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Digital, Low Mass, ClassD, Less expensive, Let it happen!

Well here we are! Not that you can't go back and buy boat anchors, but now we know sound is better with low mass designs. Digital source? Yep, the tide has turned. ClassD amplification is also here to stay. Lower mass speakers, on their way back too. The audiophile hobby is getting less expensive and better sounding.

I guess we can debate this, but it's happening anyway. The hobby is simply growing up and becoming more aware of how to get great sound, and get it smart. There has been a lot of myths passed down when we only had paperback magazines, mostly for marketing, but the internet has finally caught up with audio reality. Instead of $20,000.00 components we have $20,000.00 whole systems (including all the trimming). Shoot, there are $5,000.00 systems that excel. The Trade Shows are changing, the market is changing and we are changing. Want to stay old school? No problem, there will always be old school and plenty of used gear (at least for our lifetimes). There will also be smaller niche companies that spring up to tempt us.

The hobby is entering a new era for the extreme listener. It will be a hobby of doing and exploring Electrical, Mechanical and Acoustical as equals. Components will be much smaller and more flexible, and more time will be spent on playing our whole music collection, and not just a few recordings. Many HEA debates will be making their way to the archives as the hobby grows closer to mainstream. Mainstream as in higher quality audiophile mainstream.

Are you ready? I sure am!

Michael Green


http://www.michaelgreenaudio.net/

michaelgreenaudio
michaelgreenaudio's avatar
michaelgreenaudio OP
1,019 posts
 

Thank God we have ears! And thank God we have the free will to explore for ourselves!

The lifestyle of exploring music reproduction is a dream come true for the audiophile at whatever level we choose to get involved. The different camps of the community "are" the denominations of audio I guess one could say.

Audiogon is very much like driving into a town noticing all the clubs, churches, bars, businesses and schools. Almost all the households visit or belong to one or several of these camps. Which camp does an audiophile choose to be a part of is up to them as an individual.

I belong to the camp of "Variables" (Tuning), which means I see audio as a continuum of constant motion. It's the same camp as playing a musical instrument in-tune or any variation there of I choose. In other words I make my own sound as I see fit with all the variation physics provides. Tuning seeks not to get stuck in a "fixed" (one sound) setting. This doesn't mean random energy flying around without control, but instead being in charge of the variables. In many ways Tuning is the opposite of Plug & Play. With Plug & Play we are dictated to, with Tuning we choose our own path.

mg

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ivan_nosnibor's avatar
ivan_nosnibor
1,057 posts
 
It is interesting to see all these kinds of more recent developments (or most of them) coming not from the top down, as we've long been accustomed to, but essentially from 'the bottom up'...simple battery experiments, new inexpensive streamers (ala Allo Digione Signature), chip amps and the rest of it, much of it having been around for a while, now bearing fruit in the form of new product releases that, for the first time for their price category, are beginning to show signs of upending established traditionally made products that cost one or two thousand bucks, or even more...and at a fraction of the cost. I do imagine more such price/performance barriers might be broken relatively soon...and by Class D, as well. Low mass TT's just might add to the party.

We're also seeing continual advancements in things like noise-floor reduction and power-factor correction, the recent rise in low-cost NOS DAC's and now finally a much wider availability of 24/96k, or higher, technology in ever lower priced ancillary digital gear. And we are beginning to see all that across a number of companies that are competing for those same emerging market arenas. That is the thing that gives me the best hope for the moment for the future of the hobby. That, and, as I say, that most of these products now seem to be 'climbing up' to possibly challenge and overtake traditional, lower-end hifi, I'd say. This area of the market does seem to me for the moment to be a legit "cutting edge" in its own right. I agree it's sorta hard to ignore what might be going on here.

I say bring it on, too.
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michaelgreenaudio's avatar
michaelgreenaudio OP
1,019 posts
 

Hi Ivan

The low mass train is certainly coming our way. Smaller transformers, smaller magnet sizes on drivers, smaller connectors and a host of many other "variable" products allowing less distortion and larger dynamic ranges. Another big change heading our way is doing away with overbuilt speaker crossovers. One low mass change feeds the chain reaction. Remove a problem and you automatically remove the need for complicated fixes.

mg

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