Black backgrounds and such

esthlos13,
To me, hiss, hum, buzz, anything that detracts during quiet passages destroys a black backdrop. What i was mentioning is that for an amplifier that really is well designed, tube units seem to have less in the background during quiet passages. This is for units that are basically quiet quiet quiet.

If a unit is not quiet to start with, there is no black background. When it's right you get the notes splashed in color across a wide canvas. There's nothing to distract you except noise in the street and perhaps the refrigerator doing what it does. Generally, unless it's quiet in your room already, say that you're listening at night, you won't notice what I'm talking about at all.

If it's dark and quiet though, and there is a diminuendo followed by silence, you want silence. That's the whole idea. At those times, if there's noise of any sort, including a silk instead of a velvet backdrop, you notice.

Those times at night are when you really hear, not when you're blasting the dance music out. Honestly, most of the time it's just not something you even think about.


Tonight, when it's quiet and there is no traffic going by and the cat's asleep,
see if you can feel the system being on or not. Most times, you can.It's great when you have to look at the indicator lights to tell.

That's a black backdrop.

I have that J. Gordon Holt book in a box somewhere, whart. Maybe I should dig it out and put it up for sale!

@bdp24 - I was shocked, I tell you, shocked at the prices.

Hiss produced from the components means you dont have a black background. There's nothing wrong with hiss from an old analogue recording. The fact that you can hear the hiss means your system has a low noise-floor, or black background.

Another example that really shocked me was when Lars K from Ansuz came to my home with a prototype power cable. Up until then power cables mattered but not to what I heard next. Before putting in the cable he pushed the volume to where the speakers popped. Then we replaced the power cable. Note my integrated remembers all settings after a power cycle. When we played the same track and the music sounded much clearer and even more dynamic. Then Lars turned up the volume until the speakers popped again. It didn't get quite twice as loud but very close to that. How could that be I asked after all it's just a power cable. Lars explained the power cable had a new circuit that shifted noise out of the audible band. It's just like the same circuit that the Navy uses to be able to hear a ping from a submarine that could be 100's of miles away. So what that does is let the integrated amplify more music and without noise. It was noise I didn't realize was even there. Ansuz calls it D-TC and have added that to almost all of their cables. Also because of that I heard more layers of resolution with the instruments and vocals.