The TARA Labs Grandmaster Evolution Digital Interconnect uses a pair of RSC® Gen 3 Rectangular Solid Core® conductors. In the AES/EBU format, the conductors are critically spaced to ensure an exacting 110 Ohm characteristic impedance; this is the AES/EBU format used with XLR connectors. The RSC Gen 3 conductors are smaller than the Gen 2 version, and this provides a more extended bandwidth for the digital signal. The TARA Labs Grandmaster Evolution Interconnect uses a system of woven filaments constructed from small Teflon tubes, to expand and displace the shield further away from the signal carrying conductors. In this way, the Grandmaster Evolution Digital Interconnect is able to reduce digital distortion, called ‘jitter’.*(Jitter explains why Digital cables sound different from on to another) The Grandmaster Evolution Digital cable is simply the most astonishing digital cable in the world today. No cable comes close except the Zero Evolution Digital interconnect.
Hi sksos-steven, mmmm, that is good news, but I do not understand how the ncf furutech gtx-rhodium wpo’s can have tighter bass?, the furutech gtx-rhodium outlet's I have with my system already has perfect tight bass, are the ncf furutech gtx-rhodium outlet's good enough for you to want to change out the original furutech gtx-rhodium outlet's in your system? , given a percentage scale, how much better can these new furutech gtx-rhodium NCF outlet's be over the original?
Steve, I will be getting with you very soon on buying the ncf furutech gtx-rhodium outlet's, likely try one and evaluate it, thankyou, you are welcome here any time, btw, tell me about this s.i.n. power conditioner?
THE MUSE INTERFACE: (Release Date: March 2016) TARA Labs has been at the forefront of design & technology for thirty years. In that time, TARA Labs has been credited with numerous “first inventions” in the field of high-end audio cables; Rectangular Solid Core (RSC), vacuum dielectric technology (VDT), and now we are introducing the advent of a fantastic new product known as: The Muse Interface. If you could improve the sound of your audio system, what would that be? Would it be a more expansive soundstage, less glare or stridency, more musicality? There are literally thousands of component models available in the audio marketplace. And many of these components when combined together, will not offer that symbiotic relationship and sound that audiophiles are looking for? TARA Labs has always been at the forefront of technological advances in this industry, and our high-end audio cables have brought many a system close to “perfection.” In an effort to expand our product line to bring audiophiles closer to the “live-sound”, TARA Labs is now introducing The Muse Interface Sound Enhancement System. You can now add this incredible technology to your audio system and improve your sound like never before! And it works with any audio system or audio cables regardless of brand. The Muse Interface can be connected to any RCA or XLR cable termination, and what you’ll experience is a lower noise floor, wider sound-stage, more presence, mid-range warmth and richness, as well as enhanced musicality without sacrificing detail and high frequency extension. A sound that is more coherent and natural, bringing you closer to the “live-experience” like never before! *The Muse Interface is especially recommended for systems that have wide-bandwidth electronics (with limited filtering*), or with systems that use loudspeakers that have a tonal balance that emphasizes the high frequencies, including systems that are slightly etched sounding or overly detailed, perhaps with a sense of glare or stridency. In addition, we have found that when used with high-end audio systems, the effects become more apparent. Meaning the better the audio system, the closer you’ll become with that “perfect live sound” The Muse Interface is unlike traditional shielding methods or filter networks. Even complex shielding methods still remain in proximity to the conductors, thereby distorting the audio signal. Filter networks in boxes at the ends of the cables often contain low quality resistors, inductors and capacitors to perform the filtering. These reduce RFI/EMI in the cable itself by being soldered in series and parallel between the signal conductors. This alters the integrity of the signal, in particular, the higher order harmonic structure. Using The Muse Interface, RFI/EMI is dissipated and absorbed within the Muse technology. This function occurs in isolation from the signal conductors. The signal path is not cut and fitted with additional components. The Muse Interface is extremely effective in eliminating the noise of RFI/EMI without the attendant high-frequency anomalies of filter networks. This translates into a sound that is closer to live than ever before. Release Date: March 2016
Taralab's PROFESSIONAL STUDIO CABLE This cable is made exclusively for the recording studio. *The PX silentPLUG is fantastic for this cable as it allows a musician to unplug and switch instruments in the recording studio without the hassle of turning down/off your amplifier. (*See below CABLE TERMINATION) INSTRUMENT CABLE INFORMATION TARA Labs has taken its incredible thirty year expertise in cutting edge technology & design, and developed a high-end instrument cable. Used with guitar, bass, keyboards, or in the recording studio. Used in recordings by Stanly Clarke, Patrice Rushen, Kenny Burrell, and endorsed by such legendary musicians and producers as; Larry Carlton, David Benoit, Nathan East, Jeffrey Webber, in addition to such prestigious venues such as Carnegie Hall, Capitol Records studio, Sony studio. CABLE CONSTRUCTION Every TARA Labs cable is custom hand-crafted to order in Oregon, USA. The construction of this cable begins with our RSC (Rectangular Solid Core) SA-8NOF (Super-annealed, oxygen-free, mono-crystal, frequency-tuned, hand-polished 99.999999% pure copper conductors. This is covered with advanced Aero-PE dielectrics and skid-resistance outer sleeve. CABLE TERMINATION TARA Labs also makes available the “silentPLUG” for cable termination. The new PX silentPLUG automatically mutes (shorts) an instrument (guitar) cable to avoid pops and squeals when changing the instrument (guitar) under load. The integrated silent switch is based on REED-technology and guarantees a lifetime beyond 10 '000 mating cycles. The new PX silentPLUG features a rugged metal shell enhanced with a rubber cushion overlay for improved shock protection. The plug itself is gold plated. The “silentPLUG” is exceptional when used in situation where instruments are being interchanged, without having to either turn-down or turn-off the amplifier. All termination is gold-plated. *Straight plug & Right angle plug available / ¼” mono or stereo termination connectors are available CABLE SOUND You will hear exquisite high frequency extension, tight bass, spatial cues, and full mid-range that is detailed and open. A low-noise floor, and excellent sound-stage. Both cable models offer superior quality. These cables are far beyond any other high-end instrument cables available in the marketplace today. Endorsed by the worlds leading recording studios, music venues, and musicians. For musicians and producers who demand the very best in equipment, instruments and recording. I will be getting this instrument cable for evaluation, this cable also has recently won the positive/feedback Brutus Award, the highest award given by positive/feedback online audio review source.
This is not on the taralab's website, this is a new press release, The new taralab's zero gold (Gen2): ,,,One of the most successful audio cables of all time is the original ZERO Gold Interconnect from TARA Labs. The original ZERO Gold was praised for its breakthrough performance. In the Gen 2 design, technology has literally been borrowed from the famous and more expensive ZERO Evolution Interconnect. Available now is the ZERO Gold Generation 2 Interconnect at a lower price with complete flexibility and better performance than the original ZERO Gold. The breakthrough improvements include greater bandwidth and a completely new and proprietary air-dielectric construction. TARA Labs first introduced air dielectric interconnect cables in 1986; 30 years ago. And instead of using round conductors in air-tubes, TARA Labs uses Rectangular Solid Core® (RSC®) conductors which are 'seated' inside small air-tubes™. The new Zero Gold G2 makes full use of this technology. The new Zero Gold G2 will offer the listener an audio cable that is absolutely fabulous! Extremely low in capacitance at 3 pF, with a sound that can be described as holographic. Exceptional high-frequency extension and detail, expansive soundstage with spatial cues with a bottom end that is rich and full of bloom, in addition to a substantial low noise floor. This interconnect is simply astounding for the price. And for audiophiles who remember the original Zero Gold, the flexibility of the new Zero Gold G2 will simply amaze them.
Exactly....zzzzzzzzzzz,I'll stick to my acoustic panels at least I can hear the difference and it's huge. Put your gear in a tiled room with those fancy mega buck cabling, high fidelity included and I bet treating the room wins a1000 times over I use to do the cable thing,really it's your room and no thinking or imagining or placebo effect involved.
I have a treated room xxxxx!, I took most all treatment out because it was a thousand times better for the music to breathe than muted and lifeless, no kidding, it works! , the cable thing works better everytime.
with a sound that can be described as holographic. Exceptional high-frequency extension and detail, expansive soundstage with spatial cues with a bottom end that is rich and full of bloom, in addition to a substantial low noise floor. This interconnect is simply astounding for the price. And for audiophiles who remember the original Zero Gold, the flexibility of the new Zero Gold G2 will simply amaze them.
-- Sounds like my system , less the $30,000 wires
Hi maplegrovemusic, very funny, that's like saying soulution equipment sound's sublime with any cable, when in fact soulution, airtight, Focal stella utopia em, critical mass, and taralab's Evolution zero complete loom of cable's won the recent best of show at the Rocky Mountain audio festival, cheers.
One man's holographic is another man's two dimensional paper mâché. When it comes to trying to describe the sonic virtues of just about anything in audio, including cables, words tend to fail to properly convey the full meaning of what's going on and the words themselves seem trite and overreaching. Everything is relative to what system is the test bed and who's doing the listening. Innocent question: are Tara Labs cables cryo'd?
Hi Geoffkait, I do not believe they are, I do know that the oyaida termination's on the power cord's are, what is interesting Geoff is that the capacitance of the taralab's flagship analog interconnect is 2 Pico farads a foot, this cable is called the Grandmaster Evolution, and another brand of cable's I do like is the Nordost Odin 2, it has 18 Pico farads per foot, as a matter of fact, the taralab's Evolution zero has 3 p/f a foot, I have listened to all three cable's, the Odin 2 is not as good as the two top taralab's model's in my opinion, or preference.
Extended Bandwidth - Interconnects The Grandmaster Evolution Series from TARA Labs is truly beyond belief. It is quite simply the new watershed in the art and science of audio cable design. The Evolution Series is in a class of its own, beyond all other audio cable products in the history of the audio industry worldwide. The Grandmaster Evolution Interconnect uses the same multi-lumen air-tube concept invented by TARA Labs as used in the ZERO Interconnects and the AIR Series Interconnects originally developed in 1986. However, the Evolution Interconnect is remarkably flexible. The Evolution Interconnect uses the same displaced and Floating Shield design together with a new Dual Mono-Block HFX Ground system with greater absorption of RF/EMI and a vanishingly low background noise. Incredibly, the new Grandmaster Evolution Interconnect boasts a remarkably low capacitance figure of just 2 pF per foot. This means that the new Evolution has a High Frequency bandwidth that is more than 300% greater than any other high-end cable in the world. The most advanced air-tube technology and designAll new proprietary "dual mono-block" floating ground station (HFX) and floating shield systemControlled spacing of conductor to conductor geometry, produces record low interconnect capacitance of a mere 2 pf (picofarads)Additionally the conductor to shield capacitance is remarkably low so the EMI/RFI coupling from the shield to conductors is negatedThe outer shield is expanded and spaced away from the conductors to such a degree that the background noise is at an all-time lowTwo layers of anti-corrosion coated SAOF-8N copper shieldCompared to the Zero Evolution, The Grandmaster Evolution has a larger, more complex system of Teflon and Aero-PE filaments that ensure a complete air dielectric system.The most revealing and lifelike presentation possibleCompared to the Zero Evolution, The Grandmaster Evolution has a high-frequency bandwidth that is 50% greater, with a stunning low level of background noise contrasted with more image outlines and fine detailRevolutionary liquid micro-film (LMF) dielectric ensures a linear transfer of low-level ambient and spatial information
Mr Greg beron that owns the prestigious United home audio store in Washington DC recently won best sound at show at the 2015 Newport show with mbl equipment and uha reel to reel tape deck playing master tapes , cabled everything with taralabs zero Evolution cable's, Greg also won best sound at show at the 2014 Chicago axpona show useing the same cable's, Greg is well experienced in the high end, I enjoyed talking to him on the phone, check out his website, incredible amount of brands of audio, this is truly one of the best brick and mortor store's in America.
When the Record Industry Association of America adopted its standard disc playback equalization curve in 1954, hi-fi enthusiasts heaved a sigh of relief and bade fond farewell to years of confusion, doubt and virtual pandemonium. Before the RIAA curve there were six "standard" curves in use, and since nobody seemed to know who was using what, getting flat response from a disc was often more a matter of luck than anything else. The adoption of the RIAA standard playback curve heralded an end to all this. If record manufacturers had endeavored to install the best available playback equipment, and made their records for use on this equipment, there might be little to choose today between a stereo disc and an original tape. But when hi-fi ceased to be a pursuit of quality and became a pursuit of the Merry Megabuck, the RIAA curve became just another obstacle between the product and the consumer's wallet. The whole trouble was that J. Q. Public's polished mahogany boombox had never heard of the RIAA curve. Cut a disc to sound natural when RIAA-equalized, and it sounded muffled and distorted to the average record buyer. So, one manufacturer tried making a few minor "corrections" in the sound of his discs, and by Golly, they did sound better on JQP's console. Another manufacturer quickly followed suit, and the race was on. Hi-fi enthusiasts and critics with good equipment noticed the change, but most of them naively confused more highs with better highs, so the record makers figured they had carte blanche to go hog-wild. They solved JQP's distortion and turntable rumble problems by compressing dynamics until some LPs and stereo discs had less volume range on them than many 78-rpm shellacs. They minimized groove-jumping by filtering out all deep bass, and brought out the "presence" by whacking up the treble, adding a 5kHz response peak, or moving their microphones right in on top of the instruments. By 1959, the gimmicking of discs had reached such proportions that no tone control could begin to cope with these sonic horrors, so component buyers started choosing "sweet-sounding"—ie, rolled-off—speakers and pick-ups, in an effort to tame the screaming treble. Early LP discs, that actually had been cut to the RIAA curve, now sounded dull and sodden, thus giving rise to the reassuring myth that modern recordings are better than ever before. Today there are some encouraging signs of a return to sanity, but to pretend that the average stereo disc is made to sound best when reproduced on the best equipment is to practice self-deception. Most record manufacturers still keep a sharp eye on the limitations of the average console phonograph, boosting here, attenuating there, and generally making a mockery of their claims of "highest fidelity" and their recommendations that owners of high-fidelity systems should "equalize to the RIAA curve." If they all did the same things to their discs, or specified on the jackets what they had done, it might be possible to design equalizers to offset the effects of this messing around. But the nature of the manipulations is always a "trade secret"—most manufacturers won't admit that they do it all—which means that the poor slob of a hi-fi listener is right back where he started, only more so, because now there are no standard curves at all. There's only the RIAA curve, which hardly anybody uses any more. In short, the relatively few record buyers who are really interested in getting good sound are being sold down the river in order to cater to the imagined needs of the vast, tin-eared public that can't tell good sound when it hears it, and cares less. Until the record manufacturers start giving us the kind of sound they could if they cared to, no amount of expenditure on "perfect" playback equipment is going to make modern discs sound any better than mediocre. There are too few audio perfectionists to have any effect on the sales of recordings, but we can write letters to record companies and the mass-circulation hi-fi magazines, and we can tell less-knowledgeable record buyers what's going on. Until we can pressure the record companies into thinking in terms of top audio quality again, high fidelity's weakest link will remain the first link in the chain.
Audiolabyrinth, I'm thinking on getting latest Tara labs Air Evolution speaker cables and prime m1 jumpers. Can you please provide some info on their sound. Cant afford going higher so.
Hi denon1, yes, the air Evolution is a new model cable, this cable has huge bang for the money!, good bass, neutral midrange, with airy highs, this cable is near equivalent to the one speaker cable's, lol! Same number of conductor's with the exception of the Air Evolution has 10 gauge conductor runs, where the one has 8 gauge, however, the Air Evolution has the current carrying capability of a 6 gauge speaker cable, thus the exceptional bass, if I were you, I would try to swing getting the Omega speaker link's that are 12" long, I have these speaker jumper's now, they are incredible sounding, worth more in performance than the asking price, the m1 is satisfactory, but the Omega is omg, please pm me when you get a chance, happy listening.
Denon1, the air Evolution you have will sound ok out the box, however, at 300 hrs, they will sound open, extended, and the soundstage will be layered and dimensional sounding, most of the burn in is over at 300 hrs, you will have some nuances come through over some time after 300 hrs.
Hi greg, you can call me Keith, the answer to your question, this depends on the equipment being used, meaning, the 0.8 has more resolution, never mix taralab's cable's, if you mix with other brand's with the 0.8 or any cable below the zero gold, you will have a lean sound, if you use matching taralab's cable's throughout, you will have depth, better resolution, bass, etc. ..the 0.8 will expose more information- resolution if the equipment is up to par, no one can hear a big difference if you were using something like a Rotel component system.
Keith, thank you for the info. I'mm using Sonus Faber Guarneri Evo and accuphase e-470 amp and accuphase dp-550 player. Will the Air Evo (I already placed the order) speaker cables be adequate for my system? Are you saying that I have to use tara labs complete loom in order to avoid lean sound? This sounds strange. It is not always the case. I will not be able to get a fool loom of tara labs. For ICs and power cords I have a great cables that I intend to keep.
I have to disagree about using a full loom of Tara cables. I'm even a Tara dealer and I don't use a full loom. I tried using all Tara interconnects and the sound was way to lean. I now just use The 0.3 ic between my pre and amps and other brands throughout and now I have that full, rich, detailed sound I'm after.
Hi greg, very nice system, what is your interconnect's and power cable's?,, Greg, what I'm saying is if and when you can get taralab's interconnect's and power cord's, compared to a full loom, it will not be as good, keep in mind, you will not know unless you have a complete burned in full loom that not useing a full loom is lean in comparison, so really, in your case, you won't know the difference, you will like a lot what you just bought, your speaker's go down to 40htz so you will be surprised what the taralab's air Evolution and m1 bi-cableing jumper cable's will do, remember, do 300 hrs before you have your final impressions of the sound, Greg, it took time for me to get the full loom of taralab's cable's because of the expense of admission, I had the taralab's the one speaker cable's for over a year and no after market power cord, then I got the taralab's cobalt power cord with oyaida termination's, then the taralab's zero gold interconnect months later, then I finally got the final piece, the taralab's omega gold speaker cable's , omg, did I ever get huge bass depth and frequency extension when I got the full matching model loom, it was a night and day difference, I have no regrets, I love the sound I have, I could live out my life with this cable set up, however, after talking to Devon Scott- vise president of taralab's a few times on the phone, I will be selling my beloved interconnect's and speaker cable's to up grade to the taralab's Evolution zero Interconnect's and Evolution omega speaker cable's, my speaker cable's use to be Michael fremmer's of stereophile magazine cable's, my speaker cable's are 8ft and the interconnect is 1-meter balanced, the speaker cable's were $24,000.00 retail, the interconnect was $14,500.00 retail, I'm going to put them up for sale together for $18,000.00 which is an incredible deal if any one is interested, then later, I will get the taralab's matching Evolution power cord.
Sksos1, HI Steven, did you use the 0.3 speaker cable’s and taralab’s power cord’s when you used more than one pair of 0.3 interconnect’s? , if you did not, you would not have noticed the bass depth and improved resolution, and a rich tone, what you posted really back’s what I posted to Greg .
Keith have you looked at all the Tara cables on Agon? You will be lucky to get maybe 12k for both cables together. Heck I have tried selling NIB at BIG discounts and still have had very few sales.
Hi Steven, yes I have looked at the used market of my two cable's, even on audiogon, I have my own blue book of many products here on audiogon archives saved, so absolutely I will get $18,000.00 for the two cable's, no matter how much time it takes, I'm not in any hurry, and will shoot down all low ballers.
“Air Evo transients are sharp edged and fast, as fast as any cable I've come across... The TARA Labs Air Evolution Interconnect with EVO Floating Ground Station is advertised as completely neutral and absolutely revealing with high frequency and airy detail that is not found in comparable audio cables." It is certainly neutral, revealing, and loaded with detail...The bottom line is TARA Labs new Air Evolution cables are out-sized performers and offer a big bang for the buck. Highly recommended without reservation for those shopping at this price point.” - Marshall Nack / Positive Feedback Issue #77, 2015
“I like the Air Evo's better in my system. I also have a pair of Air 2 speaker cables. Amazing sound from both. I've died and gone to heaven – I swear. Thanks for your time and research. I am one of your loyal customers that is truly enjoying your efforts. And I did listen to XLO, Straightwire, & JPS Labs. I bought TARA Labs. Amen.” -Kevin L.
This is the matching power cord for the Air Evolution Interconnect and speaker cable's, Air Reference AC
The RSC Air Reference AC uses Air-tube™ technology that reduces dielectric distortion within cable; has an extremely low noise floor with unsurpassed picture clarity. It is shielded and has 14 gauge conductor runs; SA-OF8N® copper; 24 RSC® Gen 2 conductors separated into live and neutral paths; live and neutral paths are in individual Teflon® air-tubes™ and separately shielded; ground path is provided by exterior shield; Anti-Corrosion coated SA-OF8N® copper braided shield. Wattgate standard IEC plug, shielded14 gauge conductor runs.SA-OF8N® copper. 24 RSC® Gen 2 conductors separated into live and neutral paths.Live and neutral paths are in individual Teflon® air-tubes and separately shielded.Ground path is provided by exterior shield.Air-tube™ technology reduces dielectric distortion within cable.Extremely low noise floor.Unsurpassed picture clarity.
Keith, my dealer told me it will take around 7-10 b.days to build Air Evo speaker cables and jumpers and I ordered standard 8 feet length. Does Tara Labls build on order and does not stock their cables at all? I
Hi denon1, yes, taralab's does build to order by hand, I would also mention that the likely time frame specified in your post is also to fill order's that may be ahead of your order, Greg, you should have seen me with my anticipation for my cable's to arrive, we'll worth the wait, happy listening greg.
TARA (The Absolute Reference Audio) Labs is a manufacturer of a high-end audio cables from Medford, Oregon. It's led by president Merrill Bergs. The trademark of Tara Labs is their use of solid wire.
The company was established in 1984, when company founder Matthew Bond, trained in physics and electronics theory, was looking for ways to improve the performance of audio components and the wire used within an audio system. As early as the mid 1970s and early 1980s, Matthew Bond had experimented with solid core conductors of different diameters. He hypothesized that an 'optimum diameter' of 18 AWG (American Wire Gage) or 1 millimeter was ideal for audio frequencies because there was minimal high frequency attenuation caused by the principles known as skin effect.[1] It is important to note that Matthew Bond's work was corroborated by research work from the NBS or National Bureau of Standards in the 1930s and confirmed later by Stereophile Magazine in July 1988 in a table presented as the DC to AC resistance ratio versus frequency, in wires of different diameters.[2]Matthew Bond is credited with the invention of solid-core wires for audio use, because his work predates Dennis Morecroft (1984) and any of the early solid-core wires developed for use in audio in England at the time.[3] The first commercial speaker cables were designed in 1984, the Phase II speaker cable, a solid coredesign.[4] Thirty years later, the Phase II Speaker Cable is still available through retailers in the United States. In 1990, TARA Labs introduced the world’s first cable to have a floating conductor unterminated at one end that would allow for an increased high-frequency bandwidth to be coupled to the signal carrying conductors (US patent No. 5033091). Later, a control device inside a box fitted to the cable (The Temporal Continuum) allowed the user to adjust the amount of high frequency energy to be heard. TARA Labs introduced Rectangular Solid Core cables in 1992. The cables employed solid core conductors with a rectangular cross section. Rectangular Solid Core can be made in specific proportions(width and height), and this provides for the tuning of the frequency response of a conductor as compared to a round conductor of the same size or DC resistance.[5] The cables employed solid core conductors with a rectangular cross section.[6][7] Both the Gen2 conductor and the smaller Gen3 conductor are said to be Eight-Nines™ pure copper, which is 99.999999% pure. TARA Labs’ trademarks for this technology are 8N™ and SA-OF8N®. SA-OF8N means Super Annealed – Oxygen Free 8 Nines copper. According to Bond, the term ‘annealing’ refers to the method whereby a conductor can be made softer and more conductive.[8] In 1999 Tara Labs introduced the "Zero" interconnect with an Vacuum Dielectric Insulation system.[9][10] In 2014, TARA Labs introduced a new line of high-end cables called The Evolution Series, which included cables such as: The Zero Evolution, The Omega Evolution, and The Grandmaster Evolution.[11][12]
Considering the amount of careful research, cautious theorizing and wild speculation that have been lavished on the amplifier power question, we should expect to be considerably closer to the answer in 1962 than we were five years ago. This does not seem to be the case. We have instruments for measuring sound pressure levels in the air, for measuring electrical power, and for analyzing distortion content to the third decimal place, and the literature is full of learned dissertations on the structure of musical sounds, their behavior in concert halls and living rooms, and the relationships between ears and the sounds around them. Yet one audio expert still maintains that 0.5 watts of amplifier power is all you ever need, while another says 50 watts is barely enough. Who is right?
As is often the case in such a diagonal disputation, both are partly right. One source of the widespread disagreement stems from the lack of any standardized criteria for judging power requirements. Thus, one expert may be stating how much power we need to produce a certain volume of sound during crescendos, while the other may be telling us how powerful an amplifier we must have before any further increase in available power ceases to yield any perceptible improvement in sound. On the other hand, another expert—the field is thick with them—might be figuring power requirements on the basis of a high-efficiency speaker system like the Klipschorn, while yet another expert may have decided that the only speakers worth listening to are low-efficiency types like the AR-1, so he bases his estimate on its power requirements. All are legitimate approaches, but it is obvious that no one of them can supply a universal answer. Hence the compounded confusion. Let's get one thing straight at the outset: "Need" has no bearing on the matter. It is senseless to ask how much power we need, because the answer is "none." We don't need high fidelity, when it comes right down to that. Nobody would die, no governments would collapse, no panics would ensue if, all of a sudden, high fidelity had never been.
All right, then, how much power should we have? Simply stated, we should have enough power to reproduce the desired sound at the desired level without exceeding a certain limit of distortion. This reads like a masterpiece of evasion, but it is a step in the right direction, for no expert will disagree with it. But what level is the "desired" level? Background music level, foreground listening level, or the kind of ear-shattering level that a conductor might hear from his podium? The hi-fi system owner who does not plan to use his rig for anything except background music can just forget all about power requirements. At very low listening levels, the ear's powers of discrimination are poor, so any amplifier that is sold under the guise of high fidelity will do. A cheap 5-watter will be adequate, and it isn't too important if its distortion is fairly high, because nobody really listens attentively enough to background music to notice its sound. The only time we benefit from high fidelity is when we concentrate on the program, because that is when we start to get finicky about the sound. Our ears are most responsive to upper frequencies when the sound is loud, and it is at high levels where a hi-fi rig's distortion is prone to be most severe. If the amplifier is clipping the tops off peaks at high listening volume, the resulting raggedness of sound is much more audible than it would be were the amplifier doing the same thing at a much lower volume level. This, of course, helps to befuddle the issue, because the higher the listening volume, the lower the amplifier's distortion must be in order to sound pleasant. And we all know that the harder we push an amplifier, the more distortion it generates.
So, for the purposes of this article, we are going to assume that you will, at least occasionally, play your system at foreground level. What about orchestra-in-the-room level? Although a popular advertising gambit, this is an absurd notion. To be mundane about it, there simply isn't room for a symphony orchestra in the average home, so even if it were possible to re-create the original volume of the orchestra as heard from the conductor's podium—which it is, but it takes scads of power and a highly efficient speaker—the effect could not be realistic. It would also be very un-neighborly. A solo performer, or a chamber group, could be in your living room, and sounds very convincing when so reproduced. But recording engineers realized long ago that orchestra patrons listen from out in the hall rather than from the podium, so they do their microphoning to convey as well as possible the illusion of listening from a mythical "best seat in the house." Their recordings sound best when reproduced to scale; higher volume levels make them sound overblown and unnatural. As sound waves travel away from their source, their total acoustical power remains essentially the same, but as each wave spreads out over a wider area, it thins itself out. Thus, the actual intensity of a sound some distance from its source will be considerably lower than its intensity right at the source. For this reason, we measure sound intensities in a concert hall in terms of variations in air pressure (or the sound pressure), rather than in terms of watts of acoustical power. The original power at the source can then be computed, if desired, by a simple formula based on the fact that sound pressure weakens by a square root function as its distance from the source is doubled.
Sound pressure readings are made using a special microphone probe and a meter that resembles a tape recorder's VU meter but is calibrated in dynes/cm2 of pressure or in decibels above the threshold of human hearing. The sound meter shares the same shortcoming as a VU meter in that its indicator needle, having some inertia, does not respond fully to transients, but gives an average (or RMS) reading. The RMS level of sound during an orchestral crescendo, as heard from a fairly close seat in the concert hall (row C, for instance), measures about 100dB on a sound level meter. The acoustical power (not electrical, please note) needed to create this sound level, at a distance of 15 feet from a loudspeaker in a 10' by 15' by 20' room, is on the order of 0.4 acoustic watts. If we used a 100% efficient speaker (which is unlikely, because there's no such thing), we could recreate the RMS power of the original sound with 0.4 watts of electrical power. To find the amplifiet power required to get this acoustical power from a practical speaker, we simply multiply the reciprocal of the speaker's efficiency rating (in percent) by 40. Thus, for a 10% efficient speaker, we have: 40 x 1/10W, which works out to 4 watts. For a typical "low-efficiency" speaker of about 1% efficiency, we would need 40 watts of amplifier power to produce 0.4 acoustical watts.
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