Audio Luddite

A slightly cynical old man with a great stereo, trying to help others navigate the strange world of high end audio. Oh the GIF is of my Phazer TT with the AT7V.

[audio-luddite]

Getting Wired.

My trip down memory lane of speakers I have loved had me thinking about wires. Yes I go Stream of consciousness from time to time.

Those electrostatic speakers I built were huge. That was reason number one for retiring them. Reason 2 was high voltage sitting on the floor and relating to that was wire.

I had a pair of Dynaco Mark 3 amps direct coupled to these beasts. That means the hot primary windings of the output transformers were attached to the stators of the speakers. That is 480 volts DC to the center tap and so a lot of lethal voltage on my floor not safely in a box. I used high voltage wires to connect them and as a result I had to keep them short. Short runs from the amp to speaker means long runs from the control preamp to the amplifiers.

For a few years I used some cheap very long RCA single ended cables in a run of about 15 feet. ( 4.6m) They were fine. As I got more money in the bank I decided to upgrade and bought two runs of a shielded "AudioQuest" cable. Pretty expensive in the day, but nowhere near the insanity of today. I still have those, more on that in a bit.

It was in this era I was reading an Audio Magazine article reviewing different cables between a CD player and the preamp. Or maybe from his preamp to his amplifer? I had an early affordable Philips player. I do not remember the model number, but I do recall it had dual 14bit D to A converters with 4 time oversampling. I think this was the 1980s. But the test CD he used I had. It was the notorious Cowboy Junkies Trinity Session.

I had a good OP Amp preamp called a Spectro Acoustics. I had plain simple interconnect wires. And I had the monster electrostatic speakers. The key item in this article was that it was only with this one premium cable could he hear this noise in the first track of the album. Yes the Air Conditioning rattle*. I could hear that sound with my cheap wires. Hmmmm, its not the wires is it? His cable cost more than my CD player.

Cables were starting to go premium, and the magazines started to push, but it could not be the wire could it? Once doubt sets in the system of faith crumbles.

Wires have electrical properties resistance in Ohms, Inductance in Henrys, and Capacitance in Farads. The first one has a prefix of Milli which is thousands, the last two have prefixes of pico which is fractions of a trillion. Really small.

Fast forward to the recent present.

When I was hooking up my good system I needed RCA cables. I had boxes of them of various ages and condition. I looked for the ones that had the nicest plugs, not bent or corroded. I needed more. So rather than ordering some, I decided to make some. I got some nice hook up wire and a box of gold plated brass plugs. I braided red and white wire and they looked so nice. They were pretty short, and if you have ever braided yards of wire, you can appreciate why.

Braiding has the reputation of minimizing inductance or is it capacitance? No matter, being short minimizes both. And they are pretty.

I still had the long Audio Quest cables as well they were my "best" ones and I used them between my ARC preamplifier (The SP12?) and my Franken-Amp. For fun I swapped in a run of my home made hook up cables and it sounded much better. HUH? What? The short wires had more clarity and better treble. This with my ancient ears.

Ok thought I, the old ones are long so they probably have a lot of capacitance. Still a tiny amount measured in pico-farads, but relatively high.

So I cut a chunk off the audio quest and made two short cables from the fancy cable the same length as my home made ones. I am pretty good with solder and doing end plugs is easy. I swapped them in. Well how about that, it sounded the same now. The sound was clearer and the treble better.

So obviously I reduced the capacitance and that had been very slightly reacting with the preamp to amplifier response. Wires will make a difference if you go to extremes.

I have never respected the idea of exotic speaker cables with mystery magic. I just use heavy zip wire. Usually 12 gauge. I have long runs to my speakers and heavy hardware store wire is relatively cheap. I have nice gold plated brass terminals soldered on. In speaker runs the only significant electrical property is the resistance. A small wire will have more resistance than a heavy wire. That will reduce the damping factor and can actually attenuate the sound audibly depending on the impedance curve of the speaker.

In poorly designed unstable amplifiers speaker cables can pick up Radio Frequencies and cause weird stuff to happen. They may also react with the inductance and capacitance of the cable. It is not the cable it is a flaw in the amplifier.

*The air conditioning rattle is very subtle and low level. It is pretty clear in the original CD, and less so on the LP reissue. I occasionally struggle to hear it. But it is a noise that only real geeks care about. (Guilty)

[audio-luddite]

The best Speakers.

In my experience.

Back last century I and a buddy used to explore audio stores in New England. That included Massachusetts, and Connecticut and Rhode Island. We heard a lot of Stuff. Much of it was what we now call high end. We just thought it was cool stuff. The salespeople were tolerant as in when these kids get money....

In no particular order here are some I would own in the proper circumstances.

Original Klipschorns. Yup the big monster very efficient things from Arkansas. If you have never heard a set well do it! Are these the best, no. But for an experience of dynamics they are almost the best and only need a modest amplifier to drive them. You have never heard a Trumpet in a recording if you haven't listened with a K'horn. Drums hit you in the chest, hard.

The K'horn was in a private home of an acquaintance.

Fulton J modulars. This was in a dealer in Massachusetts who may still be in business. BIG about the size of a large refrigerator. Man tall, feet wide, and deep. They had a large modesty screen over an awkward stack of midrange and tweeter boxes. Fragile tweeters and not tolerant of amplifiers. In the photo below I see two Dynaco 400s (maybe one is a 416) and a Crown DC 300. Big Iron.

I could not remember the music played but the Bass was incredible. Deep and well defined like the bass drum was in the room. My buddy ended up getting the FMI 80 which was here used for a midrange driver. We both decided that "when we get rich..."

The next set was in a dealer in Connecticut near a submarine base. I do remember the music here, it was "Alan Parsons, I Robot". The electronics were a full suite of Audio Research with the SP3 preamp and two D76 tube amplifiers.

What can I say. This made an impression. I am still a fan of ARC (Duh!) and if I had the room I would get a set. (restored, as they do not age well.) I have stated my affection for Magnaplanars here more than once.

Quad 63 electrostatics. beautiful delicate sound with stupid levels of detail. They are also rather fragile. Better than the Quad 57s.

We were looking for Dayton Wrights, but this was a close as we got, but damn. for acoustic guitar and chamber music nothing is better than these. Of course I listen to Rock and full power symphonic music so there you go.

Dahlquist DQ10s in a Dealer I think in Mass, but may have been Rhode Island. These are remarkable and weirdly sound like electrostatics with bass if you have at least 1/2 horsepower of amplifier. More is better.

And the Bass is not that great. You need a big room and a patient partner. They can get louder than an electrostatic, but only using all your amps power.

Double Advent loudspeakers. We owned this! They were a recommended, just below reference set up, as described by the original Absolute Sound Magazine.

We both had a pair of Advents, and when he bought those FMI 80s, we set up his pair with my pair in my place. I had a Sony turntable, a Dynaco PAT5 preamp, and a Dynaco ST400 amplifier. It sounded very good.

This rig was interesting as it sounded fine with every type of music. Not spectacular, but there was nothing wrong at all with any part of it. Kinda weird no?

There were other outings, but not all made an impression like these did.

Much later in life I have heard the Wilson Audio WATT/Puppy in a local dealer in Vancouver. It was probably the room which was 4 hard walls and concrete floor.

It was painfully awful, but I think it was the room, the electronics, and the stupid semi-deaf sales people playing it way too loud for their mark. These do have an excellent high end reputation and I have heard them. I should give them another shot.

I have to mention the stuff I actually have now. I have high standards and have got pretty good at making things. I own a pair of original Advents, and I restored them from being blown and surround rotted. Those are the only commercial product main speakers I own.

I have no photos, but years ago I built a big array electrostatic speaker and there was nothing wrong with the sound. There was everything wrong with the size and hazardous voltages hiding around the back. They had to go away when I became a parent.

I still have my 48" tall monolith towers now part of my AVI surround system. It has 4 x 4" drivers each side with Piezo-ceramic tweeters and 12" woofers biamped. Not shabby at all, but not my serious system.

My serious system had been described a few times. Those speakers are inspired by these, Sonab OA14 from Scandinavia. I had heard these ages ago, and liked them.

By inspired by, I mean mine are not copies, but similar. With the grills on them they do not look like speakers at all. I saw a set of Sonabs for sale years ago. Before I could pounce someone else did. Damn, but wait I can build some and that is what I did.

Quite a variety is it not?

[audio-luddite]

Snacking on Chips.

Ok I fell for a bit of Face Tube click bait about "the best amplifiers" blah blah blah.

This guy, who seems to have a sufficient audience to not need a day job, included a couple of those tiny Class D amplifiers in his set. One was twice the price of the other but both were cheap. "They both use the Texas Instruments 3255 chip." He did not compliment their sound quality, but hey the price.

Hmmm.

If you look that chip up, which is very easy, and find the cut sheets on it there are gobs of words and numbers. It turns out the massive inflation of power capacity is due to the claims made by TI. 315 Watt stereo, 600 Watt mono! The datasheet will tell you that is at 10% distortion into 2 Ohms. Damn.

If you rig it for stereo and use a real world speaker impedance of 8 Ohm and keep distortion under 1% (bad tube amp range) you will see much less power. If you look at the distortion curve the "elbow " is at a realistic power of about 100 Watts per channel with actually respectable distortion.

But it is a tiny chip. It is 6mm wide, 14mm long and 1.2mm thick. Just think, that is smaller than some people claim as the proper diameter of wires to attach your speakers. ( I think 4mm dia wire is fine) There are 44 teeny tiny pins along the sides (22 per each) to attach inputs and outputs and power and lots of things. The PCB board attachment pads for the pins are 0.4 mm by 1.4 mm. So all this massive power and current is going through those small things.

One of the maximum ratings is for 17 amps, but for very low impedance. I don't think those pins would survive, but hey they sell these things and ASR love em.

But the best part is the price. You can buy these chips from Mouser quantity of one for 18 bucks Canadian Pesos. Yes you need some capacitors and inductors and a power supply with high and low voltages, as well as a bit of supporting logic, but all those can be had for the price of a good lunch. Somebody is making money here even if I can get a FOSI amp Amazon for 149.00 plus tax.

OK I come from last century. Single output transistors in my big amps are larger than this whole chip. It just feels wrong.

I am not going to get one even at that low low price. Why? Those great testing numbers are at tiny power levels, and I am a listening person. Would it prove me right or wrong? If it confirmed my opinion that is the opposite of an objective result. It would be money I could spend on some nice LPs.

[audio-luddite]

And Another thing.

I find those ASR people entertaining and frustrating. Many of them love "facts". If you cannot prove something absolutely, you are wrong. QED.

Was it Marcus Aurelius who said; "Everything you believe is an opinion."

There are at least two distinct groups contributing to Audio Science Review. (That bifurcation thing again) One are actual audiophiles who care about music and accurate reproduction. The other are best described as nerds. They may actually listen to gobs of music, but they only judge based on the numbers the testers deliver. If something tests better they rush to purchase it from Amazon or Aliexpress.

They will occasionally admit thinking these differences are beyond human ability to hear, but still insist this or that is better. Even if they can't hear it.

They are comfortable with this inherent contradiction.

What brings my little rant on is a discussion on one forum about a non-class D amplifier. There is always some A-hole who shouts; "Why are you wasting time with this when any Class D amp is just better?!"

For the new people, Class D is an amplifier operating mode that is, and is not digital at the same time. It is remarkable in some ways, in others WTF.

I had a Class D amp in my old car. It was amazing. It was also in a car so hardly a high end listening space. It also was wired with heavy gauge wire to the car's battery which gave it enormous current capability. That last bit is one of my big problems with these little devices.

I, obviously, am old school. A 400 Watt amplifier in my world weighs more than large children and are rather bulky. I simply do not believe the claims made by the relatively tiny boxes made in China that they produce kilowatt levels of power at 2 Ohms. I know that semi-conductors have made great strides but it takes substantial arrays of them and very heavy wires to conduct the current required for that. (like that cable to my car battery)

Yet ASR will test these things and show great numbers in multi-tone tests at 4 or 5 Watts and some other stuff. They may actually produce decent power before they distort above the assigned limit for a short time.

I have complained about this before, and probably will again. Yet I go back to the ASR site to look around as it can be fun. I sometimes have to vent afterward like this, so be patient.

I have several problems with Class D amps. Some big, some small.

Lets start with the big ones.

The power supply is usually a wall wart, or a small switch mode PSU in the box. They simply cannot produce current levels (Amperes) needed to sustain high power. Nor do they have the size and quantity of transistors to sustain that. It is the power supply in an old school amp that weighs the most. That transformer is a big lump of iron wrapped in copper wires.

The output must be filtered to cut the ultrasonic carrier out of the audio. That means a capacitor across the output. You are listening to a capacitor charge and discharge and shift phase of the signal. There is also an inductor in series, which is similar. Neither is perfect, but adding feedback from the output back to the input will reduce distortion, but does not eliminate it. (yes very small numbers)

Both my Franken-Amp and Nakamichi-san amplifers have no capacitors in the signal path as old school considered that as bad. Franken-Amp has an inductor as a safety feature as well, bad things could happen. The Tube amp is from an entirely different world, and of course has a big transformer between the working bits and the speaker.

I would guess a very good Class D amp would most resemble my Tube amp in voice. That is not bad.

I have some small issues, but sum them up, that to make such an amplifier work the signal must be converted (usually) to PCM streams to actually work the magic. That means chips. You cannot escape those Integrated circuit chips. I suspect that much of my doubt and problem with digital signals are the limitations of tiny things in tiny packages.

There was bit of argument about testing only 4 or 5 Watts being inadequate. The concern was rebutted by the catechism of you only need a couple Watts anytime. That is from an old chestnut about that is all you need to listen to even symphonic music. Being old it may even relate to the Jurassic era of audio where 60 Watts was huge and horn speakers* of high efficiency ruled. I know from personal experience I can hear a difference in dynamics between a 60 Watt and a 200-240 Watt per channel amplifier playing at the same level. Headroom is a real thing and helps with clarity.

*the Klipschorn AK7 is rated at 103 db for one watt of input power which is crazy. My speakers are 87ish db which require 40 times the power to put that out.

I feel better now.

[audio-luddite]

Lots of stuff out there.

As usual I will cruise the advertisements out in the air. So much stuff. I lingered on a CD player at this real store next town over. It is a down market version of a top of the line Sony. It has a few cool touches like a fancy metal CD drawer, and advanced DAC stuff.

My Yamaha is a consumer range device. I have my doubts as to its high-ended-ness. It sounds damn nice, but good enough? The thing with all digital devices is the deep guts are all chips made by a limited number of companies. It is the implementation of the surrounding stuff that makes the voice of the product. The metal drawer and actual heavy weight of the unit is notable. Not cheap enough to take a fly at.

Years ago I put a bigger capacitor in the power supply of an OP Amp preamp and it sounded different and better. Silly and simple, and effective. Things like that make a difference. Manufacturing decisions drive results. Heavy is good. Metal parts are good. It means some thought was given to it.

So this CD player is good, and may be better than the Yamaha. It is a Sony and they invented the CD with Philips decades ago. Who knows more about it?

I start to think I could trade some stuff for it. My old CD player and one of my old amplifiers perhaps with some cash. Ideally I could take it home to see if it is better. That is just trouble enough to persuade me to forget the whole thing.

That same store now has TWO ARC SP14 preamps. Good thing I already got mine. They still have a pair of ARC M-300 tube amp monsters and a little ARC 35 Watt amp. It is unusual to have much ARC stuff in any brick and mortar shops around here. Good thing I have mine.

In another loop around other classifieds I saw a high power transistor amplifier (200Watt/ch) for rather cheap. It is a THX certified model and that is good. It's been gone over and there were photos of the inside. It had a strong similarity to a Parasound high end amplifier ,was it a clone? One thing I noticed is that the photos of the "other" amps had large heat sinks on the dual rectifiers. This one had two naked rectifiers with no heat sink. Hmmm. Good Techs are so hard to find.

Yes I keep looking. Treasure is out there.

[audio-luddite]

How good is it?

This is a familiar question. The extremist audio geeks love to go on about how good or even perfect digital recording-streaming-hi-rez anything is. Mathematically it may even be true. If the world is all about math.

I have two main issues with that.

First is that old recordings are usually better. Specifically before a generation of "mastering engineers" started to ruin sound by massive processing to compensate for bulk consumption of audio product through poor systems. In the era from about the 1950s when stereo was invented to sometime in the early 1990s recordings and mastering was done with great care and excellence.

New recordings of popular music (for streams), and remastering of older stuff has been compromised. Example, a remastered Dire Straits Brothers in arms was compressed and ruined and is just inferior to all previous media issues. So streams of it in any format are just not very good.

Another example is that Cat Stevens album I want a fresh copy of, but new issues were remastered into a poor state. Wherefore art though Mofi?

My point is old recordings were done very well. And it really does not matter if it was analog or digital. Dire Straits Brothers in Arms was recorded 16 bit red book and is brilliant. Almost any TELARC CD or LP is just about as good as things get. Old Taped recordings can be great too. There may be a bit of noise and even drop outs, but that Getz Gilberto recording is amazing.

In response to demand companies that make boutique versions of old albums are doing well enough to get giant labels like Universal to release artisanal versions of memorable performances. Example DG (Universal) and DECCA (also Universal) press new versions of brilliant taped performances on high end vinyl. Pure analog and all that.

I have the DG Rites of Spring by Abbado and the London Symphony. It is wonderful. Pure tape to Lathe no messing about. The justly famous Jazz at the Pawn Shop is also wonderful, even if slightly technically compromised as it was not a studio recording.

The second problem is with respect to the mathematics any recording that respects the Nyquist limit and all that theory is good enough. Here is a link to an article that claims CD and SACD and High Rez are indistinguishable if the masters are good enough.

High sampling rates may benefit the DAC device output filter, but that is trivial. The circuit geeks have figured that out. Done well even CD is good enough for playback. For recording and mixing extra bits are useful to keep the noise down below audibility.

What we have is people arguing about numbers that may not be relevant. As an engineer I think that engineering and science are fields where choices are made based on numbers. At some point though the numbers do not direct one way or another. As an old school audiophile I also use my ears. I listen for ambience and resolution and clarity. I hear that in both CD and Vinyl. I miss that in many stream sources. Can a normal human or even one with record breaking hearing tell the difference between the better media?

I have several albums in both formats. They compare well. I generally prefer the LP version, which may indicate my CD player is not great. But my TELARC CDs sound awesome.

That brings me to my conclusion. If the best version of a piece of music is on an LP it is the best version. It is not a matter of handling a physical thing or even liner notes. If it is the best it is good enough. Anything with better numbers is not better if you cannot hear it.

To be fair the other extreme of pure analog or death is just as silly.

Grado Opus 3 cartridge

Yamaha CD S300

ARC SP14 Preamp

Nakamichi PA7 Amplifier.

Thick speaker cables.

Stealth Speakers.

[audio-luddite]

An impromptu listening session.

It was a national holiday here on July 1. My daughter and her kids and dog came to the village for a parade and fun street food. She bumped into an old friend from high school who was meeting up with some more old friends later. Soon enough they were all coming over to our house for a barbecue. We had just enough food. Salmon, hot dogs and a steak for the carnivores. And a few bottles of wine.

I had been playing background music on the system for a few hours. I had got the streaming thing back online as there is a new broadband modem in the house. It needed a full reset. So I was streaming a bit of everything.

This old HS friend, Mike, was in a band, later was an assistant director in the film biz, and was now working in odd jobs between gigs. The grandkids were impressed that he was a "rock star" ( pretty good singer with a sound a bit like Led Zeppelin). He mentioned that he was looking for a "record player" which got me going. He recalled I had a fancy system, so we had to go listen to it. We did.

I gave him a choice of two albums. Both were 45 RPM 180 gram doubles. He picked Dire Straits. I put it on. Mike and the Italian boyfriend of the other HS friend listened from the "good spot". This is an Album?! The geek in me said yes it is plastic, but the original recording was digital. The clarity is very good, and these guys had never heard such a system before. (It is better than what I had when they were in high school which was still pretty good)

It was fun. He asked about the speakers and yes they are strange good and unobtrusive. I built them. Yadda Yadda.

It was well warmed up and was signing. The Naka-san is back from it's days off. There was only one tube in the line that being in the preamp. The rest was solid state.

Grado Opus 3 cartridge.

Phase Linear 8000a turntable.

ARC SP14 Preamp.

Nakamichi PA7

Stealth speakers.

[audio-luddite]

Jungle Drums.

I remember old TV shows from when I was a kid. One had a guy who lived in some African jungle and did adventures. He knew something was up when he heard drums off in the distance played by the native tribes. In US westerns there were also smoke signals done by indians. Hey it was last century OK?

I was flipping through the "usual places" and found this bit of silliness.

Lots of Fun With DSP: The Ferrum Audio WANDLA DAC and Its Tube Mode

... (And a side note about tube rolling) In Part Two of my CanJam NYC 2026 coverage (Issue 230) I promised to tell you about the most intere

It is silly of course, but speaks to a key controversy. I can see both sides here. Do you want perfect accuracy, or pleasant sound, even if the pleasantry is like sugar in coffee? I do not like sugar in coffee if the coffee is good. Is the coffee good?

It is interesting that a device was made to present the sound of particular tubes using good math, and very powerful computing power to fiddle with an otherwise accurate signal. Much of the cost here was to provide this feature. The cost is not trivial.

Most interesting is the method used was to measure how a particular vacuum tube distorts and model that with polynomial equations then feed that into a digital signal processor to add that profile to the original signal. The lesson here is that tiny amounts of added stuff is audible and creates the "warmth" or voice of a tube. I suppose that it means you could enjoy tube rolling without having to buy thousands of dollars worth of tubes to feed tens of thousands of dollars of amplifiers. Makes it almost sound affordable.

In my own case I have an amplifier that is very accurate and it reveals almost too much detail in some recordings That is Naka-san. It is built to avoid very complex high order distortion by avoiding global feedback. It is really accurate. I also have an amplifier with very low distortion, but that definitely adds something to the music, being my ARC Tube amp. I enjoy listening to both. They are both high end. I even get the lips parting thing with the tube amp, but that may be too much. The mechanics of a piano and the valve train of a saxophone are not essential to the music.

So the controversy is preference of a particular voice versus truth. Is better, better? My tube amp has a pleasant voice, but it is not a strong dominating voice. It is subtle texture on top of a really accurate presentation.

In the above piece, and in many other "audiophile" reviews the idea of something being more musical is said. Does musical mean more distortion? The textures that the ARC Cl60 adds make drums sound more like they have skin, and wooden instruments sound more woody, things like that. It also enhances the complexity of that electric guitar on Dire Straights "Brothers in Arms-the man's too strong". Those things are not musical to my ear, but they are nice. My fancy transistor Naka-san is more accurate, and it sounds very nice too. I see musical as a smoothness and lack of harshness which is true of all my equipment.

I am lucky I do not have to play favorites. I got both. If I did not and could afford it a thing like this Polish machine it could make sense. Of course Mr Doris was able to borrow one to play with. No money was spent.

[audio-luddite]

Its Summer!

The longest day and time to fire up Naka-san. Put the Audio Research Space heater to bed until fall.

Had a friend over. He is German, specifically Bavarian. Last time he was over we did not even talk about audio stuff, this time we did. And we listened too. And there was beer. Pilsner Urquell if you must know.

He had not heard Naka-san in the system and he was impressed. His speakers are big Bang and Olufsen's which he had fiddled with. As with many old school products the inside was wired with tiny fine wires and the connection to the amplifiers were with a tiny DIN plug. He replaced the wires with heavy stuff and the connections with solid modern terminals. (OK DIN plugs are modern in a way, but come on!) He learned how much fun it is to solder next to a big magnet. He said the sound opened up and it was like a veil was removed. Yup he talks audiophile speak.

He asked me how much would it cost to make speakers like mine. Oh that is dangerous. He wondered about the midrange driver, what kind of driver was it? I told him it was the woofer. It was a two way system with damn expensive cross over parts. (Solen) I had to remove the covers to show him. He said he did not believe it. Hey I know about stuff.

His electronics is a vintage German receiver called a Kirksaeter. I think it is well regarded, certainly by him. Probably adequate to drive my things. I like building things. Could get interesting.

His son is a well trained pianist, but works as a computer programmer. ( hey I am old school and refuse to use "coder" as a job title) He is going to visit him in Montreal for a month. I asked what if any system he has. He said he has a piano.

Funny how musicians fall into two fairly distinct groups. There is that bifurcation thing again. One side gets all fussy and demanding with raging audiophilia with fancy systems. The other side is happy with a blue tooth speaker or even an AM radio.

It may be a self protective measure as if you are in to quality music, once you enter the madness of high end audio.....

Obsession is a dangerous thing.

We played some good stuff. All vinyl of course. For all the crowing about the inherent superiority of digital stuff most new recordings just are not that good anymore.

[audio-luddite]

Tubular Dude.

It is about time to swap out the Tuber for the Naka-san. It is getting warmer, I set up the AC unit in the front room.

In other tube news.

I got a junk mail from one of my tube shops, Tube Depot. They are having a sale on a selection of NOS tubes. They quote names like Mullard, SED, Tung-Sol, Siemens and Telefunken. All in the celestial sphere of glass heads. The ad touted the warmth and richness and specific attributes of each type and what they can bring to your system.

I am so glad I am not a tube roller. I do not like the idea of changing the sound of a system with different brands of gain devices. I think for a given circuit it should not change very much if at all if you swap out one 12AX7 for another brand. I know things age and very subtle parameters can change, but the device should be tolerant.

It takes a helluva lot of work and time to bias the tubes in my ARC. Not the kind of thing you want to do very often. I also could not afford it. She has 12 tubes.

They wanted over $359 USD for one EL34 tube. If you have a Dynaco ST70 you need 4 matched ones. This tube set is a few hundred dollars more than you would pay for a fully restored example of that Amplifier.

I have only ever replaced tubes that had problems. Though I admit to flipping through a few tubes in my Schitt headphone amp which has one tube in it and I had a handful laying around. Oh and yes they sounded different dammit.

I wonder about having a NOS sale. NOS is new-old-stock. That means never used, factory fresh, and they don't make them anymore. Once gone they are gone. I suppose they are getting expensive to keep around. All these types are manufactured today in fairly good facilities. Though most are made in Russia (bad Putin BAD). They are also made in China and in Eastern Europe. You can get brand new ones.

Supposedly if someone builds an Amplifier it is configured with current tube parameters and should work as intended with current stock.

Oh well it is a hobby and people like to play.

[audio-luddite]

More Reality.

As real as it gets.

The Vancouver Orpheum Theater for the VSO. A Gershwin concerto, a thing about Finland by a Peruvian composer, and Ravel's Daphnis and Chloe.

It is a 90ish year old venue in the old school tradition of lots of Baroque shapes. The sound defuses with a vengeance. That was the goal after all, so everyone can hear it.

Gershwin made a hit with Rhapsody in Blue and he was commissioned to do a "proper" Piano concerto which he did. He did all the orchestration himself this time, but it sounded a lot like Rhapsody in Blue anyway. The Pianist was amazing by the name of Helene Grimaud. Such fast fingers.

The Ravel was very interesting as they absolutely filled the stage with musicians. There were 8 percussionists! Oh and a full choir with about two dozen more placed up in the balcony for a surround sound thing.

Again my theme here is the image I heard was nothing like a stereo playback. Every instrument was audible and clear. The textures and timbres of each was clear. But there was none of the precise location in space that golden ears crave. You could see where they were. There is nothing more realistic than reality. I am still impressed with how a solo violin can fill such a space with sound.

I am going to look for a recording of that Ravel. I have an excerpt I think. It was particular fun as the conductor Alexander Shelly did the whole thing from memory. He spoke briefly before the performance and was clearly having fun.

Live music is good, if inconvenient. It is a valuable thing to experience to keep you aware of what is real, as well as employment for all those amazingly skilled musicians. Recordings are only a shadow.

[audio-luddite]

I got a CD on.

It is Carlos Santana Shaman. I got the ARC CL60 in line. It must come out soon, the weather is getting warm. I have to enjoy it while I can. This is a digital recording and it sounds fine. It is a 2002 copyright.

The ARC amp adds a wonderful texture to sound. The percussion is more alive and real. The first track had castanets which felt like they were in the room. Oh the third track has Seal who is a big black guy with a rasp in his voice. Damn!

I know it is a tiny subtle distortion. And maybe a tube amp drops down the ultrasonic noise from DACs. I don't care. It is good.

There is detail and wonderful subtle sounds. This is why the money is spent. I can hear it. Front and back tracks all are clear. No sound can hide from the steam powered system.

All my amps sound different. Really close, I am sure I could pick them out blind. (Challenge to those testing people)

I had the system warming up on two passes of a TELARC CD. If you have a CD player buy TELARCs. They are the most obsessive high end things. They don't make them anymore, but they are out there. Two essentials. One is the 1812 overture with real FN cannons, the other is Carmina Burana. I got both and a dozen others.

But this Santana is a damn good Arista label. Now owned by Universal who own everything but what Sony does. Made before the stupid loudness wars. Buy old it is better.

It is weird to me that CDs are old tech. It is weird to me that cassettes are coming back. You have to spend serious money to get them to sound just OK. Vinyl is far better, and good CDs are a whole nuther level. (most CDs are just OK but good ones!)

Of course I am listening to a tube amp. They are tricky. Some are great. Some are just sticky sweet syrup. The good ones..... I am going to say Conrad Johnson and ARC are worth it. The rest....

Yes I have had a bit of red wine. More than a bit. Just the right amount. Had a nice steak right off the BBQ.

Santana is still cooking. Damn I never heard these sounds in my Car. No surprise it is stock.

[audio-luddite]

Some people care about stuff.

I was thrashing about the internoise and tripped over this.

Care and quality.

I doubt that there is a single streaming platform that cares so much about the music and how it is packaged. Just get the file on the server and collect the money is that business model. Impex is all about caring for the product and the experience you get when you use their stuff.

I have two IMPEX records. One is the most expensive album I ever bought (Getz/Gilberto). It comes with a detailed book describing the process they used to get the recording done, but also the effort they went to involving the family of Stan Getz and telling the story of the original recording.

The other is an excellent version of Famous Blue Raincoat. Not the ultra expensive one, the just really good 33.333RPM copy they put out.

They are both excellent.

I love back stories and the when where and why of a thing. IMPEX cares too.

I wish they would do a Catch Bull at Four. I know they would do an outstanding job of it.

I listened to both of my Cat Stevens LPs last night. Tea for the Tillerman and Catch Bull at four. They are good clean copies and I have taken good care of them, but they are 50 years old. They sounded very good. I know they could sound better.

While I was listening a thought came to mind. The testing people and the golden ears go on and on about phono pickups, this is good this is bad this is better. Blah Blah Blah. I hear very little about microphones. There are at least three technologies used. There are many models from several manufacturers. They can all sound different and bring a particular voice to a recording. But even the digital drones do not debate the need for microphones. They do not care that recording engineers pick and choose them to voice a recording. They do not debate which is more accurate. They cannot test one without using another microphone. They are trapped.

I think phono pickups are simpler and probably more consistent than microphones. They have an easier job. If they have reasonable frequency response the job is half done. They live in a very well defined place and work within simple constraints.

Last night listening to my 50 year old plastic disk I did not even think about which phono pickup was in the turntable. The sound was good, clean, clear, no problems.

It was the GRADO pickup by the way.

[audio-luddite]

New Old music

I do not often listen to radio in the car. I never do at home. So whatever is the top 40 or whatever it is called I do not hear. Has been that way for a very long time.

So I am a bit isolated from what is popular or new. Or what was popular and new decades ago. What I get, I get from other places like a news source. That is how I found The last dinner party. I found Mike Dawes on a YouTube musician site.

Most recently it was in an audiophile equipment review. I like interesting and complex sounds. Apparently so do golden ears. Last week I read a thing that mentioned Peter Gabriel, a name I had heard before. He had some hits but those did not interest me at all.

There was a review of an amplifier where the GE was using a particular track of Mr Gabriel's for evaluating bass. That track was "The rhythm of the heat" from his fourth album from 1982. The back story is really interesting, look it up if you can. I listened in the car a few times and hey not bad. One other track was a crazy thing that reminded me of Indonesian Gamelan music. There were a couple of tracks that got airplay, but I never cared for "Shock the Monkey". (WTF is that about)

My car audio is stock and sounds OK. But power and range aint in it.

Last night I fired up the steam powered system and streamed this album. I see now why the GE used it for Bass evaluation. There are some BIG drums. Great space and dynamics that the car system just could not do. Impressive to the point I may look to buy the album. I can of course stream it as I did last night, but hey its what I like.

I followed that with a track from Paul Simon's Rhythm of the Saints which has a similar world music thing. Brazilian and African drums and a fair bit of fun. I had that on CD but it was destroyed. Big drums.

Big percussion is complex as most of the sound is not the low frequency stuff, but higher harmonics and information. The BASS is a foundation that makes it work. It just does not sound the same without that as it was in my car. The ARC is still on duty and it likes drums. Kinda funny as it is a tuber, but it has good bass if it is on the track. It is not perfect, but it is deep. The tested bandwidth is 12hz to 40 khz.

I have not measured my speakers, but they go pretty low, and higher than I can hear. They are fairly simple. If there is signal going in it all comes out.

[audio-luddite]

No apologies.

I was flipping through the noise in the ASR site. It is full of contrasts and contradictions. One user who often posts technically sophisticated replies and even burns to other people surprised me when he wrote about how he liked and appreciated Vinyl LPs.

He liked the "ceremony" and full experience of pulling out an album and doing the spin up thing. It came across as rather apologetic. He had the fancy streamer stuff but, sorry, still liked plastic. Why be sorry?

I have heard this a few times from a few places. The tone was "yes I know digital is better, but..."

Trying to express the preference for the sound by a back door is not really right. I may have even done that a bit to try to bridge to the digital people. I do go on about liner notes and how good they are to appreciate a piece. But I gotta say that Apple Music stream of the Beethoven Violin Concerto had a great set of documents to go through with more detail than anyone could want. (over 20 pages?)

Fundamentally I find the sound is better on vinyl. Just better.

Aside from the potential for higher dynamic range and resolution in digital it is usually used very poorly. Compression and limiting and loudness wars to make pop music sound good through wireless earbuds results in very compromised sound. Who cares if you can have 24 bits of resolution if you only use 8?

When done properly it is excellent. Think Telarc for that.

Older music that has been remastered also gets poor treatment. Example of Dire Straights Brothers in Arms (original studio recording in digital 16bit 44khz) recently remastered for re-release with massive screwing up to sound good to the "new" ear bud audience. It is compressed, and limited and simply ruined.

I had a simple consumer LP that sounded far better when compared to a lossless stream, and got a MOFI skateboard trick (45-180-double) LP that blows every recent "remaster" into the weeds. Plastic wins that round.

Much of the recent vinyl issues come from two ideas. One is to preserve the quality of the original recording. The other is to tone down the loudness war nonsense of some recent stuff because vinyl is just not as tolerant of it. So even some new stuff can sound better on vinyl.

Though apparently Taylor Swift's stuff is not great.

The shopping adventure is made more "interesting" as you have to figure out who drove the mastering process. Example that I cannot find a proper new copy of Cat Stevens Catch bull at 4. In contrast that Deutsche Grammophon of Rites of Spring which was recorded on tape and remastered by artisans who did an incredible job.

The old analog recordings are very good. They are not perfect, there are flaws, but damn they sound good. The extreme example is Getz Gilberto. Recorded the early 60s before they knew what stereo was. I have a silly expensive version (one step impex) that has zero processing. The simplicity and naturalness of the sound is remarkable. It is also a historical document of Jazz at a crossroads. ( I did spend too much money on it)

There are many others. The MOFI business model is based on getting access to original masters of well recorded albums and treating them well.

Mike Dawes that amazing guitarist issued a vinyl LP "Galactic Acid" that bragged it was the best sounding recording he had ever done. The Last Dinner Party's first LP was mastered by Sterling Labs and was incredible. (and had wonderful liner notes)

I like Vinyl Records. They sound better.

[audio-luddite]

I got ears don't I?

Late Sunday afternoon. We were tired, and nothing was thawed out from the freezer. The leftovers from earlier in the week were done. OK lets go into the village for dinner.

We wanted Greek Food, but it was Greek Orthodox Easter. They use the old Julian Calendar for religious purposes. It does not line up with our world. So the place was closed. I did not want Pizza, but it is very good from this tiny shop on the corner. So we walked on and tried to decide where to go.

There is a pub that has lots of seafood pub style, but also has Thai food, and I like spicy. So that is where we went. And there was live music.

There was a tiny stage with a drum kit and some PA. There was only one guy this day. He had a guitar and one of those machines to play rhythm. I do not know one guitar model from another but it was electric and had a hollow body. It looked a lot like the type George Benson plays. So he did some songs. He was an OK singer and player. Hey music is done for love, not showing off. (usually)

I had a beer. There was a golf tournament on the TV. We had some breaded shrimp while waiting for the unpronounceable Thai food to arrive. The music was fine behind me. I noted that it was not loud, but there was a lot of distortion in the tone. That was almost like an extra string. Electric Guitar Players love that. I mused that it was either a tiny tube amp, or it was a digital processor thing. A clipping tube amp should be loud right?

Then he played a George Benson version of "On Broadway". Everyone knows that one. The tone was very much like George Benson. The guitar sounded right. He fiddled with the lyrics quite a bit. Doing a pub gig people ask for more songs than anyone can remember exactly. It was enjoyable. It was live music.

Live music is cool. That Absolute Sound idea about it being the ideal your home system should match is nonsense. The PA system was a simple jazz / pop small group thing. Often they have three players, and there was only one this night. It did not have subterranean Bass and shimmering treble. It was what it was.

My most recent other live music experiences were also different than this "Absolute". Those were a Symphony Orchestra and a Chamber Orchestra. No PA there, but still it did not have holographic imaging and many of the hallmarks we look for in great recordings. Recordings are different. This was not "Jazz at the Pawn Shop".

I enjoyed the spicy food and the beer and the music. It was all good.

[audio-luddite]

AB versus D?

I have not yet found a reliable review of one of those tiny class D Chinese amplifiers. By that I mean a sounds like review by at least an apprentice golden ear. But I have found a Stereophile review of a Chinese "hi end" amp made by Eversolo who have made a few those small Class D amps. The model in question is the Eversolo AMP-F10.

Stereophile did a relatively positive review in the classic "it sounds like" style.

I want to be clear that sounds like style only works to sort devices that are otherwise noted as at least OK. I have seen so many likes of less than OK devices to rely only on that.

The cool thing here is that when the designers at EVERSOLO wanted to take a kick at the high end they went class A/B. It is in every way a classic big iron linear power supply to an analog transistor output. They didn't try to do it Class D. So they think in their own minds A/B is better? I will link the review below as it has some cool tidbits like what music they listen to in Shenzen China.

In typical fashion they overclaim the power. The lead in on the website says 950 Watts, but it really is 200 Watts per channel at 8 Ohms. The higher number is when it is bridged into mono into 4 ohms. It is not an inexpensive device.

For all that it did fine. It was being compared to a Benchmark AHB2 which is a good one. Generally the AHB2 was better in detail and clarity while in some tracks the Chinese beast showed a heavier bass. So it was good, but not as good as.....

I had seen a good review of an ARC Class D amp, but it had a linear power supply, and the Class D "module" was built of discrete components by ARC. That's the hard way.

The fun part here was, as I said, that Eversolo thought they had to do a high end amp old school.

As a bit of spice the Audio Science Review site has comments on this particular model as being not very reliable.

A century ago, pioneering psychiatrist Carl Jung had a wild encounter with the power of sound. "In a village on the way from Lake Albert to