Its a quiet morning with no outstanding jobs, at least non that I cant put off for a while longer, so I thought you may be interested in the following.
I have spent the past 4 years developing a hi-fi system for streaming. I have over 50 years experience in hi-fi and reasonable theoretical knowledge of networking standards from a time in my career I managed the global ‘Networked Laboratory’ strategy for a vendor of complex laboratory instrumentation. But, even so, 4 years ago I had no knowledge whatsoever in terms of computer based hi-fi. My system at the time was a fully balanced, CD-based all vacuum tube system of very good repute. I was just sick of the heat in summer and the occasional wobblers that an all-tube system is prone to throw. And most important, I wanted all the benefits of high quality unlimited recordings for little money as I was running out of convenient storage space for more CDs.
Knowing very little, I did 3 things. I bought a simple networked speaker, joined a series of on-line webinars about networking, specifically domestic, local area networking and internet and I started reading everything I could find in the DIY community about the subject. Pretty early on I discovered the potential that streaming offers….I also found a few generous souls who were both dedicated audiophiles and IT specialists and I let those few guys help me with some early decisions and advice.
What I found was an area of hi-fi that just kept on rewarding. Not just that. It was predictable. With the right set up I could make improvements that delivered exactly what I expected and very often a lot more. It took all of the doubt out of upgrading and made it a carefully planned and precise exercise of improving SQ. I standardised power supplies, cabling, DC cabling, vibration control and the network topology which seemed to multiply the improvements. Running in became a matter of waiting for major improvements to integrate with the rest of the sonic picture to deliver a holistic improvement, which then built on one another to deliver very special sonics. Over the years I‘ve used top class horns, mulitiple subwoofers, top class ported, sealed and ABR’d speakers with a number of different amplifiers and ancillaries, based on both CD and vinyl, yet I’ve never ever owned a system that had such deeply satifying dynamics, physical and musical bass, treble extremes, spatial 4 dimensional attributes etc. as the system I have today. Note that Im talking about my preference and my judgement. Others may well differ, depending on their experience and background
BUT, all this was developed mostly during the Covid pandemic, so I’d never compared my system with anything, let alone top performers like the Taiko Extreme. I was extremely happy with the results I was getting, but I had no idea how they compared to the most recent high end systems. For all I knew I was just a happy punter living an illusion. Then last June, between Covid waves came the North West Audio Show, so on the Saturday morning I jumped into my car and drove the 140 miles for a good listen. Now I already said I’d had 50+ years experience in hi-fi, so I know that shows are amongst the very worst environments to judge hi-fi. Never-the -less I was still interested, so I set off to visit each room in turn. In order to remain and listen, I expected to find some degree of 4 dimensionality and an attraction to the music. If the music clearly came from 2 loudspeakers and sounded like hi-fi I simply moved on.
What was clear as I toured from room to room was that while the show was beautifully organised, it provided exhibitors with a truly awful set of environmental conditions and challenges.
The mains was hotel mains and no matter what was plugged in it was clearly overloaded
Each room appeared to have a few wall wart chargers doing iPads, mobile phones, lap tops etc.
Many exhibitors were streaming local files, some were playing vinyl, very few were trying remote streaming on what must have been clearly overloaded hotel bandwidth. I’ve no idea how well any remote connections were working but we’re talking EMI and RFI soup so I imagine not great.
Long story short, I was back in my car a looking for lunch by 13.00. I’d actually remained in 4 rooms for a listen. Interestingly all 4 rooms were based on 2 way speakers, where at least the bass was well integrated. In many other rooms, the bass, while solid and deep seemed to be an end in itself judged by how it drew the listeners’ attention to the detriment of the rest of the music.
So what’s my conclusion? Am I boasting that my system is the best? I hope not as that’s not my intent, nor am I so naive. If I could spend more my system could be a lot better, as could a LOT of fellow audiophiles’ systems. What I am however saying is that my set up, the environment in which I play my music and use to create my music IS miles better than anything at that show. My mains is better, much much better, my EMI and RFI levels are much, much lower, my vibration levels are all managed, I have tons of bandwidth and very little network traffic on my hi-fi network and the rest of my network is designed not to interfere with my hi-fi. I use optimum power supplies and cable looms, my environment is quiet, wi-fi is set up to isolate without interfering, my room and listening position are all system optimised. As a result, nothing at that show even approached the results I’m getting from streaming. The environment was just way too compromised, too noisy, too under resourced, too rich in room anomalies, too contaminated.
So can I say that my gear is better than anything at the show? Well I could but it would be a pretty stupid statement, given that I could take some of what was at the show and set it up optimally. And that, in a nutshell is what’s wrong with statements like ‘analog is better than streaming‘. Essentially what we’re comparing is two lengths of string and we all know that old adage.
I have spent the past 4 years developing a hi-fi system for streaming. I have over 50 years experience in hi-fi and reasonable theoretical knowledge of networking standards from a time in my career I managed the global ‘Networked Laboratory’ strategy for a vendor of complex laboratory instrumentation. But, even so, 4 years ago I had no knowledge whatsoever in terms of computer based hi-fi. My system at the time was a fully balanced, CD-based all vacuum tube system of very good repute. I was just sick of the heat in summer and the occasional wobblers that an all-tube system is prone to throw. And most important, I wanted all the benefits of high quality unlimited recordings for little money as I was running out of convenient storage space for more CDs.
Knowing very little, I did 3 things. I bought a simple networked speaker, joined a series of on-line webinars about networking, specifically domestic, local area networking and internet and I started reading everything I could find in the DIY community about the subject. Pretty early on I discovered the potential that streaming offers….I also found a few generous souls who were both dedicated audiophiles and IT specialists and I let those few guys help me with some early decisions and advice.
What I found was an area of hi-fi that just kept on rewarding. Not just that. It was predictable. With the right set up I could make improvements that delivered exactly what I expected and very often a lot more. It took all of the doubt out of upgrading and made it a carefully planned and precise exercise of improving SQ. I standardised power supplies, cabling, DC cabling, vibration control and the network topology which seemed to multiply the improvements. Running in became a matter of waiting for major improvements to integrate with the rest of the sonic picture to deliver a holistic improvement, which then built on one another to deliver very special sonics. Over the years I‘ve used top class horns, mulitiple subwoofers, top class ported, sealed and ABR’d speakers with a number of different amplifiers and ancillaries, based on both CD and vinyl, yet I’ve never ever owned a system that had such deeply satifying dynamics, physical and musical bass, treble extremes, spatial 4 dimensional attributes etc. as the system I have today. Note that Im talking about my preference and my judgement. Others may well differ, depending on their experience and background
BUT, all this was developed mostly during the Covid pandemic, so I’d never compared my system with anything, let alone top performers like the Taiko Extreme. I was extremely happy with the results I was getting, but I had no idea how they compared to the most recent high end systems. For all I knew I was just a happy punter living an illusion. Then last June, between Covid waves came the North West Audio Show, so on the Saturday morning I jumped into my car and drove the 140 miles for a good listen. Now I already said I’d had 50+ years experience in hi-fi, so I know that shows are amongst the very worst environments to judge hi-fi. Never-the -less I was still interested, so I set off to visit each room in turn. In order to remain and listen, I expected to find some degree of 4 dimensionality and an attraction to the music. If the music clearly came from 2 loudspeakers and sounded like hi-fi I simply moved on.
What was clear as I toured from room to room was that while the show was beautifully organised, it provided exhibitors with a truly awful set of environmental conditions and challenges.
The mains was hotel mains and no matter what was plugged in it was clearly overloaded
Each room appeared to have a few wall wart chargers doing iPads, mobile phones, lap tops etc.
Many exhibitors were streaming local files, some were playing vinyl, very few were trying remote streaming on what must have been clearly overloaded hotel bandwidth. I’ve no idea how well any remote connections were working but we’re talking EMI and RFI soup so I imagine not great.
Long story short, I was back in my car a looking for lunch by 13.00. I’d actually remained in 4 rooms for a listen. Interestingly all 4 rooms were based on 2 way speakers, where at least the bass was well integrated. In many other rooms, the bass, while solid and deep seemed to be an end in itself judged by how it drew the listeners’ attention to the detriment of the rest of the music.
So what’s my conclusion? Am I boasting that my system is the best? I hope not as that’s not my intent, nor am I so naive. If I could spend more my system could be a lot better, as could a LOT of fellow audiophiles’ systems. What I am however saying is that my set up, the environment in which I play my music and use to create my music IS miles better than anything at that show. My mains is better, much much better, my EMI and RFI levels are much, much lower, my vibration levels are all managed, I have tons of bandwidth and very little network traffic on my hi-fi network and the rest of my network is designed not to interfere with my hi-fi. I use optimum power supplies and cable looms, my environment is quiet, wi-fi is set up to isolate without interfering, my room and listening position are all system optimised. As a result, nothing at that show even approached the results I’m getting from streaming. The environment was just way too compromised, too noisy, too under resourced, too rich in room anomalies, too contaminated.
So can I say that my gear is better than anything at the show? Well I could but it would be a pretty stupid statement, given that I could take some of what was at the show and set it up optimally. And that, in a nutshell is what’s wrong with statements like ‘analog is better than streaming‘. Essentially what we’re comparing is two lengths of string and we all know that old adage.
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