High End Myth Glossary.


Disclaimer:
Many of the glossary terms bellow are entered with little or no comments. Large comments might require large space and time investment. If anyone reading this glossary is offended, than I'll keep you a company as well. Every myth-paragraph bellow adds a price to the audiocomponent only without substantial improvements and "upgrades" to your system.

Feel free to add to the list bellow:

1. Cables' price should be arround 10...20% of the whole system i.e if the system costs $100k than $10...20k should be for interconnects and speaker cables.

2. Directional signal cables.

3. Zero Negative Feedback.

4. $10k 10Wpc amps.

5. No need for larger output power. Place compact system speaker into the plywood horn enclosure and use SET 1W/ch.

6. Tube watts v.s. SS watts.

7. CD-players or digital separates over $1.5k(Analogue sources stay somewhere next to but not to the same degree for example $10k cartridges)

8. Audiable differences in .3dB or in .5%THD v.s. .001%THD.

9. Auditioning of audio furniture.

10. Stereophile or other oriented magazines one-person "expert reviews"

11. $5000 Mark Levinson amp looks like it should sound excellent...

12. $12k CD-player reads CD with greater precision.

13. tubes $900/matched pr

14. amp stands $600/pr.

15. microphonic-free chasis, power interconnects and speaker wires. tubes and transistors can certainly be added as well.

16. wire reactance influence on audio freequencies.

17. Nirvana speaker wire has substantially less reactance than Home Depot.

18. S/N ratings of CD-player(larger than CD's dynamic range 16bit = only 60dB!)

P.S. I would be also glad to see Worst-of section in forums here.
128x128marakanetz

Showing 5 responses by albertporter

Here are my Myth's to add to the Glossary.

Audio Asylum is as good as Audiogon.

No one at Audiogon ever "trolls" by posting controversial topics.

Bose makes the ultimate speaker.
Pbb, perhaps Ultraviolet is referring to the effect of furniture in the room. I can clearly hear position of drapes, rugs and even the change from moving around larger pieces such as sofa’s and love seats.

It is also possible to hear the difference between two identical sized sofa’s when swapped in the same spot, provided one is hard (wood) and the other is padded cotton or wool piece.

I have one friend who refuses to listen from my sofa due to the height of the back. He is sensitive to the reflection directly behind his ears (off the leather). He always draws up a Queen Anne chair and places it behind us.

Everyone has their own particular sensitivities. I learn from everyone that listens with me. My system would not be nearly as evolved without others help.
Agree with your comments about room acoustics, especially reflective surfaces.

I‘m not certain what the term audio furniture covers. If the manufacturer builds a cabinet with similar construction as home furniture, then says it has mystical properties, I refuse to believe it.

There are stands that have low resonant shelves, pointy feet and such that do effect the sound of equipment. Like all audio tweaks, the improvement can be very big or very small depending on the room, equipment and listener.

I don’t know if Sound Anchors, Systrum and similar products would fall into the category of audio furniture or not. They support equipment, speakers and such and make an audible difference.
No, it means that a Yamaha integrated receiver that measures .002 percent distortion will sound MUCH better than an Audio Research Ref 600 MK3, because the ARC is not that low distortion.

Numbers cannot lie...........Right??