Buchardt E50

[ssashton]

Bare I mind that Tooles work shows such speakers score highest over-all. Its conceivable that a narrow taste in musical genera or era might affect the preference. Such as if a listener favours 1950's jazz.

Fluty, I think the only way to share some EQd files would be to use a computer, even if you write them to an audio CD.

 

[Svend P]

Why are you here?

Maybe a more polite way would be to explain that digital treatment of audio is not harmful.

'Listen and choose the 8th generation digital copy.'

Feb 18, 2019

Each of these zip files will open into three wav files. One is labeled Reference, one is A and one is B. These are 30 second snippets of full songs. The originals were from CD so all 44.1 khz and 16 bit.

Either A or B has been thru 8 generations of DA to AD copying. The other is identical to the Reference file. So the 8th generation copy should be the odd one out in terms of sound quality. I decided not to make it a poll. So just put your replies to any you listen to in this thread. I'll reveal which is which in time.

Thought it a good chance to let people hear what 8 rounds of...

• Blumlein 88
• ad da conversion loss how audible is ad da conversion quality of adc quality of dac
• Replies: 119
• Forum: General Audio Discussions

• 

 

[Deleted member 34697]

Bare I mind that Tooles work shows such speakers score highest over-all. Its conceivable that a narrow taste in musical genera or era might affect the preference. Such as if a listener favours 1950's jazz.

Fluty, I think the only way to share some EQd files would be to use a computer, even if you write them to an audio CD.

If you're prepared to go to that trouble, the least I can do is listen to it. I have an audiophile grade CD writer (used for copying for my students), the only issue wil be how to send me your file. Maybe Google Drive?

To the best of my knowledge, none of the reviewers who judge the sound of the E50s has found the "problem" being discussed here. For those who may not have read any, & there are several, here's a typical example with which I heartily agree:

Buchardt Audio E50 – HiFi Knights

This is the www.hifiknights.com review of Buchartd Audio E50 two-way speaker set. Author: Dawid Grzyb. Enjoy!

hifiknights.com

 

[Svend P]

To the best of my knowledge, none of the reviewers who judge the sound of the E50s has found the "problem" being discussed here. For those who may not have read any, & there are several, here's a typical example with which I heartily agree:

Generally we don't really value subjective reviews on ASR. They tell you more about the mood the reviewer was in and vary from person to person and room to room. Also these are the same people who try to tell you that amplifers and DACs differ in sound, so they are just sales people. Measurements are objective and will give you a lot more useful information, you just have to learn how to interpret them.

 

[Deleted member 34697]

Generally we don't really value subjective reviews on ASR. They tell you more about the mood the reviewer was in and vary from person to person and room to room. Also these are the same people who try to tell you that amplifers and DACs differ in sound, so they are just sales people. Measurements are objective and will give you a lot more useful information, you just have to learn how to interpret them.

I'm probably in the wrong place on this forum. I have the greatest respect for measurement, but I trust my ears more - you've seen that I'm a professional classical musician, which means I know like the back of my hand the sound of live non-amplified music. A familar phrase is "seeing is believing" & I'll add to that "hearing is believing". However I understand that very few will have professional & well-educated ears! The reason for my original post was to discourage any prospective buyer from being put off by the (now understood - thank you!) "mid range scoop".

I'd like to add a couple of comments in favour of the E50, not mentioned elsewhere: sensitivity - while Erin suggests it's low at 83 db, I find that they're louder at the same volume setting than my previous Sonus fabers (numeric display on my pre-amp). Those speakers were not considered difficult to drive, but it may depend on the power amp. I'm using a Purifi "Eigentakt" power amp, so ideal for the Purifi woofer. The other thing is the brilliant way the E50s can unravel complex orchestrations, when multiple instruments each have something different to say at the same time.

 

[MarkS]

With a caveat that I will get to, I would always buy speakers that sounded more realistic to me over speakers with better measurements. That is what I have always done in the past.

The caveat is that now with widely available parametric EQ, buying better measuring speakers and EQing to taste is a feasible path, but ONLY for those with the time and inclination to learn how to do it well. And doing it well requires a pretty solid understanding of what to even try, given the infinite number of possible EQ settings.

 

[Deleted member 34697]

With a caveat that I will get to, I would always buy speakers that sounded more realistic to me over speakers with better measurements. That is what I have always done in the past.

The caveat is that now with widely available parametric EQ, buying better measuring speakers and EQing to taste is a feasible path, but ONLY for those with the time and inclination to learn how to do it well. And doing it well requires a pretty solid understanding of what to even try, given the infinite number of possible EQ settings.

The trouble with equalisers (in my experience) is that putting more connections, cables and electronics in the signal path invariably degrades the sound.
Even a simple adaptor can do so - when connecting the E50s here to my previously used bi-wire cable, I had to use adaptors to connect to the single terminals. Sounds much better / cleaner after I replaced the adaptors with proper connectors.

 

[Digital_Thor]

Maybe a more polite way would be to explain that digital treatment of audio is not harmful.

Well, I would ad that EQ - like any other tool - can definitely go both ways in terms of quality of the results.
But I fully agree, that if done right, it's mostly always a benefit

 

[Svend P]

The trouble with equalisers (in my experience) is that putting more connections, cables and electronics in the signal path invariably degrades the sound.

That can be measured. It really doesn't. But subconsciously you have already decided it does, so that is what you hear. Which is why you need to test blind. Could you tell the difference on the 8th copy in the link above?

 

[Deleted member 34697]

That can be measured. It really doesn't. But subconsciously you have already decided it does, so that is what you hear. Which is why you need to test blind. Could you tell the difference on the 8th copy in the link above?

That is not a fair comparison, of course there's no difference in text. But a digital signal can certainly be corrupted as it travels along a wire. It travels as an analogue square wave and is easily affected by the same parameters as an analogue audio signal. I can hear it, if you cannot then its because (with respect) your ears are not as good as someone like me! Sorry for repeating, but an experienced (40 + years) professional classical musician has spent his entire life listening in great detail just in order to do his job!

 

[Purité Audio]

Uh-huh.
Keith

 

[Svend P]

That is not a fair comparison, of course there's no difference in text. But a digital signal can certainly be corrupted as it travels along a wire. It travels as an analogue square wave and is easily affected by the same parameters as an analogue audio signal. I can hear it, if you cannot then its because (with respect) your ears are not as good as someone like me! Sorry for repeating, but an experienced (40 + years) professional classical musician has spent his entire life listening in great detail just in order to do his job!

This is very trivial to show with measurements. I think you are overestimating your hearing abilities.

'Message to golden-eared audiophiles posting at ASR for the first time...'

Nov 17, 2020

Hello friend. Hey, listen...we know how it is. Believe me, most of us have been there too. You've spent years toiling in the muck of audiophilia. You read ALL the reviews. You watched ALL the youtube videos. You visited ALL the other forums where everything always makes a difference. You bought the cables and the little bridge thingies for them to sit upon and the benefits were magical. You bought the $1000 IEMs that only truly sang after 250 hours of burn-in. Not 200 hours...or 225 hours, but 250 hours! It must be that for the magic to appear! You converted...

• Sgt. Ear Ache
• Replies: 3,945
• Forum: General Audio Discussions

• 

 

[Deleted member 34697]

This is very trivial to show with measurements. I think you are overestimating your hearing abilities.

'Message to golden-eared audiophiles posting at ASR for the first time...'

Nov 17, 2020

Hello friend. Hey, listen...we know how it is. Believe me, most of us have been there too. You've spent years toiling in the muck of audiophilia. You read ALL the reviews. You watched ALL the youtube videos. You visited ALL the other forums where everything always makes a difference. You bought the cables and the little bridge thingies for them to sit upon and the benefits were magical. You bought the $1000 IEMs that only truly sang after 250 hours of burn-in. Not 200 hours...or 225 hours, but 250 hours! It must be that for the magic to appear! You converted...

• Sgt. Ear Ache
• Replies: 3,945
• Forum: General Audio Discussions

• 

Certainly is not the first time, but I think its the last! You have no idea of my world as a classical musician but I know quite a lot more than you about what real life sounds like! Imagine if you can the training - at least 10,000 hours before being ready & then only if you also have the talent - then (in my case) more than 40 years as a professional, listening like crazy to all your colleagues in order to give you a performance. You have no idea of the precision listening to pitch, timing, ensemble, not to mention also being musical - do you understand what that means?
I thank those here who have been polite and with whom I've had interesting discussions, from whom I've also learned long the way. I won't stay any longer now that we enter a slanging match with a lack of respect.

This is very trivial to show with measurements. I think you are overestimating your hearing abilities.

'Message to golden-eared audiophiles posting at ASR for the first time...'

Nov 17, 2020

Hello friend. Hey, listen...we know how it is. Believe me, most of us have been there too. You've spent years toiling in the muck of audiophilia. You read ALL the reviews. You watched ALL the youtube videos. You visited ALL the other forums where everything always makes a difference. You bought the cables and the little bridge thingies for them to sit upon and the benefits were magical. You bought the $1000 IEMs that only truly sang after 250 hours of burn-in. Not 200 hours...or 225 hours, but 250 hours! It must be that for the magic to appear! You converted...

• Sgt. Ear Ache
• Replies: 3,945
• Forum: General Audio Discussions

• 

 

[Beave]

That is not a fair comparison, of course there's no difference in text. But a digital signal can certainly be corrupted as it travels along a wire. It travels as an analogue square wave and is easily affected by the same parameters as an analogue audio signal. I can hear it, if you cannot then its because (with respect) your ears are not as good as someone like me! Sorry for repeating, but an experienced (40 + years) professional classical musician has spent his entire life listening in great detail just in order to do his job!

You may be an exceptionally talented musician, but you have a lot to learn about audio electronics.

 

[Beave]

Certainly is not the first time, but I think its the last! You have no idea of my world as a classical musician but I know quite a lot more than you about what real life sounds like! Imagine if you can the training - at least 10,000 hours before being ready & then only if you also have the talent - then (in my case) more than 40 years as a professional, listening like crazy to all your colleagues in order to give you a performance. You have no idea of the precision listening to pitch, timing, ensemble, not to mention also being musical - do you understand what that means?
I thank those here who have been polite and with whom I've had interesting discussions, from whom I've also learned long the way. I won't stay any longer now that we enter a slanging match with a lack of respect.

None of those skills are relevant when judging the performance of audio reproduction equipment. They are certainly useful for creating the art of music, but that's an entirely different thing.

 

[Svend P]

I thank those here who have been polite

It was not my intention to be impolite. I am not a native English speaker, so the right tone can be hard to strike. Sorry.

But look at it this way. No one agrees with the BBC dip in the professional world. Not Dirac, Revel, Kef, Genelec or any other serious manufacturer makes a loudspeaker with the midrange dip like Buchardt. And Harmans reseach has shown it is not preferred. And yet you just want us to trust you?

 

[Beave]

From my POV, you have been perfectly polite and are trying to be helpful. I appreciate the effort, even if others don't.

 

[ssashton]

I'm probably in the wrong place on this forum. I have the greatest respect for measurement, but I trust my ears more

I hope you won't feel that way - I probably speak for the majority here when I say the really interesting aspect of measurments is where they intersect with our subjective experiance and help to underatand the mechanism behind them. A non-perfect analogy might be how music theory can help to understand and thus pull on emotive handles at will, rather than relying on an intuitive grasp of how score and emotion intersect.

"Ahh, this score sounds quite tense all of a sudden, even though the pace and dynamics dont change. That's because the writer introduced a chromatic note."

Or

"Ahh, there is a kind of harsh edge to sound, even though the frequency response is not exaggerated. This must be because the speaker has a peak in intermoduation distortion around 3000hz."

The best work is always done when there is a holistic understanding.

There are some aspects of audio engineering which are more simple to define, though. This is usualy where the system is entirely electrical or even digital, without mechanical components such as in speakers (or vinyl). Comments about things like cables having a sound are more likely to stir the hornets nest because they are so very well defined in an engineering sense with only a few variables at play.

 

[Deleted member 34697]

It was not my intention to be impolite. I am not a native English speaker, so the right tone can be hard to strike. Sorry.

But look at it this way. No one agrees with the BBC dip in the professional world. Not Dirac, Revel, Kef, Genelec or any other serious manufacturer makes a loudspeaker with the midrange dip like Buchardt. And Harmans reseach has shown it is not preferred. And yet you just want us to trust you?

You have never been impolite - it has a pleasure to chat with you. You don't have to trust me, I just came along to stand up for the E50 after seeing it being put down.

You may be an exceptionally talented musician, but you have a lot to learn about audio electronics.

There's always more to learn, but I'd say that you also have more to learn about the sound of live music! It may seem pretentious, but the reality is that musicians like me have better ears than the average audiophile. (Better ears = actually know what its supposed to sound like). There's so much that we can hear but we don't have the tools to measure it all. Talking only about measurements, for example how do you measure that some performers can put more emotion into the same piece of music?

 

[Beave]

You have never been impolite - it has a pleasure to chat with you. You don't have to trust me, I just came along to stand up for the E50 after seeing it being put down.

There's always more to learn, but I'd say that you also have more to learn about the sound of live music! It may seem pretentious, but the reality is that musicians like me have better ears than the average audiophile. (Better ears = actually know what its supposed to sound like). There's so much that we can hear but we don't have the tools to measure it all. Talking only about measurements, for example how do you measure that some performers can put more emotion into the same piece of music?

Again you are confusing the music - the art that is produced and recorded - with the gear whose job is to reproduce that recorded music without introducing noise or distortion.

How do you measure that some performers put more emotion into the same piece of music? You don't. It's an entirely irrelevant and meaningless question.

What one DOES measure is how the recorded signal is altered due to linear and nonlinear distortions.

You see, once the music has been recorded, it is now a simple waveform, subject to mathematical analysis that one learns in electrical engineering.

I've loved music since I was a kid. But I was absolutely terrible at playing it. So instead I studied EE and then spent a career designing and testing audio electronics.

The things you can hear so well are in the performance. That's a different animal that being trained in hearing distortions introduced by the gear that is trying to reproduce a RECORDING of that performance. It's two different ways of hearing the same thing.