What do you think of my 25 laws of audio


The Laws of High Quality Audio.

1. The bigger the sound system the better.
2. The more powerful the sound system the better.
3. There is no such thing as a sound system that is too big.
4. There is no such thing as a sound system that is too powerful.
5. You will always find that no matter how big you build the system it is never quite big enough.
6. You will always find that no matter how much power you have there never seems to be quite enough.
7. No matter how deep and powerful the bass sounds, it will always seem to be not quite deep enough and not quite powerful enough.
8. No matter how clear and detailed the treble sounds, you will always feel that it could be improved.
9. Achieving audio perfection is absolutely impossible no matter how much money you spend.
10. No matter how much money you spend you will always feel that the system is not quite as good as it could be.
11. If you think that your system sounds perfect then there must be something seriously wrong with it or something seriously wrong with you.
12. All your friends think that your system sounds much better than you do.
13. The longer you listen to your own system the worse it seems to sound.
14. Any dissatisfaction with a new system, no matter how slight, will always become greater as time goes on.
15. Any new pieces of equipment added to the system will always sound excellent initially but nowhere near as good when you get used to them.
16. Regularly listening to poor equipment for extended periods is good because it seems to make good equipment sound much better.
17. Regularly listening to good equipment for extended periods seems to make poor equipment sound absolutely dreadful and probably worse than it really is.
18. Any person’s opinion on the sound quality of a system is completely worthless because someone else will have a different opinion.
19. Any alterations you make to the system to improve it, no matter how extensive, will never improve it to the extent you wanted it to.
20. No matter how good your system sounds, there will always be someone else with a system that sounds better.
21. You will always detect a difference between the sound qualities of two identical systems and never know why they sound different.
22. Any attempt to match different makes of equipment together will never work out quite as you originally intended.
23. Improving any individual part of the system will always make some other part of the system seem worse than it was before.
24. If you build a big listening room you will be very pleased with the result, but when you get used to it you will convince yourself that the room needs to be bigger.
25. An infinitely huge attempt to achieve perfection would at best only produce a system that was infinitesimally close to perfection, but still not perfect.
chiefmegawatty
Hi Satch,

I have been trying to build a studio sound quality system which is capable of PA volume levels. This is not easy to achieve. Loud systems that sound horrible are easy to build.
High quality systems that can only give low volume are fairly easy to engineer.
High quality and high volume without spoiling the sound quality is a seriously difficult engineering challenge.
Tannoy and JBL have been addressing this engineering challenge with impressive results.
High quality sound with smooth extended frequency response
at high volume is quite some experience.
The most painful part of this experience is finding the money to finance such a system.
Best Wishes
I know Chief, it's just funny that your approach to audio and mine are totally different, yet we reach for the same aim. My setup consists of a tube preamp and a 2 x 25 watts class A poweramp, with which I'm extremely happy. I don't know which system will take one closer to audio nirvana.... Just a shame you don't live close, it qould be interesting to compare those systems. Oh, and this financial thing.... that's very familiar!! :)
Hi Satch,

Thanks for your interesting reply.
Well I don't think that my sound system is anywhere near
audio nirvana and probably never will be.
I suspect that your system is much nearer than mine.
Being an engineer I am very much aware that the design of anything is a compromise and if the end result is pleasing
then fair enough.
I suppose for audio law number 26 I could say that if all Hi Fi systems were perfect then they would all sound the same when operated in the same environment.
Regarding location, I assume you are in the USA.
I am in Bristol in the south west of the UK, a right miserable place indeed.
I must make an effort to visit the USA sometime. Trouble is
that I wouldn't want to come back home.
The USA's brilliant pop artist "Madonna" lives about 30 miles away from here. Why on earth did she want to live here for?
If I had her money I would use it to get the hell out of here!
Thanx for the compliment(s) about my system, unfortunately it's not true. And I'm not from the USA, but from the other side of that orther little pool: I'm from Holland....