I love all the ages of audio. Every one of them has offered something. I'm down on the discrete era 1997-2015 for obvious reasons, over build, over pricing and only a volume control. The HEA magazines pulled off one amazing marketing run telling us to just keep buying upward, but I for one asked myself what's going to happen when the industry modernizes? If you've been to the CES the last 15 years it would be hard to miss that the new generation has reinvented listening. Not just Headsets but designing in general. We've also had hints of change by watching the development of Class-D components and modern sources. 5 or so years ago I mentioned that I was meeting with some of the younger innovative designers in audio on the Stereophile forum and was quickly trolled off the stage. It was kind of like some old folks were willing to protest "change" to the death. Well here we are 5 years later and HEA is on it's last CES leg while those innovations have become mainstream.
Threads are popping up on this and other forums suggesting HEA is dead or at least terminally ill. You have to be waring some pretty tinted rose colored glasses to miss this reality. Those who want to argue this can wait another 5 years I guess and see how many of their friends are still kicking, or buying new expensive High End gear vs the ones who have either settled into their last system or have embraced the less expensive better sounding hobby. Why do I think it will be better sounding? That's easy, lower mass and simpler designs, and very important "adjustability". Now I love vintage audio and own a lot of it. I also own some of the big boys of today and in my demo rooms have, and continue to pass through, a lot of products, old, new, big, small, expensive and inexpensive. I don't mind telling you that depending on how you setup your systems there is no money hierarchy any more. What there is are methods of listening that when you do them you find how things mate, and that's how you can determine if you wish to stay in the old school, discrete camp or become involved it the new age of audio.
So that's what this thread is about. Not changing anyone's mind just showing the differences and maybe a little of the comparing of apples and oranges.
HEA is not dead. What you can afford now was top class technology yesteryear. Like the technology in luxury cars, eventually it filters down to the common car on sale now.
Technics renewed and released it's 1200 turntable. A copy of it's classic? Affordable now? Nope. But wait for a few years and it will be affordable as something newer takes its place.
Product developers listen to the public and in time we will get the tuning items we want. Reintroduction of bass, treble and balance. It's coming, just around the corner.
I see the Audiophile world as strong and growing. I see vintage audio as having a great following. Gaming is exploding in the theatre setting.
What I don't see is the next generation with huge amplifiers sitting in front of them with an audio rack in between a set of super expensive speakers. If HEA was going to turn the corner of luxury audio it would have done it by now.
Here's my point of reference. When you say Mercedes, everyone knows what your talking about. When you say Audio Research, no one has a clue what that is. High end audio hit a peak in the 60's, 70's, 80's even, that hasn't carried through to today. When was the last time we saw a TV ad for a high end audio component?
Remember when every town had a stereo store, and bigger towns had several, and one or two of them were high end shops? When you take that away it's like a town not having a car dealership. In time the buzz looses it's sting. That's not a bad thing, it's just the modern audiophile is not going to be looking for the same things that were appealing back in the 70's and 80's, past the collectables. It's like when TVs went from tube to flat screen.
I saw recently on TV a GEICO ad featuring a JBL 4312 and a rack of LPs with a TT and integrated amp on top! A step forward in convincing the youngsters that HiFi is HIP! Now I should take my 4312's out of storage and have a listen!
Hi MG. I do see your point. I guess there are a lot more audio designers and manufacturers than cars. But the technology is still filtering down I believe. But despite enjoying reading about the new stuff, I am equipment status quo.
I remember a time when almost everyone I knew had a set of 4312's either in their studio or home. Musicians of course. JBL is one of those companies that crossed over into the mainstream. If more of the HiFi companies would have made the crossover I believe HEA would be mainstream. The closest I ever saw was a few years in the late 80's when HEA was across the street from the CES. It continued into the 90's and then took a weird turn when leaving the Sahara hotel.
Several of my designer friends and reviewers agreed this was the markings of the end. Richard Beers made a good go of it but you could see the numbers drop and HEA drifted further away from the every day listener.
HEA will never disappear. It will always have a chapter in the Audiophile world. How big the camp remains depends on how many younger folks follow in the same footsteps of our generation. Gaming is already a much bigger hobby than in-room stereo listening, as well is AV.
AV is so different from when we were doing home theatres. Now you can pick up a projector around a hundred bucks, paint your wall, set up your computer (smart phone), do your acoustics and speakers with simple amplification and surf the net. Back in our day we did FM and it was a big deal visiting with our friends. Today’s visiting is the same in many regards except the net is now their FM. A big record collection means nothing to the new generation of kids (up to 35) hanging out.
Last year and this year I set up 3 of these systems close by me and was actually pretty impressed. They were using my speakers (and subs), RoomTune, my cable and all the stuff you would normally see with one of my setups except the front end and simple amps. Very impressive I might add, and the appearance was pretty cool too.
I know for a lot of high end audio folks it was kind of weird going from a living room full of listeners hanging out on a Saturday night to being the only one in the room. It’s not that people all of a sudden stopped visiting, it’s that the types of gatherings changed socially. It’s not even any of the types of systems and rooms changing, it’s simply a matter of there being more choices now. Dad or Grandpa enjoy their private listening room and the gathering enjoys a newer form of media. HEA audiophiles thinking the next generation are going to follow in that idea in our minds of massive amplifiers and components in front to stare at is probably going bye bye in the next few years and dying off with us for the most part. But I think maybe that's the way things should be.
Michael green: I agree with you about JBL being considered "mainstream". They are one of the very few audio brands today that most people still equate with " quality". And they have made consistently good stuff over the decades! Case in point: I bought a pair of JBL 640 floor-standers with a d'Appollito driver array (GoodWill - $48 pr). Had my cousin over to have a listen. He still has his JBL 100's in use with his Mac C28/2105. We listened to DSOTM (CD) and I was amazed at the SQ of the 640's! I told my cousin to sell the 100's and buy my 640's. Plainly far better! He turned down my offer - too conservative in his views! I eventually sold the 640's cheap ($200). Too many speakers at home! But I regret losing them! A truly quality speaker from JBL that would embarrass many multi-kilobuck speakers!
Michael Green: How about that Crown Drive Core 2 XLS 1502. Over 300 wpc and 8.6 lbs! I bet it would embarrass any multi-kilobuck audiophile amp! If I didn't already have too many amps I'd be buying one myself! This is the future - affordable quality products!
I could not agree more on both counts! I love HEA, I really do, regardless of me being so tough on them. But, companies like JBL and Crown have seriously got their acts together, I’ve been a big fan of both for many years.
You know, I might just have to pick up a Crown and tune it up and see how it does. I keep looking at them thinking I’m going to do it but I think you have given me the inspiration to pull the trigger.
you said
"I bet it would embarrass any multi-kilobuck audiophile amp!"
It certainly looks like it could. You sold me, I’ll take the plunge and let you know what I think.
Michael Green: I too am intrigued by the XLS 1502! And why not! Lots of power, light as a feather (kidding!). Amps after all are rather like toasters. They just have to put out enough volts and current to get the job done (drive speakers with low-enough distortion) or In the case of toasters, burn toast - but not the house! So what it has a switching power supply and a switching output stage! I am sure that Crown's engineering team knows how to build a quality amp!
No amount of "tuning" is going to correct what's wrong with the cheap Crowns. Have a real electronic engineer look at a schematic, he'll tell you immediately. Those Crowns were tried by the guys on the Planar Speaker Asylum, and it wasn't pretty. They aren't even good enough for subwoofers, let alone full range.
This idea that doing superficial "tweaking" to a design that is inherently flawed can transform an amp is just silly. It reminds me of all the teenage boys in L.A. who put spoilers on their lowered Hondas.
No thanks bdp24, I like to do my own reviewing. As well I have plenty of EEs around me. You can hang out with the teenage boys in LA, not my scene obviously. "Spoilers, Hondas"?
I'm impressed by Crown's innovative and modern designing.
Yeah, spoilers on Hondas. As in the spoiler doesn't change the design of the car---it's engine, transmission, suspension, the technical things that determine performance. The spoiler is just a conceit, like "tweaking" that does nothing to improve the circuit of, for instance, a power amp. High school boys in lowered Hondas with spoilers would pass me on the freeways in L.A. when I lived there. Those spoilers didn't magically turn their Hondas into BMW's, and tweaks don't make an amp more linear and stable, increase it's bandwidth, or produce less distortion. You know---Hi-Fi stuff.
Oh, I do Frank. Townshend Audio Seismic Pods and platforms, Symposium Acoustics and Ingress Engineering Roller Blocks, DH Cones, BDR Cones and Blocks, SIMS Navcom Silencers, Herbies Tendefeet, EAR IsoDamp, tube dampers, VPI Magic Brick, silver ic and speaker cables, Bybee and Shunyata power conditioners and power cords, Shakti Stone, Tube Traps, diffusers, lots of others.
But the assertion that one can change the basic performance of an inherently flawed or compromised design (a power amp, for instance), turning it from a mass-produced mid-fi component into a product producing better sound than a product designed from the ground up as superior-performing one (define as you wish) is laughable. Removing a power transformer from a chassis CAN improve the sound of, say, a pre-amp (Ric Schultz did just that in his mod of the Audible Illusions Modulus), but that does nothing to change the pre-amp’s linearity, overload margin, stability, bandwidth, distortion, gain---the most basic jobs of a pre-amp. The claim that even more minor tweaks than removing a transformer will (heh) transform a pre-amp (or power amp, or, God forgive, receiver) are those of a charlatan.
I get a kick out of some of the words used by forum folks when they get upset at others. Charlatan, snake oil and alike. I, in the last couple of years, have learned that this is yet another (more legit) forum term "troll".
Internet trolls are easy to spot. They’re the guys who come up a shout that something can’t be done because they themselves have not explored enough to become knowledgeable through practical application. Of course the audio signal is tunable and has been so since the very beginning of the audio chain itself.
It’s more fun to be a walker than a talker I have experienced. And the more walking that is done the more we learn about the audio signal and pathway. I’m more into "doing" the possible. It seems to me that Crown is as well, we’ll see.
Big difference between trolling and calling a spade a spade. Some of the (unfortunately) more expensive Crowns (some discontinued) are/were pretty good, much better than the current bottom-level Crowns. Excellent engineering doesn't necessarily cost more than mediocre (that's more a result of the design engineer's knowledge and talent), but you can do only so much with $100 in parts (the XLS 1502 parts can't total even that much, considering it's retail price).
To purport that the referred-to "tuning" of an electronic component will improve the sound of that component to a great enough extent to mitigate (or even eliminate) the inherent shortcomings in the component (it's linearity, stability, freedom from distortion, etc.), that the improvements brought about by said tuning are equal (or even greater) in their ability to determine the ultimate sound quality of the component as is the basic, inherent design of the component (which "tuning" does not address), is a very ambitious claim.
Real designers/engineers DO tune their circuits, but in the real sense of the term. Watch Roger Modjeski's You Tube videos on amplifier design to find out why the dielectric properties inherent in electrolytic capacitor's make them unacceptable for use in certain applications (where there is a change in the voltage across the cap, for instance), while fine in others. Amateur "tuners", lacking a deep understanding of circuit design and electronic principles, dismiss all electrolytics, in any and all applications, as sounding "bad".
Recording engineer Kav Alexander of Water Lily Records, known for his astoundingly-great sounding recordings (Ry Cooder was determined to have Kav record him after hearing one of the Water Lily albums), asked Modjeski to determine the source of some objectionable noise in the tube electronics of his custom recorder. Roger found it---some of the "Audiophile Grade" components (I don't remember---caps, resistors, etc.) someone had used in the circuit, their characteristics not appropriate for the requirements imposed on them by the circuit. The kind of audiophile-approved parts thought of as sounding "better" than garden variety parts, though they in fact sound worse when misused.
Roger is one of my favorite designers, as well a great guy. I was a dealer of Roger's and have enjoyed owning many of his products.
I obviously disagree with your premises above concerning Crown and Tuning, but that's ok.
As far as misusing parts, I'm in total agreement. I usually won't get near a "mod" unless I trust the source and have put the unit through my own evaluating.
I also don't trust measurements. One of my jobs for Turner's crew was testing equipment calibrations. Meaning testing the test equipment as well the components. This is maybe one of the reasons you don't see me talking techno-babble. I've worked with real engineers and was trained by them. It's pretty easy to spot the talker from the walker, and that's ok too. Everyone has their own experiences both professional and non. My gig is "doing" and fluff means very little to me.
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