Audio Note speakers

[Dialectic]

Speakers are a tertiary business for Audio Note - most recording studios have purchasing agents so it is often not the case that the RE chooses the speaker the Recording studio uses - Bob Hodus is an acoustician and engineer who worked at Abbey Road Records - he thinks B&W is total garbage - he didn't buy or select the speakers for the studio - they were what was there.

Indeed, Recording studios are also often "given for free" their speakers so that the company gets to advertise "B&W is the choice of Lucas Film" - that means far more to them than the $15k they get from the sale of the speakers.

For any studio to be looking at "home audio" equipment to use in recording or mastering - they're the type of people who care a lot about sound and go and seek it out. Musicians too. Sure some musicians buy Bose but that's because they are human like most people and buy whatever happens to be sold at stores near them - maybe they buy the speakers they see in the recording studios. In other words, the biggest name speakers. That is hardly an Audio Note which is far away from being a household name.

I dunno but when a Mastering engineer/audiophile who has attended audio shows for decades and who has recorded and mastered The Eagles, The Doors, Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan, The Beach Boys, Nat ‘King’ Cole, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Ray Charles, Roy Orbison, Cream, The Cars, Blondie, Jim Croce, Linda Ronstadt, Jethro Tull, The Doobie Brothers, Jackson Browne, Steve Miller Band, Elton John, Van Halen, Bonnie Raitt, Al Green, Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon, Stan Getz, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Art Pepper, Rod Stewart, Judy Garland, Ella Fitzgerald, Peggy Lee, Wes Montgomery among others and has recorded and mastered highly praised SACD and Vinyl for labels like Audio Fidelity/Analog Productions says they're the best speakers he has heard in 40 years (including ATC/PMC/Genelec and other recording studio darlings - and uses one pair at home and one pair in the studio. To me that ranks a bit higher than an RE working at Abbey Road who uses B&W where the RE doesn't even like the speakers.

Okay so that's one guy but then you have the likes of Damian Quintard who is a young up-and-coming talent who did the sound at the Olympics and has recorded award-winning classical albums from award-winning conductors like Teodor Corentzis and has worked with the likes of Lady Gaga - already. He uses AN speakers. Brad Pitt has hired him to reopen the famed Miraval Studio. Gearbox Records in the UK has also changed out their mastering system with AN gear. These are quick examples - adding to that all of the various review publications where the reviewers, unlike most people, hear most everything have owned/still owned or raved about AN speakers and systems - Well that's a pretty impressive track record - when their tertiary business managed to out do speaker makers who are solely dedicated to speakers. I mean reviewers at Stereophile/TAS/HiFi Critic/Hi-Fi Choice/Audiophile/dagogo/6Moons/TNT/HiF-Review/enjoythemusic.com/Part-Time Audiophile - off the top of my head have reviewers who own AN speakers. Again tertiary business - reviewers who have heard all the major best-measuring speakers buying $10k+ AN speakers - which don't even look impressive or measure impressive.

Maybe the Hemp woofers are making all these people high or something but you don't fool that many highly experienced people for 30+ years.

Ok, so what is Audio Note's primary business? And its secondary business? (GPUs? Nuclear reactors?)

I never said B&W speakers measure well. There are lots of recordists out there who have long used NS10Ms on an unpaid basis, and those are terrible. Whether any particular person in the industry prefers Audio Note speakers to B&W speakers or anything else thus indicates almost nothing about whether Audio Note speakers are good reproduction devices.

Damien Quintard is a great social media influencer but lacks any knowledge of electrical engineering, acoustics or psychoacoustics. Real engineers - yes, I'm saying that Damien Quintard is not a real engineer - tend to use Genelec, Neumann/K&H, Geithain, and, more recently, Kii and D&D monitors.

I don't have time to address all the other nonsequiturs....

 

[prerich]

When Peter Snell Died - Peter Qvortrup was their European Importer and dealer. Peter Qvortrup started the company Audio Innovations and bought the rights to the original Snell cabinets - as Kevin Voecks took over as lead designer for Snell. At Audio Innovations they sold the Type E speakers. Then when Peter left Audio Innovations he began the lower-level Audio Note lines (level 1-3) and brought the speakers with him. Snell was never really the same after Peter Snell died and they went to some narrow baffle designs with side-firing woofers like the Snell B-Minor which I personally didn't care for though I have found trying to position those sorts of speakers fairly difficult - I did have better results from Audio Physic speakers which seem to me to be somewhat of a copy of those old 1990s ish B-Minors. Still - the Audio Physics can be somewhat unrelenting in the upper frequencies and the bass never seems to quite integrate as well as I would like - also what I experienced with the B-Minors. Then it seems they went to the big box chains for a short time and I believe they were bought by Denon or someone. So probably today Snell in name only - Boston Acoustics too I think.

Snell speakers as a brand died about 2010, Boston Acoustics died out on 2018....a lot of great brands have gone the way of the dodo bird.

 

[JiiPee]

Could someone provide a link to a properly executed and documented DBT that shows results where people could reliably detect differences between cables. They are quite often mentioned by subjectivists, but despite my efforts, I have never found one.

I know this has been discussed before, but is it really impossible to arrange such an event where some well known subjectivists could prove that they are actually capable to detect those differences. I mean the kind of differences they claim are of such magnitude that even their wives could recognize them already three blocks away when coming home from shopping...

 

[Richard Austen]

You can certainly hear differences, if they are big enough. As I mentioned super thin long lamp cord as speaker cable, or cheapest non-shielded long RCA cables that pick up noise (it was measured by PMA in the thread I referencedm to). Absolutely, then you can hear it. BUT now I have taken up the extreme cases. Beyond that, I am curiously skeptical.

Regarding blind tests, there is one aspect that cannot be ignored. How motivated, engaged and concentrated you are on the task you undertake. If those aspects are missing, no difference will be heard. Plus IF you have the preconceived notion that you will NOT hear any difference. Then you probably won't do it. Much like a subjectivist who imagines hearing something but in that case the opposite.A lot of psychology in it all.

Of course you can have different hifi stuff to switch between. It can be fun. On that point I agree with you. Maybe two-channel stereo for most music, but the home cinema system with all those speakers if you want to listen to an orchestra with lots of instruments, classical music or big band jazz?

Out with the fat ugly PA speakers + appropriate PA amp when you're throwing a real wild rock party (that time is over for me but for the young people)...and so on.

My case about cables has always been to start with a hypothetical exercise.

1) Assume all cables sound different. With this assumption in place (whether you agree or not just assume) then every cable in a system will "interact" in some way with the other cables in the system - in theory, it is then plausible that you can't achieve any better sound than the worst sounding cable in the chain. In other words, the worst cable will be the bottleneck. If this follows then if you try to compare "two other cables" and can't hear a difference perhaps you can't hear a difference because of the "worst cable" that is bottlenecking the other two cables.

2) let's assume all the cables are deemed good cables - but if you have a system made up of differen components from all different manufacturers then that could be a lot of disperate interaction. Say the system is is CD player, Preamp. Amp, Speakers - - well

the CD player may use internal copper cable A
the IC cable from CD player to preamp is Silver Cable B
The Preamp use internal cable C
The cable from preamp to power amp is cable D
The internal cable of amp is E
The amp to the speakers is cable F
The speakers use internal cable G

To me - switching out the speaker cable is kind of a form or tone control - again assuming differences - all you can really say by taking out F the cable from amp to speaker - is how that reacts to the other 7 cables in the system.

On of the reasons the AN system approach makes logical sense from a cable enthusiast perspective is that you could put together a system where all the cables inside the amps, CD players, DACs Transport, Tonearem wire, amplifiers, speakers, speaker voice coils, connectors, soldering material, caps, as well as their silver endcap resistors and silver transformers were all of the same silver litz construction - as close to a complete end to end wired system with the same microstructure. Or the entire chain with their Copper versions. Although to me this takes things beyond reason but hey - there is a certain logic to the notion that if cables matter to someone it should matter what cable is connected up to the transformer and what cable the transformer or voice coil is wired with. No point in buying Nordost speaker cables if the speaker is internally wired with Cardas and the amp is using Tara Labs.

These days more and more companies make the entire audio chain - and I like that because now you can audition an entire Krell system or an Entire Bryston system - you get to know what the company is going for sonically - what they think is the best sound. Sure you can mix and match later with amps or cables etc but still - a complete system gives you some reference point.

 

[Talisman]

My case about cables has always been to start with a hypothetical exercise.

1) Assume all cables sound different. With this assumption in place (whether you agree or not just assume) then every cable in a system will "interact" in some way with the other cables in the system - in theory, it is then plausible that you can't achieve any better sound than the worst sounding cable in the chain. In other words, the worst cable will be the bottleneck. If this follows then if you try to compare "two other cables" and can't hear a difference perhaps you can't hear a difference because of the "worst cable" that is bottlenecking the other two cables.

2) let's assume all the cables are deemed good cables - but if you have a system made up of differen components from all different manufacturers then that could be a lot of disperate interaction. Say the system is is CD player, Preamp. Amp, Speakers - - well

the CD player may use internal copper cable A
the IC cable from CD player to preamp is Silver Cable B
The Preamp use internal cable C
The cable from preamp to power amp is cable D
The internal cable of amp is E
The amp to the speakers is cable F
The speakers use internal cable G

To me - switching out the speaker cable is kind of a form or tone control - again assuming differences - all you can really say by taking out F the cable from amp to speaker - is how that reacts to the other 7 cables in the system.

On of the reasons the AN system approach makes logical sense from a cable enthusiast perspective is that you could put together a system where all the cables inside the amps, CD players, DACs Transport, Tonearem wire, amplifiers, speakers, speaker voice coils, connectors, soldering material, caps, as well as their silver endcap resistors and silver transformers were all of the same silver litz construction - as close to a complete end to end wired system with the same microstructure. Or the entire chain with their Copper versions. Although to me this takes things beyond reason but hey - there is a certain logic to the notion that if cables matter to someone it should matter what cable is connected up to the transformer and what cable the transformer or voice coil is wired with. No point in buying Nordost speaker cables if the speaker is internally wired with Cardas and the amp is using Tara Labs.

These days more and more companies make the entire audio chain - and I like that because now you can audition an entire Krell system or an Entire Bryston system - you get to know what the company is going for sonically - what they think is the best sound. Sure you can mix and match later with amps or cables etc but still - a complete system gives you some reference point.

If you're serious, I suggest you go back to a middle school physics book

 

[prerich]

Could someone provide a link to a properly executed and documented DBT that shows results where people could reliably detect differences between cables. They are quite often mentioned by subjectivists, but despite my efforts, I have never found one.

I know this has been discussed before, but is it really impossible to arrange such an event where some well known subjectivists could prove that they are actually capable to detect those differences. I mean the kind of differences they claim are of such magnitude that even their wives could recognize them already three blocks away when coming home from shopping...

You might want to look over in the cable thread.....everything I've seen.....a cable is a cable. That's why I use off the shelf cables. The only reason I buy for say a 12 gauge power cable ....because of it's looks and I like big gauge cables on my power amps (and even then they're never over 35 bucks). If something I bought has a heavy duty cable with it, I'll stay with that cable. Speaker cables - same thing... I like and usually run 14 gauge, but 16 gauge will do.

 

[Richard Austen]

Snell speakers as a brand died about 2010, Boston Acoustics died out on 2018....a lot of great brands have gone the way of the dodo bird.

I was at Fortress here in Hong Kong the other day - and they no longer carry any amps or speakers - all they have is soundbars for the TV. Back several years ago, Fortress sold Benchmark, Cyrus, Rega, Kef, B&W among many others. Their website still seems to carry some of these brands but it is direct sales only - you can't audition them at any of their stores. This seems like the future.

The audio world perplexes me a bit - take photography - look how many people are into that? Then look at how many companies make the top-end cameras. Not too many - then look at audiophiles - a niche of the population and the hundreds and hundreds of manufacturers who hang around and hang around for decades. I am often amazed at how these companies can actually make a living - even some of the bigger name brands. I mean Creek Audio? My dealer liked them but he kept telling his salesmen to say "Creek Audio" and not just "Creek" because "Creek" sounds like a door hinge that needs to be oiled. These guys sell all around the world - but I never really read anything about them on forums - not many people talk about them - but they seem to have been around for like 30+ years. Someone's buying them.

 

[Richard Austen]

If you could hear a difference do you think there would be different measurements between the two cables or do you think you are hearing things that can't be measured?
I always hear about these tests anecdotally but I never see them performed and documented properly

I was speaking hypothetically with cables - I do not review cables because I have not seen DBTs where people could tell cables apart when blind and level-matched. My hypothetical example with the assumption that all cables sound different would then mean that "even if cables DO sound different" then all they are are tone controls which would interact differently in every system. So either they don't sound different and it's all in your head or they do sound different but you can't recommend them because they will do different things in every system. Either way they're a problem.

I used to read UHF magazine out of Canada (who conducted blind tests and measured the gear and had a panel of people listening and reviewing the speakers - and they stated this - "Selling cables is easier than working, and safer than stealing."

I am not a zealot about this - but I would recommend that anyone looking to buy any expensive cable - conduct a controlled blind test and have a lengthy in-home trial of the cables - and put it to the test. Don't read - do. John Atkinson of Stereophile had an amp - he then did a DBT and the cheaper amp proved no different than his own amp - he sold it and bought the cheaper one - then over time he didn't like it and went back to the initial amp that "sounded better" - who knows - but personal experience - personally being in a blind test to me is better than reading about someone else in a blind test.

 

[MattHooper]

My case about cables has always been to start with a hypothetical exercise.

1) Assume all cables sound different. With this assumption in place (whether you agree or not just assume) then every cable in a system will "interact" in some way with the other cables in the system - in theory, it is then plausible that you can't achieve any better sound than the worst sounding cable in the chain. In other words, the worst cable will be the bottleneck. If this follows then if you try to compare "two other cables" and can't hear a difference perhaps you can't hear a difference because of the "worst cable" that is bottlenecking the other two cables.

2) let's assume all the cables are deemed good cables - but if you have a system made up of differen components from all different manufacturers then that could be a lot of disperate interaction. Say the system is is CD player, Preamp. Amp, Speakers - - well

the CD player may use internal copper cable A
the IC cable from CD player to preamp is Silver Cable B
The Preamp use internal cable C
The cable from preamp to power amp is cable D
The internal cable of amp is E
The amp to the speakers is cable F
The speakers use internal cable G

To me - switching out the speaker cable is kind of a form or tone control - again assuming differences - all you can really say by taking out F the cable from amp to speaker - is how that reacts to the other 7 cables in the system.

On of the reasons the AN system approach makes logical sense from a cable enthusiast perspective is that you could put together a system where all the cables inside the amps, CD players, DACs Transport, Tonearem wire, amplifiers, speakers, speaker voice coils, connectors, soldering material, caps, as well as their silver endcap resistors and silver transformers were all of the same silver litz construction - as close to a complete end to end wired system with the same microstructure. Or the entire chain with their Copper versions. Although to me this takes things beyond reason but hey - there is a certain logic to the notion that if cables matter to someone it should matter what cable is connected up to the transformer and what cable the transformer or voice coil is wired with. No point in buying Nordost speaker cables if the speaker is internally wired with Cardas and the amp is using Tara Labs.

These days more and more companies make the entire audio chain - and I like that because now you can audition an entire Krell system or an Entire Bryston system - you get to know what the company is going for sonically - what they think is the best sound. Sure you can mix and match later with amps or cables etc but still - a complete system gives you some reference point.

That makes as good a case as anything for the relevance of science and engineering. All of that reasoning seems as intuition-based as one might find in an alternative medicine forum. It's asking a whole bunch of questions that are generally already answered, and going off on a goose chase trying to find answers to the wrong assumptions.

 

[GM3]

My case about cables has always been to start with a hypothetical exercise.

1) Assume all cables sound different. With this assumption in place (whether you agree or not just assume) then every cable in a system will "interact" in some way with the other cables in the system - in theory, it is then plausible that you can't achieve any better sound than the worst sounding cable in the chain. In other words, the worst cable will be the bottleneck. If this follows then if you try to compare "two other cables" and can't hear a difference perhaps you can't hear a difference because of the "worst cable" that is bottlenecking the other two cables.

Why would you start with such a silly assumption? The reasonable assumption should be to start from the technologically & scientifically literate position. Not from ignorant idiotic audiophile position.

If you do this, you quickly realize that the job of a cable is not to act as a tone knob or an EQ. So spending any sort of audiofool money for cables that act as an EQ or tone knob is simply idiotic. Just buy a normal cable of adequate size for the length, and dismiss any audiofool overpriced broken tone knob EQ cable as the foolery that it is.

Other than that, there's no magic involved with cables. If you can't measure any difference, there's no difference. And if a regular cable of appropriate size works perfectly well, it's not something you can improve.

On of the reasons the AN system approach makes logical sense from a cable enthusiast perspective is that you could put together a system where all the cables inside the amps, CD players, DACs Transport, Tonearem wire, amplifiers, speakers, speaker voice coils, connectors, soldering material, caps, as well as their silver endcap resistors and silver transformers were all of the same silver litz construction - as close to a complete end to end wired system with the same microstructure. Or the entire chain with their Copper versions. Although to me this takes things beyond reason but hey - there is a certain logic to the notion that if cables matter to someone it should matter what cable is connected up to the transformer and what cable the transformer or voice coil is wired with. No point in buying Nordost speaker cables if the speaker is internally wired with Cardas and the amp is using Tara Labs.

These days more and more companies make the entire audio chain - and I like that because now you can audition an entire Krell system or an Entire Bryston system - you get to know what the company is going for sonically - what they think is the best sound. Sure you can mix and match later with amps or cables etc but still - a complete system gives you some reference point.

sigh .. No there's absolutely no logic there, just technical illiteracy. In any sort of half decent electronics, you would have 0 benefit from changing all wiring from say copper to silver or whatnot, because the wires are perfectly adequate; the flow of electrons go through the wire without any issue, because when the engineers designed the electronics, they made sure to use adequate wiring.

Where it can get a bit muddier is components, ex; better caps, better resistors, etc., in example crossovers. Replacing some components with others with tighter tolerances, you could in theory yield audible and measurable differences. But to a limit... A replacement could have 0 effect depending on its location, depending on how or if any matching or measuring of components were done, quality of original parts, etc. For these, sure, there's a theoretical technical benefit from using improved components, but it won't necessarily result in any audible improvement either.

Not easy to spot any theoretical improvement or waste, and something which would definitely warrant a DBT + technical analysis by knowledgeable tech, both for specific components specs & where/how they're used in the circuit. But in the end of the day, likely minute/insignificant differences, especially if you're starting off with decent parts; the cost of esoteric components vs performance ratio likely won't be great; low bang for the buck; probably type of change which wouldn't pass a DBT...

 

[MattHooper]

I was speaking hypothetically with cables - I do not review cables because I have not seen DBTs where people could tell cables apart when blind and level-matched. My hypothetical example with the assumption that all cables sound different would then mean that "even if cables DO sound different" then all they are are tone controls which would interact differently in every system. So either they don't sound different and it's all in your head or they do sound different but you can't recommend them because they will do different things in every system. Either way they're a problem.

I used to read UHF magazine out of Canada (who conducted blind tests and measured the gear and had a panel of people listening and reviewing the speakers - and they stated this - "Selling cables is easier than working, and safer than stealing."

I am not a zealot about this - but I would recommend that anyone looking to buy any expensive cable - conduct a controlled blind test and have a lengthy in-home trial of the cables - and put it to the test. Don't read - do. John Atkinson of Stereophile had an amp - he then did a DBT and the cheaper amp proved no different than his own amp - he sold it and bought the cheaper one - then over time he didn't like it and went back to the initial amp that "sounded better" - who knows - but personal experience - personally being in a blind test to me is better than reading about someone else in a blind test.

And yet: Audio Note's designs and pricing structure are built upon some of the very premises that deserve this skepticism, with their emphasis on the relevance of different wires, caps etc.

 

[Richard Austen]

And yet: Audio Note's designs and pricing structure are built upon some of the very premises that deserve this skepticism, with their emphasis on the relevance of different wires, caps etc.

Well that is true but Audio Note conducts their own tests with their equipment - and they use some of the best measuring and test equipment available - they have concluded that certain wires and caps transformers make an improvement which is why for example you can audition an M3 and M5 an M6 and an M8 preamp - all of them are the exact same design topology in the exact same case with the same features - the only difference is the internal parts. You can audition these identically designed amps to determine if all those "parts upgrades" are audible or not. Obviously, they feel they are and so do the people spending the money for them. This is the same for the AN E/LX speaker that uses Copper while the AN E/SPe uses silver cable. The price difference is relatively small and one can choose what they like better or what they think is better value - or if you want pit them against each other level matched and blind to see if you can even tell the difference. Peter Qvortrup has always been happy to put his gear in blind-level matched conditions. After all - when so many people see the measurements and "corner loaded" and see that they are wider baffle - a lot of expectation bias goes against them.

 

[Richard Austen]

Ok, so what is Audio Note's primary business? And its secondary business? (GPUs? Nuclear reactors?)

I never said B&W speakers measure well. There are lots of recordists out there who have long used NS10Ms on an unpaid basis, and those are terrible. Whether any particular person in the industry prefers Audio Note speakers to B&W speakers or anything else thus indicates almost nothing about whether Audio Note speakers are good reproduction devices.

Damien Quintard is a great social media influencer but lacks any knowledge of electrical engineering, acoustics or psychoacoustics. Real engineers - yes, I'm saying that Damien Quintard is not a real engineer - tend to use Genelec, Neumann/K&H, Geithain, and, more recently, Kii and D&D monitors.

I don't have time to address all the other nonsequiturs....

I am a little confused by your post - So I am going to try and break this down a little into some smaller chunks.

So we have multiple people here -
1) the consumer or listener of an audio system to enjoy his music collection.
2) A recording/mastering engineer who spends their time more focused on the minutia of the recording usually in the near field.
3) Musicians who are more versed in reading music, timing scale, pitch etc - may or may not know anything about Hi-fi
4) The Home Audio Equipment manufacturers - who are designing part or all of the playback system for the people in group 1 - for regular rooms in the mid/far field to be enjoyed (not as a tool). Designed for the listener to appreciate the "forest" more than highlighting the "trees."
5) The Pro-Studio Equipment manufacturers - who are designing part or all of the system for people in group 2 - usually for near field monitoring with more focused listening - the "trees" are the focus over the "forest."

The problem your post suggests is an Ad Hominem attack on any recording engineer or any listener who is not a devout follower of someone who owns or uses Genelec, Geithainn, D&D or the other speakers you feel are the one's that count. Thus you are making a religious argument that the Bible is always right and true because God says the Bible is right and we know that God is right because the Bible says so - If a Recording engineer uses Gethain he has better hearing and taste than anyone who uses something that Dialectic doesn't approve of.

The problem with this argument is that some tone-deaf hack could buy Gethain or Genelec because he went on a forum and engineers TOLD him those are the best - so he dutifully buys the speakers so he is not laughed at on pro audio forums. In no way shape or form does owning or using those speakers PROVE that his ears are Superior to Damian Quintard just because he uses equipment you personally don't approve of.

One does not need to know how to design and build an Internal Combustion Engine to be able to review a car. One does not need to be an acoustics engineer to be the only person allowed to review the sound of a stereo system.

The ability to judge the QUALITY of music played back - is not isolated to Recording Engineers (or other kinds of engineers) or acousticians.

The Car Care Nut can explain why a Toyota is going to be more reliable than a Mercedes when he talks about all the parts of the cars and why the Mercedes part is going to break more often. And if Reliability is high on my list (which it is) then I will be more apt to put more focus on what he is talking about than a professional driver who will say - "yeah but the Mercedes drives way better" - it handles better and all that - still any consumer can drive both and decide what they like better. They can acknowledge that the Mercedes is a better driving car and the Toyota's quality will hold up better over the long run and cost less to fix. Just as one can say that a piece of audio gear is technically more accurate but the less accurate one "sounds more right" when they play their music.

Maybe the analogy is coffee - drinking black coffee is the most accurate way to drink it - if you want the full coffee flavour. Once you add cream or cream and sugar - you are now adjusting it to your taste. I know Audiophiles tend to be high on the Anal Retentive OCD scale where everything and everyone has to fit the exact box - but jeez drink the damn coffee any way you like and if Eva Cassidy makes you blubber like a schoolgirl when you listen to AN and Shindo and you want to shut it off because it annoys you when you listen to it on Benchmark and Genelec - why does this matter so much to people?

 

[Purité Audio]

I couldn’t see any measurements Richard on the AN site? Perhaps I missed them?
Stereophile looks to have measured a few AN components.
Keith

 

[Mnyb]

The expensive part argument dont hold water either . could they just not attach a silver brick to the side of the speaker so I can sell that on ebay .
Instead of winding coils with it ?

Homeopathic improvements ?

 

[Richard Austen]

I couldn’t see any measurements Richard on the AN site? Perhaps I missed them?
Stereophile looks to have measured a few AN components.
Keith

Not sure what you are asking - AN is never going to win any measurements contest - Peter Qvortrup sent his CD player 4.1 to Stereophile - John Atkinson said the measurements looked "Broken" - Peter Qvortrup said it himself on youtube that it "measures a bag of nails" ie; crappy. UHF Magazine measured it and said it may be the worst measuring DAC they have ever seen - although they also said it sounded better than their reference - Stereophile's Art Dudley said it was the best CD player he ever heard and it's been copied by many other manufacturers.

No one buys the stuff because it measures well - everyone knows it doesn't. I went back half a dozen times because I wasn't having it that I liked this stuff over the NRC-approved speakers and Bryston gear I was set on buying back circa 2002. A Stereophile reviewer (engineer) Peter Van Wellinswaard wrote an article for Stereophile about why tubes sound better and Martin Colloms wrote about No feedback is better but I don't think anyone would find those articles exactly technically convincing - they're more a stab at trying to come up with some sort of technical reasons why Tubes and SET amps sound better.

​

Tubes Do Something Special​

Tubes Do Something Special

Most people who now listen to tube amplifiers began with a transistor amp, and know from experience that a tube amp of a given measured power output sounds louder than its nominally identical transistorized equivalent. The unofficial consensus is that you need two to four times the transistor...

www.stereophile.com

A Future Without Feedback

A Future Without Feedback?

Over the years as a reviewer, I have tracked the swings of opinion and popularity of various audio ideas and technologies. Amid a sea of advanced designs that achieve powerful technical performance and laudable specifications, I'm reminded of a major blind listening test of 18 power amplifiers...

www.stereophile.com

Someone noted that AN doesn't publish their measurements - I mean why - again NOS CD players, SET amps? They do test and measure the stuff though and they use very high-quality equipment to do it. They feel like they "know more" than the rest of the industry. Hubris perhaps.

If you are bored you can always watch the factory tour.

 

[Dialectic]

I am a little confused by your post - So I am going to try and break this down a little into some smaller chunks.

So we have multiple people here -
1) the consumer or listener of an audio system to enjoy his music collection.
2) A recording/mastering engineer who spends their time more focused on the minutia of the recording usually in the near field.
3) Musicians who are more versed in reading music, timing scale, pitch etc - may or may not know anything about Hi-fi
4) The Home Audio Equipment manufacturers - who are designing part or all of the playback system for the people in group 1 - for regular rooms in the mid/far field to be enjoyed (not as a tool). Designed for the listener to appreciate the "forest" more than highlighting the "trees."
5) The Pro-Studio Equipment manufacturers - who are designing part or all of the system for people in group 2 - usually for near field monitoring with more focused listening - the "trees" are the focus over the "forest."

The problem your post suggests is an Ad Hominem attack on any recording engineer or any listener who is not a devout follower of someone who owns or uses Genelec, Geithainn, D&D or the other speakers you feel are the one's that count. Thus you are making a religious argument that the Bible is always right and true because God says the Bible is right and we know that God is right because the Bible says so - If a Recording engineer uses Gethain he has better hearing and taste than anyone who uses something that Dialectic doesn't approve of.

The problem with this argument is that some tone-deaf hack could buy Gethain or Genelec because he went on a forum and engineers TOLD him those are the best - so he dutifully buys the speakers so he is not laughed at on pro audio forums. In no way shape or form does owning or using those speakers PROVE that his ears are Superior to Damian Quintard just because he uses equipment you personally don't approve of.

One does not need to know how to design and build an Internal Combustion Engine to be able to review a car. One does not need to be an acoustics engineer to be the only person allowed to review the sound of a stereo system.

The ability to judge the QUALITY of music played back - is not isolated to Recording Engineers (or other kinds of engineers) or acousticians.

The Car Care Nut can explain why a Toyota is going to be more reliable than a Mercedes when he talks about all the parts of the cars and why the Mercedes part is going to break more often. And if Reliability is high on my list (which it is) then I will be more apt to put more focus on what he is talking about than a professional driver who will say - "yeah but the Mercedes drives way better" - it handles better and all that - still any consumer can drive both and decide what they like better. They can acknowledge that the Mercedes is a better driving car and the Toyota's quality will hold up better over the long run and cost less to fix. Just as one can say that a piece of audio gear is technically more accurate but the less accurate one "sounds more right" when they play their music.

Maybe the analogy is coffee - drinking black coffee is the most accurate way to drink it - if you want the full coffee flavour. Once you add cream or cream and sugar - you are now adjusting it to your taste. I know Audiophiles tend to be high on the Anal Retentive OCD scale where everything and everyone has to fit the exact box - but jeez drink the damn coffee any way you like and if Eva Cassidy makes you blubber like a schoolgirl when you listen to AN and Shindo and you want to shut it off because it annoys you when you listen to it on Benchmark and Genelec - why does this matter so much to people?

@Richard Austen, can you please answer the question what Audio Note's primary and secondary businesses are? You have a habit of saying here and on another forum that "speakers" are the company's "tertiary" business, as though Audio Note is Lockheed Martin or Nvidia and makes speakers just for fun.

Damien Quintard is not a technical expert, although he is a social media master. This is not an ad hominem attack--I own some of his recordings (and previously heard others on Tidal) and found them to be extremely badly mixed and mastered long before I found out who did the work! His tastes for Audio Note speakers, bad headphones, highly reflective rooms, and, now I'm reading, ancient microphones all lend themselves to great pictures on Instagram and a fun narrative. But this is not how serious recordings are made. Please don't mistake commercial success for technical comptetence.

 

[Pearljam5000]

 

[JiiPee]

@Richard Austen, can you please answer the question what Audio Note's primary and secondary businesses are? You have a habit of saying here and on another forum that "speakers" are the company's "tertiary" business, as though Audio Note is Lockheed Martin or Nvidia and makes speakers just for fun.

Damien Quintard is not a technical expert, although he is a social media master. This is not an ad hominem attack--I own some of his recordings (and previously heard others on Tidal) and found them to be extremely badly mixed and mastered long before I found out who did the work! His tastes for Audio Note speakers, bad headphones, highly reflective rooms, and, now I'm reading, ancient microphones all lend themselves to great pictures on Instagram and a fun narrative. But this is not how serious recordings are made. Please don't mistake commercial success for technical comptetence.

I'm not Richard Austen, but I assume that the first two businesses are electronics components (like resistors, capacitors etc...) and valve based audio electronics (like amplifiers, DACs etc...).

 

[DanielT]

Is it good because it's expensive or good regardless of a hefty price tag?

Within HiFi, the correlation between price and performance seems to be absent. At least regarding DACs BUT we have also seen a lot of expensive amplifiers (tube of course) and speakers that Amir had on the test bench (or Klippel-rigged) that measure mediocre or even poorly.
(yes I know you Pearljam5000 already know this)

Then the question almost always arises, that is to say: Can hear something that can't be measured? I won't go into it because then it's mostly about subjectivity and psychology. Plus there are already threads about that topic on ASR. Since I mentioned DAC for example this 443 page long thread:

Serious Question: How can DAC's have a SOUND SIGNATURE if they measure as transparent? Are that many confused?

I know there are people out there that think cables affect sound, which is much worse, but there really is no response to something like that, but just to smile and nod. But what about people who talk about DACS as if they were headphone drivers or speakers, and talk about the SOUNDSTAGE...

audiosciencereview.com

Price - performance correlation DACs: