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.
You really don't need to understand a whit about circuit design or electrical engineering to intelligently evaluate different approaches by the various designers.
You can walk into an audition room and focus on the effect of one component alone, such as an amplifier, in a chain of many, and walk in to the same store another day, and focus on the effect of a different component, say a speaker, in the same chain of components.
Tone controls and room equalization can be made irrelevant by carefully choosing the right components.
Your ears and hearing are objective and stable listening devices.
"Burn-in" has nothing to do with your hearing and brain getting accustomed to a system, and everything to do with physical changes in components.
Live sound is better than home audio.
Home audio is a more essential experience than going to concerts.
That some speakers can blend with your furniture or are elegant furniture.
with all due respect to you I can tell that I'm different from the one who would bring "crying towel" and despite your wide thick and big experience selling audio equipment, I have placed a large number of scientific and budget measurements onto every paragraph mentioned, but I don't specify reasons on purpose since they require knowlege of electronics and mentioned negative feedback in particular. I simply let everyone here think about that including dealers as well(that unfortunately in largest scale were "infected" by new-era high-end mythical plug to be able to infect buyers).
Personally, I feel that numbers 1-6 are not myths.
#1 Paying 10% for cables may seem outrageous for a $100k system, but what about a $10k system? I'll bet most of you out there who have $10k systems have at least $1k(total) in cables, including power cables, right? Not a myth.
#2 Directionality of signal cables - debatable. I think it makes a difference in some cables.
#3 Zero negative feedback - preferable over virtually all types of negative feedback. Not a myth.
#4 What's wrong with $10k 10watt amps? You may think it exorbitant, but listening to one on a suitable speaker system may make you think otherwise. That is only $1k per watt, and I paid $2k per watt for my amp. Wanna see if a Pass or Halcro can beat it out on efficient speakers? Bring your crying towel! Not a myth. Watts cannot be equated with good sound.
#5 Must have higher power? Speaker efficiency doesn't matter? See above. Bring your crying towel. Not a myth.
#6 Like it or not, tubes will provide more "listenable" volume for the same power rating as SS, unless driving low impedance speakers. Make up your own reasons, they just do. Not a myth.
Proposed #19 - everybody knows what I think about that.
Anything cryoed cone-shaped feet to put under things tweaks that make you "discover your collection all over again" cables thicker than garden hose Also, I especially like the part about demagnetizing aluminum cd's
You basically need to perform a third experiment: Strip the shield of your old MIT wires and try them one or the other direction.
As to the recording onto cassette the pulling strength is different throughout the whole cassette tape length especially at the very beginning and at the very end. Thus the alignement can't be perfect as well even on mega-priced tape decks. What can be great there is electronics making a clean recording and sound.
Open reel recorders are to the less degree affected but still recording engineers wind forward and leave the rest at least 15...20meters unrecorded from both tape ends to make sure that the tape strength will be more stable and so is head alignement.
Actually, #2 I have experimented with. An interconnect shield is typically only hooked up at one end (except for some very obvious Kimbers, Nordost, etc.) and an old MIT sounded very bad the wrong way.
Another really interesting test was done on some FMS hook up wire. I had heard that there could be differences in sound depending on how the wire was pushed, pulled or whatever, so before installing it, I made a cassette copy of a song from a CD to a Nak Dragon using the hookup wire as the "hot" with a set of RCA pigtails made with Kimber 4TC and (ugh!) alligator clips. Then I flipped the wire around and recorded the same song again and listened to the tape with both "versions". It took a few times, but one sounded very slightly quicker and punchier, the other a bit more dull. After listening to it a few more times, I figured I had the differences down and tried listening to the two other coils (of different color) of the same wire I had. I was able to correctly identify the "direction" of the others, whether it was the punchy way or slow way by flipping ends. Sometimes I have way too much free time! Oh, these wires were a multistrand copper of the same gauge twisted around a plastic core. Could the twist have made a difference, I don't know; what do you think? All in my head?
A while back there was a post on recepticle covers (wall plates) and the way they effect sound. I like tube rolling but never considered plate rolling. Great post, I am enjoying it!
Your proposed 19- believing is only the derivative. The prime
20. Who and/or what made us to believe.
Ghostrider45,
6dB per bit seems way tooo much for me as it's hard for me to imagine that there is nothing between 30 and 36dB.
I also want to post a general comment that many of the paragraphs mentioned are just only derivatives.
I'm appreciated to all posters whoever agrees or disagrees The only thing I want to add is that I bought for the same as I sell and if someone will realize the same might only benefit.
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