High End Myth Glossary.


Disclaimer:
Many of the glossary terms bellow are entered with little or no comments. Large comments might require large space and time investment. If anyone reading this glossary is offended, than I'll keep you a company as well. Every myth-paragraph bellow adds a price to the audiocomponent only without substantial improvements and "upgrades" to your system.

Feel free to add to the list bellow:

1. Cables' price should be arround 10...20% of the whole system i.e if the system costs $100k than $10...20k should be for interconnects and speaker cables.

2. Directional signal cables.

3. Zero Negative Feedback.

4. $10k 10Wpc amps.

5. No need for larger output power. Place compact system speaker into the plywood horn enclosure and use SET 1W/ch.

6. Tube watts v.s. SS watts.

7. CD-players or digital separates over $1.5k(Analogue sources stay somewhere next to but not to the same degree for example $10k cartridges)

8. Audiable differences in .3dB or in .5%THD v.s. .001%THD.

9. Auditioning of audio furniture.

10. Stereophile or other oriented magazines one-person "expert reviews"

11. $5000 Mark Levinson amp looks like it should sound excellent...

12. $12k CD-player reads CD with greater precision.

13. tubes $900/matched pr

14. amp stands $600/pr.

15. microphonic-free chasis, power interconnects and speaker wires. tubes and transistors can certainly be added as well.

16. wire reactance influence on audio freequencies.

17. Nirvana speaker wire has substantially less reactance than Home Depot.

18. S/N ratings of CD-player(larger than CD's dynamic range 16bit = only 60dB!)

P.S. I would be also glad to see Worst-of section in forums here.
128x128marakanetz

Showing 4 responses by pbb

Ultraviolet, you can actually hear furniture? No kidding? Life must be tough for you. I sympathize. I can hear large appliances, but I still need training in listening to furniture. I presume you also perceive light in the ultraviolet range. Where is the line between being open minded and gullible?
Did not see this post of yours earlier Marak. I agree with you totally. I like the "auditioning audio furniture" entry. Someone figured out a number of years ago that if folks could be sold on the superior sound of cables and wires in the thousands $$$$, hey why not tell'em they can hear the furniture and get top $$$$ for it. Main thing is to not muck up the acoustics with the placement of the furniture. The rest is hyperbole.
Albert, my post reads as follows: "Main thing is to no muck up the acoustics with the placement of furniture". I have always accepted (I think I have no choice, it's a fact) that whatever is in the room does have an effect on the acoustics of the space. I also think that nothing is more annoying than a glass pane, a panel somewhere or anything else resonating. Where I draw the line is in thinking that electronics will sound different because of the furniture supporting it. Again, sanity should prevail and you don't want a wobbly piece of trash, but I still maintain that all this vibration suppressing mumbo-jumbo is simply in aid of manufacturers asking enormous amounts of money for "audio furniture". I will not suggest blind testing of furniture; it simply would be too funny.
We may have gotten our signals crossed. What I find remarkable is that the people who truly believe that everything is in the head of the listener are very often the ones who have very limited knowledge of the basics of electronics. I don't purport to know a hell of a lot about the basic science behind electronics, but I know enough to recognize poppycock when I hear it. On the other hand, it does not all sound the same. Often enough there would be a simple fact based explanation, but it is a lot more entertaining to talk in broad terms emphasizing aesthetics and to bring everything back to one's individual likes or dislikes than to use a double track approach of measuring and listening. It is so strange how one school always fears that the other approach will, somehow, taint their judgment.