Do you know of any .47uF film 150VAC capacitor with exactly 20.3 mm between pins that can fit Studer/Revox boards? I exhausted my stock and all I find now to replace the cracking RIFA's are 15 or 22 mm pin spacing!
State of the industry - Roy Gregory Editorial
- Thread starter Elliot G.
- Start date
...ditto. The old console stereo. Mid-60s until mid-70s, by which time you had to be in your room, or a friend's room listening. Optimally, with a lava lamp and some posters on the wall.
Most of my family's music had a social component at home or in the car. And a lot of it came from the Columbia Record Club.
Luckily, my mom was terrible at declining the "automatic selection" so all kinds of stuff would show up. Where else would I have gotten my hands on all that Monk stuff?
"Underground" shows up in the mail and it's madness!
The conversation here feels like the efforts to get more people to go to pro lacrosse games. At some point, you may have to consider everyone who wants to see lacrosse is already in the stands. It's just not a big slice of the population, feels like to me. But ya gotta recruit new fans, I guess...
Well, most of the time the real problem was that the standard output of CD players was 2V and overloaded inputs, creating an enormous distortion.
???So is the harsh criticism of [...] which I am not allowed to name.
***
Well, I think they had mixed feelings about it. I do not have Stereophile old issues, but as far as I remember the Meridian MCD Pro was the first player they considered acceptable - I got one at that time, later replaced by the Sony X7ESD that sounded much better with a small modification - replacing the whole analog section with a DIY passive filter - it had a tube flavor, I took the coils from an old tube radio FM stereo decoder section.
Are you sure this was a common problem?
Interesting.
J Gordon Holt was incredibly positive in his 1983 review of the first Sony CD player:
https://www.stereophile.com/cdplayers/193/index.html
And he cast aside his remaining doubts in his follow-up from August 1983:
Sony CDP-101 Compact Disc Player Follow-Up Review
A Follow-Up review appeared in August 1983, Vol.6 No.3 The five classical CDs I received [with a second sample of the Sony CDP-1O1 CD player] included a Decca, a Sony/CBS, and three Deutsche-Grammophons. The DGs sounded consistently rough and slightly veiled, rather like what I heard from the...
www.stereophile.com
Peter,
I think it’s more accurate to say the industry is trying to grow. We are not in a period of survival. Most high end companies have enjoyed record profits recently.
I am curious, what would you say was the pinacle of CD players that you owned before you went to DAC and streaming approach?
No but i suggest you contact Dr Burkhardt from eternal arts in Hannover germany
He can find anything regarding tapedecks , he sells restored ones as well
I wonder, but I highly doubt it. Those issues were all pre-digital. I had most, if not all, of those early issues. After lugging them around for many, many years I eventually threw them away.
Of the same era was my beloved Edward Rothstein article about high-end audio. I have taken responsibility for keeping that article alive in the internet age.
See https://www.whatsbestforum.com/thre...th-of-the-cd-and-the-miracle-of-the-lp.17951/
Not quite. Schiit Audio made 65,000 units of its products in 2017 (US made), with an average customer age of under 30. I am sure they have only have grown since then. Back then it was headphone amps, DACs, preamps, power amps. In the meantime they have added equalizers.
Their DACs range in price from $ 130 to $ 2,600, their headphone amps range from $ 100 to $ 350, speaker amps from $ 700 to $ 1,600.
OK that is one manufacturer, but isn't much of that for the headfi market?
Back in the 80s and 90s there were many many manufacturers who produced more .
I don’t have a beef with you or your publications Lee, I don’t read them so I don’t know what you’re promoting. You wanted me to be specific I gave you an example that’s all.
I don’t see a new golden age maybe because my passion is for the sound of the Golden Age.
I realize it’s a popular product but it doesn’t change anything in my view.
That was about trying out different grounding schemes for the electrical plant and their effect on sound not a magic box.
In what?
I said Pipedream was a work in progress and not even a product when it became the speaker, Scaena is what Alan and Sunny built it into.
He was a very good writer no one argued that and started off as you suggest but he went past being a reviewer and made himself the maven and brought a lot of politics into the business. My comments on what I saw heard at his place remain. Point was he didn’t just review he made it up and gave false guidance.
david
I read early TAS and treasured my back issues until around '96 when The Great Flood in my basement destroyed my collection. HP was indeed an entertaining and influential writer.
The story goes that he started TAS in reaction to how dissapointed he was after purchasing one the most touted speakers of the 1970s - the Bose 901.
Where I give him credit is in three areas:
1) HP promoted the idea of subjective evaluation of audio components and systems.
Listening well and describing in some detail how a component sounded and comparing components based on their sound was a reaction to the then dominant Julian Hirsch / Stereo Review approach of gauging an amplifier primarily by its circuit construction and electrical parameters - so many (all ?) products received wonderful reviews from Hirsch. Hirsch: “I do not believe that any amplifier that is reasonably good and operating as intended has any sound quality of its own, at least not in the sense that phono cartridges, speakers, and listening rooms have their distinctive sounds.”
Some will tell you the popularity of those Bose 901s came from two sources: Bose's advertising and Hirsch's 1968 review in HiFi Stereo Review. Hirsch: "I must say that I have never heard a speaker system in my own home which could surpass, or even equal, the Bose 901 for overall “realism” of sound."
To describe a component's sound Pearson adopted/created concepts and vocabulary that his readers reacted to positively; they related to his writing because they could hear what he described in their own stereos. And if they did not, they attempted to make changes to emulate what he described. Imo his writing about psychoacoustic properties (soundstage, depth, etc.) and how those tied into speaker setup and room acoustics were among his more innovative articles. Pearson heard amplifiers sounded different from one another, Hirsch did not. HP was an early promoter that wires can sound different from one another.
2) He named his audio journal,'The Absolute Sound' after what he claimed was his reference point for subjective reviewing. The absolute sound is the sound of live acoustic music.
At least he had an ostensively definable reference point - the sound of live music, not organic oranges. To bolster his credentials, HP talked a lot about attending live music events and sometimes described what he heard at a concert. Thougn not new, Pearson made it seem as if it was a different approach. A reference that is not a recording or another stereo system.
3) The early TAS was subscriber funded as far as we know. That led to a somewhat sketchy publishing schedule but the absence of advertising lent credibility to the publication. No payola for featuring certain products or writing favorable review results. No advertisers allowed him and his writers to do what today's audio magazine shy away from and that is shootouts among multiple products in a single review. Readers love shootouts.
But ... in my opinion
HP eventually could not stay true to his notion of the absolute sound. He did not develop a consistent vocabulary to describe live acoustic music that he then could apply to what he heard from a stereo. His vocabulary was largely based on the sound of music reproduction and he did not have a feedback loop to the concert hall to inform or validate it. Nonethess Pearson became - or was made into by his readers - the venerated maven he is seen as today. His vocabulary and language highly influenced several generations of audio writers and today the world of audio writing and reviewing sometimes feels like it operates within a self-proscribed naval gazing bubble. How many people here - admittedly armchair critics - say too many reviews sound the same. Some of this was Roy's target.
TAS eventually accepted advertising in order to expand and establish regularity. At first all ads were relegated to the back of the magazine, not interspersed with reviews. Eventually the format changed from journal to glossy - bigger pages with ads everywhere. Iirc at first an ad for a product with a review was not allowed in the same issue as the review; now the review and the ad are within a page or two of each other. This has created the most frequent criticism I hear of audio magazines - the possibility of pay for positive review - I know it is not true, not at least for myself, although the placement of ads and reviews is not in the hands of the writers.
Is that too harsh? I hope not though I have paid a price for critiquing the industry in which I participate. While sometimes molds are difficult to work free from, I do believe audio writers have positive intent.
What you seem to do David is make some huge statement about HP but yet you were at his place ONCE. You make these remarks and throw them out like they are facts. False Guidance - does that mean you did not like what he said and YOU are the only maven and the ONLY one that can hear correctly? WE GET IT YOU LIKE OLD STUFF. Enjoy it ! I like different things but I don't find the need to put your gear down for me to enjoy mine.
I think that attitudes like yours are what is ruining audio is that real enough for you!
The Industry made HP into what he became. Every company wanted a piece of him. AS Roy said the Industry had no marketing and used the review and specifically HP's reviews to put them on the consumer map.
Again I will let Alan and Sunny reply to your inflammatory statements about their products but as we all see if David doesn't like it it is crap or broken.
David,
Fair enough. I do appreciate vintage gear and have heard some great sound from vintage. I suspect I would hear even more greatness on your system. However, I am hearing resolution and dynamics and overall musicality on today’s better systems that indicate progress to my ears.
Tim,
This is yet another thoughtful post from you. If I may address two issues. First, I am not aware of any payola arrangements for a TAS review since I have been involved. Robert Harley is no-nonsense on any whiff of an ethical conflict or any appearance of impropriety. He has let go reviewers that have crossed the line. I would add that I have never been approached with a bribe during the years I reviewed for Part-Time Audiophile or Headphone Guru.
Second, it is indeed impossible to have a subscriber funded magazine as the hobby is simply too small to support it. The best we can do is create a “chinese wall” between the sales staff and editorial staff.
That is an important point, thank you for spelling it out, Elliot.
Individual perceptions and tastes are too often made absolute in this hobby, to unpleasant effect.
Everyone hears differently, and has different listening priorities. Given that, there is no one single "correct" or "best" approach to this hobby. For some this fact, based on how human nature works, seems a too inconvenient truth to swallow.
Dogmatism has no place in high end audio.
Lee,
Sorry, but TAS, Stereophile and pretty much all of the other have been pay-to-play for a LONG time. Sure there are exceptions, I have personally benefited from an exception or two, but in general if you request a review but don't advertise, it's not the norm to get a review.
On the flip side if you are a full page advertiser, and it's NOT just in TAS, but all most all publications, then the reviews are granted very easily.
It's a business, it is what it is, but to say it doesn't exist is not reality. And again there are exceptions, but the exceptions are not the norm.
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