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In Reply to: RE: After Reading posted by Charles Hansen on November 12, 2017 at 08:15:04
If I started playing with wooden blocks, I would not be 'Balanced'.Cut-Throat
Follow Ups:
> > If I started playing with wooden blocks, I would not be 'Balanced'. < <
That's fair enough. What makes for a "balanced life" clearly varies from person-to-person. When I first became an "industry professional", designing and manufacturing loudspeakers, I could not reliably hear difference between cables or footers (back then there were only cones made from different metals - sorbothane was just coming out).
Doing it professionally had me listening many hours a day and exposed to many different systems - at other manufacturers, dealers, and reviewers. After a few years of this exposure, I could easily hear differences to both of the above.
When at Ayre I had the conscious realization that if dealers, reviewers, customers, and other manufacturers had trained their listening skills to be better than mine that I would literally be at a competitive disadvantage. If I couldn't hear flaws in the products I designed while others could, I would be living in "blissful ignorance" - yet losing sales to those who could hear the flaws. This was simply an observation - it didn't induce me to develop and maintain any explicit "listening training program".
Yet every time we would do listening tests for different circuits, or different parts, or different circuit parameters, a byproduct would be that my listening skills increased. I've also met people who seem to be naturally gifted in this regard - they can hear virtually the same fine differences that required decades for me to develop - without even being "audiophiles" or focusing on any kind of training.
It's the same for the Hydrogen Audio crowd who don't hear any difference between wires or electronics - only speakers and rooms. It doesn't bother me or hurt me in any way. It only becomes annoying when they try to tell me what I can or cannot hear, and that I am trying to "rip off" unsuspecting "suckers".
There have been many, many times when careful listeners have told me of low or no-cost tweaks to improve the sound of my system. I thought the ideas so ridiculous that for years I refused to even try them. Then when I finally did, I was kicking myself for not doing it years prior and enjoying much better sounding music the whole time.
It only becomes annoying when they try to tell me what I can or cannot hear, and that I am trying to "rip off" unsuspecting "suckers".Your posts on this thread have been most interesting - many thanks.
I don't know why so many, including competent electronic engineers (though few who are genuinely innovate in audio) find it so hard to grasp that key parameters in perception and the engineering aspects of musical reproduction are so loosely correlated.
In crude terms, you can't describe how or what we hear by looking at an oscilloscope even if observed perceptual phenomena, however counter-intuitive, will sooner or later be shown to have a basis in physics. To put it even more crudely, God help us from wannabee psychologists too lazy to learn what has, after all, been well understood for many years.
Perhaps the most fatuous example of this Philistinism (for such it is) is the tiresome repetition of the term Double Blind Test by people who couldn't design a perceptual test that would pass muster in a first-term psychology class if their very lives were at stake. Worse, they not only seem to have no interest in discovering why but insist in stressing how they prefer to listen to music - as if those with audio skills were indifferent to it.
D
Edits: 11/13/17
> > I don't know why so many, including competent electronic engineers (though few who are genuinely innovate in audio) find it so hard to grasp that key parameters in perception and the engineering aspects of musical reproduction are so loosely correlated. < <
Yes, I sure do miss Richard Heyser. He was the president-elect of the AES, but never assumed office due to a very rapid cancer. He was the most credible and visible of the "respected" scientists (PhD professor at CalTech) who was constantly trying to invent new ideas and methods to develop some kind of measurement that would correlate with what we actually hear.
He made a huge advance with TDS (Time Delay Spectroscopy), which allowed him to create the first waterfall plots. This was enormously helpful for loudspeaker designers (and soon after replicated by Doug Rife using his Maximum Length Sequence System Analyzer - MLSSA). Unfortunately, to date nobody has been able to do the same for electronics. John Curl and Matti Otala tried (many decades ago) with TIM - that helped make a lot of bad-sounding IC op-amps sound less bad - but it is far from a "final answer".
Which is fine by me. Just as we will likely never have the "perfect" car, I doubt we will ever have the "perfect" amplifier (or whatever). Cheers!
Unless you balanced your gear on the blocks?
No worries, Charles is still in awe of this hobby, let him enjoy playing around and going in circles.
Its fun to try different stuff, hardware, software, operating systems, wire, room treatments, operating system tweaks, rocks, sticks, gems, etc. I figure after about 50 or so go-rounds of trying every combination he can imagine plus every combination he's found, he'll finally get tired, sit down and listen to some music.
Dynobots Audio - Music is the Bridge Between Heaven and Earth
I am listening right now to Charley's creations: the KX-R Twenty preamp, MX-R Twenty amps, QX-5 Twenty DAC, and the P5-xe phono preamp through Wilson Alexia Series 2 speakers (not Charley's preferred speaker).Trust me when I say he is not going in circles!
Edits: 11/14/17
> > Trust me when I say he is not going in circles! < <
Hi Steve - thanks for the kind words. I would be pretty happy with that system, too! I've found that good electronics can make pretty much any speaker sound amazing. This is something that JA pointed out nearly 20 years ago (see linked review below).
That said, I know that there are better sounding phono stages out there than the one you are using. However, they all either use tubes, or cost at least 10x as much as your example. I know how to build a better sounding one now (that design was created over a dozen years ago). And I could probably make (slightly) better examples of everything you own - given an unlimited budget.
But the frustrating thing is that many won't buy those products for one reason or another - each of them having nothing to do with the performance or even the cost. "Too old" or "no MQA" or "too small" or "not expensive enough" or whatever. But I would gladly put that system up against anything else at any price using any technology (tubes or solid-state) - with the exception of the phono stage (as noted above).
The bottom line is I guess I'm better at design than at marketing.
I am pretty impressed with the P-5xe when using the balanced inputs given the unit's reasonable cost. I have owned more expensive phono preamps when vinyl was my primary source, but the P-5xe still sounds darn good mated to the R Series.Thanks for designing these fine components Charley.
Edits: 11/17/17 11/17/17
> > I am pretty impressed with the P-5xe when using the balanced inputs given the unit's reasonable cost. < <
I agree - given the caveat. On the other hand, I don't believe your other components need any caveats. (Of course, I would say that, wouldn't I?)
Thank you for sharing.
Dynobots Audio - Music is the Bridge Between Heaven and Earth
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