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Re: Out of curiosity

Posted by Donald North (M) on February 25, 2007 at 15:14:53

In Reply to: Re: Out of curiosity posted by AJinFLA on February 25, 2007 at 13:46:01:

Hi AJ,

You make several good points, to which I will add these comments:
1. A good magazine that evaluates hi-fi products in controlled, blind tests with a listening panel is the UK magazine Hi-Fi Choice. A hi-fi system is as good as its weakness component, be it the source, amplifier, speakers, or listener. On Creek's website they have posted on the Hi-Fi Choices recent group tests of similarly price integrated amplifiers. They include all the usual measurement data in addition to the panel's listening results. All the amps measure more-or-less "good", but sound different. Always interesting reading.

2. Your car analogy certainly is valid for objective figures of merit: gas mileage, horsepower, 0-60 acceleration, braking 100-0, etc. However other attributes like how a car feels or handles, I believe, cannot be defined quantitatively through traditional, simple means. For example, a BMW drives, handles, and "feels" a certain way. To begin to quantify this would require multi-axis accelerometers, concurrent torque measurements, etc., and hopefully there should be some correlation. A different car, like a Corvette, will have a different set of data. Which do people like or prefer is subjective and people will have their own preference. I believe the same applies to wines, whiskeys, music, and audio because these are more subjective experiences.

3. I know of no lab test which can provide a result and figure of merit for an amplifier's "clarity" or "involvement". The closest I know is Leonard Nowitz and Peter Qvortrup's method of comparison by contrast:
http://www.audionote.co.uk/articles/art_audio_hell.shtml

4. It has always been by belief that if people can hear characteristics that they can't exactly measure and identify by their available test methods, then this does not discredit what people heard. To me it means further methods of tests need to be developed and explored. Here's a personal example: In 1992 I bought a Sony home DAT recorder to use with my binaural recordings I was doing while in school. The unit received a good review in Audio magazine with excellent measured results. I was so proud of my purchase and I took it down to the Caltech Music Lab to show off. Down there was a Revox B77 MkII open reel tape recorder. I did some comparison live recordings on the Sony DAT and Revox and was shocked: The Revox sounded better and more real. I wanted the Sony be the better sounding unit, but it wasn't. And there were a few of us there for this comparison and all heard the difference.

Here's another good listening example: James Boyk on his Performance Recordings label recorded one of his concerts both analog and digital from the same microphone feed. Both recorders were considered state-of-the-art respectively at the time. The album was issued on LP and CD, and on the CD he included both the analog and digital recordings. This recording was done at Dabney Lounge at Caltech which also had a special, permanent cable feed to the music lab. With this setup, we could hear live-feeds in the music lab of the same piano, microphones, etc without any recording medium. Using this as a reference to judge the recordings, the analog LP was closest to sounding like the live feed.

5. My amplifier and loudspeaker evaluation experiences have been predominately with passive loudspeakers or hybrid: active bass-midrange crossover and passive midrange-treble crossover.

6. With active speakers they should provide an easier load to an amplifier and may allow various amplifiers to offer a more similar performance. However then there is the added circuitry of the electronic crossover with its sonic characteristics. When developing my Sequence speaker, my EE friend designed both discrete solid state and triode vacuum tube versions. Both measure with extremely wide bandwidth to beyond 1 MHz, have very low noise floor (which was particularly challenging to do with tubes and why we chose the high transconductance 6C45), very low measured distortion, low output impedance, high input headroom, and good current drive. However upon listening they sounded different: The vacuum tube unit was more clear, dynamic, lively, greater resolution, and involving than the transistor unit. Why this is, I don't exactly know.

7. One more example: In the summer of 1993 a friend and I each were designing a set of monitor-sized speakers. We did measurements, crossover simulations with SPICE, etc. At the Caltech Music Lab we had a couple "workhorse" amplifiers: A Hafler solid-state and a McIntosh MC275 tube. While listening and evaluating my speaker, on some classical pieces I could hear some sort of unnatural prominence on the French horns when powered by the McIntosh, but not by the Hafler. I dismissed this as an artifact of the "less accurate" tube amplifier. Later when I returned home and played the speakers with the same music through my Sugden AU41 solid-state amplifier, I heard this same prominence. Both the Hafler and Sugden have similar measurements (wide bandwidth, low distortion, low output impedance), but for some reason the Hafler did not have the resolving power to show there was a problem with my speaker design. I got so mad...

Needless to say, there are many "mysteries" of audio yet to be resolved and fully understood. But this still will not change the fact that people have their own listening preferences.

Donald North

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