MattHooper
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Hi Amir…
I would generally agree with that.
Even if a product has introduced some form of colouration , they are usually not sold as colorations.
And I have always been sceptical of the “house sound” of electronics.
That said, with some trepidation…
On the subject of manufactures “voicing” electronic gear, or whether some electronics have a “ house sound” I’d like to reference some blind testing I did that was inspired by those very questions.
In the 90s I used a Sony CDP, and later bought a Meridian 508.20 CD player. That was back when many audiophiles were complaining about digital sound - “ digitus” and all that - and the 508.20 had the reputation of sounding “ more analogue, more like vinyl. (I wasn’t one of those who had a problem with digital sound by the way I just wanted a good sounding CD player as I was just getting into high-end audio.)
Indeed, I perceived the 508.20 to to have a particular Sonic character - more focus and density and solidity to the sonic images, a slight “ textural” quality that made images pop a little little bit more from the mix, more “airy sounding highs… overall a slight edge in realism, though also smooth and reminding me of vinyl a bit.
So I perceived a “ house sound” that was very much as other audiophiles were describing.
Then I acquired a Museatex Bidat DAC (which came with a volume control). It was the current “darling “ among the audiophiles I was following and knew person personally. The Bidat was said to sound “less digital,” smoother and richer with particularly rich bass and very transparent.
Again, that is exactly what I heard once I put it in my system. Even back then I was skeptical about there being significant differences between digital front ends, but wow this seemed so obvious - it sounded a bit darker and more rolled off than the Meridian, less focused with a larger more diffuse images, and expanded soundstage, and obviously more beefy bass, yet the most subtle aspects of recorded ambiance and reverbs came through particularly well. There was a sense of my speakers slightly expanding in size, and the room melting away when using this DAC.
But again, even back then I was suspicious, and well aware of the issue of sighted bias. I wondered if the differences I was hearing were as real and obvious as I perceived them to be .
So, I did some blind testing and posted the results on one of the audio newsgroups for critique, since a number of objectivist/engineer types inhabited that newsgroup (including j.j.). I was given advice as to how to tighten up the protocol, and afterwards I did a second set of blind tests with my engineer father-in-law helping me, with levels carefully matched at the terminals using a voltmeter.
The results were that it was pretty much effortless to tell the difference between these three units. I could identify each one by the sound. For instance I could identify the meridian from the Bidat DAC 17 out of 18 tries, against the Sony 12 out of 12 guesses, I could identify the Sony against the Bidat.
In each case, especially with the Meridian and Bidat, the Sonic characteristics that I heard in sighted listening were all there and easy to identify in the blind tests.
In fact, they were so distinct, we did some more tests with me listening OUTSIDE the listening room and down the hall a little bit, and I still continued to ace identifying the different players!
So I found it very interesting that:
- In sighted listening I perceived the “house sound” of each unit much the way I’d seen other audiophiles describe the character.
- That held over through the blind tests
NEXT:
Conrad Johnson “house sound.”
Any of you who’ve been around for a while probably remember the cliches about Conrad Johnson (CJ) tube amps having a “house sound.” I’m grabbing a couple of older CJ review quotes that get at the sound:
Jonathan Valin reviewing a modern CJ amp, but contrasting it to the old CJ sound:
“There is none of the “golden brown” coloration that tended to make c-j electronics sound the way bronzed baby shoes look,”
Fremer on the CJ Premier 12 mono blocks:
“....the midrange were carefully accomplished, though the upper midrange exhibited a rich, golden bloom—a sonic bouquet—too subtle to be called a coloration but sufficiently pronounced to enrich brass, strings, female voices, alto sax, and hall ambience with an intoxicating glow.”
So this was the famous CJ “golden tone” associated with their classic amplifiers up until the early 2000s.
When I bought the CJ Premiere 12s myself I perceived EXACTLY the golden glow as Fremer described.
It was persistent and always there, and every time I tried a different amplifier that “ golden glow” tonality disappeared.
The obvious question for me has always been whether actual colorations explained all those reviewers and large numbers of CJ amp owners coming to similar perceptual conclusions about this house sound. Or of course, whether it was a bias - an expectation effect just spreading among audiophiles. If I had to put money on it, I would bet on a bias effect.
But on the other hand, man was it a strong and persistent effect!
For the 25 years that I’ve had these amplifiers and compared them to other amplifiers, I have reliably perceived that “ slight golden tone” from the amps. And that is the same for so many other CJ owners.
There have been people here, who caution about buying on sighted listening, and if your perception is influenced by a bias effect you don’t necessarily want that because it’s likely to be unstable. You get the product and it goes away and you become unsatisfied.
But if we are talking about not satisfaction itself, but the perception of the sound, that “golden glow” tonality seems really persistent.
Anyway, once I added a CJ tube preamp it seemed to also add more of that timbre/tone. It wasn’t until I purchased a Benchmark LA4 preamp that I got to compare the CJ tube pre to solid state pre-amplification… and again, it seemed to add more of the CJ texture and golden tone compared to the Benchmark. And again I still pondered whether it was just my imagination.
And fortunately the benchmark allowed me to actually do a blind test, running the CJ through the benchmark.
I described the test and results here:
Blind Test Results: Benchmark LA4 vs Conrad Johnson Tube Preamp
Hey folks, I thought I'd post about a little blind test I did between my two current preamplifiers: Benchmark LA4 vs. Conrad Johnson Premier 16LS2 tube preamplifier. People are familiar with the Benchmark LA4 I'm sure: https://benchmarkmedia.com/products/benchmark-la4-line-amplifier A...
www.audiosciencereview.com
(Note: as I’ve mentioned before, I was ultimately able to acquire another voltmeter and double checked that the levels were the same at the speaker terminals).
As I described in that thread:
Yes, I did seem to hear the same characteristics in the blind testing as I did in my sighted listening - the telltale added body, density, texture and the slight “golden glow” timbre/tone when the CJ was being played.
I’m not offering any of the above to prove anything to anybody. Or even that any of it is definitive in regard to my own views. It’s not like I had a team of scientist helping me with this. And even if we presume my results are sound, there can be other explanations rather than “ deliberate voicing, or a house sound.”
I’m just offering it as “FWIW” for anybody reading it - the results of my own attempts to get some answers at least in terms of the equipment I had at my disposal based on my own perception.
In the case of the digital units I feel personally quite sure about what I was hearing.
In the case of the CJ, as a personal matter I’m fine living with the lightly-held belief it’s not my imagination, and I’m fine with the fact that I still could be wrong, because it’s pleasurable either way.
TL;DR - curious about the purported “house character” in certain electronics, I did some blind tests and the characteristics seemed to be perceptible in my blind testing.
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. I'd throw in too... Which design would likely produce a house sound between amplifiers designed using op-amps or discrete components?
