If Warmth Is a Distortion, Why Do So Many Audiophiles Still Defend It?

@atmasphere You said, 

"I concur with the result (passive controls sounding ’cool’ or ’thin’) but not the why. 

That is because the passive control allows the interconnect used to color the presentation far more than a properly designed active circuit might."

But you didn’t acknowledge my other statement that a passive attenuator will be more transparent AND cooler than an active preamp in tonality.  I won’t debate circuit design because I am ignorant of that.  But this is an obvious sonic result heard by educated ears like mine with lots of live music and audio experience.

This is an example of the well accepted sonic result that high fidelity aka transparency is better achieved with a straight wire with gain.  I think we would agree that the straight wire with gain does have its own colorations of whatever resistance, capacitance, inductance is in the wire.  But active preamp circuits have lots more wire and more capacitors, resistors plus devices (transistors, tubes) so active circuits are a much larger deviation from the theoretically perfect straight wire.  Therefore, whatever cable is used, it will have FEWER colorations than all that wire and components in the active circuit.

Long ago, I had a phono stage with just the right gain on a certain recording, so when I plugged it into the power amp it was much more detailed AND cooler in tonality than when I added the line stage.  I did this by plugging the phono out RCA into the power amp, then compared line out RCA into the power amp.

As you say, my equipment didn’t have XLR balanced outputs to do this experiment.  I do know the theory that balanced cables cancel the distortions, which is why in pro applications, long microphone cables and cables from the ADC to recorder inputs are balanced.  Also, long interconnects from preamps to power amps have less resistance and losses in balanced vs unbalanced.  However, I have found that consumer playback with short balanced vs unbalanced cables is slightly more bass dominant, which has the psycho-acoustic effect of veiling.  Dave Belles in the early amps I used had only single ended RCA connectors.  He thought that balanced connections require double the amount of circuitry which would result in loss of detail.  

"so active circuits are a much larger deviation from the theoretically perfect straight wire."

One would think...

And by this same logic, one channel of a power amp that is run in stereo should have better measurements than when the two channels are connected to form a mono channel using almost twice the number of components.  But if you look at the specs in Stereophile, you will find that this is not usually the case and the two channels "ganged" will measure better.

@Rauliruegas, Great observation that no analog musical instrument produces one pure note.  When an orchestra tunes, the oboe plays an A at 440 Hz for about 30 seconds.  The oboist tries to make a steady 440 Hz with steady loudness.  But actually it is not steady, and many micro transients are heard.  These come from the air turbulence needed to produce the sound.  Similarly, while listening to the oboe A 440 Hz, I try to match my open A string to that 440 Hz.  The funny thing is that a violin at 440 Hz sounds slightly higher in pitch than the oboe at 440 Hz.  This is due to many more HF harmonic overtones in the violin than the oboe.  Violin string sound is created by scrapping the string, which generates more HF than the air turbulence used to create oboe sound.  A great violinist can move the bow all its length from the frog to the tip in over 30 sec, even 60 sec.  But even the best violinist moving the bow slowly and as steadily as possible still generates these micro transients which sound markedly different from the sine wave generator at 440 Hz.

A nonmusical medical analogy.  When I see the urologist, I urinate into a funnel passively without forcing the flow.  I then see the curve of volume vs time.  It is fascinating that the curve has lots of mini squiggles to show that what I think is smooth and steady is not that at all.  It's got lots of transients which are shown by the mini squiggles.  I hope you enjoyed this analogy.  Music is part of real life in many ways.  High fidelity accuracies should reflect real life.

@r27y8u92,

"I have enjoyed the warm and smooth sound. Not any more. Whenever I go to music concert, I feel the sound from the concert somewaht harsher. But, the harsher sound is true to the music, and I like it better! Because it is simply more vivid! Some people whose ears are trained by the real concert sound do not much prefer the WARMTH. I am the one of them." 

Well said.  That is the truth. The conductor hears everything at the most vivid.  In the 1st row center, it is somewhat less vivid but still enjoyable.  Vividness is progressively lost further away.  Yes, the 7th row may have the best overall balance, but the vividness is markedly subdued.  In the 7th row, there is more uniformity between the musicians close to the edge of the stage and those in the back of the stage.  But everything is way less vivid in the 7th row, so I am less interested in balance when everything is mediocre by my standards.

sargonicuse, devinplombier,

Thanks for your info on the SPL apps.  Are there good ones for Android?  Or non phone apps now that Radio Shack is out of business?