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The last 5 ?????

Sometimes as an Audiophile I come to a place where words no longer express the experience I’m having with my system. In this past year I have needed to sell off parts of my system, the biggest changes were going from two Plinius SA-102 amps bi-amped to a single amp, and replacing my Nordost Valhalla cabling with the far more affordable Kubala-Sosna Emotion cables.

The loss of the amp was clear, less dynamics and less involving. The cable change was something significantly different however. The Kubala-Sosna cables are every cliché we audiophiles use. Blacker, better definition, more space between notes, dynamic, extended… These words fail to express the improvement over my Valhalla cables however, and all I can say is I’m more musically involved. This was a clear improvement to my system, and for less money!!! But words fail to adequately express the improvements.

The second experience came when my Sony SCD-1 receiving all the remaining modifications available through Richard Kern at Audiomod.com I had half the mod’s done four years ago, and received the remaining just last month. The fully modified player is said to better the EMM Meitner/Phillips combination. I can not speak to that in that I have never heard this combination, so my basis is strictly within my experiences listening to other systems.

The fully modified Sony is simply amazing, beyond my limits of expression. I could say it’s more analog than any digital system I’ve heard, and yet it’s well beyond analog. It is simply so much more than the analog most of us can afford. It’s also not at all digital, it has none of the electronic, edgy artifacts of solid state and digital systems. The best way I can explain this system is it’s beyond digital and analog that I’m aware of.

Words like three dimensional, attack, tightness, extended, clear, dynamic, natural, subtle all fall completely inadequate when trying to explain my system today. Words just can not explain the sound.

This leads me to my purpose of this post. The topic actually came up talking to Albert Porter when we were discussing continued improvements we make to systems that are already beyond 95% of anything available. In Albert’s case I suspect he is beyond 99.99% and yet we continue to change our systems and reach DRAMATIC improvements.

How is this possible if the last five or three or one percent is as significant as 50% to 90%? What I mean is when I moved from a $1000 system to a $4000 system the improvements were dramatic. Then I moved to a $9000 then $20,000 and finally to where I am now. Each step was marked improvement over the earlier step and even at $4000 I was far beyond anything 95% of the consumers will ever hear. So what’s actually going on? If $4000 gets me to the last few percent, how can each additional step be doubling or tripling the previous systems musicality or involvement or measurable improvement?

Why do some of us get to a point where we believe a single multi-thousand dollar interconnect brought us 100% closer to the music? Why are there some who still claim cables do not effect sound? Clearly they want good sound, but somehow are not aware of what is possible due to limits in there 95% system.

My answer is either the last couple percent are actually far more significant than the first 95% or we are actually only 25% “there” with a $4000 system. I can not even express how big the changes I have made are. They are well beyond two times, maybe three or four times the significance on the system before these changes. That would mean I was something like 25% or 45% “there” before. Well that is crazy because I have not hear a system I enjoyed more than mine. I’ve heard some that were better in one area or another, but overall… Of course this is a subjective topic, and I understand that, but the point is for my room, my ears, my taste I was already 100%, yet now I’ve bettered it by two or three fold.

All I can think is this is not a 100% issue. This is something more like the open ended Richter scale. On the Richter scale every tenth of a point is doubling the magnitude of an earthquake. The Richter scale is logarithmic, that is an increase of 1 magnitude unit represents a factor of ten times in amplitude. The seismic waves of a magnitude 6 earthquake are 10 times greater in amplitude than those of a magnitude 5 earthquake. However, in terms of energy release, a magnitude 6 earthquake is about 31 times greater than a magnitude 5.

-1.5 on Richter scale, equals 6 ounces of TNT
1.0 on Richter scale, equals 30 pounds of TNT
1.5 on Richter scale, equals 320 pounds of TNT
2.0 on Richter scale, equals 1 ton of TNT
2.5 on Richter scale, equals 4.6 tons of TNT
3.0 on Richter scale, equals 29 tons of TNT
3.5 on Richter scale, equals 73 tons of TNT
4.0 on Richter scale, equals 1,000 tons of TNT
4.5 on Richter scale, equals 5,100 tons of TNT
5.0 on Richter scale, equals 32,000 tons of TNT
5.5 on Richter scale, equals 80,000 tons of TNT
6.0 on Richter scale, equals 1 million tons of TNT
6.5 on Richter scale, equals 5 million tons of TNT
7.0 on Richter scale, equals 32 million tons of TNT
7.5 on Richter scale, equals 160 million tons of TNT
8.0 on Richter scale, equals 1 billion tons of TNT
8.5 on Richter scale, equals 5 billion tons of TNT
9.0 on Richter scale, equals 32 billion tons of TNT
10.0 on Richter scale, equals 1 trillion tons of TNT
12.0 on Richter scale, equals 160 trillion tons of TNT

So if we said a boom box was a 1.0, a Bose radio might be considered a 3.0. A top of the line Best Buy system might be a 4.0. The typical audiophile system might then be a 5.5 where the old 98% system might be a 6.5. If my system was a 7.5 before the changes it might be a 7.9 now. Albert’s system might be an 8.5, but his new cables could make his system 100% better, or become an 8.6.

In my mind this is more logical for explaining the effects I have experienced. This also means we never find 100% for this scale has no end. Now the issue is how we actually mathematically quantify this logarithmic expression. I figure if some of the engineering minds out there might have an answer for this and this could be a new expression for us to use. If we could come up with a quantifiable formula, it might be a new language for us to express our systems to each other. If we had something like this maybe it could be a part of the virtual systems. We could then begin to understand how an improved cable is affecting our systems.

I may be way off here; it would not be the first time. I do however feel we need another language to express the “last couple percent” because the system we are using is inadequate, and at some point all the clichés mean nothing, and words are wholly inadequate. Perhaps this is a start???
128x128jadem6

Showing 5 responses by r_f_sayles

r_f_sayles's avatar
r_f_sayles
872 posts
 
"The mystery man came over
and he said "I'm outta sight!"
he said for a nominal service charge,
I could reach nirvana tonight.
If I was ready, willing and able
to pay him his regular fee,
he would drop all the rest of
his pressing affairs and devote
his attention to me.

But I said "Look here brother-who you
jiving with that cosmik debris?"

Happy Listening!
r_f_sayles's avatar
r_f_sayles
872 posts
 
This is indeed a grand thread. I apologize for the Zappa lyrics earlier if it left anyone offended or confused to my intention. It was an abstract response (yes, poking a little fun) to how abstract I personally find it of trying to quantify seeming improvement of faking the sounds of real music from a real acoustic environment in our living rooms. I would agree also that many times live performances compared to Hifi performances leave me with mixed review to what I would rather sit in front of. I commend the higher thinking and questioning of this thread as it is a rare departure from the usual blabber present in a growing larger amount of threads.
What I find hard to come to terms with though, and so the cosmic Zappa lyric outburst, is the effort to put a numerical value on a feeling of possibly rapturous proportion. Just as Mechans put it so well before me "the quality of your system is entirely in your mind". It's an illusion. How does one intellectually grapple with explaining an illusion? I realize we are not comparing something as simple as the merits of why chocolate might be better than vanilla. I would agree that it is much more a thing of texture and nuance and timbre and pace that tickles our perception.
I am an artist by trade and on a daily basis I deal with engineering and sales people who try to quantify something as I create it from a blank sheet of paper. I always find it interesting the dynamic of perception from one person (vantage point) to another. It's juxtaposition to expectation and preconceived notion leaves me entertained but gleans little true light on an understanding. I am not the wordsmith that many of you are and I hope I can convey my ideas of this clearly enough. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and for me maybe Shakespeare or Chagall, Wagner or Hendrix might have been able to express this thing better than all the mathematical theorists we could employ (with all due respects). Happy Listening!
r_f_sayles's avatar
r_f_sayles
872 posts
 
Prey tell, If I listen to those new fangled little shiny silver discs of sterile acoustics, unrealistic blackness and the edgy nervous jittering of 1's and 0's will they allow me to not be so dedicated to my listening?! Gee-whiz I can have a wireless remote control too! Paint this listener an analog fan I'm afraid. Cheers!
r_f_sayles's avatar
r_f_sayles
872 posts
 
Dear snobbery JD, I for one found your thread and point of view quite interesting and not like mine and I think it's safe to say, that it has generated mostly stimulating responses. I wouldn’t think of approaching this subject in the manner on which you did, and that makes it all that much more compelling for me. I find diversity in our thought to be inviting rather than detracting. For someone to find you an elitist is tawdry at best and I don’t agree with them. Although esoteric, you may be, your passion is obvious and shows a humbleness of sorts in the self-deprecating way you try to come to terms with the measure of change or of worth and a grasping for ways to explain it. Hang in here JD and damn the torpedoes. Happy Listening!
r_f_sayles's avatar
r_f_sayles
872 posts
 
JD, I did not recognize you by your moniker, but when I looked at your system thread I remembered who you were to me. Good to see you back! I enjoyed learning a thing or three from your experience with isolation techniques they helped immensely. As Le Corbusier (I think) said, God is (truly) in the details and our tweaking in many ways is as important as our equipment choices. Granted, it's all about the music. Please take note, your extensive review of the Aesthetix Calypso really firmed up my decision to buy both it and a Rhea, and I thank you for that. This was a huge move toward the music for me and I couldn’t be happier with its build quality and operation modes. I’ll be on my way to a Shunyata Hydra as well very soon. I also found your brief remarks on the Kubala-Sosna Emotion IC’s helpful, as there has been quite the buzz lately. Happy Listening!
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