The State of High End Audio

[andrew_stenhouse]

Is it possible to design controls that do not add some coloration to the sound of the unit or system? I thought that was the reason for getting rid of tone controls in preference for accuracy or fidelity to the recording. If the signal is altered by going through a control of some kind, are you not compromising the fidelity of the component? Or are you talking about perfect controls that can be completely bypassed and add nothing to the signal?

Hi Peter
Every digital signal that reaches us in a DSD or pcm file is manipulated. I wouldn't be too excited about adding 'colouration' to a system, whatever that is - and really every choice in the replay chain affects the sound - I don't think it matters a jot. I'd be more interested in what sounds pleasing.

Anyway there is, I suggest, no such thing as "accurate" when it comes to recording: it is always the mastering engineers version of what is given to him, which is made up of a chain of components that work together to produce a digital signal from an analogue wave form. It is no more accurate to what I hear from a live performance than what you may. It is always at best an approximation.

Personally I don't see any difference to manipulating a signal via eg a tube pre amp or via eg a dsp engine (take for instance HQ Player). They all change the sound, and for the better, according to our individual whim.

Sweating the small stuff, in my humble opinion. Accurate is just an audiophile nicety that gives us something further to obsess over. It works from a premise that isn't, in my view, necessarily valid - that you want to/should hear what the studio hears. Now, having been in a couple of studios I can firmly state that is rarely what I would want to hear from my system. Pro audio have much lower replay standards than audiophiles. It's pretty shocking when you hear what they master through, and consider adequate to the task.

That is why when you get a studio that works with eg Merging or converters, you are generally onto a good recording. Personally I find the dCS and Grimm Audio ad converters far too sterile for my tastes, but to each their own.

Just my 2 cents.

 

[Detlof]

Hi Peter
Every digital signal that reaches us in a DSD or pcm file is manipulated. I wouldn't be too excited about adding 'colouration' to a system, whatever that is - and really every choice in the replay chain affects the sound - I don't think it matters a jot. I'd be more interested in what sounds pleasing.

Anyway there is, I suggest, no such thing as "accurate" when it comes to recording: it is always the mastering engineers version of what is given to him, which is made up of a chain of components that work together to produce a digital signal from an analogue wave form. It is no more accurate to what I hear from a live performance than what you may. It is always at best an approximation.

Personally I don't see any difference to manipulating a signal via eg a tube pre amp or via eg a dsp engine (take for instance HQ Player). They all change the sound, and for the better, according to our individual whim.

Sweating the small stuff, in my humble opinion. Accurate is just an audiophile nicety that gives us something further to obsess over. It works from a premise that isn't, in my view, necessarily valid - that you want to/should hear what the studio hears. Now, having been in a couple of studios I can firmly state that is rarely what I would want to hear from my system. Pro audio have much lower replay standards than audiophiles. It's pretty shocking when you hear what they master through, and consider adequate to the task.

That is why when you get a studio that works with eg Merging or converters, you are generally onto a good recording. Personally I find the dCS and Grimm Audio ad converters far too sterile for my tastes, but to each their own.

Just my 2 cents.

Agree

 

[esldude]

I've made a point of asking for EQ advice from pros whenever I got a chance. A few things have emerged as patterns: Cut, don't boost, and do it gently. And pay attention to the sonic impact a cut in a certain range has to do with the content adjacent to that range.

I assume a system built into crossovers is used to EQ the room, not individual recordings?

Tim

I have similar experiences.

I still use Tact gear which allows me to store and switch remotely between 9 target curves. I of course have one for my cleanest recordings to obtain the best fidelity I can. I then have two for bright recordings which do two different steps of relatively modest adjustment. I have one for overly warm recordings. I have one for forward recordings (which is where adjustments taking into account adjacent bands fits), and one for recordings that are too distant sounding.

Now this isn't enough to fully fix every recording. It is enough to have both full fidelity as far as my gear and room allow, plus convenient adjustments to at least push poor recordings in the generally good direction.

 

[Fitzcaraldo215]

Is it possible to design controls that do not add some coloration to the sound of the unit or system? I thought that was the reason for getting rid of tone controls in preference for accuracy or fidelity to the recording. If the signal is altered by going through a control of some kind, are you not compromising the fidelity of the component? Or are you talking about perfect controls that can be completely bypassed and add nothing to the signal?

Yes, most analog tone controls had unfortunate side effects - time domain issues, increased noise, etc. I think you will find that most competently designed digital signal paths are quite free of these colorations. It is just not that hard with digital, which is one reason many of us prefer it for the entire signal path. Ergo, adding a purer form of DSP EQ for room correction or other signal processing, etc. has no parallels to and should not be compared in any way to the old days of analog signal processing.

 

[RayDunzl]

Yes, most analog tone controls had unfortunate side effects - time domain issues, increased noise, etc. I think you will find that most competently designed digital signal paths are quite free of these colorations. It is just not that hard with digital, which is one reason many of us prefer it for the entire signal path. Ergo, adding a purer form of DSP EQ for room correction or other signal processing, etc. has no parallels to and should not be compared in any way to the old days of analog signal processing.

I recently added AcourateDRC to control my OpenDRC-DI.

I'm quite pleased with the audible results. I'd call it de-coloration.

Here are the DSP applied corrections to Frequency Response and Phase (unsmoothed) for the Listening Position of the left channel at the preamp output. Without, the curve would be flat to within .1dB or less, probably artifacts of the 25 foot cable to the PC.

 

[Rodney Gold]

With DSP you can do Eq of the room at sitting position and tweak to taste .. DO NOT try for flat at listening position..it's terrible sounding , you need a treble droop and a bass bump , to restore what the perfect room would do
So use a target curve of your liking to do the room , preferrably ONLY in the low bass .. and then use the parametric eq to tweak to the nth degree of perfection for everything else. DSP is not a silver bullet -- it will work MUCH better if the room is treated.. you wont make a set of speakers in a lift shaft sound good..dsp or not

You cannot talk about loss of transprency etc as the eq controls and room correction is an order of magnitude more effective. I have used plenty systems , most do not change anything in bypass mode.
The difference with or without Room correction and EQ is astounding..it cant really be compared to uncorrected in terms of anything.. ..I could never live without DIRAC...

So you have the choice - so called "purity" till the amp and speakers .. and have the room etc mangle things and try endless box swapping or tweaks to maybe change it , or panel beat the sound to suit YOU and the room and have a better musical experience from the system...only your ears you have to satisfy

I chose the latter

Best of all , it's cheap compared to equipment changes , dirac allows you a 14 day trial etc.. so a lot of systems are a try before you buy
The fly in the oinkment is having to AD anything analog and the measuring and user involvement ..

 

[amirm]

DSP is not a silver bullet -- it will work MUCH better if the room is treated.. you wont make a set of speakers in a lift shaft sound good..dsp or not

Actually the most critical thing with DSP is having the right loudspeaker. One that has similar on and off-axis response. That way when you optimize the sound that goes into the loudspeaker with DSP/EQ, it will equally change both direct and indirect sounds. If the two start off different, no DSP can correct that because it only controls what goes into the loudspeaker, not the two different signals that emerge from it.

A great speaker will also sound good in a lift (elevator) shaft . May not sound good for all music but it better not sound bad regardless.

BTW, DSP is mandatory for correct sound. It simply cannot be done in domestic rooms without it. Using absorbers to tame low frequencies requires so much and such thickness of them that it simply is not practical.

 

[Geardaddy]

Hi

I didn't know where to begin on this. This thread can quickly die or burst in Flames. It is about the price of Audio Equipment nad the state of affairs in High End Audio.

After a long hiatus during which I have been using only headphones with great pleasure I must add and frankly an education in tonal purity. I am ready to jump back into speaker-based systems. I simply don't like to throw money at a problem expecting a solution to raise from the ashes of burnt currency. I am an engineer by profession and prefer the approach of having a schedule and cost limit in building a system. It is my strong belief that such approach leads to rewarding and sustainable results. I hate to tweak constantly and to change equipment on a constant basis. I buy, optimize and just enjoy what I have if I can... This not about me but rather of the state of things in High End Audio. A luxury sector let's not fool ourselves in believing it is not that.

The idea of this thread came to me when Lee asked on his thread for a 12~14 K$ speakers and I could only come with a few perhaps 2 and of just one brand: Magnepan. I, then , noticed that most of the speakers I am considering at this point for my next system are over $20 K MSRP : Giya G3, G2 , G1, Magico Q3, Q5 and S7 with 2 exceptions Magnepan 3.7i and 20.7 i at respectively 5K and 15K ... Woah! This is a disconnect. Would "normal" folks who love music, care about a >20 K pair of speakers, let alone a $20,000 music system?
Then I noticed on Lee's thread that few unusual brand came up aside from Vapor Audio whose systems look like a Good deal but I saw no mention of, for the lack of a better words, outside of the box manufacturers such as Salk, Legacy, Emerald Physics, etc... Are they completely absent from the Audiophile psyche?
I believe some things bad happened between the birth of what we come to call High End Audio, late 70’s, early 80's and now, 30 years later. We may have lost our way. Once upon a time the Wilson Audio and the Lamm, et all, were garage affairs. Audio Magazines would go and listen to these garage affairs and give them the necessary exposure. Is it being done these days? Have we become so averse to risk as to go for what we consider the current day status quo? How will those other small, definitely unknown manufacturers ever come to the forefront? Are we getting so old as to become entirely risk-adverse and "orthodox"? Go with the conventional, the admitted? The agreed-upon? How we moving forward? Are we progressing? Will we come up with a better way to measure progress? One that is a consensus? Not a world of preferences of the very same brands, telling us they are making progress when it is simply a variation on an old theme? Will High End Audio grow to include younger people not the >50 that populate this board? Can this industry of ours grow?
And while we are on the them can we come up with a full range system for less than $30K… Digital , analogue, Digital and analogue? Would like to see some examples…
As usual full participation is welcomed even from you Blizz …. Just joking

Well Frantz, your thread premise is a loaded one obviously and has solicited a lot of entertaining responses. My first reflex is to say "don't do it"! Enjoy your headphones and avoid all the Brownian motion and witchcraft that is an unfortunate part of the more recent iteration of our hobby. With the disappearance of the brick and mortar experience (and the expertise that came along with that), we have been left with the roulette that is Audiogon, etc. You have the potential to spend more time in audio purgatory and ironically spend more money that way. As for raw expenditure, numbers mean little these days. I have heard a lot of very expensive and mediocre gear (or systems), and thus the real art comes in when you can spend much less and get great sound. A lot of audio acquaintances spend gobs of money and still have crappy sound due to their neglect of the room. Put money towards the room (it is your speaker after all) and buy your equipment off of Craigslist....

 

[PeterA]

BTW, DSP is mandatory for correct sound. It simply cannot be done in domestic rooms without it. Using absorbers to tame low frequencies requires so much and such thickness of them that it simply is not practical.

Amir, could you define "correct" sound? Also, "cannot be done" is different from "not practical". Your last two sentences seem to contradict each other. Though not practical in most domestic rooms, is it not still possible to tame low frequencies with absorbers in such settings?

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Actually the most critical thing with DSP is having the right loudspeaker. One that has similar on and off-axis response. That way when you optimize the sound that goes into the loudspeaker with DSP/EQ, it will equally change both direct and indirect sounds. If the two start off different, no DSP can correct that because it only controls what goes into the loudspeaker, not the two different signals that emerge from it.

A great speaker will also sound good in a lift (elevator) shaft . May not sound good for all music but it better not sound bad regardless.

BTW, DSP is mandatory for correct sound. It simply cannot be done in domestic rooms without it. Using absorbers to tame low frequencies requires so much and such thickness of them that it simply is not practical.

Actually, I think this might be the most critical thing with or without DSP, at least if you want to listen to music in your room, in your house, in your life, instead of locked down in a narrow sweet spot where everything changes if you move your head.

Tim

 

[amirm]

Amir, could you define "correct" sound? Also, "cannot be done" is different from "not practical". Your last two sentences seem to contradict each other. Though not practical in most domestic rooms, is it not still possible to tame low frequencies with absorbers in such settings?

Correct sound is one that the effects of your listening room has been dialed out. Without that, you will have massive shaping of low frequencies up to incredible 25 dB! Imagine playing notes from low frequencies up to 500 Hz and have this much variation in their amplitude. Take a look at this measurement from our custom designed and optimized room with tons of acoustic treatments:

The faint red is pre-DSP curve. As you see, it has a big hump even though we are rolling it off below 80 Hz. DSP is excellent at bringing peaks down and that is exactly what it did (solid red).

DSP is not good for nulls. For that, you use speaker/seating positioning. Once you fill those holes, you are almost assured to have made the peaks worse. That is where DSP comes in. It is able to easily pull those peaks back down, resulting in a complete solution. You can have a fully optimized solution without any acoustic treatment for low frequencies!

Note that what screws up the frequency response is simply a function of wavelength of sound, and locations of seating and loudspeaker positions. It is not a function of your DAC, amplifier, or even loudspeaker (within reason). Just like the line in movie Terminator, " Listen, and understand! That Terminator is out there! It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead." Just substitute Physics of Sound for Terminator and the rest will be right.

By definition then, any ordinary room that is not stuffed to the max with acoustic products, by definition will have "wrong bass." It just does. You can just look at a room and declare it as such without ever listening or measuring it! It is that certain. Now how wrong it is can be adjusted with optimized seating and speakers but you can't remove it all.

 

[Folsom]

"The people that tend not to be critical listeners by Mcintosh"

I am not a Mcintosh supporter by any means. But if you went to a site that there are a lot of Mcintosh supporters on they would take you to task with that statement. I don't get the Impression there are a lot of Mac fan boys on this site.

I'm not saying McIntosh isn't good, I'm saying they get massive sales from people with burning pockets.

 

[PeterA]

Correct sound is one that the effects of your listening room has been dialed out. Without that, you will have massive shaping of low frequencies up to incredible 25 dB! Imagine playing notes from low frequencies up to 500 Hz and have this much variation in their amplitude. Take a look at this measurement from our custom designed and optimized room with tons of acoustic treatments:

Is this an image of correct sound? Down 20db at 50Hz and 35db at 30Hz? Or am I not reading the image correctly? If "correct sound is one that the effects of your listening room has been dialed out", does that mean there is absolutely no ambient noise level? Ambient noise is an effect of the room and what one hears when making no noise. It is different for every room. So correct sound is one in which the effects of the room are dialed out which I guess means by room correction or DSP or something to some designated target curve which could be different depending on what people want, or is it always flat with zero ambient noise or some other absolute and defined curve? The graph you show is clearly not that. It seems to be something else.

Correct sound implies to me that it is an absolute sound of some kind. How is that absolute defined? Do you have a measurement to describe it? Or do you mean "corrected" sound as in a room that has been corrected to your target curve by DSP or something?

Another way to ask this question is, are there many examples of "correct" sound, or just one? Is everyone's personal target curve THE correct sound? If so, it seems there are many correct sounds and that seems to be in conflict with high fidelity to the recording.

So now, as this thread is about the state of the high end, and correct sound requires DSP, the state of the high end is in chaos because many systems don't use DSP. Tim demonstrated earlier that there is a difference between high end and high fidelity, one is only a luxury and the other is about accuracy to the recording. DSP seems to be more in the provence of the latter and less of the former. But hifi is an absolute when referring to faithfully or accurately reproducing one particular recording. If it is based on individual target curves to get correct sound, then it is not absolute but varies according to the preference of the guy creating the target curve and is thus not accurate or hifi but subjective and based on preference.

Amir, I have spun myself in a web and fairly confused by now. Please help.

 

[RBFC]

Peter,

I believe that the curves shown may not include the subwoofers.

Lee

 

[DaveyF]

In my thread on the Linn Exakt system...http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showt...Exakt-system-and-the-future-of-high-end-audio, there is some good info on the Linn Exakt DSP.
Someone at the audio meeting where Gilad Tiefenbrun was demo'ing the system, asked if it would be beneficial to utilize room acoustic treatments with the Linn system, to which Gilad said no need. I think he believed that they may even be detrimental with the Linn DSP system...and perhaps all DSP systems.

 

[amirm]

Peter,

I believe that the curves shown may not include the subwoofers.

Lee

Lee beat me to it . Here is the sub counterpart (cluster of subs really):

And lots and lots of cool things you can do with the combination of DSP+multiple subs: http://www.madronadigital.com/Library/Computer Optimization of Acoustics.html

 

[Robh3606]

Well maybe I am old school but I always tried to get room set-up and placement right as best as I can and use EQ/DSP as a last resort and if used as little as possible. What was used was cut only. You get a decent pair of CD type speakers and you should only be doing EQ below the schrouder frequency.

Rob

 

[amirm]

That's proper Rob. That kind of optimization is also free other than time involved.

 

[amirm]

Amir, I have spun myself in a web and fairly confused by now. Please help.

No worries. There is actually a thing called "circle of confusion" by Dr. Toole which means the ultimate correctness of sound does not exist because we can't control or know what happened during the recording.

The idea is to get all of us to have smooth (not flat) frequency response that is not unduly influenced by the room. If both of us did that, and had the same loudspeaker, then we would be hearing similar sound. If all of us did that, then we would all be having a unified point of view in our experiences. The hope then is to have the recording site also follow the same curves and then we will be golden. That of course is a pipe dream.

What is not pipe dream is that when we reduce those peaks subjectively most of us will consider the sound more correct. Boominess is what we all recognize as being bad. Removing it is considered a good thing usually. The exception is the feeling that there may not be enough bass especially if one is used to the boominess. Hence the boosted low frequencies as the final target curve.

As to the high-end, one way to accommodate this is to add subwoofers and put the DSP inline or use the one in the subs. That way you are not putting DSP in the path of your analog chain. For digital playback, best place is in the source and again, it would not change the analog audio path after that.

Let me know if this makes any sense .

 

[Rodney Gold]

Every room will have bass gain and treble droop .. if you choose to use DSP to flatten things at listening position , you have actually taken out the room ... simplistically speaking
You then need to restore a normal rooms effect with a bass bump and a treble droop overlayed on the flat setting .. called a target curve...as flat at listening position is generally unpleasant , no bass , thin reedy treble
The room correction really gives you a smoother base to work from...you still have the option of tuning to preference.