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.
marakanetz

Showing 3 responses by themadmilkman

Oh, that is too true, Rex.

Also, Marakanetz-- I'm curious about your "Zero Negative Feedback." Please do illuminate me, as I am a fan of no feedback designs.
I've had feedback explained to me well enough, but here is my real question.

I'm a fan of BAT's solid state amps. They are balanced, no-feedback designs. I understand the need for negative feedback with tubes and op-amps, but what about with a MOSFET based amplifier?

Just curious to hear your response.

BTW-- I also prefer speakers with stable impedances, which lessens the swings caused by the high output impedances typical of zero-feedback designs.
You know, I had always wondered that... As a marketing major (recent grad) I always saw a hole in the statements with the local feedback as opposed to global feedback-- there just weren't any designers that I could ask. I simply assumed that a no-feedback design referred to both, due to a lack of better information.

I will be sure to state that I prefer "Zero Global Feedback" designs from now on. Thanks for the heads-up.