On Sun, 17 Oct 2004 20:06:52 GMT, (Don Pearce)
wrote:

On 17 Oct 2004 19:45:44 GMT, ohawker (Andy
Evans) wrote:

Contrary to what Stewart and others think, I've spent 35 years building and
tweaking hifi with one aim in mind - to make the hi-fi system sound like live
music.

Why is that 'contrary to what I think'? In point of fact, I'm sure
that it's absolutely true - I also think that you're going about it
the wrong way! :-)

I didn't use measurements for this, I used my ears since I've been a
professional musician for most of my life. I also did all improvements
methodically, switching one thing at a time, and preferring a closer approach
to the original sound, more fidelity in instrumental timbre and more detail,
reasoning that any unrealistic timbre or detail masked was not 'fidelity' to
the source. OK. ~ Now the point is this:
How many of us know exactly how acoustic instruments and voices actually sound?

At least three regular posters attend jazz and other unamplified
concerts on a regular basis. I'm one of them.

If you go to live classical or jazz concerts where music is unamplified (plus
folk etc), it actually has a particular sound to it which is smooth, natural,
even bland. It's unimpressive in many ways compared to our "delusional" hifi
kits and our delusional hifi language.

Agreed. The common 'hi-fi' sound is anything but!

It doesn't have 'warmth', or 'bloom' or
'bass slam' or even PRAT. What it does have is a lot of nothing - nothing
between individual instruments except space.

It's absolutely *not* 'nothing', some of us call it atmosphere.....

To reproduce this it's necessary
to reproduce a lot of nothing, which is the fantastically difficult bit. It
means no gloss on the treble, no large soundstage to instruments - they should
sound like small point sources in exact locations in the soundstage - no
'dynamics' that aren't actually there, and no 'bass slam'. Pretty boring you
might say. And very hard to achieve - you have to eliminate resonances, all
sorts of interferences etc etc. You don't so much 'build' a syetem but 'take
away' infidelities of all kinds.
At this point Stewart must be rubbing his hands and saying "I told you so -
acoustically transparent".

Close enough for guv'mnt work................. :-)

Jim must be happy that the amplifier doesn't exist.
It all sounds great. Except that this isn't the gospel according to Stewart.
Because:
a) I'm quite sure amplifiers and indeed componants sound different, and I've
been doing systematic choices between componants to eliminate infidelities for
countless years.

I'm quite sure that good ones don't, but I can still count the years!

b) I've done all this by ear

Me too, but under controlled conditions.

c) I use all valve equipment, and I don't think I could get transparency so
easily with solid state.

I use all solid-state equipment, because it's very difficult - and
extremely expensive - to achieve sonic transparency using valves.
OTOH, getting *added* 'nothing', i.e. reverberant hall ambience, is
very easy with valves.....................

d) I don't think valves sound 'warm' - another delusion - the ones I build
sound smooth (to my ears smoother than solid state) and dynamic (without a kind
of 'greyness' I hear in some solid state products)

Anything which does not sound *exactly* like a top-class solid state
amp is not removing 'greyness', it's *adding* artifacts. That these
artifacts are euphonic, so you obviously *like* that artificial sound,
is another matter. It's easy to make an amp sound smooth when you
knock off the edges that were in the input signal................

e) I don't think there is such a thing as 'acoustically transparent', only
approximations towards this goal.

I do, and I can prove it with a bypass test.

Why this post then? I just eliminated another level of grunge - yes, more has
"gone" leaving the sound a lot better. I started by using better speaker cables
(solid copper core, the previous ones were coloured).

Oh, phukkin' L!!!........................

I hope you mean that they were yellow, not that they actually sounded
different. Otherwise, you're a maroon.

Then I wired my whole
system through a monster variac which I have (25 amps). Obviously an effective
mains cleaner.

No, it has no effect at all, other than varying the voltage. That's
what a Variac is *for*, it varies AC - Variac, geddit?

Some studios use huge toroids for this, like over 1K VA
isolation transformers, e.g. mine is over a foot in diameter and 6" high.

An isolation transformer is an *entirely* different beast, and
requires specialist grounding techniques to be effective. Your
imagination of course requires no such technical input!

snip gushing expression of vivid imagination

BTW, sounds like you may have a hum problem in your system, 50Hz as
opposed to PSU ripple. The best way to fix that is with a 'scope, as
it's difficult to hear, nearly subliminal in most systems. You really
just feel that an odd veiling has been lifted when you remove the hum.
Hey!............

Interesting essay, Andy - but you've wasted your time. The decision as
to whether what comes out of your Hi Fi sounds like live music has
been made long before any piece of media reaches your hands, and the
decision in pretty much 100% of cases is "no, it won't sound like live
music, it will sound the way the producer likes it". Unless you make
your own recordings, that is the situation you are stuck with and you
just have to make the best of it.

Quite so. But you have to admire ol' Andy's enthusiasm, however
misguided..... :-)
--

Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering