@oddiofyl i can agree with that. Some companies have great reputations, product signatures and things that they excel at. Nothing wrong with commenting on things you have experience with. That is kind of where I’m going with this. Some people will doubt it before they hear it. If it’s doing something different that they can’t personally figure out it’s a no go. Some even shun innovation because before it wasn’t possible. These are the kinds of things I’m referring to
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@jeffrey125 working with Infigo audio happened naturally. We ended up meeting as part of a show team 5 years ago. Hans started his company and realized how enthusiastic I was about audio and I have a good ear for it. I have learned from guys that put 30 to 50 years in this hobby we call audio. I always want to hear and experience different great sounds. There are many different ways a system can please you and sound great no matter what the cost is. I always look at it from a standpoint of actually experiencing the sound of the gear for yourself. Science is important but my ears are the important to me. Is it musical, low noise floor, engaging and puts a smile on my face then I’m good. That’s what we are trying to do. We even loan out cables at no cost to allow people to actually hear them |
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Touché, this is the point that enrages the people that already blew their discretionary income and engages those who have cash reserves. Did you ever wonder why you almost NEVER see reviews of room treatments and the only way "audiophiles" ever measure their acoustics is with an obscure app called REW that must be studied like learning calculus? The fact is that room treatments are boring, you don’t plug them in, they can look disgusting on your walls if you don’t cover them with acoustically transparent fabric. You get the room right and a $500 receiver can sound like a $$$$ amp in the average listening room that has sound waves bouncing off windows, ceilings, dry wall, etc. like its the Titanic. This is fact, I didn’t invent acoustics. Sadly this is why many people are on an endless journey of upgrades, because it never gets quite right acoustically and no speaker, no DAC, no cable can fix a FR that looks like one of those old TV test patterns. Here is a video on the topic: The math on getting decay time right starts at the :40 min mark, the "recipe" of what to do follows right after the math: https://www.youtube.com/live/G0ekssXX7rE?feature=shared
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jeffrey125@kota1 Here is a shot of a couple of @calvinj systems, blows your stuff away for sure. https://infigoaudio.com/page/reviews/
This is more fun than watching Napoleon Dynamite |
nonoise
I haven't eaten fruit, grain or vegetable in years. |
“You get the room right and a $500 receiver can sound like a $$$$ amp in the average listening room that has sound waves bouncing off windows, ceilings, dry wall, etc. like its the Titanic.” 🤔- Nope I have a treated room and it was set up by a very well known acoustical engineer that brought all the goodies with him. I also have a $500 amp sitting on a cabinet behind me (was $3k new), unplugged. That unit never even sounded close to the amp and preamp I use now (which obviously cost more money). There’s a reason why the worlds most renown equipment designers create their own products and charge more for it rather than working a soldering iron over at Marantz. Think about it.. |
@calvinj you asked a question and I think I provided a valid answer. Don’t shoot the messenger. There are many nice headphones out there that are arguably not a very good value especially when it’s been demonstrated applying a proper no cost convolution filter like those available for use in Roon can take many less pricey headphones to levels that can compete with some of the best. There are always smart buys and those that are less so. It’s typically a matter of opinion what offers value or not and everybody has one. If one is strong in their convictions contradictory opinions of others won’t matter to them and vice versa. it’s when we start talking about good investments financially that things become a good bit less subjective.
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@designsfx +1 Yes room treatments applied correctly make a solid difference in the overall sound quality of ANY system. The issue is you can NOT turn an Emotiva amp into an Esoteric amplifier even with proper room acoustics. Your Naysayers/Snake Oil believers/DIY/Vintage/Frankenstein setups will never accept the truth regarding HEA, that nuances and subtleties don’t have a price point. |
@dayglow you said it perfectly in my personal opinion. The HEA the little nuances like space, dimensionality, image placement, soundstage depth, width, height, noise floors, treble decay. These are just a few things that for the most part the High End typically does better. For some folks it’s not worth it. But to some of us it’s like having a concert in your room anytime you choose. Some can and will pay for it. Others won’t. |
@calvinj I think we are on the same page. If someone asks my opinion I’ll give it but I am not one to pass final judgement on things I know little about or have no direct experience with. |
@mapman i agree with you. I posted this because I see a lot of that happening. I see a lot of generalizations. I see a lot of spec talk unrelated to actual sound. I see folks that think you are not hearing what you are hearing and they will tell you what you hearing. Which is crazy to me |
+1, indeed your room looks good, I tip my hat to your designer. There’s a reason why the worlds most renown equipment designers create their own products and charge more for it. This is a VERY interesting point, I also tip my hat to designers of gear that can create something MORE important than the room, the music, or the gear itself, they can create...customers. If they got 10,000% markups what do I care if the customer feels they got value, I got no beef with a good business model. If someone can do it cheaper, that's ok too. What we can debate are WHO are these designers? I have some hero’s right here that are DIY guys that don’t even own a company, but they got skills. But I gotta disagree on one point, you can’t get blood from a turnip. If the room sucks ain’t know gear that will make it unsuck.
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The thing about rooms is yes they are what they are acoustically and tunings can be done to tweak that to various extents, but the decisions one makes regarding what to put into that room and how to achieve the best results possible need to be very well informed otherwise results will still vary all the way from totally awful to quite lovely and most rewarding. I have found that when it comes to acoustically challenged rooms, less can often turn out to be more. |
@calvinj systems, blows your stuff away for sure. Great, I’m happy if he’s happy, more power to him. He’s got a great story, being in the right place at the right time and then migrating into the business. He built what he wanted, I built what I wanted, they are different for sure. But I gots to tell you, my room does audio, channel and object based, throws up a 100 inch 4K image that pops, I got 4 sweet spots not one because of acoustic astuteness and a NAS drive full of movies, concerts and music. My two channel flows through a separate dac/pre/headphone amp that took five years for the top engineers at Sony to design with an unlimited budget straight into a pair of Paradigm legendary reference active 40 speakers. My object based preamp controls 9.3.6 channels of pinpoint soundstage with the latest object based music being dropped nightly into my system from Amazon and Tidal. Movies? Fuhgeddaboudit!! I can and do get a LOT of enjoyment. 😎
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Thank you for the compliment- it took me a while to put this little space together simply because of the sound I wanted to achieve and the discretionary funds it took to make it happen. And yes, I think we can all agree that a well setup/tuned room is at the top of the list when going down this road. And for everyone else- swing by the music forum and check out the title I just listed under “What’s playing on your system today”, it’s awesome! (If you like that stuff) |
@kota1 that sounds nice. Man. Enjoy it all. I been lucky in this hobby but your setup sounds like it can do it all on demand. That’s a good place to be. |
The issue is you can NOT turn an Emotiva amp into an Esoteric amplifier even with proper room acoustics I think you missed the main point, take an Esoteric amplifier and stick it in a bad room and you should have just bought the Emotiva instead, you can't fix acoustics with an amp, sorry. I will take a great room with a pair of XPA HC-1 Emotiva monoblocks ($1800 for a pair) over a bad room with a $$$$ amp any day, all day, with pleasure. Now if I can have a good room AND a $$$$ amp that is totally different 🤩 |
@kota1 i will say this. Having a great room helps tremendously but a really great amp in a bad room is still gonna perform well. If it is a great amp. Great amps don’t need perfect room acoustics they just don’t. It would help but you still gonna get a great sound. |
I do have an amp that will perform better in a bad room than 99% of the amps out there, its a Martin Logan amp (a speaker company I know) and its called the Forte. Martin Logans parent company is Anthem. It is selling for 60% off right now at $249. It includes ARC room correction and has a built in streamer AND a sub out. If you position the sub and the speakers well and then run ARC it is probably going to sound better than a $$$$ amp in the same room and I guarantee it will measure better. BTW OP, I actually own this amp and have listened to it since that is the topic of this thread: https://www.martinlogan.com/en/product/forte Don’t take my word for its chops, here is a review. I use this amp to power my passive rear surround speakers and from the first time I turned it on I was amazed that an amp this inexpensive and small made these speakers sound that good. It also has an RCA in so you can hook up a CDP or a TT: Review: "a small affordable unit that is almost too good to be true." https://hometheaterhifi.com/reviews/amplifier/power-amplifier/martinlogan-forte-amp-review/
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Adding even a few well placed and sized panels increased my enjoyment of my current setup for far less than any $5000 power cable, $3000 usb cable, $10000 set of speaker wires or $500 fuse ever could. That is the most well kept secret in audio. I don't know who is at fault though. Dealers that profit from the upgrade cycle caused by bad acoustics or simply "audiophiles" that enjoy pulling the trigger on stuff you plug in but don't know what panels to buy or where to hang them. |
@everyone I’m not negating the room plays a huge part in sound but I do believe in the high end gear if it’s really good. If you place high end well built and designed gear in a really great room and acoustic environment it sounds like heaven. I’m not going to negate the room especially the treated rooms at all but at the same time place high end gear in a really great environment if you have matched it properly and it is designed well you truly can hit it out the park. However all of us don’t have the perfect listening environments but a lot of us can still get great sound. |
@everyone I do get what you are saying about people not talking about how much the room plays a part. Just cause you spend a lot of money doesn’t mean you have a great system either. It is a lot of things. EQUIPMENT, ROOM, MATCHING, CABLING ETC. All of these things can play a part. Now I will say a better matched mid fi system can beat a hi end system if it’s matched properly and placed in the right environment. Some folks sell you stuff that doesn’t work well together just because that’s the brands they sell. I get that part too. |
If you place high end well built and designed gear in a really great room and acoustic environment it sounds like heaven. +1 However all of us don’t have the perfect listening environments but a lot of us can still get great sound. If you want easy peasy a room kit from Sonitus is the way to go. high end gear in a really great environment if you have matched it properly and it is designed well you truly can hit it out the park. I chose to go mostly with active speakers where the designer matches each driver with a monoblok amp and an active crossover. Yes, there are many paths but that is a quick one. It also saved me budget from buying external amps and speaker cables on a LOT of speakers. Now I will say a better matched mid fi system can beat a hi end system if it’s matched properly and placed in the right environment. This is the nice thing about this hobby, as the OP said earlier, there are a lot of paths to get good results. |
My room is crazy. It’s not the best room. It has high ceilings. Wood floors and I can only place my speakers so far apart and can only place them 2-3 feet from wall. I’m going to be honest. When I take my system to a local show like I did when I had my last amp in dac I got amazing sound in that carpeted room when I had someone come set it up properly. I even had my sub guy come in and do placement because he does that as a regular job as well as he has become really good at placement angles etc. But I have gotten really great sound in my room. I’m extremely happy with my system. I’m not gonna lie it’s the best I ever had. But one thing that I could do that most couldn’t is that I had a 2 month demo of the amp and dac in my room before I purchased because of my relationship with the company. The whole reason we lend out cabling at infigo audio is to let buyers try before you buy in your i environment. That’s important but mist in the end can’t allow it in their business model and logistics. |
@designsfx the owner of infigo was working with another company and when he decided to start infigo he told me about the amp and I kind of blew him off the he said he would fly from Canada to my place in Dallas and he did it. We listened to my amp on Friday. Then on Saturday we put his amp in let it play all day to let it burn in a little and open up. Then on Sunday invited most of the same 10-15 folks we had over the previous Friday. His amplifier blew my 9k integrated out the water. Which for 8 years was my reference. That’s when I decided to work with Hans. I truly saw he was an audiophile at heart. Some folks wanna just sell gear he actually enjoys improving the gear. Pushing the limits and getting the gear to sound better. Reducing noise floors, cutting out distortion, building power conditioning inside the equipment. Isolating internals so that the heat generated limits distortion. In our Method 4 dac. He literally showed me the measurements of each dac chip that we use and each chip down to the 10,000th of a point and he uses a program to update that dac that will allow it to use its settings to limit distortion in the second and third harmonics that is created by the differences in each Sabre dac chip. He even isolated each dac chip from each other. I chose to purchase the gear instead of just keeping it on loan from time to time because he is actually doing things to improve the sound. In addition to that he has done it in a way that still sounds musical. I chose the gear because of it. I chose my Gato Fm6 speakers in a similar fashion because I knew the owner of Gato was a former lead designer at gamut audio whom makes super high end speakers. The Gato along with my Infigo gear and cabling has me in ear heaven right now. I got a great speaker that competes with more expensive ones but Infigo electronics with my Gato has me in a good place. Expensive but really ear pleasing place. |
@everyone I’m not downing anyone else’s equipment but I have learned in these years in the hobby that materials, matter, parts matter, technology matter, transformers matter, isolation, matters, shielding matter, cabling matter, implementation of technology matters, eliminating distortion matters, equipment design matters, proprietary programs and technology matters especially in the high end. I know my system costs quite a bit of coin but I chose each piece based on what was in it and how it performed. To some I spent too much but at least I’m musically happy. I’ve seen people spend more and be unhappy and less and be happy. At the end of the day it’s up to what you like, can spend and willing to spend to get there. Some folks it’s not worth it but for me music touches my soul and in my current system it really does that for me. I have an Infigo method 4 Dac. Method 6 stereo amplifier, fluvius streamer and all infigo cabling going into gato fm 6 speakers and I’m extremely happy with the results. For others their happy place is with what they have. Enjoy it. Some people like watches, cars, jewelry for me it’s audio. Whatever you like just enjoy the music. I enjoy mines. |
And we have members who do not believe you have had or heard things you actually did have, owned, and heard, so they attack them because they spent more money than you did. We also have a population who clearly does not understand the fundamental laws of physics. That's OK as they don't teach that in Marketing. They DO in engineering which mystifies me how some claiming to be engineers don't have the slightest clue. An example is suggesting the direction a cable was extruded has any bearing on an AC signal transmission. Micro diodes? OK, RG-59 is good to about 50 MHz. What harmonics do you think it is filtering in audio? I run about 100 feet of RG-6 and manage to get perfectly fine HD TV OTA. Can you measure the rectification you claim to exist? How high is it in relation to the DC leakage in the driving or receiving stage? This is a case of marketing taking an actual but insignificant property and advertising to folks without the technical background to know it is total BS. So, do they hear a difference? Sometimes. Placebo is very strong, so enjoy your mono-crystal-silver-air-core-directional-skin effect, cables. There is a lot we don't know, a lot we know but don't measure, and a lot we don't know how out brain interprets it, yet we have those who insist they hear things that violate the laws pf physics in this universe rather than what we don't understand. There are plenty of real problems looking for innovation. There has been tremendous innovation in class D amplifiers, DACs, A2Ds, switching supplies, and DSP. A lot of work has been done improving linear supplies to get the artifacts down to modern DAC noise levels. A year ago I had never heard a class D amp I could stand, now I am looking to buy a Purify based amp. I was waiting for the AMT patents to run out, but as of yet, every AMT driver I have heard is terrible. I give them time to innovate. There has been some significant analog circuit innovations recently allowing commodity priced units with classical measurements we never dreamed of 10 years ago. Think of the progression from OP-1, 741, Tlo72, Ne5558, to the current TI amps. Lots in IEMs and cans. I will repeat my direct experience: Some interconnect cables do sound different. Three classes of cables. Those so cheap they are not properly shielded and in some instances can pick up interference. The second class are the esoteric snake oil that actually degrade some aspect of the signal to show a difference. They seem to have a very large positive effect on the owners ego. Fortunately there is the third large class of perfectly good cables. They all sound the same as they don't degrade the signal. Many boutique cables are in group three, just fine, only overpriced BS advertising to invoke the placebo magic improvement to the purchaser. To the "believers"" No cable can improve the signal it is carrying. It can't add actual depth or detail. It just can't. Not in this universe. At best it does not degrade it or add distortions. Fortunately, that is easy. |
@tvrgeek i agree with most of what you are saying. Innovation has been a game changer in audio. We have some great improvements in the dac and amp market. I also agree that some attack others just because they have an expensive system. The take it upon themselves to tell you how much of a fool you are and what you are not hearing. We designed our cables to be shielded from outside interference also nit to be a bottleneck to allow the music to flow through. |
So I have been posting about the new atmos music format and of course members who have never heard the format in their own room are quick to comment. Do you think they love it if they never heard it? LOL. Their seems to be an endless resource of both new and old recordings being dropped in Atmos on my various streaming services every week such as Pet Sounds. If anyone comments on this atmos mix without having listened to it I will be infiguoritaed!: https://www.udiscovermusic.com/news/beach-boys-pet-sounds-dolby-atmos/
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In four months, you've made more than 2,700 posts on primarily two topics:
Given those facts, you are in no position for chastising anyone for being "quick to comment." |
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