Audio, hi-fi and car audio - Is Hi-Fi delusional?

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Is Hi-Fi delusional?

Andy Evans wrote:
In reply to Ian: I don't know any alternative to using descriptive language
when describing sound in words, any more than wine tasters can't do better than
'a hint of blackberry and elderflower' when describing wine. It's one of those
things we're stuck with, faute de mieux.

On the contrary - 'a hint of XXX' is very descriptive, indicating that
XXX is detectable in small quantity.

'sounds like lots of nothing' is NOT descriptive at all.

Is Hi-Fi delusional?

"Andy Evans" wrote in message

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. 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.

Ignorance of the need for level matching and blind testing for many of these
comparisons, noted.

OK. ~ Now the point is this: How many of us know exactly how
acoustic instruments and voices actually sound?

Yup, all acoustical instruments of a kind sound the same, regardless of who
plays them, where you play them or where you are standing with regard to the
instrument when it is played.

If one allows that the sound of a given kind of musical instrument varies
with the brand, model and even sample, that different players make them
sound different, that they sound different in different rooms and when you
are in various locations w/r/t the instrument then you come up with a simple
answer:

Virtually nobody ever knows a priori how the instrument sounds.

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.

Unless the particular circumstances make it sound otherwise...

It's unimpressive in many ways compared to our
"delusional" hifi kits and our delusional hifi language. 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.

Except when it doesn't.

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.

However, the infidelities are always non-zero.

At this point Stewart must be rubbing his hands and saying "I told
you so - acoustically transparent". 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.

IOW it's gotta be true because you've believed the same thing for years.
Wow, that must be a scientific theorum, right?

b) I've done all this by ear

No, by eye, ear, unmatched levels, not time-synched, etc.

c) I use all valve equipment,

Bragging or complaining?

and I don't think I could get transparency so easily with solid state.

IOW it's gotta be true because you've believed the same thing for years and
years. True science strikes again.

d) I don't think valves sound 'warm' - another delusion

Bragging or complaining?

- 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)

definately bragging.

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

IOW it's gotta be true because you've believed the same thing for years and
years and years. Where is science when you need it?

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).

More opinion stated as fact.

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

Not so obviously an effective mains cleaner, since some Variacs have
nonlinear cores.

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.

I got one just like that, but I use it for bringing up SS amps under test.
Saves a lot of fried parts.

My
first reaction was that the sound was boring. The "foreground" of the
sound was less obvious - the soundstage was the same, neither more
forward or backward, but instruments sounded relatively tiny and
melodies less 'obvious'. There was a lot of nothing between
instruments, and their actual location was spookily exact. The sound
seemed quieter because of this, and also the treble seemed dim
initially. In fact the treble was all there, and the sound of the
triangle and cymbals was exactly right, just not spread all over the
place. It took a while for it to dawn on me that this was the closest
I had come to the sound of live music. Yep, smooth, quite bland, a
lot of nothing but loads of fine detail, faithful timbre to
instruments - in short a step further towards acoustically
transparent. No warmth, no bloom, no PRAT, no bass slam. Spooky.

Probably delusional.

After a little while I started to get excited! And looking back on
the whole saga of 'warm valve amps', PRAT, slam etc etc, the whole
business of Hi-Fi seemed delusional. I'm sure this post will be of
little use to those who listen mainly to rock and amplified music,
but for those who listen to classical and acoustic music, getting
closer to 'nothing much except the live sound of music' may matter a
lot. It's taken me 35 years to eliminate enough grunge to actually
get this far, and no I couldn't have got there sooner or even at all
with a big Krell - I know that one very well, my brother has a Krell
and Apogees, and I've heard all manner of big ss amps in high end
demos. I'm quite unrepentant about how I've made my Hi-fi sound
natural, and all the changes I've done have been carefully thought
out. It's a bit like Salome's seven veils - you have to lift all the
veils to see what's really there, which is, errm, nothing. Thought
for the day.

This round of self congratuation was brought to you by Andy Evans.

Is Hi-Fi delusional?

Stewart's dead right, don't forget you'll need a bl****dy big 'ammer to
knock it in with. Its amazing the amount of cr**p on Hydro Electric here
even in the Highlands. If you don't have a scope then you can loan for a
nominal sum a mains 'sniffer' of Russ Andrews and hear all the burps,
noises, clicks buzzes that reside on your supply. As Stewart say's a girt
copper spike driven deep into the ground works a treat..somewhere for 'em
all to go. During the summer months I have been known to pour a couple of
buckets of water on the spike surface is to help ground conduction...how mad
is that ;-)

We've got 10 Furze extensible lightning rods deep driven with a
1 1/4 inch by 1/8 inch solid copper bus bar outside our hi-fi room.

But it ain't connected to that, its to help protect the radio stack
above from old Jove's bolts!.

Now how "sensible" is that;))...
--
Tony Sayer

Is Hi-Fi delusional?

"tony sayer" wrote in message
...
Stewart's dead right, don't forget you'll need a bl****dy big 'ammer to
knock it in with. Its amazing the amount of cr**p on Hydro Electric here
even in the Highlands. If you don't have a scope then you can loan for a
nominal sum a mains 'sniffer' of Russ Andrews and hear all the burps,
noises, clicks buzzes that reside on your supply. As Stewart say's a girt
copper spike driven deep into the ground works a treat..somewhere for 'em
all to go. During the summer months I have been known to pour a couple
of
buckets of water on the spike surface is to help ground conduction...how
mad
is that ;-)

We've got 10 Furze extensible lightning rods deep driven with a
1 1/4 inch by 1/8 inch solid copper bus bar outside our hi-fi room.

But it ain't connected to that, its to help protect the radio stack
above from old Jove's bolts!.

Now how "sensible" is that;))...
--
Tony Sayer

The ultimate ground connection preventing Jove from disagreeing with your
stations music selection ;-)

Is Hi-Fi delusional?

As a matter of interest, Arny, which of these describes you?
a) I spend most of my time helping people
b) I divide my time between helpig people and mocking people
c) I spend most of my time mocking people

=== Andy Evans ===
Visit our Website:- http://www.artsandmedia.com
Audio, music and health pages and interesting links.

Is Hi-Fi delusional?

In article , Andy Evans
wrote:
Re Stewart and Variacs:

- apologies here, it appears my Variac is an autoformer, I had presumed
it was an isolation transformer. This leaves the question, why does it
appear to have a beneficial effect?

Well, when I've used variacs and they made a difference I explored and
decided this was due to two effects with a common cause, and a different
cause:

Cause: The variac changed the source impedance of the mains and hence
altered the way the mains into the power transformer alters with load, and
when 'nibbled' by the rectifier diodes.

Effects:

1) Power rails wander about with varying load, altering the dynamic power,
and sometimes the d.c. offset.

2) Changes the amount of rectifier hum/buzz on the power lines, and hence
possibly leaking into the signal.

Alternative cause: Providing a different mains voltage to the amp, and this
alters it performance. (See KH's article in last month's HFN for some
examples of this.)

The above can be useful as they can illuminate weaknesses in the amp PSU or
the amp itself. However I tended to use them as tests to aid redesign to
suppress such changes. Don't want mains variations or rectifier buzz
getting into the output.

And, of course, what better effect could be achieved with a similar size
isolation transformer? Has anybody tried putting two toroids in series
with their highest secondaries tied together? This has been recommended
elsewhere. Andy

I would be more inclined to find out what the variac is doing to the
amplifier and fix that. Not to experiment with a range of variacs, etc.

Slainte,

Jim

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