the body of the new C8 corvette without cracking the plastic sub straight but my huge injection molding press beside my Wifi torque guns puts out such a strong RF signal it messes my Torque guns up ! Losing signal constantly ! So much So we had to change usb cable with one heavily shielded ! And also shielded the transmitter as well So yeah cables do matter but not in terms of spending $ thousands of dollars that is just crazy !! I must admit great job on video lots of good ideas
One common thing I see that keeps rearing its head up every once in awhile in these conversations is when people are referencing equipment based on their experience. One would think that would be a fairly logical way to make critical choices but as we all know about synergizing the system what component works in one system may offer something completely different in another and may actually not be a great recommendation like one may think or vice versa.
My favorite audiophile snake oil product is the "audiophile-grade" ethernet switches. Apparently no one told them that RJ45 ethernet is already galvanically isolated
You should also be careful about the city electric supply. Nuclear reactors sound very dynamic but a little synthetic while hydroelectric power plants sound natural and deep :))
That's the usual thing that audiophiles say to explain the difference they think they hear, but others can't. It's simply not true. "Midfi" is a word invented by audiophiles to distinguish themselves from what they think of as less refined listeners. It's an elitist term, in other words, designed to make you feel superior because you have true hifi equipment, and denigrate others that don't. Classic human behavior.
GIGO, garbage in, garbage out. It's ALL critical. Different amps definitely sound differently. Cables absolutely sound differently if the system has sufficient resolution. Instrumentation will probably soon have sufficient power, to crunch numbers, to measure sufficient data points that they will be able to interpret all the subtleties of sound to the degree human hearing is able to. Measuring amplitude with an oscilloscope, or even spectrum with a spectrum analyzer does not begin to reflect sound as captured, and interpreted by human hearing. Until such time that we have that ability, unfortunately we are pretty much stuck with the subjective. It's my understanding that we are close to the point where you'll be able to compare inputs and outputs to a point where given reasonable equipment, you'll be able to pretty accurately reproduce the recording. The system will play a sample, to self calibrate, then delay the output in order to apply correction to it resulting in as perfect reproduction that you'll be able to get with the equipment and the room you have. If you don't have say 20K strategically invested in equipment, and often even if you have much more invested, cables may have nominal, if even noticable, effects. If you have $100,000 speakers, and a Tonka toy DAC, I don't care what you do with your room or speakers, your system is going to suck. Electronics generally get less expensive and are higher quality over time. I don't believe that stereo has reflected that norm, likely due to there being a smaller user base. The less sold, the higher the cost. After 40 some years in this hobby, mostly chasing my tail, I can assure you that rather than buying this, to compensate that, slow down and save until you can afford neutral equipment. The only way amplifiers sound the same is if your system lacks resolution. If your system lacks resolution, you might want to reconsider whether you are really the guy to be telling others what is what. I graduated from radio and television broadcasting gear to networking equipment. Like cables there are multiple types of fiber. Some is decidedly better than others, but using the best fiber with marginal switches, and the inverse is a waste. A complete waste, unless you have plans to upgrade the weaker elements of your system. It's tedious to hear that only speakers or only speakers and rooms matter. As the audiophiliac, who I often differ with strongly said, if the want better speakers, upgrade your electronics. Regardless how great your speakers, they cannot make a piss poor signal sound good.
One thing I'm sure of, and that's we as a species will never gain the full benefit of our ability to be rational, when so many are brimming with confidence in their self deception.
@IBuildIt you should know. I am a technician, and I understand the limits of my test equipment. Having been a cable denier, I found myself capable of admitting my mistake. Same for capacitors, tubes, even resistors. To one degree or another they all effect sound.
You claim expertise, yet are prone to irrational thinking, just like that doctor. I didn't ask the doctor for proof, but if you have any that's real I'll look at it.
Ok it is like someone trying to sell you "good water" for several hundred dollars/liter claiming it would make your health better. Discussing this issue on the basis of the question "does water make a difference" is of no use. You need context. Good water is of course very very important. (afteral It is the most important chemical for life) But it is also cheap It only makes a difference if your water is bad.. And spending a lot is not justified with that discussion ..
In TODAY'S audio world, cables may not matter much. However! Ask an old school audiophile does cables matter!!!!. They most certainly did. Because when dealing with above basic grade audio and having an EAR for sound, one HAD to have the correct cabling or else your sound suffered.There aren't any bonafide audiophiles around anymore much. They are eith dead or in the mid 60s and over and don't get into audio,video like they use to because their community is gone for the most part.
This is 💯 BS aaaaa you got me lol good one !! Yes I would not spend thousands on cables but yes I definitely do matter you got me good on this one my man.
Another INTRENET TH-cam guru. Lots of truth in his video, however I know from experience that some power cables can make a difference. In my case it was a BIG difference on the DIGITAL. Not going to go into details/ Don't want to be viewed a an advertiser.
Respectfully, many of your assertions you make may have some layers of truth in mid fi level audio but are woefully inaccurate when it comes to components and networked cables I utilize and TEST some of which I built to specifically NOT adhere to the ugly distortions so many have settled for even in the supposed ultra high end.
To recap, all of the electronic components, which includes the cables used to connect them, are at the bottom of the list. The list I'm referring to is the list of factors that you can change that make the biggest difference in sound quality.
This is about sound quality that you'll get listening in your room.
All competently made components will sound alike, and any differences will be too small to hear. This does not include equipment that has been "voiced" to sound a certain way, as in amps that have been designed to have more harmonic distortion or cables that intentionally degrade the signal. Both of these instances can result in SUBTLE differences, but do so by actually putting out a technically worse result. However, the ear likes what the ear likes, so "worse" in this instance can be a matter of taste and opinion. And remember that the ear is connected to a brain that interprets what it's getting and is therefore heavily influenced by what that brain wants to hear.
What really drives the truly subjectivity based audiophile to buy these products is the reputation of the products and the idea that in order to be in the club, you need to have it. The club I'm talking about is the one where all the coolest audiophiles hang out and brag about the gear they have and talk about how wonderful it sounds, and look down on anyone who isn't in the club.
Of course this "club" isn't (usually) anything official, as in an organized association of members, but you know you are in if you buy the right things.
Next up is the recordings and they can range from terrible to amazing. Even though the quality of the recording is largely out of your control, you can decide to be selective and not listen to the ones that sound bad. Or, and this is what I do, you can try to ignore how bad they are because you love listening to them.
Speakers are where you'll find a lot of variability in how they can sound and the differences can range from subtle (for models in the same price range, typically) to very wide. Speakers that measure the "same" can sound much different, depending on a number of factors. For example I've always preferred the presentation of larger speakers to smaller ones, even when they mostly sound the same. To me, and I'm not completely ruling out a psychological influence, the larger speaker with larger drivers delivers the sound with more authority and presence. Presence being the "it feels more real" - note "feels", not "sounds".
Other factors are how the low end is handled, whether the speaker is sealed or vented or dipole.
This is why any attempt to judge the sound quality of speakers with measurements alone is a fool's game - you have to listen to them to really know how they sound.
Lastly at the very top of the list of factors that impact sound quality is the room you'll be listening in. And it's ironic that even today, it's the one factor that is ranked the least important to most audiophiles. In fact most completely ignore it (and that includes the lab coat objectivity based ones) and will go to great lengths to deny its significance. Instead they'll spend money on things from the bottom of the list thinking the greatest differences can be realized there.
The room is the biggest wild card because there is so much about it that can affect sound quality. From the size of the room to the shape and the makeup of the walls and what's in the room - all will have orders of magnitude more influence on sound quality than all of the electronics put together.
And , also ironically, it's the one that you have the most control over, yet is almost universally ignored.
I spent nearly a full year treating my listening room and I can say without any doubt that the year spent was one of the best investments I've ever made. Since completion I've been using that room every single day. I spend all of my evenings there, from 5 in the afternoon until 10 at night, and sometimes longer.
So I have that to compare - treated to untreated, unlike most audiophiles. They THINK they know what it's like, mainly because they heard (and look for) someone else say that it isn't needed or that it "ruins" the sound, being "too dead".
I will say that a treated room is something you need to get used to, but when you do you'll never want to go back. I know I haven't.
balanced and un balanced do make a difference
Not if each are done properly. Balanced is used to reduce noise that can be picked up by long cables, but if your cables are short enough and shielded properly (and your equipment is competently made), there won't be any difference.
So I guess you won't be making any cable risers anytime soon. 😉
I designed cable risers to feature in a parody video, and also to sell for some ridiculous price to see if there would be any takers.
I would say I had my doubts to begin with, but was completely blown away when I actually tried them. And as a result I'm going to be making a limited, numbered and signed run of them to sell to discerning audiophiles out there.
@@IBuildIt Please describe "blown away"
I fully agree - cables don't matter, loudspeakers matter a lot. However there are many cable quacks out there.
Polarized thinking is a problem in our little audio community and certainly in the world today as a whole and it tends to lead to tribalism. Great video, John. We couldn't be more aligned. Thanks.
We are tribal by nature as a species. That’s not debatable, unless you can’t define what is a woman? Regardless, it’s a matter of dialogue and debate in which “truth” is found. IMO. Lol
You are a brave soul to enter this fray. I appreciate a voice of reason. Thanks.
I dont see it as brave. John is saying it exactly like it is. Common sense, experience and factual. No agenda or bias.
Not true. Expensive or exotic speaker cables always appeals to non critical thinkers who don't have the technical aptitude to understand what problems it actually solves !!
Two other components (no pun intended) of audiophoolery: 1) “my senses and hearing are so advanced that I can hear things that are too subtle to be detected with plebeian hearing abilities like yours” and 2) a straightforward ego/testosterone male competition over who has the most fancy crap or more money.
So you think everyone has the same hearing ability? I don’t personally have a great ear, but for me to think that if I can’t hear it no one can is simply wrong. I recently had a professional race car driver take me for a lap on the racetrack in my car. After just one lap he told me my right rear tire was about 1 psi low, he was correct. I am unable to detect such sultalties, but clearly others can. I design and build speakers as a hobby, I have had people listen to them and be able to tell my the crossover point of my mid to tweeter, I can’t do that and I know the crossover point.
High-end expensive cables definitely make a difference... a negative difference to the pocketbooks of the people buying them and a positive difference to the pocketbooks of the people selling them. That pretty much covers all the differences.
You actually "went there" on cables! When I first set up my system I used 18 gauge "alarm wire" as I had a lot left over from my CNC build. When I was ready to start tuning my system and room I made up "proper" cables with Canare 4S11 cable and "Speakon" connectors. The sound was slightly different and to my ears, better. Cost per cable ( about 1 m long ) including connectors was under $15. I think that this was a good balance between the two camps. BTW I came across a gem that I was not aware of, "Where Hides Sleep" by Alison Moyet. I really enjoyed her stuff while she was with Vincent Clarke as Yazoo ( Yaz on this side of the pond ).
Very true about great equipment in bad rooms = a lackluster experience. Treating a room is usually not cheap (done properly) but is still a better investment than in outrageously expensive gear that disappoints in a poor listening environment. As always, a very honest perspective on “delicate” controversial audio narratives.
best take on this subject i've seen yet, seriously.
I buy a good cable in bulk length and the connectors and make my own cables. Always haven always will. Great video.
Hi John, I was wondering when are we going to hear your new equipment? Regardless of how you think it sounds it would be great to still hear it. Thanks and keep up the great job
My next video deals with that a bit, and then the one after will actually have a recorded sample of the sound - my open baffle speakers with the new active amplifier.
@@IBuildIt I’m looking forward to seeing it and hearing it. Nice job on the open baffle speakers
Thank you John for your tips, tricks, and perspectives. The elephant in the room of each and ever audiophile is the variability in their biological system compared to the standard of a person with perfect pitch and perfect 20 -20000 Hz hearing. Add to this the structure of the outer ear audio collection into the brain circuitry the yields the audio perception we all call music. I believe that to achieve audio file quality in today's level of engineering and available tools makes the difference between budget and uber high cost systems quite narrow. It is a great time to be alive as an music lover!
Never restrict yourself to the 20-20000Hz range.
I can demonstrate the difference between a system designed within those limits and a system that goes from 10 to 30000Hz. It's not only to do with what the listener hears. It's a lot to do with what they feel.
Using sub-audible and ultra-audible sound is not new, certain artists have been using it for decades. The problem for us techies is, have you got enough power to move enough air for the audience to feel it? Down around 10-12Hz that's a tough one.
Go to a show at Ushuäia, Ibiza and tell me if they got it right or not. Just sayin
No one has perfect 20 - 20,000 Hz hearing (F-M curves) rather each persons FR hearing response is different depending on the factors described above - outer ear geometry, inner ear bones, ear drum, et al. One easy test is to take your ear lobes and push them out from your head and hear the increase in midrange - this is real as the ear now gathers in more sound in these frequencies. So if the person "next door" has ears that stick out father naturally, he/she may well hear sound differently than you.
I've always loved the notion that "science can't explain everything we hear". I counter "what are you hearing that science can't explain"?
Spot on... there's lots of caveats in between (like impedance matching between equipment and also speakers, well-designed/made equipment)... Cables can have very subtle differences, and sources/amps do have sonic signatures, but as long as the fundamentals are in place, the big differences are in speakers, speaker placement and the room itself (and also matching a system to your typical listening volume). Like you, I'm a diyer and in the middle.
Can you please provide a link to a good audio cable?
Hey John, you left off power supplies and "conditioners". Any thoughts on these and where they would fall in your ranking?
John Dunlavy got raked across the coals for basically saying the same thing 25 or 30 years ago. He knew how to make incredible speakers, but saying cables made little or no difference was audiophile heresy. He decided to make his own cables that measured about as perfectly as you could ask just to show the doubters, then they accused him of trying to have it both ways.
What cable would you recommend for 232 trs balanced monitors being hooked into a interface? I’m only finding 14 foot ones and I keep reading about how bad it’s is to use cables 20+ feet.
People have a tendancy to think that big companies have done expensive research and somehow have evidence that their claims are true.
Amplifiers:
The controversy over tubes vs solid state presists. When response, modulation distortion and transient intermodulation distortion are below certain levels (< 1%) there should be no audible difference.
Speaker wires:
It can be solid, stranded, copper, oxygen free copper, silver, etc.--or even "magic" wire--as long as the resistance is kept to be less than 5% of the speaker impedance. There is no listening difference as long as the wire is of adequate size. Bear in mind, a well-designed amplifier will not have a problem with any of these wires.
CD players:
In the 1980's, people spoke of experiencing "no air" and "aggression" while listening to digital recordings. Today we understand the principles which are fundamental to this phenomenon, we name it Jitter, we test it, calculate it and dress it with numbers, systemize it and describe it entirely. Jitter has always been and still is the worst enemy of the digital audio format. And today it is understood.
Fact: Digital audio data is 'just' 0's and 1's. There may be many formats (.wav, .aif, CD-audio) but the information is still digital. There is no loss during format conversion, provided the formats don't utilize compression.
Fact: Copying CD's (if they aren't damaged physically) is a lossless procedure. You can extract CD-audio with your computer and generate a file on your hard disk. Compare this file with the file created when you extract the same audio using a $30,000 player, the resulting two files are identical.
The question which naturally arises out of this paradox is: why does the $30,000 player sound better?
Before we answer that question, let us first understand that at the Digital Out of a $100 CD-player we have the same 1's and 0's as we do in the $30,000 player. The only difference is in the Jitter content. Jitter only means that the data (the 1's and the 0's) is not perfectly time-aligned, but is transmitted either slightly earlier or later than it should be in the ideal case. However, this time flaw is not as great as to cause a digital error (data fallout).
Now if you know that, then you must ask: so why does one CD-transport cost much more than another? Ah, Jitter. The cheap ones shake and the expensive ones don't.
Well, that's true. The entire audio business of CD transports and DACs is built on the totally backward setup of the CD player containing the Master Clock and the DAC being the Slave. This results in the entire palette of innovations to lessen Jitter, starting from air drives to expensive digital cable technologies with complex math to reduce line-induced Jitter, to very carefully filtered power supplies, to all sorts of very necessary things when you want to achieve the least possible Jitter. So we have the worst possible digital scenario bringing in the most possible amount of money, because it is extremely difficult to annihilate Jitter when the CD player is the Master Clock. If you're looking for quality, this is stupid, to say the least!
The whole setup should be different. As is the standard case in any pro-audio studio, it is always the playing device, the DAC, which is the Master Clock. The clock is located right next to the converter chips. That way, no line induced Jitter can appear. This clock signal is then taken from the DAC device and is used as the clock input of the signal source device, say the computer, the DAT player, or the CD player. Yes, in that setup, the CD player is receiving a more jittered clock than the DAC is, but that doesn't matter, because the DAC is doing the audio playing. When the Jittered audio signal arrives at the DAC, it is quantized into place temporally and is then played, in perfect synch with the clock oscillator, which is right next to it.
But oh! In that case, you can use a $100 CD-player with a very poor power supply, a digital cable made from your average household extension cord, and still get a better sound than you'd be getting if you spent $30,000 on the best transport and digital cable! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, this is the naked, uncensored, plain truth about CD players and DACs. Their Master/Slave relationship is BACKWARDS and their prices therefore HIGH.
If you don't believe this, then all you need to do is record digitally your favorite tune from a $100 CD player into your computer (provided you have a soundcard and software that doesn't add yet more lies into the equation, which is often the case, so beware!) Then borrow the most expensive CD transport you can get your hands on and repeat the experiment. The resulting sound files aren't just similar, they are identical!
But the $30,000 player sounds better! How do you get them to sound the same? You only need to slave the transports to a DAC in Digital Master Mode. That's it. Identical sound, guaranteed. The least possible Jitter. The least loss.
For a "carpenter" you're q pretty good audio guy!
An even better carpenter for an audiophile!
John, since you did so much work on the sound treatment in your place, and the truth about rooms from that conference, I have a favor to ask... If you've got time, please take a look at the couple videos I've got with my new listening area/studio in it and let me know if you spot anything I can do to improve it. Thanks in advance!
My recent video titles "Why did I buy this crap" goes through the basics of room treatment, and also gives a link to a channel with good, dependable info on the topic.
Spot ON!!! I believe in everything you say in this video. I like your philosophy regarding audio and I have seen a lot of content from you. I try to stay in the middle as well, but there are difficulties to stay sober when you start to watch raving reviews on YT... As you put it and to my ears: No1 = Speakers/room and listening position. No2 = Decent electronics and cables =====> Done! Most sadly is that I cannot listen to badly recorded music anymore regardless of how "good" the actual song is. Bad recording techniques suits the car or radio in the kitchen, but not in my main rig where I listen carefully :) Keep up your good work in bringing balance in this crazy Audio industry.
Just saying 'this works' and his doesn't work'is not very scientifc.
Just saying ; difference are just your bias'is actually a very biased, unscientific statement.
I do agree that a cable can only 'damage' the sound. It cannot create what is not here.
How the power supply is built and how the preamp is refenced is all the maters. So long as your cable meets the specification, ya good.
Lets see if people will hate the video because they have just read the title without looking the video. lol
I think your "room treatment guide" in the second half of the video is really on point. I think a lot of people including me have argued with you under the last videos because you gave the simplified opinion:"speaker directivity unimportant but room important" or at least it felt that way.
I will make another argument even though i think i fully agree with what seems to be your opinion on room treatment speakerplacements and so on.
In the lower midrange say 300hz there really are two problems which ad up. One is the room reflections and the other is the omnidirectional directivity of almost all speakers at these frequencys.
A great way of improving this in an untreated room are cardioids. 15db rear rejection makes a huge difference and by building a d'appolito constrution with 2 woofers per side you essentially get 4 cardioid subwoofers with different path lenghts so even less room modes and increased horizontal directivity while still beeing a point source. The german manufacturer ME Geithain does this since 40 years and today there are several highly regarded manufacturers using it. Here is a review of one of their speakers unfortunately in german but there are inroom measurements with and without cardioid:
www.me-geithain.de/de/assets/media/products/studio/RL901K/RL901K-Einlageblatt.pdf
Of course this can not replace room treatment but its a whole lot easier to do than putting 40cm of rockwool on your walls.
The audio industry really is weird. The most useful things like speakerplacement or room treatment are never talked about but cables, dacs and amps are all the rage. There are hundreds of threads on audiosciencereview where people "argue" about dacs while beeing of the same opinion but nobody really can explain how to place a certain type of speaker. It really is like: "all speakers with good spinorama will always sound good" which also is not the case.
You seem to be a bit fixated on "directivity" and the idea that I said it isn't important.
I didn't say that.
I said that it isn't as important as it's being made out to be. That doesn't mean it isn't important at all.
It's supposed to be more important in a highly reflective room, but if you are truly serious about getting the best sound quality possible, you need to start doing some effective room treatment that will limit how much those reflections affect the sound.
In a treated room, you are hearing much more of the direct sound from the speaker and off-axis response becomes less important.
As for cardioid speakers, this is a concept that's been taken from the world of pro audio that's highly effective in large venue sound, and may not be effective at all in a small room. Since I haven't personally tested it, I can't say for certain. But I do know that large rooms behave MUCH differently than small ones, and the things that work in a large room may not work at all in a small one.
I just think today distortion is mostly a solved problem at hifi levels and the most important factor for speakers in it self is lets just say a radiation pattern fitting to the room. So i think we are on the same page as far as "speakers and the room need to be considered as a system"
I mentioned cardioids because i think they are a great way to tinker. It really is just small box with slots in the back and rockwool or preferably basotect to dampen the rear wave of a dipole. The slotsize and amount of dampening determines how much sound is radiated at the back. The box acts as a folded baffle so your base rolloff works similar to a dipole but it goes lower. Its not the wizardry people in audioforums make it out to be but i think its a small step in improving speakers which are placed in relative proximity to walls because roommodes will always be a problem even in treated listening room, but of course lesser so.
Been loving these explainer videos, John. Your way of explaining things is really lovely and that treated room of yours...so amazing!
You are right on John! The great thing about Audio today is, you can audition a piece of gear or a cable from a reputable dealer and if it doesn’t work for your room send it back. I just auditioned a pair of Maggie’s LRS + and they did not sound even closely as good as my GR Reseach DIY NX Studios. So I sent them back and got a refund. No matter the hype or the measurements just try stuff in your room! Room treatment is half of the battle for good sound. I have a 10 by 12 small listening room and I played around with diffusers, absorbers and combinations of both and now my little room sounds like I am in a castle! Treatment costs less than gear. Thanks John
It's like many politicians: tell lots of generic truths and sneakily slip in something you want people to agree with you, and they will nod in agreement without realizing.
In the face of emotions, no amount of reasoning or logic has any meaning.
Audio equipment and setup: in the hands of a capable and experienced audiophile the same equipmemt sounds a lot better in the same way a good photographer can make better use of his/her equipment compared to a rooky.
In the end, it's you yourself that makes the biggest difference.
Too true. HiFi and audio hobby is probably the one with the highest amount of placebo compared to any other hobby.
And yet, we still have so called “reviewers and influencers” who ‘listen to the DAC’ for comparison purposes. The amount of bullsh*t they come up with is mind-numbing. I twitch a little every time I come across a post or a video about that. :-(
Especially when I hear things like "more open sound" or some other crap I mostly stop listening.
I love the woody sound that comes from my DAC... Guitar gear may give audiophiles a run for their money...
I listened to a review of my original Pioneer receiver that I bought in the 1970's and found out it didn't have a good "sound stage" now I'm questioning 40 years of life decisions...
I can see a speaker cable riser build video coming in the future. Now I expect a comparison between at least 10 different species of wood for the speaker cable risers, including North American, South American, European, African, and Eastern woods. Joinery of the cable riser will be a determining factor as well. We need dovetail, half laps, and bridle joints comparisons. Heck I believe there could be a significant difference in the sound of a speaker cable riser constructed from your finger joint jig versus Matthias's jig. So lets definitely do that comparison. With your woodworking skills this shouldn't be a difficult video to create.
We are not sure if you are saying this with irony or not... If not, you have not listened to John at all. Cable risers are for the "Subjetive party".
@@martinlindberg1983 I can assure you that I'm being a total smart-ass. I thought that would be easy to discern reading my ridiculous comments. Although it might be difficult to differentiate between my ridiculous comments and an actual audiophile's. If I had the time and resources to provide the public with the proper data that debunks most of the audio file jargon I would definitely pursue it. Starting with Speaker Cable Risers, possibly the most ridiculous claims from Audiophiles.I hope everyone that reads my comment had a good laugh at the thought of cable risers.
Your honesty and directness are much appreciated. I have a budget system leveraging used equipment values and located in a vaulted 19 foot ceiling 25 foot square room. Very happy with the results. I can experience 3 dimensionality and can hear a good recording from an inferior one. This from a 70 yo carpenter. Denon AVR 125 watt pc running in stereo from the goodwill for $25. Energy Connoisseur C8 $500 Craigslist. JBL 12” Sub. $100. Substantial cables and wires from Amazon $40. Spotify streaming. No, I haven’t upgraded my electrical service from aluminum to copper as seen in some audio nutter’s TH-cam.
Ah, sense prevails! (By the way you "conducted" this video magnificently.) I find the blather that some audiophiles come out with, is like listening to an art critic mistaking a litter bin for a masterpiece and then trying to justify it. Your stuff is great John
Ha ha!
Top comment!!!
Good video John. I have actually stopped people in my room in RMAF from switching magic cables in and out for dollar store cables. A good cable conducts an electrical signal with fidelity. That is not rocket science. Been done for many decades. The rest is spot on. Learn how to treat your room is number one. ANd it need not be expensive. It is doable as a DIY project. There are great online resources as to how to do it.
Mark
I get the impression from some people that they think that the science behind audio reproduction is something that was discovered growing on the side of a tree somewhere, and that we still haven't quite figured out how it works, yet.
They don't grasp that it was built completely by man from the ground up and is thus fully understood.
@@IBuildIt Audio is quite worked out. We know what does what, and with a little intelligence we can do it. With a little applied math we can reproduce what we can record. And a little attention paid to the details, and we can create a rather convincing image of people playing music for us.
Mark
When I was first getting in to audio 30 years ago, I thought I could make a better cable for cheaper. I heard from work the benefits of twisted pair, so I made some twisted pair cable out of industrial shielded twisted pair cable with RCA cable ends. What I did not understand was that the audio I was connecting was single ended and twisted pair is better when driven differentially. Boy was I surprised, it sounded awful ,the sound was choked down. I threw that all away and bought some nice cables, and heard no difference than what was in the box. Then got a better cd player and heard so much more faint audio than I could hear with my run of the mill Sony. That was the only time I heard a difference in cables going from good to bad with homemade cables.
Always appreciate your practical commentary, and also your actual experience and background on things like this. In regard to 'possibly degrading the signal': that is a measurable AND audible function? I use to work in commercial photography, and would tether the digital camera to computer via USB (older days with mini-USB A). We had to use a specific BRAND usb cable to avoid the tether program from dropping out/no longer seeing the camera connected. If we used a generic cable, the program wouldn't see the camera; plug in the special $65 10' cable and the camera/computer worked great-never an issue. This lead me to believe that there 'could' be a difference in audio tonal qualities from at least inter-connects and digital cables. But in audio, the same thing would basically happen (at least with digital cables) things would either 'work' or not, like the camera-computer connection?
The whole interconnect thing was not a thing until the hifi industry figured out it was a new opportunity to peddle overpriced trinkets to customers who don't understand electrical engineering. The interconnect thing is not really a thing in professional audio including the recording studios where the recordings originate which audiophiles then claim are vastly modified by their hyper expensive cables.
Of course there are miniscule changes to the signal from interconnects but in any decently made interconnect they will be way below the threshold of audibility.
I do suspect that some interconnect companies may be including components into their interconnects to create passive filters with the aim of giving some kind of tone control. And that seems to be what the audiophiles are after - tone controls without actually having tone controls on the amp, because tone controls are evil.
I have always been one to lean on the science, but sometimes my ears tell the “truth!” (*our own perceived objective truth) Thanks for always being subjective and objective in your videos!
'Don't take it so seriously: it's only audio' 🙂. Substitute audio with a whole list of topics and this would still be the best possible advice. That, and keeping an open mind. Love these videos 👌👌👌
This pretty much aligns with my my experience in domestic audio playback. Listening is an art that you can master like any other craft but what I would emphasize is that always question your brain when critical listening. Sometimes you hear what you want to hear 🙂
You totally got me hahahaha. I was about say I totally hear a difference on my guitar to amplifier depending on quality and length of cable. The longer the cable the more high end is lost unless you use buffers. Great video per usual!
Or because you can walk farther away
The most powerful drug on the planet is a placebo.
Also compare the thickness of those magic speaker cables with the thickness of wire used on the voice coils ? What problems are these cable manufacturers trying to solve ?
Do existe a couple of brain "different capabilities" that exemplify why some people can and others cannot hear minimal diferences in cables. One is called "amusia" who are people that cannot understand music besause their bran is uncapable of decoding music and they feel as noise the music, and the other condition is "cortical deafness", a problem when the person have normal pheriphereal hearing but his or her brain is uncapable of decoding languaje and the person is uncapable of understand spoken words. As well there good dancers, photographers, composers, violinist, etc. There are another with no talent, and simply sucks on these activities. Then Not all brains are the same, not all brains are well suited to hear differences in audio. I can hear differences on audio cables, for good or for bad, some very expensive cables like shunyata sound awfull for me, some others no. But I try to play violin or take good pictures with camera (I take photo a violin clases) and no talent there. here is the mesage: If you cannot hear differences in cables, do not invest on them your brain is not helping you. If you can the differences and like the audio hooby, is up to you to spend the money you earn as you like. greeings.
The only problem I ever found with cables is poor resistance on the ground shielding. It can cause interference and hum between audio equipment because of the voltage drop across the grounds.
Having watched your presentation, there are a number of comments I would like to make.
However this is one of those oh so rare occasions where all that really needs to be said is: Yes, agreed and thank you.
Oh and subscribed!
It’s a ton of confirmation bias. Audio pervs are a great example of it. When there’s complexity and lack of critical thinking then things like astrology and alt medicine start to grow deeper. Same w sound. It’s pretty sad plus doing science on super subjective experience is a huge task but, might not be quite possible, so measurements really do creat a more objective guid.
I think I’ll just sit down in my comfortable chair and enjoy the music….
Thanks for another great video John.
Hi John, Very well put. Your feelings/explanations make perfect sense. I listen to music. My recording of Quicksilver Messenger Service "Just For Love" is not a good recording, harsh. But it has been a favorite, and I listen to it often. Thanks
A good power amplifier setup would include the speaker wire in it's feedback.
Better yet, if the speaker is included in the said feedback.
Only the cable capacity to pass current is left to be dealt with.
Unfortunately, I have never seen either of these up to now.
You can put race fuel in a Toyota Corolla, but it's still a Toyota Corolla.
A LOT of sense in this video you crazy fool! Spot on, happy to hear it. 😊
Very much depends on the system you should experiment with a naim system particularly the older ones unsure if they require a particular capacitance from their cables but poor cables really can strangle the sound on these systems.
I agree with your assessment on cables, as the actual conductor upon which the Electrons travel/flow as in dq/dt=I, allows the Electric and Magnetic Field components to establish in the Space outside of the conductor and the musical signal propagates, in what We would perceive as empty Space, via said Fields. NEVER mentioned is that the Electrons, NOT the signal, essentially drift, oft Times moving backwards as the conductor's crystal lattice is at room Temperature, vibrating constantly, and not being a Superconductor, Cooper's Pair formation doesn't exist, and said Electrons bounce off the vibrating crystal lattice. But, "Manufacturers", DO charge exorbitant prices for their conductors, some, in the tens of thousands of dollars. They're lousy at Physics but their marketing departments effectively wage PsyOps, on the unknowing public.
As to all amps sounding the same I must whole heartedly disagree. I've built Class A amps with Hitachi MOSFETs in the output stage. Prior to long term listening, was required to place my multimeter in series with the output stage rail, set to Ammeter, and bias the Current from Zero, so the amp was running in Class AB initially. It didn't sound all that great, as I had music playing through the amp, while undergoing the biasing procedure. As the bias Current was adjusted upwards, 2 Amps of Current being the threshold for Class A operation, the music became much more palpable, focused, the high end airy and delicate, the Bass more timbrally correct, deeper, and midrange was holographically realistic. It was operating as the TopoIogist had designed it to, as a Class A circuit, sans transistor crossover distortion. The amp, being my first Class A amp, I had owned and listened to, as I refused to pay the 10,000 1970's dollars for a Stax Class A amp, and not being the most expensive Class A product either, had me disbelieving the quality, of sound, just by eliminating the extremely short Time span of ON/OFF operation and said ,"Notch distortion", associated with the Time required to turn off and then turn on, the output transistors of Class AB Topologies. Later learned this was why the more expensive Class AB designs operated at Class A at low levels. I had designed the power supply for the output stage to operate at a bias Current of 4 Amps to attain greater Power, with requisite alterations to heat sink surface area, filter Capacitance size and robustness, as the output stage PS was unregulated and with the capability of the toroid's, one per channel, to source Current, some 16 Amps, without issue. The input and driver stage had a separate toroid, and tightly regulated PS/channel.
So, from mine and other's observation, would unequivocally state that Topology of the circuit is crucial and that all amps do not sound the same.
Since, I have been building kits from Transcendent Sound, valve OTL's which are quite inexpensive compared to retail, pre built, OTL's. The sound of the Cathode connected directly to a loudspeaker terminal without the output transformer to match Impedance is on another level. I've performed blind testing for friends to observe their input and all have agreed with my assessment.
At times I've lived in smaller houses where rooms become a definite issue. I've employed nearfield listening to help mitigate the effects. Sitting within about a meter+, of a 6 foot tall, push pull, dipole, line source, planar may seem counterintuitive, but surprisingly mitigated the image smearing of more conventional placement.
Yet it is the music which is paramount, for me. I've thoroughly enjoyed BBC Concerts played through a table radio, back in the Day, especially the Pink Floyd's Hyde Park Broadcast from the early '70's and more recently Deep Purple's bootlegs captured from the same Time frame and listened through my laptop.
Crossover distortion is universally agree upon to be unpleasant, but does not occur in a properly adjusted AB amplifier.
Biasing farther into class A can cause issues that can be interpreted as sounding better to some, and that includes higher harmonic distortion. Did you measure the harmonic distortion of the amp before and after increasing the bias?
@@IBuildIt No, I read what Nelson Pass wrote about the subject of increasing power in Class A designs. His recommendation about the amp, called the, "Lang Amp", still available documentation on line, published in the Audio Amateur, stating it was "The most advanced and elegant design, published so far including his own at the Time. I bought the PCB's and sourced parts and followed J Peter Moncreiff of TRT/Wonder Cap and Nelson's writings. My planars are rated at .1% THD @ 2 Watts, 1KHz for 92db, SPL and .35% THD at 200 Watts, 1 KHZ. My object was to build a loudspeaker/amplifier combination that would yield the same kind of experience as my Stax earspeakers. In that I succeeded. Contrasting the two transducers, I don't sense any euphonic 2nd Harmonic. Not saying its not there, but I grew up in a house with a Steinway Grand and play both acoustic and electric guitars, so I do have some ear, "Training", as to what to look for. Also took a year of Music Theory as my lightweight course at University, for my Applied Math/CS undergrad. But your point is extremely valid.
I should add the first iteration I built was biased at the 2 Amps bias Current and I didn't experience any noticeable difference in sound quality. But with the later iteration I employed the boutique circuit elements that cost minimum 10X as much and didn't experience any difference. Its why I now believe that Topology is the most important criteria in amplifier quality.
As much as I like and respect Nelson, he is more biased (see that?) toward the subjective side of things where amp design and performance is concerned. Which is, in my opinion not at all a bad or wrong way to be, but definitely has an impact on what he prefers to see happening.
For example, he prefers to design amps that have very little feedback and class A bias makes that a lot easier to pull off. High idle current amps don't need as much feedback to help linearize the output stage. His argument against feedback is that it takes something essential away from the music, or at least throttles it in some way.
I've had both classes of amps and haven't heard a notable difference in the same room through the same speakers. I've also ran amps at a higher idle current to compare directly and didn't hear a difference. But then there will always be a break - a delay in between the changes and audio memory isn't as reliable as many assume it is.
The only truly reliable test is one that's immediate and blind, where the listener has no idea what he's listening to.
@@IBuildIt I agree about Nelson, vis a vis simplicity and euphony. Not always making for superior performance. Yet there are the kits that DIY Audio sell from Him that many find mesmerizing. Also, blind testing too, but I can remember note progression, pitch/ Frequency, the Fundamental. Timbre being the Harmonics, to a lesser degree is also a learned skill. Blind testing does require others become actively involved, and their experience/knowledge may not be adequate to the task. Especially when I'm laying out the bucks and Time to assemble hardware and my eyes aren't so great anymore. Point to point wiring to tube sockets, and lugs is becoming more difficult, even with magnification.
My T-16 monobloc OTL's have 16, 6C19 PI (American designation), miniature triodes/channel, operating in Class AB with about 22 db of negative feedback. So, I'm not bound to any specific paradigm in this addictive, "Hobby".
The tubes have a minimum 5000 hour lifespan, were manufactured at the Ulyanovsk factory, as voltage regulators in Soviet Military Avionics during the 70's. I bought 320 for $2.05 apiece delivered, from Russia. The monoblocs are superior in every respect to the Lang. The amps don't immediately jump out as better, but over Time, I can recognize that bandwidth, timbral accuracy, and to a lesser degree the soundstage, for me, offer a more musically satisfying performance.
I'm done looking for the next best thing with regards to amplification, except TS's, 300B based Pinnacle monobloc OTL's. I'm driving the Stax with a Single Ended OTL, also from Transcendent Sound called the Mini Beast employing JJ Electronics, EL 509's(3/channel). My preamp is the 300B based Masterpiece kit.
Before the Ukraine/Russian conflict the EL 509's were some 42 bucks and the Gold Lion 300B's were maybe 125 bucks. I haven't bothered to look at the costs since the EL 509's went to almost 80 bucks.
I grew up with my Father's tube electronics but myself was indoctrinated by marketing departments and to some degree my first undergrad's coursework, into the BJT then MOSFET. Yet I find it interesting that I'm now using tubes so many years later, albeit in a vastly different topology.
Nice! So many items to discuss!
Certainly not the most important, but re:
Balanced, or Single Ended
- Balanced exhibits strengths vs external noise, and single ended may exhibit superior internal noise characteristics.
Also, balanced seperates the grounding avenue from signal avenues ... whereas single ended does not.
Bottom line, as John suggested, execution is key, either approach can facilitate superb performance.
I think it Sheldon said, " You can change the laws of a country, but you can't change the laws of physics "
Hi John, yes hi fi cables they make some companies a lot of money with all the magic talk but if you look into it scientifically the cables that will make the most difference are the ones from your turntable to your pre amp if they where extended or the wrong type of cable used with a higher capacitance say of several hundred pF, as you know
most moving magnet cartridges look for about 200pF loading so if you add a couple of hundred pF or more by extending cables or using the wrong type this will make the overall sound duller. As for loudspeaker cables generally the only thing that will effect them is the forward resistance causing loss, as for any added capacitance this should not effect any well designed power amplifier with a decent damping factor as the amplifiers output impedance will be very low so putting say hundreds of pF in parallel with this you would not notice. Most amplifiers have what known as a Zobel network across it's output anyway usually consisting of a 10ohm resistor in series wit a 0.1mF capacitor so that's a lot pF, so a few extra more won't make any difference to the sound quality. Anyway rant over for today, keep up the good work.
Cheers
Dave.
So what do we do with turntables, such as mine "Sanusi & Dual " that have cables from the factory, that look like common rca cables?
Hi Eric, all good quality turntable manufactures like the makes you have generally use low capacitance screened cable which has a thinner inner conductor with a wider dielectric material, this keeps the overall total capacitance down to a minimum, it is as I said only a problem if you try to extend them with normal screened cable like the stuff you find used on cheap interconnect cables. I measured the capacitance of the cables on my old Pioneer PL12D (without a cartridge fitted) and found it to be 56pF so I added another 150pF with the switches on my Quad pre amp to get to the 200pF recommended by Shure for the V15 that I use.
Hope I didn't confuse you with my earlier message.
Regards Dave. 😀 @@ericschulze5641
my audio dealer joe said he has some $1500 dollar cables that sound ten times better than my $200 cables and he can hear the difference immediately. he said they will transform my $800 speakers to sound like speakers costing thousands more. i think he is right i trust him and im going to give these cables a try wish me luck.
With analog signals, it's important to not be using garbage cable(cheap =/= garbage necessarily here) but there's not much point in using 100.00% molecular gold cable, if the wires inside the speaker/amp/etc that lead to the connectors on the back are garbage aluminum and not even copper.
Very well said
If the room was in my control I would be so happy that I would not even care about the music.
It is of course in my wife's control.
i can agree with this, i do not looks for camps so i have little idea that it was this intense.
seems like an invention of the internet.
i do have some ideas about things that do not are commonly accepted. but it not that serious in the end.
it is not like this hobby is serving any good on this planet, it is actually the opposite to a small degree.
I think what often happens is a person will have interconnects in their system. The interconnects will be in the same position for a year or more. They have not been cleaned, and neither have the jack's. So when those interconnects are removed, the contact point is broken. The dirt and possibly corrosion are displaced or removed. Then when you try the "new" interconnects, it is proclaimed "hey I can hear a difference"! You would have heard the same differences had you just cleaned the original interconnects and jack's. The Amazing Randi had a challenge with a big cash prize to anyone who could tell the difference between properly designed cables. Needless to say no one ever collected the prize. Of course the guy who hears his new pair of $5,000.00 interconnects is going to swear he hears a huge difference. Confirmation bias at its highest! I have been at this hobby over 40 years, I have not heard an expensive cable that was worth price, or a $50,000.00 amplifier that delivered performance commensurate to its price.
I saw a documentary once where a guy took the camera to the top of the CN tower. The communications hub of Ontario with just about every kind of amp, transmitter, repeater, receiver, etc is used. He pointed out that there was not one gold plated cable in the whole place despite high quality being demanded in there. Also see, the great Monster Cable scam....lol. Also another show where an electronic engineer measured the quality of signal going through HDMI cables. Seems the expensive fancy cables were no better, electronically, than the inexpensive generic ones.
Thanks for sharing.
LBJ once said, "The answers lie down the middle of the road, the rest is in the gutter".
This type of info is so overlooked. I want better sound but It won't get better until I fix my room. LOL
Good old physics...
$4,000 for usb cábles
How about those expensive little "tripods" that keep your cables away from ...what?
Thanks for great videos, please keep them coming. Regards Rolf Denmark
I agree with your general philosophy for sure. Objective performance metrics are valid; we live a world, galaxy, universe that operates by the laws of physics as we observe them. The limitation and where potential discrepancies can exist is our limited ability to observe those objective performance metrics. So its within those limitations that people get polarized and take an entrenched stance and frankly people don't want to be moved from either camp. As in other politics people like their current tribe just fine and its all too easy to abuse statics or use dismissive cognitive dissonance to selectively choose which facts you choose to believe to reinforce the narrative you align with.
Personally when it comes to audio I have no experience with cables but I have heard differences in amplifiers and DACs when really there shouldn't be based on what the known objective characteristics are. The first few times this happened it was as disappointing and confusing outcome but now I just roll with it and take a balanced view point that both subjective and objective matter and at some point objective measurements will catch up with our perceived subjective experience.
One slight disagree, I'd say in-between the two views rather than in the middle. In the middle you get dragged around by the extremes on both sides
It's weird that it applies so much less in other areas. No one would argue that applying a filter to a picture can't increase the subjective enjoyment of the picture. But equally no one would argue that you can see difference in a picture that you can't measure. A picture is a literally only a set of measurements of light and recorded sound is literally just measurements of sound pressure
Comparably made amps sound different. I listened to many amps, all "high end" with similar specs and distortion figures and I can 100% say they sound different. Some had subtle difference while others were night and day.
It would be intesting to see the IMD figures among various amps under the same load. I also would like to see all measurements under a real load (no speaker stays 4ohm over the freq range, complex impedance [magnitude and phase change]). It's my belief amps handle varying complex impedance differently, hence the sonic differences among them
Comparably made amps that EQ the signal might sound different (as I said in this video), but it most definitely can only be enough to be called subtle. To get a night and day difference it would have to be absolute junk, or broken.
My new cable I’m making will be named - Gods dark wand dragon tail titan cables.
The cable itself makes no difference but the material of the conductor does, copper for lows silver for highs, simple as that
Of course its worth it, your halving the cables impedance and separating the drivers frequencies at the amps output, on long lengths of cable of 12ft and over biwiring is the way to go, same principle as adding dropper wires to a model railway, without them the train will slow down after about 20feet therefore you need to push more voltage to make the train run properly, yes model railways run on AC today to carry the digital information to the decoders
the rule is simple:
copper cable for bass
silver cable for treble
when one cable tries to do everything thats when the problems arise
silver cable carries high frequencies way more efficiently than copper
copper cable is pretty hopeless at frequencies above 14khz
biiring will cut distortion by half, thats its whole purpose.
oil and water do not mix
speakers work on AC not DC thats why biwiring works, if it was DC then yes it would be pointless. basically 2 sets of cable doing their job that theyre intended to.
Its pointless biwiring on mini systems like the denon stuff because their speakers are not biwire compatible as theyre designed to be used no more than 5feet away from the amp, but for long lengths its a definate YES, in any case just do it, speaker cable is cheap
even on mini systems inside the speakers will be both silver and copper cabling going to the drivers (if its a high quality hifi that is)
In fact bi-amping is useless and destroys sound quality unless you have 2 finely tuned identical amplifiers with their volume levels and DC offsets set up 100% perfect. bi-amping is a complete pain in the backside and rarely gives good results.
honesty can be so offensive........to some.
Electrolytic copper (99.9% pure) is what it is, no difference if it is used in a cheap or an expensive cable.
Oxygen-free may have a tiny bit better conductivity, but that´s easily achieved with a slightly thicker wire.
I run 12-15ft of home-improvement-store-dirt-cheap 9 AWG between the screw terminals, that´s more than enough for 130WRMS (Yamaha RX-V473 to Indiana Line DJ 310).
usain bolt does need propper shoes to win a run.
f1 needs propper tires matching to the race…
i get your rating from what has the biggst affects.
but let me tell you, the more quality your hifi system has, the more cables can make ALL the difference. such as any other equipment…
i hear so many people „debunking“, talking about such effects, but many never really heard that effects on really really upper end systems. it will show u imeadiatly if the cable doesn’t work on it.
it is so important!
that doesnt mean a cable has to be dead end expensive. but they are so different…. in affecting the sound of your system.
if you can afford it. go with propper cables! - always.
i measure product differences in a very simple way. If the only way to show something is better than something else is with expensive electronic measuring equipment. Then if you only want one, it make no sense to purchase the one you need a mortgage to purchase. Reason, with only one there is no comparison, only the "should I have bought the other one" syndrome.......The grass is greener........
a properly designed speaker is made for any normal room, somewhat flat on-axis and smooth off-axis. so this guy saying that a 50k speaker is affected the same way by the room as a $300 speaker is often not true. then you can go into horn or dipole`s that are even less affected by the room than any box speaker.
Before people spend a bunch of money on expensive cables, they should ask themselves what could possibly be added inside a cable to change the sound for the better and warrant the ridiculously high price? Is a cable really worth $5000 because a $2 component (basically the 3 components used in speaker crossovers) was added to the cable to degrade the sound (tone down your overly bright system which gives you listening fatigue)?
Anyone with a modicum of electronics knowledge will tell you that a $500 power cable can't possible do anything to change the sound of your device. The only way expensive cables can make your system sound better, is if you don't buy them and rather spend the money on better gear.
According to your theory, there should only be subjective differences in speakers. They all just move air. Moving air is moving air.
Totally agree about the truth laying somewhere in between both extremes and not to take this hobby so seriously. Great Vid and sense of humour in the comments. Glad I found your channel. Subscribing! 🍻
I work as an industrial Maint tech i work on Multimillion dollar machines and Automated robotics systems and cables DO MATTER ' ESPICALLY THE SHIELDING ALL CABLES ARE BASICALLY a 📡 Antenna ' picking up lots of RF ' I do use cheaper cables but with hell of shielding and Oxygen free copper ' Or OCC '
Resitance condictance impedence matters ' Want an example of shielding🛡?
I have wifi torque drills that operators use to incert metal threaded flanges into plastic substrates so part can be screwed into the body of the new C8 corvette without cracking the plastic sub straight but my huge injection molding press beside my Wifi torque guns puts out such a strong RF signal it messes my Torque guns up !
Losing signal constantly ! So much So we had to change usb cable with one heavily shielded ! And also shielded the transmitter as well
So yeah cables do matter but not in terms of spending $ thousands of dollars that is just crazy !!
I must admit great job on video lots of good ideas
One common thing I see that keeps rearing its head up every once in awhile in these conversations is when people are referencing equipment based on their experience. One would think that would be a fairly logical way to make critical choices but as we all know about synergizing the system what component works in one system may offer something completely different in another and may actually not be a great recommendation like one may think or vice versa.
My favorite audiophile snake oil product is the "audiophile-grade" ethernet switches. Apparently no one told them that RJ45 ethernet is already galvanically isolated
AudioQuest sells $1000+ ‘directional’ ethernet cable. Because digital communication only works one way in those cables I guess?
You should also be careful about the city electric supply. Nuclear reactors sound very dynamic but a little synthetic while hydroelectric power plants sound natural and deep :))
Centrism is always best 👍
With midfi there probably isn’t a difference between the cabling
That's the usual thing that audiophiles say to explain the difference they think they hear, but others can't. It's simply not true.
"Midfi" is a word invented by audiophiles to distinguish themselves from what they think of as less refined listeners.
It's an elitist term, in other words, designed to make you feel superior because you have true hifi equipment, and denigrate others that don't.
Classic human behavior.
Youre completly correct.👍
OMG! Cables make no difference? Next you'll be saying people over 40 (who spend $$$$ of hi-fi) can't hear as well as teenagers...
Cables do make a difference
@@viciogamergd8061 In your wallet.
Amazing!🎯💯👌👍😊
I'm a moderate-extremist audiophile.
GIGO, garbage in, garbage out. It's ALL critical. Different amps definitely sound differently. Cables absolutely sound differently if the system has sufficient resolution.
Instrumentation will probably soon have sufficient power, to crunch numbers, to measure sufficient data points that they will be able to interpret all the subtleties of sound to the degree human hearing is able to. Measuring amplitude with an oscilloscope, or even spectrum with a spectrum analyzer does not begin to reflect sound as captured, and interpreted by human hearing.
Until such time that we have that ability, unfortunately we are pretty much stuck with the subjective.
It's my understanding that we are close to the point where you'll be able to compare inputs and outputs to a point where given reasonable equipment, you'll be able to pretty accurately reproduce the recording.
The system will play a sample, to self calibrate, then delay the output in order to apply correction to it resulting in as perfect reproduction that you'll be able to get with the equipment and the room you have.
If you don't have say 20K strategically invested in equipment, and often even if you have much more invested, cables may have nominal, if even noticable, effects.
If you have $100,000 speakers, and a Tonka toy DAC, I don't care what you do with your room or speakers, your system is going to suck.
Electronics generally get less expensive and are higher quality over time. I don't believe that stereo has reflected that norm, likely due to there being a smaller user base. The less sold, the higher the cost.
After 40 some years in this hobby, mostly chasing my tail, I can assure you that rather than buying this, to compensate that, slow down and save until you can afford neutral equipment.
The only way amplifiers sound the same is if your system lacks resolution. If your system lacks resolution, you might want to reconsider whether you are really the guy to be telling others what is what.
I graduated from radio and television broadcasting gear to networking equipment. Like cables there are multiple types of fiber. Some is decidedly better than others, but using the best fiber with marginal switches, and the inverse is a waste. A complete waste, unless you have plans to upgrade the weaker elements of your system.
It's tedious to hear that only speakers or only speakers and rooms matter. As the audiophiliac, who I often differ with strongly said, if the want better speakers, upgrade your electronics.
Regardless how great your speakers, they cannot make a piss poor signal sound good.
One thing I'm sure of, and that's we as a species will never gain the full benefit of our ability to be rational, when so many are brimming with confidence in their self deception.
@IBuildIt you should know. I am a technician, and I understand the limits of my test equipment. Having been a cable denier, I found myself capable of admitting my mistake. Same for capacitors, tubes, even resistors. To one degree or another they all effect sound.
I once had a conversation with a medical doctor who was telling me that his uncle's house is haunted by the ghost of his great grandfather.
@IBuildIt false equivalency, why am I not surprised?
You claim expertise, yet are prone to irrational thinking, just like that doctor.
I didn't ask the doctor for proof, but if you have any that's real I'll look at it.
Ok it is like someone trying to sell you "good water" for several hundred dollars/liter claiming it would make your health better.
Discussing this issue on the basis of the question "does water make a difference" is of no use. You need context.
Good water is of course very very important.
(afteral It is the most important chemical for life)
But it is also cheap
It only makes a difference if your water is bad..
And spending a lot is not justified with that discussion ..
In TODAY'S audio world, cables may not matter much. However! Ask an old school audiophile does cables matter!!!!. They most certainly did. Because when dealing with above basic grade audio and having an EAR for sound, one HAD to have the correct cabling or else your sound suffered.There aren't any bonafide audiophiles around anymore much. They are eith dead or in the mid 60s and over and don't get into audio,video like they use to because their community is gone for the most part.
Well said.
This is 💯 BS aaaaa you got me lol good one !! Yes I would not spend thousands on cables but yes I definitely do matter you got me good on this one my man.
Fyi, every cable degrades the signal.
Another INTRENET TH-cam guru. Lots of truth in his video, however I know from experience that some power cables can make a difference. In my case it was a BIG difference on the DIGITAL.
Not going to go into details/ Don't want to be viewed a an advertiser.
Respectfully, many of your assertions you make may have some layers of truth in mid fi level audio but are woefully inaccurate when it comes to components and networked cables I utilize and TEST some of which I built to specifically NOT adhere to the ugly distortions so many have settled for even in the supposed ultra high end.