There is nothing holy about the signal

[Sokel]

What I know for sure as my personal poll is that never-ever a person who had the opportunity to be in studio listening to the main monitors ever told me "is bad,is like that or is like this" .
None.
Zero.

What does that tells you?
Cause what it tells me is that a ground-up design is the way to go.And one needs an accurate signal even if the goal is intentionally messing up with it.
But the ability must be there cause messing up with an already messed up signal does not only adds up,it multiplies.

 

[Newman]

I'd love a simple bass/mid/treble set of tone controls I could easily change from the listening position. One of my frustrations with modern processors is that they have gone all-in on room correction and target curves, exhibiting tremendous processing capability, but don't offer a simple way for me to do just the basic "tweaks" I used to do all the time with my tone controls.

Are you sure your AVR doesn’t have such tone controls? The mid-range Yamaha that I sometimes use does, and I assume it is not unique. Accessible through the menus or on the front panel. With 3 selectable ‘knee’ frequencies each for the bass and treble.

 

[majingotan]

It seems to me a strange thing

Mystifying

That this holy, immaculate signal is so carefully taken care of and then sent to that musty obsolete tech and then into high fidelity headphones for evaluation of how well the tubes mussed it up

And that this practice is

A fashionable hobby?

[Don't mind me, I'm just old and completely out of touch with what cool people do these days.]

I think @MattHooper sums it up for me. It's about tangibles of physically swapping tubes being more pleasurable than something being done on the digital side. If I'm gonna be honest, even just switching from Midgard to a SET amp with hundreds of thousands times more distortion provide barely audible difference to my ears (i.e. I would probably fail DBT more likely than passing it) and they're mostly fine tuning the harmonics within the sound to a very small degree. DSP effects would actually be a lot more audible than just switching from a SS to a tube amp especially when you're using a linear impedance headphones like DCA Stealth, Susvara and other planar magnetics. With dynamic driver, impedance and damping factor difference between SS and tube are the main drivers for differences and rolling tubes would provide barely audible differences (other than amplification gain levels) when level matched (as long as the noise floor such as humming and hissing aren't audible).

What I still don't understand deeply is that why would a very small heck even just imaginable change in the sound perception through listening through tube amplification (not looking at measurements) become more pleasing, gives me a psychological perception of a more relaxed listening session? I chalk it up to this weird sighted listening when looking at tubes and the nostalgia of "vintage-ness" honestly.

I agree. The idea of doing it via digital modelling takes the fun and romance out of it, for me. I really got a kick out of getting in to tube rolling a few years ago. Am I just imagining things? Could be. But it's fun, and I just find different tubes kinda neat, and tactile, and I love the visuals.

I get why others would go the digital modelling route.

This. The visual bias perception, heat and glow and its ability to fine tune the harmonic distortion with tube rolling influence us way more than the sonic attributes when comparing SOTA SS amp and high distortion tube amps. Digital modelling eliminates that tangible trait and puts my mind into "working mode" rather than "relaxing and fun" for some reason.

On a serious note, sonically, I don't have preferences between tube and solid state as I have both modern and obsolete tech and I listen to my SS amp at work and tubes at home, but the visual cues of glowing tubes when I'm at home seriously influences my listening experience to a better degree

 

[Newman]

Geariophile v audiophile

 

[DonH56]

Are you sure your AVR doesn’t have such tone controls? The mid-range Yamaha that I sometimes use does, and I assume it is not unique. Accessible through the menus or on the front panel. With 3 selectable ‘knee’ frequencies each for the bass and treble.

I have a JBL SDP-75 (rebadged Trinnov Altitude 32) and I do not think so. My old Yamaha does, but I do not think my Denon, Emotiva, Pioneer, or Sony did. But the newest of those is 5+ years old now, and the rest (much) older, so it may be something they have added. As for the SDP-75, not last I looked, but it is behind on updates (JBL seems to run 6+ months behind Trinnov in updating, a gap they are supposedly trying to reduce) so maybe they've added it (or I missed it the first time).

 

[Newman]

Gee I hope it was cheaper than the equivalent Trinnov…

 

[MattHooper]

Geariophile v audiophile

I find it funny when long time members of a forum devoted to audio gear suggest it's the other guy who is in it for the audio gear.

 

[Newman]

Ah, the irony of misplaced irony!

 

[gnarly]

Ah, the irony of misplaced irony!

Agreed. maybe it's the irony of some folk's idea that an audio-science forum, is mainly about gear....
(which is probably, sadly, more true that not...)

 

[MattHooper]

Ah, the irony of misplaced irony!

Perhaps I misunderstood.

Which category would you place yourself in? Geariophile or audiophile?

 

[DonH56]

Gee I hope it was cheaper than the equivalent Trinnov…

It was at the time, but I think they've aligned pricing structure. They were also supposed to align FW/SW updates and some other things but AFAIK that has not happened, several years later. Still a nice unit, pre-programmed with data for my speakers, and I got a good deal on a dealer return that made it a lot more affordable. If that term even applies...

I tend to fiddle for a week or three when I get a new toy then forget about it. I do not constantly tweak; I just want to listen and watch. It took years to get to that point, especially as the engineer in me would just measure and tweak forever. I compare it to practicing music; focus on all the technical stuff in the practice room, tweak during rehearsals, but during the performance all I (try to) think about is the music.

 

[DonH56]

Perhaps I misunderstood.

Which category would you place yourself in? Geariophile or audiophile?

Why does everything have to be black and white? I doubt anyone is 100% either way, just as I doubt anybody is 100% objective or subjective.

I also think it's "gearophile" if anything but I am often wrong, especially about grammar and spelling...

 

[MattHooper]

Why does everything have to be black and white? I doubt anyone is 100% either way, just as I doubt anybody is 100% objective or subjective.

It doesn't. At least not by my lights. And I've often argued that it's a nuanced spectrum, and even an individual can move along a spectrum of gear interest, at different times.

It was Newman who suggested those categories, so I've inquired about what he means, which category he feels he'd fit.

 

[majingotan]

Perhaps I misunderstood.

Which category would you place yourself in? Geariophile or audiophile?

I collect DACs that have different DAC chip manufacturers (Texas Instruments, Analog Devices, ESS, AKM, Xilinx FPGA, Cirrus Logic) as well as tubes and solid state so I'm a Geariophile in this context

 

[Blumlein 88]

Who would have thought so many responses.

Let me see, geariophile, audiophile, musicophile? I think most people here are some combination of the three. And which has precedence likely changes over time. Has for me. I'm a guy, most guys are easily seduced by gear. I like music otherwise I wouldn't have cared about music related gear. If I'm going to use gear to play music I care about how well a whole system does that. So I'm an audiophile.

Alan Parsons' quip, " an audiophile is someone who uses music to listen to gear" is one oft quoted. Yeah, what's it too you Alan? If you sale a few extra copies of your music because your production values make it good for listening to gear I bet you don't turn down the income do you pal. What's with the high horse? Besides your favorite microphone was an Audio Technica AT 4033. Okay one of the first pretty good cheap condensers, but a pretty awful microphone imo. I'm not going to call you out on it since you made good use of it anyway. You didn't use music to decide you liked that mike did you Alan? Oh now did you?

Solid state vs tubes. MOSFET vs bipolar. SET vs push pull. Digital vs analog. Tape vs LP. R2R vs delta-sigma. How many conflicts can we create for ourselves. Unvarnished holy signal vs let us have some fun and muck around with the signal some.

Merry Christmas to everyone.

 

[MattHooper]

Who would have thought so many responses.

Let me see, geariophile, audiophile, musicophile? I think most people here are some combination of the three. And which has precedence likely changes over time. Has for me. I'm a guy, most guys are easily seduced by gear. I like music otherwise I wouldn't have cared about music related gear. If I'm going to use gear to play music I care about how well a whole system does that. So I'm an audiophile.

Alan Parsons' quip, " an audiophile is someone who uses music to listen to gear" is one oft quoted. Yeah, what's it too you Alan? If you sale a few extra copies of your music because your production values make it good for listening to gear I bet you don't turn down the income do you pal. What's with the high horse? Besides your favorite microphone was an Audio Technica AT 4033. Okay one of the first pretty good cheap condensers, but a pretty awful microphone imo. I'm not going to call you out on it since you made good use of it anyway. You didn't use music to decide you liked that mike did you Alan? Oh now did you?

Solid state vs tubes. MOSFET vs bipolar. SET vs push pull. Digital vs analog. Tape vs LP. R2R vs delta-sigma. How many conflicts can we create for ourselves. Unvarnished holy signal vs let us have some fun and muck around with the signal some.

Merry Christmas to everyone.

Ha! I laughed out loud. An audiophile clapping back at Parsons. Love it! *thumbs up*

 

[Barrelhouse Solly]

Is the signal holy? It seems to me that it should remain unchanged up to the point in the chain where you change it. That point should be whatever you do to modify the sound you perceive, at the very end. That includes physical modifications to the room, DSP, and anything else you use to correct/modify what's coming out of the electronic side. Everyone's hearing is different. Even people who can hear high frequencies over 20K and lows below 20 Hz have different audiograms. No one's hearing is flat over the portion of the audio spectrum they can hear. Everyone has preferences. E. g. professional musicians never agree on what's the best brand of instrument with others who play the same instrument. Among acoustic guitarists you can have very long lasting discussions about the Gibson vs the Martin sound. It's true for any instrument.

 

[Anton D]

Once the original signal has been released, do as you please!

 

[Keith_W]

I assume that double blind tests are also required because expectation bias can occur after room correction, for example, as much it can when getting electronics boxes which measure even “better”.

Most definitely! This is why I think a convolver which allows you to easily swap between filters is important. Hang Loose Convolver is the best, it instantaneously switches between filters at the push of a button with no gap in between. Acourate Convolver is second best, it also switches filters at the push of a button, but has a slight gap of maybe 1/2 a second. Most of the others involve going into menus (like JRiver), or stopping the music altogether and loading another filter. The old version of JRiver required a restart of the application before it would load the new filter, making filter comparisons difficult.

 

[CleanSound]

I had voted yes, then thought about it and changed it to no. Only because, most old (and some new) recording, mostly back in the days of low resolution analog medium and early equipment are absolutely terrible compared to digital/modern standards and it can benefit from some sort advanced DSP and/or remastering.