Out goes the Old, In comes the New!
I love all the ages of audio. Every one of them has offered something. I'm down on the discrete era 1997-2015 for obvious reasons, over build, over pricing and only a volume control. The HEA magazines pulled off one amazing marketing run telling us to just keep buying upward, but I for one asked myself what's going to happen when the industry modernizes? If you've been to the CES the last 15 years it would be hard to miss that the new generation has reinvented listening. Not just Headsets but designing in general. We've also had hints of change by watching the development of Class-D components and modern sources. 5 or so years ago I mentioned that I was meeting with some of the younger innovative designers in audio on the Stereophile forum and was quickly trolled off the stage. It was kind of like some old folks were willing to protest "change" to the death. Well here we are 5 years later and HEA is on it's last CES leg while those innovations have become mainstream.
Threads are popping up on this and other forums suggesting HEA is dead or at least terminally ill. You have to be waring some pretty tinted rose colored glasses to miss this reality. Those who want to argue this can wait another 5 years I guess and see how many of their friends are still kicking, or buying new expensive High End gear vs the ones who have either settled into their last system or have embraced the less expensive better sounding hobby. Why do I think it will be better sounding? That's easy, lower mass and simpler designs, and very important "adjustability". Now I love vintage audio and own a lot of it. I also own some of the big boys of today and in my demo rooms have, and continue to pass through, a lot of products, old, new, big, small, expensive and inexpensive. I don't mind telling you that depending on how you setup your systems there is no money hierarchy any more. What there is are methods of listening that when you do them you find how things mate, and that's how you can determine if you wish to stay in the old school, discrete camp or become involved it the new age of audio.
So that's what this thread is about. Not changing anyone's mind just showing the differences and maybe a little of the comparing of apples and oranges.
Michael Green
^^^ Some of those kids refer to their Japanese cars as "Rice Rockets," and for good reason. How about a 1000 horsepower Toyota Cellica? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6Bmh2_XgZM And by the way, if you haven't tried a tweak that improves the SQ of an audio system, you just haven't found the right tweaks. Frank |
Oh, I do Frank. Townshend Audio Seismic Pods and platforms, Symposium Acoustics and Ingress Engineering Roller Blocks, DH Cones, BDR Cones and Blocks, SIMS Navcom Silencers, Herbies Tendefeet, EAR IsoDamp, tube dampers, VPI Magic Brick, silver ic and speaker cables, Bybee and Shunyata power conditioners and power cords, Shakti Stone, Tube Traps, diffusers, lots of others. But the assertion that one can change the basic performance of an inherently flawed or compromised design (a power amp, for instance), turning it from a mass-produced mid-fi component into a product producing better sound than a product designed from the ground up as superior-performing one (define as you wish) is laughable. Removing a power transformer from a chassis CAN improve the sound of, say, a pre-amp (Ric Schultz did just that in his mod of the Audible Illusions Modulus), but that does nothing to change the pre-amp’s linearity, overload margin, stability, bandwidth, distortion, gain---the most basic jobs of a pre-amp. The claim that even more minor tweaks than removing a transformer will (heh) transform a pre-amp (or power amp, or, God forgive, receiver) are those of a charlatan. |
I get a kick out of some of the words used by forum folks when they get upset at others. Charlatan, snake oil and alike. I, in the last couple of years, have learned that this is yet another (more legit) forum term "troll". Internet trolls are easy to spot. They’re the guys who come up a shout that something can’t be done because they themselves have not explored enough to become knowledgeable through practical application. Of course the audio signal is tunable and has been so since the very beginning of the audio chain itself. It’s more fun to be a walker than a talker I have experienced. And the more walking that is done the more we learn about the audio signal and pathway. I’m more into "doing" the possible. It seems to me that Crown is as well, we’ll see. Michael Green |
Big difference between trolling and calling a spade a spade. Some of the (unfortunately) more expensive Crowns (some discontinued) are/were pretty good, much better than the current bottom-level Crowns. Excellent engineering doesn't necessarily cost more than mediocre (that's more a result of the design engineer's knowledge and talent), but you can do only so much with $100 in parts (the XLS 1502 parts can't total even that much, considering it's retail price). To purport that the referred-to "tuning" of an electronic component will improve the sound of that component to a great enough extent to mitigate (or even eliminate) the inherent shortcomings in the component (it's linearity, stability, freedom from distortion, etc.), that the improvements brought about by said tuning are equal (or even greater) in their ability to determine the ultimate sound quality of the component as is the basic, inherent design of the component (which "tuning" does not address), is a very ambitious claim. Real designers/engineers DO tune their circuits, but in the real sense of the term. Watch Roger Modjeski's You Tube videos on amplifier design to find out why the dielectric properties inherent in electrolytic capacitor's make them unacceptable for use in certain applications (where there is a change in the voltage across the cap, for instance), while fine in others. Amateur "tuners", lacking a deep understanding of circuit design and electronic principles, dismiss all electrolytics, in any and all applications, as sounding "bad". Recording engineer Kav Alexander of Water Lily Records, known for his astoundingly-great sounding recordings (Ry Cooder was determined to have Kav record him after hearing one of the Water Lily albums), asked Modjeski to determine the source of some objectionable noise in the tube electronics of his custom recorder. Roger found it---some of the "Audiophile Grade" components (I don't remember---caps, resistors, etc.) someone had used in the circuit, their characteristics not appropriate for the requirements imposed on them by the circuit. The kind of audiophile-approved parts thought of as sounding "better" than garden variety parts, though they in fact sound worse when misused. |
Roger is one of my favorite designers, as well a great guy. I was a dealer of Roger's and have enjoyed owning many of his products. I obviously disagree with your premises above concerning Crown and Tuning, but that's ok. As far as misusing parts, I'm in total agreement. I usually won't get near a "mod" unless I trust the source and have put the unit through my own evaluating. I also don't trust measurements. One of my jobs for Turner's crew was testing equipment calibrations. Meaning testing the test equipment as well the components. This is maybe one of the reasons you don't see me talking techno-babble. I've worked with real engineers and was trained by them. It's pretty easy to spot the talker from the walker, and that's ok too. Everyone has their own experiences both professional and non. My gig is "doing" and fluff means very little to me. Michael Green |
