rgro;685340 Wrote: > But, ralphpnj, aren't you just circling back to the same old argument, > here? > And, while I agree with you (and mcr, for that matter) in principle, > who's the arbiter of what's "better sound"? > > < snip > ;)
a very positive worldview thankyou for that, I agre with that peole pay for luxury items for all kinds of reasons not conected to thier real performance . Just look at my sig I do love these products but SQ/$ is low partly due the very small production series and partly because as we all know price is a part of the product, and if cost $$ it must also look good that adds further $$ I would argue that the curve for the law of diminishing returns goes flat on a certain level, and for digital transports this happens very soon especially if your dac and processor is of modern design ( not necesarily expensive ,but good engineering not bizzaro tech ). So when they sound all the same whats the " better sound " now. Of course no audio rag is going to blind test this the name brands is going to win these tests as usual. and I think there is an arbiter for " better sound " if you chose the original hifi defenition or as QUAD use to say in their old ads from the decades before the new age wave in hifi " the closest aproach to original sound " . Not many modern brands tries such modest aproach they usually wax on about soundstage " blacker blacks" or other wine taster terms on how good it sounds ? The input signal is arbiter output signal should be as similar as possible . This aproach works best with electronics obviusly, speakers are harder to asses. So in audio electronics you would expect products that aim at reproducing their input signal to sound increasingly similar and they do especially at small signal levels. Power amps are often driven sligthly outside spec and their clipping and limit behavior can sound different. And actually the measurment spec for power amps seldom consider real loads they can distort during some of they wierd impedance/phase envelopes some speakers have. I only seen one audio mag using a real load for measurments, they used real speaker drivers and xovers to get all nonliearities and back emf they had to use pa drivers otherwise it would have melted and it did not sound good, but it was a load that actually represented speakers . But you could argue that powerfull amps driven inside thier spec should also be similar. here is my reasoning, you cant really make anything " sounds better" you put the signal trough a product and out comes something that lacks some of it and had other stuff added so any product sounds " a tiny bit worse than the input signal " exceptions are digital products that can "restore" the signal so input=output but it still does not "sound better" it never does. So sometimes when I can't really hear the difference what to do, choose the product with the best technical performance I think these tiny deviations that you cant hear in isolation adds ups eventually. So sometimes we have to " shudder " trust measurment and technical data as you realy can't pick by ear. Cable choice is a good example. Does this sound stupid ? An example given a dac and a preamp and a power amp combo. i would asses output voltage and noise level of the dac input senstivity and gain of the preamp and input sensitivity and gain of the amp I would strongly favor power amps where gain can be adjusted I would dislike preamps with to much gain . I would distrust brands that cant match thier own products. Why pay atention to " gain scaling " . What does an amp do ? It amplifies with a factor called gain, what does it amplify ? Obviusly the inputsignal but also the output noise from previus component and the noise of it's own input circuits. i do exlude designs that deliberatly "sounds different" and deviates from hifi products by making thier own sound far to often, if you like souch products it's hard to argue it is a matter of taste . I consider that stuff to expensive in any form SQ/$=0 if SQ=0 . i define SQ as the input signal. Som for me there is no " better sound " there is the sligthly "worse sound" from the electronics and that similar but although different sound from speakers . the good sound hides out in the recording somewhere :) if your lucky . So regarding speakers I can agree with rgro with an exception :) pick your own pioson they are all flawed in some way, but you can preselect speakers with good engineering ( thats my exception ) that do try to perform as good as possible and then choose among those for the " better sound " -- Mnyb -------------------------------------------------------------------- Main hifi: Touch + CIA PS +MeridianG68J MeridianHD621 MeridianG98DH 2 x MeridianDSP5200 MeridianDSP5200HC 2 xMeridianDSP3100 +Rel Stadium 3 sub. Bedroom/Office: Boom Kitchen: Touch + powered Fostex PM0.4 Misc use: Radio (with battery) iPad 64gB wifi +3g with iPengHD & SqueezePad (in storage SB3, reciever ,controller ) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Mnyb's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=4143 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=93111 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
