Hi From DownUnder

[Johnkeizer]

Hi all, just joined, am a rather senior (old?) audioholic from Australia so my experience of this hobby will be a bit different to the people’s up north.
Have enjoyed reading the various reviews and forum comments and actually bought some bits based on them.
Firmly believe that while measurements don't tell everything about how a piece of electronics sounds, they do usually at least point to the quality of design and build in the equipment.
Looking forward to an enjoyable time here.

 

[Sir Sanders Zingmore]

Hey John, welcome.
A few Aussies here (Melbourne for me)

 

[Johnkeizer]

Thank You, and just started reading some of the posts and yes, much to my surprise, there are a few of us here.
I am up in Newcastle, NSW.

 

[Audiofire]

Firmly believe that while measurements don't tell everything about how a piece of electronics sounds, they do usually at least point to the quality of design and build in the equipment.

Welcome. Interested in your reasoning about this. There is certainly a difference between electronic signals and acoustics. Electronic signals are very well understood, but acoustics is much more difficult.

Hope you have a good time on the forum. We are all here to learn!

 

[Johnkeizer]

I have learned that one can get good numbers and actually make the sound worse, eg heaps of negative feedback.
However, done correctly, good numbers can point to a designer who knows his stuff, uses good parts, puts the gear together properly.

 

[boswell]

Hi all, just joined, am a rather senior (old?) audioholic from Australia so my experience of this hobby will be a bit different to the people’s up north.
Have enjoyed reading the various reviews and forum comments and actually bought some bits based on them.
Firmly believe that while measurements don't tell everything about how a piece of electronics sounds, they do usually at least point to the quality of design and build in the equipment.
Looking forward to an enjoyable time here.

Hi John?
72 yo from Melbourne, welcome
just want to point out that only speakers make the sounds, what is sent to them is another matter and this is generally regarded as no longer an issue unless there is a problem that shouldn't really be there and can fixed
you will enjoy your time here, this is a group that is very diverse but also respectful of persons' audio positions
kevin

 

[Johnkeizer]

Hi, yes, only speakers make the sound but am surprised at how often the biggest factor of all is overlooked.
The room of course.
Also unfortunately the one thing most of us can do little about, although I have had some success with installinf some rather unattractive corner bass traps and ceiling pads.
Only could do this as being a widower there is no better half to order their removal.

 

[Audiofire]

you will enjoy your time here, this is a group that is very diverse but also respectful of persons' audio positions

I generally agree, but audiophoolery is not taken lightly on the forum and is often merged into the snake oil thread, kinda like a dustbin!

 

[DSJR]

I have learned that one can get good numbers and actually make the sound worse, eg heaps of negative feedback.
However, done correctly, good numbers can point to a designer who knows his stuff, uses good parts, puts the gear together properly.

Welcome - and PLEASE hang around here after what myself and others are going to tell you (whether you want to read it or not )

It's been shown in many discussions here and elsewhere that there's nothing whatever wrong with negative feedback in an amplifier circuit, but I'll meet you halfway in suggesting it's *how it's implemented* that's the key. Like oodles of dsp in a loudspeaker, I'd suggest one needs to get the fundamentals right first and then use a little local as well as global negative feedback (and dsp in a speaker) to fine tune what's there, rather than 'cure-all' a circuit. My antiquated amps use local as well as global feedback if I have it right, the basic signal path actually quite straightforward. No obvious lack of transparency here as I can easily hear (even with my knackered ears) recording and production differences and a low output impedance (they made a huge thing of this 'damping factor' at the time) keeps the driven speakers more as designed.

As for measurements not telling us everything (not that one again ), the whole suite of measurements as a complete picture needs to be examined, not just sinad or other singular things. Our ears don't have a wide dynamic range, but they do work on a sliding scale however, so a younger mixing engineer of old, playing at (too) high levels, can come out onto the street and not hear birdsong or much traffic noise for a while until (what's left of their) hearing re-adapts. As we age, I'm reliably informed that we can't adapt so easily and as well as the hf issues, I now find loud reproduced music almost causes me pain and a fairly recent dem of a resurrected incredibly expensive classic Dynaudio speaker sent me out of the room as the sound was both horrible and far too loud, no doubt to impress the punters!

The longer you're here, the more some pre-conceived audiophile vibes will start to dissipate I'm sure. One day, you may find that you can choose audio electronics on after-care if needed, looks, feel, price and so on as the designs and such are so good that any 'errors' or 'characteristics' that they may have, are so far below any audibility threshold, they simply don't matter (doesn't stop the sinad-freaks here with some spare dosh chopping and changing inexpensive dacs for the fun of it ). Speakers will be trickier however and I'd politely suggest that many domestic models are way behind the curve now, or built down to a price...

Lastly before I shut the heck up! Too many audiophile listening rooms these days, seem to be totally wrong for any music reproduction, having 'acres' of exposed glass windows, bare floors, speakers designed for toe-in facing straight out and sat on stands with a story and selling for twice what they're materially worth, grilles designed and 'voiced' into the design being removed to show off ugly drive units and loads of screws holding the baffles in, despite pleas by the designer who should know what his products are on about (yes, I'm looking at you, far eastern Harbeth owners).

 

[Keith_W]

Welcome to ASR.

I used to think that measurements don't tell you everything. But the more I learn about measurements, the more I realize that it's my lack of understanding which is the reason they don't seem to explain everything. It's not just the measurements you have to learn how to read, but also the psychoacoustics. And THAT is difficult.

 

[RandomEar]

I have learned that one can get good numbers and actually make the sound worse, eg heaps of negative feedback.
However, done correctly, good numbers can point to a designer who knows his stuff, uses good parts, puts the gear together properly.

There is a fresh thread about feedback here, which contains a link to this whitepaper by Bruno Putzeys which looks like an excellent read. In essence, you want lower distortion and this requires feedback. Use feedback

 

[Johnkeizer]

Am not against feedback, I know some is needed, just have my doubts about using huge amounts of it just to get good numbers.

 

[DavidEdwinAston]

Hi, yes, only speakers make the sound but am surprised at how often the biggest factor of all is overlooked.
The room of course.
Also unfortunately the one thing most of us can do little about, although I have had some success with installinf some rather unattractive corner bass traps and ceiling pads.
Only could do this as being a widower there is no better half to order their removal.

Sorry for your loss.

 

[Chrispy]

Am not against feedback, I know some is needed, just have my doubts about using huge amounts of it just to get good numbers.

Curious, where/what source did you get that information from particularly?

 

[Johnkeizer]

Over fourty years in this hobby and I read voraciously plus do a fair bit of listening and experimenting.
Not scientifically but when your daughters walk into the room unaware that I have changed out a component and straight away comment about the sound, I can be sure it has changed.
I don’t class myself as a traditional audiophile, preferring to bring out the emotion rather than the detail in the music. Along the lines of preferring an oil painting of an old sailing ship ploughing along under full sail rather than the blueprints of said sailing ship.

 

[Timcognito]

Welcome,
I'll say this right off, I'm not an Australian but have been to Canberra, Adelaide, Melbourne 3 times, Perth and Sydney (briefly) and have eaten every possible kind of Aussie meat pie there is, due to a cardiologist mate's addiction down there. Some great times and long plane rides from San Francisco for two startups. I too think great music can get lost when your around some very competent tech types, EEs and such, and my collection spans six decades of collecting and many genres. Don't worry there are many like us at ASR.

 

[Sal1950]

Hi all, just joined, am a rather senior (old?) audioholic from Australia so my experience of this hobby will be a bit different to the people’s up north.

Hi John, just a quick Welcome to ASR !

I have learned that one can get good numbers and actually make the sound worse, eg heaps of negative feedback.

I'll only make the quick comment here that negative feedback has been given a bad reputation by the subjective community in an effort to give credence to their claims of huge differences in amplifier sound over the last few decades.
The bigger truth is that their support for the "sound" of low or no negative feedback has actually given birth to a couple generations of amps that DO sound different due to higher distortion, not better sound.
All the while continuing to deny any value of DBT.

"Do you see any signs of future vitality in high-end audio?
John Atkinson"

"Vitality? Don't make me laugh. Audio as a hobby is dying, largely by its own hand. As far as the real world is concerned, high-end audio lost its credibility during the 1980s, when it flatly refused to submit to the kind of basic honesty controls (double-blind testing, for example) that had legitimized every other serious scientific endeavor since Pascal. [This refusal] is a source of endless derisive amusement among rational people and of perpetual embarrassment for me, because I am associated by so many people with the mess my disciples made of spreading my gospel. For the record: I never, ever claimed that measurements don't matter. What I said (and very often, at that) was, they don't always tell the whole story. Not quite the same thing.?
J Gordon Holt "

45 Years of Stereophile | Stereophile.com

It was 45 years ago this month that the first issue of Stereophile, just 20 pages in length, went in the mail. It had been founded by one J. Gordon Holt. Gordon had been technical editor of High Fidelity magazine in the 1950s, and was tired of being asked to pander to the demands of advertisers.

www.stereophile.com

 

[Matias]

I appreciate March Audio speakers and electronics from down under, you guys are lucky to have them locally!

 

[Jcrow]

Hi John,
Greetings from Melbourne. This is a great place to be!
I’m newish to the hobby, and came across this site when searching for reviews of products. I’m glad I did, because I never got suckered into all the audiophile bullshit.

Double blind testing is a major proponent of discourse here, so would be good if you look into that and maybe have a go yourself. The results are very illuminating. Many perceived differences between two products vanish when we don’t know which product is in use. Auditory perception and memory is not super reliable it turns out.
Like I said I’m happy to have learned this earlier, as it has prevented me from pursuing more illusory aspects of the hobby.

 

[Chrispy]

Over fourty years in this hobby and I read voraciously plus do a fair bit of listening and experimenting.
Not scientifically but when your daughters walk into the room unaware that I have changed out a component and straight away comment about the sound, I can be sure it has changed.
I don’t class myself as a traditional audiophile, preferring to bring out the emotion rather than the detail in the music. Along the lines of preferring an oil painting of an old sailing ship ploughing along under full sail rather than the blueprints of said sailing ship.

You've probably mostly read subjectively based creative writing IMHO. Have you actually built different amps with different feedback? Emotion is fine for enjoyment, has little to do with the hardware outside of your transducers. The ship analogy I don't even understand.

ps Have you reviewed the thread and links in what Randomear suggested? That's at least a good start...