All systems that measure the same MUST sound the same cause measurement devices are more accurate than hearing devices.
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.
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.
65 responses Add your response
Numbers don't lie but you have to know how to interpret them. That specific analogy simply means that the Yamaha produces lower THD, it doesn't tell us anything about how the unit will sound or how those figures were derived. You have to look at the BIG picture and have a LOT of spec's / background on the unit and methods used for testing for the "numbers" to mean anything. Sean > PS... Lots of global or local negative feedback will produce very low THD figures, but it also produces a very "sterile" sounding component. One is better off with a product that uses a very solid circuit design to start off with with just enough feedback used to keep the device "clean" and "stable". There are many mass produced products that utilize "thrown together" circuit designs and then utilize GOBS of feedback to correct the poor design. Unfortunately, it is much cheaper to build a junky circuit and make it "measure good" / correct it with a lot of feedback, so that's what a lot of manufacturers do. That's why so many pieces of gear sound like crap i.e. there are more "band-aids" than healthy designs out there. |
Sean sez: Numbers don't lie but you have to know how to interpret themI agree. It further seems that some "standard" measurements (or the way they are made) hardly correlate with the sonic result. Especially when it comes to amp-speaker interface. OTOH, engineers DO know circuit analysis -- so, it stand to reason that there SHOULD be SOME measurements made that actually reflect what everyone HEARS. I don't know where the catch is -- maybe the industry doesn't want to change the "standard" specs? For an interesting discussion on this subject take a look here and here Cheers |
Sean, Most of the such recievers are built on OP-Amps that by definition have humangous gain and thus need huge neg. feedback to correct distortions. Most of these chips(used in consumer audio products) are produced in China and do have terrible characteristics far different from catalogue specified. A feedback at the same time can't be infinite and should be carefully selected so such unit will not go to oscillations... By definition it's far more easier to produce a transistor with clean and linear characteristics(or tube) than OP-amp. A good OP-amp has much larger tolerance in its IO characteristics than a good transistor(or tube) by all logical terms but designing and building an audio component is much simplier and faster and so cheaper using OP-Amps, however there are many successfull audio-components in today's high resolution audio equipment built on OP-Amps: compact phonostages such as NAD PP1, Michell ISO by Tom Evans; preamps such as McCormack RLD, McCormack Micro Line Drive; poweramps such as Audio Research D series have input and driving circuitries using OP-Amps. Gregm, To understand measurements that everyone HEARS you should know ALL electronic parameters of at least audio amplification equipment. Challenge yourself and many secrets will be uncovered for you... |
Themadmilkman, First you need to know what feedback is and than you will easy understand what is negative feedback. Theoretically and in general, the gain of an amplification device such as transistor tube or OP-Amp is very high and non linear. In order to eliminate a possibility of self-oscillations i.e. instability of such tne negative feedback mandatory should be applied. |
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. |
I know well that VK was originally an SS amp designer(as well as Vladimir Lamm or previousley Vladimir Shushurin). MOSFET as well as Bipolar or OP-Amp do need feedback. The mentioned BAT amp has probably Zero global neg. feedback while having plenty of local one. A local feedback is the one that is being applied to an individual amplification stage of an amplifier. A global feedback is being applied to the amplifier as whole. When amplier is being designed and tested for distortions the engineer may or maynot need an additional feedback to correct them and this feedback would likely go arround the wole amplifier instead of recalculating and retesting values for every individual stage. Increasing a global negative feedback do decrease the gain and the output power of the amplifier substantially. |
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. |
