Are audio companies all involved in a huge conspiracy? - Page 53

May I ask where you got this "factual" information from?

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Edited by kraut - 3/5/13 at 7:02pm

Sounds like his primary source is that renowned audio expert, Prof. Otto Yerass.

He studied under the renowned Asian researcher, Dr. Sum Ting Wong.

Having never looked at the Krell specs as I would never seriously consider owning one, I will grant you the possibility: given the numerous problems that must be needlessly addressed in a high power pure class A design, it is quite possible that the Krell is audibly inferior to the Audiosource amp. Maybe even by a "huge" margin.
Quite true. The faces of insanity are varied indeed.

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Edited by kraut - 3/5/13 at 7:01pm

No, but we can prove what makes better reproduction of what's coded on the media. That not all people like it that way - there's nothing to do about.

But we can prove if there's an audible difference between amp A and amp B. ABX should be standard in all reviews. If it were I guess there would be a lot less to talk about.

Audiophiles seem to question the Richard Clark amp challenge because EQ was added in amp designs that have non-linear frequency response. So therefore his entire challenge is null and void.

Dun ....dun....DAAAAA...

No, I have no view on this. Tell us what you think.

And I'm mainly talking about the difference in perceived soundstage. I actually don't know REW that well as I use TrueRTA, but REW seems to be more widely used and is more likely what someone would have on hand to make measurements of their room with.

Seeing as going from straight 2ch playback to upmixing to 5.1 is a very obvious difference in soundstage, both width and depth - what type of measurement would give a graph or number of soundstage width and depth difference between the two that I can perceive?

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Edited by kiwi2 - 3/5/13 at 1:56am

There is no single metric that measures "spaciousness". You might want to read Toole, "Sound Reproduction". Highly recommended.

Besides the answer in the post above, I want to add that the two cases described will yield very different measurements in several ways. And you have to be aware that you yourself is part of it - your physical shape (outer ears, nose, shoulders) has an effect on the sound ending up on the eardrums when you move the speaker locations around. So you'll find differences no matter is you measure frequency response, arrival times, phase shifts etc etc Putting all that information together in a way that could be described in "audiophile terms" is the difficult part. But given that we have systems that can places sounds in 3D for headphone listening, we do know quite a bit about what changes in frequency/time/phase we can use to move sounds around. But that's one direction at a time... describing the entire soundfield at one is "infinitely" more data to handle/decode.

I suspect that you underestimate the state of current audio science in this regard. I'd like to see you write a brief white paper about what you think it is and post it here. I suspect that so many logical arguments and footnotes later, it would not stand.

Not simply, but with nominal effort, we can scientifically prove what sounds better. However to do that scientifically, you have to define better in such a way that it is reliable, relevant and falsifiable. That is Science. It is doable. It has been done. Since you have denied it is true, but it is true perhaps your grasp of modern audio science is a bit lacking?

My favorite criteria for proving that something sounds better is whether or not it is audibly indistinguishable from the source. This is easiest when the input and output of the device are in the same domain, such as electrical signals. Thus, it can be applied to amplifiers and DACs but is far more difficult (perhaps at this time impossible) for speakers and microphones. This is the critera that most scientific investigators and paper writers for peer-reveiwed publications agree on, either explicitly or implicitly.

After reviewing page after page of posts, and going back over 2 weeks, I finally found the link:

http://www.qscaudio.com/support/library/papers/amptalk.pdf

Please quote segments from that paper that support your exceptional claims. I found another post where to my way of thinking you completely missed the boat after citing Douglas Self. Therefore I am left with the conclusion that you really don't understand what these papers are saying and are innocently misrepresenting them. Perhaps you can help me out here.

I would like to have you back that guarantee with what is often called "valuable consideration" that would justify my efforts to debunk it. As long as we don't abuse either amp (clip it or damage it) I can confidently predict that in a time-synched, level-matched DBT the listeners will be left guessing randomly. The difference you claim is an illusion that is probably based on misapprehensions and lack of experience on your part. Again, please feel free to take up my challenge or otherwise prove me to be in error.

Again please correct me if I'm wrong but this is a discussion about sound quality, right? I am willing to stipulate that there are strong perceived difference in the minds of a great many audiophiles (that is where perceived differences are created and stored), but I am of the opinion that sound quality is of the essence.

I am not so sure about that. I think that everybody who plops down more than a reasonable minimum (e.g. the price of a comparable QSC, Behringer or Crown) perceives a benefit to spending the extra cash whether it is $1 or $10,000. Whether that's about sound quality, well I'm a little bit undecided about that.

For over 20 years people have been doing DBTs of amps like this and showing that in reliable unbiased listening tests, people can't tell the difference in most cases. That is pretty well known at this time given how many audio writers still rant and rave about blind tests! ;-)

Asked and answered.

I visited the Kraco official web site and I find no evidence that they are currently in the audio business, therefore the reference seems very obscure. Again if I am wrong about this please correct with reliable evidence.

You mean sound quality? Well it might be true or not but on the face of it, this looks like an excluded middle argument. I don't think there are a lot of people at AVS who have Kraco amplifiers in their living room. Perhaps you would be willing to make comments that are relevant to the discussion at hand? ;-)

That appears to be an unfounded, unsupported assertion.I know of many counter-examples. Please clarify.

Some high end audio amplifier designers seem to have figured out how to make their amplifiers sound different in blind tests - they build amps with relatively high source impedances. This essentially turns the amp into an equalizer whose frequency response is determined by the speaker's impedance curve. They actually can sound different with every speaker you hook them up to, and that's before the signal actually goes into the speaker. The effect is clearly measurable at the amp's output terminals.

So what is a fair way to manage this situation when comparing this somewhat flawed amp to a good amp?

If the source impedance of the amp can be effectively modeled by simple means such as a small resistor as Bob Carver did in his amplifier challenge of more than a decade ago, then this seems to be an effective, relevant solution.

If it can't, it seems like successfully using one of those often hated (but apparently effective) equalizers forms double indictment of the somewhat defective high end amp. Not only does the equalizer correct the flawed response, it does so without adding any additional audible distortion.

It's quite ironic, and funny, when skeptics are so quick to embrace any story, no matter how dubious, if it backs up their claims. Among the many tests cited above is the now infamous coat-hanger-speaker-wire which is such an obvious lie ("Dr." Bob Dean, the PhD in Clinical Hypnotherapy and expert on "catalyptic (sic) and somnabulistic (sic) hynotic (sic) suggestability (sic)") that no one with an accurate BS detector would fall for it. Since you have, I'll have to disregard anything else in this "data" you have cited, because I would not have the time to weed through the rest of it.
In spite of this failing, I will agree with you that blind ABX testing is obviously not a good way to test audio gear. Fortunately there are other methods that work.

What other methods work?

What do you mean us? You are the one who doesn't know, so why not say, "Tell me..."?

Anyway, now that you admitted not knowing what quality means for sound reproducing equipments, here's a reading material for you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_fidelity

By the way, you've been arguing about these audio equipments all this time without knowing something as basic as the criteria mentioned above?

Depends how you define "work". If the goal is to move hardware, nothing beats a level-unmatched, asynchronous, sighted evaluation.

Those Richard Clark tests look strange. The basis of the claim is that not all amps sound the same. Clark agrees, but then continues to say that if he changes the amps to sound the same, you will not hear a difference. Clever guy. No wonder no-one hears a difference. To then add that the amp that does not sound the same is simply not a good one, is like saying if you can't hear the difference between cables you don't have a good system. Same thing.

Sure, you can say a good amp should have a flat response. I contend that all hamburgers should be served with an egg. If not, they're not good hamburgers, when really its a matter of taste.

If it is high-fidelity sound reproduction that is of interest, it's sound that one is interested in reproducing, not "what's coded on the media". And this is what I find peculiar about the engineering approach to high fidelity. It's easy to compare electrical signals, so that's what engineers do, seeming to forget that it is not electrical signals that we are interested in reproducing.

Why would I want an amplifier to do anything but precisely amplify the signal? If I really want to boost or cut frequencies in order to change how things sound, that's what equalization is for. To stretch your analogy to the breaking point, the egg is a modified frequency response curve, but I can't call what I put it on a 'good hamburger' if it consists of a deep fried piece of cod.

True enough, but if the electrical signals don't retain their integrity in between the microphone input and the speaker output it's hard to credit that as being hi fi.

Integrity?

REW has the ability to determine amplitude, timing, and arrival direction of reflections in your room. If you wanted to make a simplified equality that stronger lateral reflections = greater soundstage width (a gross simplification to be sure) that would probably suffice for your purposes. You could go further to differentiate reflections from direct sounds coming from processed surround channels, but it wouldn't be necessary at the simplified level you are asking about.

I don't think there is a single number that would encapsulate it, but something akin to a polar graph from the listening position would suffice. I don't think that is a "stock" graphing feature.

The point is, the two situations you describe are vastly different (2.0 and 5.1) and can easily be measured in a way that correlates with human perception (despite amir's darkest wishes).

Are you seriously expecting me to take the time to reply to all that? Ok, I will in a few sentences, believe what you want, but I promise you that if you took the time to take your amplifier (which you have not made mention to) and compare it to say a Krell KSA series, Classe or an BAT/CJ/ARC Tube amp, if you do not hear the difference- then one of two things are going on- you have hearing loss, or, you are so self convinced that you are some how more knowledgeable then all of us who do, in fact, own well built high quality gear, that there can not, nor could there ever be any possibility of you accepting what we that own such gear already know- that you are simply .....wrong.

Like I said, I cant prove what sounds better (and neither can you), unless you compare them side by side (as I previously stated)- no amount of written word, or electrical testing (That is written for your entertainment) can do this either. Tell me how to describe the color Blue or Red to a blind person, so they can understand color as people that can see...........good luck my friend.

So now let me ask you, what equipment do you have and use, my present set up is in my sig. And btw, all of the gear I have made mention to, I either have owned or presently do own. It would seem you can not claim anything but citing that of previous testing methodologies created by other persons that were bogus from the onset. I have simply stated what I know from personal experience- I think it best if the rest of you do the same. Perhaps a white paper from those disbelievers is in order.

I find it amazing, no one with in this conversation (but myself- thus far) have made mention of what an amplifiers REAL function is- and that is to simply amplify an input, but more importantly, to control the speaker. This is what a quality amplifier can do better then it’s lesser build quality brethren. Speaker control is what some of you do not seem to understand.

for arnyk, nothing I have stated is exceptional, save perhaps, to yourself.

And BTW, I do not directly respond to strawman arguments. FYI
Edited by kodi41 - 3/5/13 at 4:30pm

LOL, yet more inexperience. Does it never end?

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Edited by kraut - 3/5/13 at 7:03pm

kodi41, if you disagree with CD vs. tape & vinyl, just say so and explain why.

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Edited by kraut - 3/5/13 at 7:03pm