Are audio companies all involved in a huge conspiracy? - Page 3

Interesting thread. It seems to me, based on some of the comments, that a lot of people WANT to believe this to be true. Maybe it's for a variety of reasons (biggest probably being...they can't afford it), or...maybe it's PARTIALLY true (I.e some companies are in fact soaking you because they know they can).

I know one thing, I have had a LOT of audio gear and I have heard a lot of audio gear in my lifetime. My current system consists of a Meridian 861v4 and DSP 6000's. Imo, if you paired my system up against cheaper fare....MOST people would hear a HUGE difference. I'm in no way rich but this was one of the best investments I ever made.

Perhaps you have a singular reality which has no real meaning to anyone else?

The only thing that is actually relevant in this debate is the ratio btwn the price of a given high end audio item and the income level of the buyer[/B].

Once the looks of a piece has caught the eye of the buyer, the selling effort is only about convincing the buyer that third parties examining the transaction will not assess it as ridiculous.

This is mostly not about sound quality.

Cheers,
Bernard

An easier amp test is ask for differences and never really switch between amps?
Been done. A large % still hear difference between the exact same amp. Human nature looks for differences no matter what.

Most of the talk on this thread is about amps.

That's the first problem right there.

AV, like arts and fine wines are not science alone. People with money will pay if they perceive it will make them feel (an emotional response) better.

BTW pure science is dry and boring and if that's all there is to life... imagine!

I don't think that it would be reasonable to say that the DSP 6000 speakers can't be distinguished from cheaper speakers, since speakers as a rule always sound different from each other. However, it seems reasonable to question what they actually do that is generally superior to some highly-regarded studio monitors that cost about 1/10 as much and have a similar driver complement.

The 861 has some facilities such as Ambisonics decoding that one does not find on a typical AVR, On balance both the AVR and the 861 decode all of the mainstream formats. The 862 seems to lack useful facilities such as Audessey, MCACC, and YPAO or much of anything that is equivalent. In manual mode it seems to only provide some extremely limited bass and treble controls, while even inexpensive AVRs have multiband graphic equalizers with 8 or 9 bands.

When faced with results they don't like from a test like this, most audiophiles would argue that we screwed something up when we swapped the guts.

The notion that all amps sound the same given the vast differences in engineering and technologies involved is ridiculous. I thought Julian Hirsch had passed away, but he apparently lives on at AVS.

People tend to forget the standard disclaimers for the audibility of amplifier differences. For the audible differences to go away, the amps being compared must have:

High input impedance
Low output impedance
Operated at power levels far enough below clipping that the distortion is low
Flat frequency response into a resistive load

Some amps, often audiophile amps, violate one or more of these disclaimers. For example, SET power amps have a typical output impedance of about 3 Ohms, which causes easily audible frequency response differences with real speaker loads. The ones I've seen measurements of also have non-negligible frequency response errors even into a resistive load. Their distortion tends to be ridiculously high as well.

A good number of class D amps violate the second requirement too, at the high end of the audible frequency band.

The disclaimers could be summed up as "properly designed". Due to marketing needs for product differentiation, audiophile amps often violate these rules/disclaimers, under the correct assumption that a significant number of audiophiles will perceive an audible difference as an audible improvement.
Edited by rock_bottom - 8/22/12 at 6:18am

This thread reminds me of a perhaps theoretical question I've had for some time now:

If audiophiles are correct and properly designed amplifiers really do sound differently, why aren't people outraged about it? Given the variable quality of recordings, and the extreme variability of speakers and rooms, wouldn't it be preferable if amplification were a constant?

I keep imagining what it would be like to cook a meal if every different brand and container of salt tasted differently. Why would anybody find a situation like that acceptable?

Do people hold the opinion that an amplifier can't be designed and built such that they're audibly transparent?

Interesting point . We have accepted all of this for speakers. Why are there no riots over that using the same logic?

I don't know. I'm not an expert and my rioting days are way behind me anyway.

Your question isn't the same one I asked. No one seems to dispute that speakers have different sounds. Perhaps speakers can't be made transparent?

But to the actual point I raised: There seem to be clear lines drawn about amplifiers. Some people believe they can and are built to be audibly transparent, and some people don't. Again, my question is why those people aren't demanding transparent amps. They're perfectly willing to discuss audible differences but not generically define any perceived sonic character as a flaw in the amp.

I just wondered how come.

I am also not trying to start a fight but rather explain the facts. I am an audio engineer with hundreds of albums and several feature films under my belt. I've also do work for companies like discovery and their channel partners. This, is my opinion. If I mix on genelec's, or Yamaha's, or Dynaudio, or KRK, or Blue sky, or Adam or JBL or any number of professional monitors. I'm mixing the film or recording on a set of speakers that show me everything and the mix will never sound better because that is the way I want it to sound. If you play it back on a $50,000.00 speaker it doesn't sound better because that's not what I want it to sound like. The concept behind THX is that you will hear the sound exactly the way the engineer wanted you to, because your listening to it on the same speakers in the same room with the same reverberation etc. So that set of 50K speakers may be pleasing to your ear but unless you listen on the speakers I mixed on, You're not hearing what I want you to hear and a consequence of that is it doesn't sound right which means not as good.

Sounded to me that you were expecting science to be fair. That is, it has some obligation to provide to us what we wish. In the case of speakers, it is not able to do that so I thought that was a good counter argument.

Putting that aside, while there is a portion of audiophiles which may like some coloration, most are weeding through amps to get to the truth in audio as they know it. So in that sense their goal is as you ask. The difference being that they don't agree that can be achieved with just about any amp on the shelf. They also believe in another thing they call synergy. The notion that a component is a better match with others, whether that is a speaker or a pre-amp.

I wish folks read and read again what you post! That what we have in our hands as far as consumer delivered sound, has little chance of sounding like what you/talent heard. We therefore can never have an aspiration to get to that reality. The only reality in front of us is to do justice to the recorded content as delivered to us. Fortunately that can be pretty satisfying but at high level, audio is an entirely broken in this regard. Compare the situation to video where we calibrate what we shoot against a set of metrics for color and luminance and then have the ability to match the same at playback. In that sense, we can get to the truth of what was seen by the talent/engineers. Sadly not for audio. Had we had this same mechanism, we could settle far more of these food fights.

What is interesting is that people on both sides of the audio argument miss the important point you are making there.

may as well go the whole hog then, even if we had the same identical equipment chain, unless we are listening in THAT room we will not get what was intended.

Heck, unless we had the same ears, perceptions and values then again we would not get the intended result.

A lot of truth, but in many ways it hides a dead end, which is in it's own way just as truthful.

The notion that they are fighting against a belief that all amps sound the same is a straw man that gets brought up all the time, mostly by people who are very unscientific and illogical in their approach. If they can get past that, they need to deal with the fact that when tested using the best listening test procedures and conditions known, very many of them are indistinguishable from each other when tested by skilled listeners of all ages.

If the various high end amplifier manufacturers had the courage to back their assertions, they would run their own public demonstrations, rack up the positive results, and make the naysayers look silly. Never happened!

In fact an amplifier manufacturer did build over 100 ABX DBT comparators and distributed them around the country. However the company was QSC a pro audio amp manufacturer, and their goal was to show that their amps sounded as good as high end amps. I know of no instances of anybody doing DBT comparisons of good amps that were positive for audible differences. Trust me, these comparators were distributed with no strings that would force people to conceal any positive results, They just didn't happen!

Please give examples of these alleged vast differences in engineering and technologies involved.

I've had no problem finding pictures of high end amplifiers and receivers and compared them to pro and mainstream equipment in posts at AVS, showing that they are made in very similar ways. Ditto for schematic diagrams.

The idea that making cosmetic or trivial engineering changes necessitates different sound quality is like saying that houses with different heating systems have to have different temperatures inside, Or that cars built using different technologies can't go the same speed, handle well, etc. One of the benefits of diverse technology is the fact that we can produce comparable results by various means.

For example, there is are books by Douglas Self and Robert Cordell bothwell-known amplifier designers that analyze virtually every commercialized audio output stage configuration, both bipolar and FET, with comments and measurements of their performance. They find that their performance is similar and that they generally have distortion that is below audibility.

So please do provide counter-evidence, preferably centerpieced by the results of well-done listening tests showing that good amplifiers generally sound as different as we see claimed on consumer audio forums. Once you do that you should be able to show that spending more money on amplifiers generally provides better SQ.
Edited by arnyk - 8/22/12 at 4:11am

Edited by arnyk - 8/22/12 at 5:43am

I think it is very important to observe that all of the claims that amplifiers can't readily be made transparent lack reliable evidence.

People are often distracted by Solipsism and Sentimentality.

OK, I'll ask a simple question then. At what point does an amp no longer sound any better the money? $100? $500? $1000? $10,000? How about speakers? I need to know because I don't want to waste anymore money on sound quality if it just stops getting better at a price point. I'd rather just buy where any sort of sound quality stops instead of doing this upgrade thing all the time.

I've been avoiding this thread b/c I don't have any technical prowess in this arena, and thought that I'd add little to the general idea.

 

However, the above post made me want to chime in.

 

At what point does anything seem to be no better than a previous yet similar device?!?

 

Comeon!  As long as someone thinks their device sounds/looks better they will distill their opinion till the world ends.  There is no concrete wall of device operation that suddenly means that it is overpriced.  We(America) is a capitalist society with capitalist ideals.  The idea that anyone can sell something to anyone else for whatever price is soley determined by the person whom is willing to pay for said device.  It doesn't matter what the device is. As long as someone is willing to pay the price that someone else is asking it is worth their time/effort/money.

 

Truth be told, a crappy little $100 100WPC Amp will sound the same as a $10000 100WPC, in most general settings.

 

If you are able to afford a $10000 Amp, then more power to ya, but that is overpriced for someone who is completely comfortable with a $100 amp.  The cheaper Amp owner thinks that the higher priced owner is stupid and bought "snake oil".  Whereas the owner of the higher priced amp thinks that the lower priced one is junk and that the lower priced owner is too poor/stupid to put their hard earned money into a device that may or may not have an sonic differences.

 

It all comes back to the price that one values his/her money for.

 

What is the best deal for your personal budget?  That is all up to the individual.

Edited by underminded999 - 8/22/12 at 7:22am

For the avg. person there is a point of diminishing return for everything

Is a $1,000 pair of speakers $500 better than a $500 pair of speakers - probably

Is a $10,000 pair of speakers $5,000 better than a $5,000 pair of speakers - probably not

But it's also all relative -
If you make $50K a year, the $2,500 pair of speakers is 5% of your income
if you make $500K a year the $2,500 pair of speakers is only 1/2% of your income

You want a simple answer to a complex question. But here's a start. You can buy a stereo receiver for about $100 that can drive the vast majority of speakers on the market to levels sufficient to fill the vast majority of living rooms out there. A more expensive amp cannot improve on that. So, unless your speakers are a particularly difficult load, and/or you're trying to fill a barn with sound, you don't need more amp than that. That doesn't mean spending more is a mistake, or a waste. (And, as a few people have suggested, if an expensive amp makes you think your system sounds better, it might be worth it to you.)

Speakers are a different story. They all sound different, and they have different capabilities in terms of frequency extension and dynamics and such. Surely there's a point beyond which you can't make a speaker objectively better. I don't think there's any way to identify that point, however.

Meaning that it's their personal belief. Of course they don't. Personal belief varies because it's personal. They can believe what they want. Some belief is based on facts, objectivity. Some others are based on myth. Until their base of belief is known, it's just babbling.

Baloney.
Marketing talk again. Slow sales at your store?
Another one of your marketing in disguise. Digital music file player, preamp and amp are capable of delivering audible transparency at low cost now.
Your dance move #4, "make things up as you go". The subjective side perhaps but not both sides.

His point is the level of fidelity. There is a term called "hi-fi", it's a description of the level (closeness to the original). There are also "mid-fi" and "low-fi". Unfortunately for "high-end" dealers like you, one doesn't have to spend much to get "hi-fi" from digital music file player, preamp, amp and cables these days.
Edited by diomania - 8/22/12 at 8:49am

That depends on the application. The cost bar is lower if you don't need a lot of power, for example. However, the $ per watt goes down as the power goes up so the larger amp does not cost proportionately more.

Your best value is often the amps in a good AVR, but there are times where they simply don't fit the need. As long as you have enough power to keep the amp out of clipping, buying watts you don't need has zero SQ advantage. Once fairly minimal performance levels are met, any extra money you spend goes someplace else besides system SQ.

Again, the application matters very much. For example you usually don't want floor-standers to use with your PC unless it is a HTPC. In another thread we talked about the difference between a system for background music versus one for dance parties, as well as indoors versus outdoors. Use outdoors takes a lot more SPL because you don't usually get many reflections to help you build up a sound field. Large rooms versus small rooms, Rooms with lots of reverb versus the ones that are full of well-stuffed furniture. Finally, are you competing with the local Star theatre with your HT system or do you watch movies at night in an apartment with cardboard walls? What's your take on the cannons in the 1812, and stuff like that.

Exactly.