Z Reviews hi-fi snake oil

[Nick C]

I find that there's a significant different between super-cheap cables and normal cables - especially with USB where cheap cables tend to use much thinner conductors, which can take a lot less current and so charge a device much slower. Super-cheap ones also tend to break much more easily, and have a poorer fit into the sockets.

 

I can't possibly see how there can be any difference between normal cables and expensive ones though! The best USB cables I've found are Anker ones - 3 for slightly under £8, and I bet they transfer data just as well as ones that cost 200 times as much (£538... https://www.audiosanctuary.co.uk/audioquest-diamond-usb-digital-audio-cable.html)

 

Mind you, in my current audio setup, the speaker cables did cost more than the rest put together - around £20 in Maplin for a reel of fairly decent 2-core. The £15 amp and £1 (ebay) speakers sound excellent to my untrained ear - both would have been fairly high-end when new around 40 years ago!

[Free At Last]

My mate paid a few grand for this...

 

... weighs a ton, we had to dismantle it to carry it into the back of a van. 

He's spent more time fiddling around with it than listening to it, swapping arms, cartridges and the like. Apparently you can put 3 tone arms on it. What's that all about, Smoke On The Water in tri-stereo?

Is it really better than an old Dansette?

 

 

[Guest]

My mate paid a few grand for this...

Hope it sounds better than it looks.....

[raymw]

I thought it was a tea urn... wrt dansette, back in the day, beach boys, 'good vibrations', a minute or so? of silence in the middle. No. 'twer organ music, too low for the dansettes to respond to.

[big jim]

Hope it sounds better than it looks.....

i thought it was the lovechild of C3-P0 and R2-D2

[peach james]

At the least, it probably has some quality to it.  Not what I'd choose in terms of $ to return, but it is far more likely to influence the quality of the listening experience than the quality of the USB cables (once you pass the poundland lack of quality ones...).  It does also look neat, and make a focal point of the room.

 

I'm just doubtful that most people's ears can hear the difference.  And I have listened with some fairly high end kit in it's day- and could then hear the difference between Record and CD.  (for example, the intro into "Where the Streets Have No Name", which on CD has a definite start, but does not on record, or even on a decent tape...).  The difference though is tiny, for most of what we percieve.  (at least until you get to MP3, which can be downright frighteningly bad...but better gear isn't going to add bytes to the missing data...)

 

Still using my Yamaha Natural Sound 2x65w amp, a old pair of speakers that are 2nd hand to me, and a Natural Sound 5x changer, 400 disk sony changer (now with new belts !), and Natural Sound single tape player.  (first bit of "Stereo" kit I bought new...$400 in 1997 from A&B Sound...)

 

James  

[jjb1970]

Lousy mastering is probably the cause of most of the anti-CD sentiment

 

I think that is absolutely true, lousy re-mastering in the 90's and 00's screwed up so many recordings. One of the wonderful attributes of the CD standard was the dynamic range on offer, that was thrown away in order to boost loudness by compressing the life out of many recordings. In the "loudness wars" made CD, which is technically utterly superior to LP, sound a great deal worse than LP. 

[pete_mcfarlane]

My mate paid a few grand for this...

 

Turntable.jpg

... weighs a ton, we had to dismantle it to carry it into the back of a van. 

He's spent more time fiddling around with it than listening to it, swapping arms, cartridges and the like. Apparently you can put 3 tone arms on it. What's that all about, Smoke On The Water in tri-stereo?

Is it really better than an old Dansette?

 

That looks like something the Soviet space programme would have landed on Venus in the early 1970s.....

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

 My primary interest is composed music, and CD was a massive improvement over the fuzzy mush with snap crackle and pop garnish of LP replay: effectively silent background, full stereo channel separation, much larger dynamic range available . Recording engineers employed by the 'minors' got onto exploitation of this better medium, while the major companies - with Deutsche Sludgeaphon in the van - persisted with their LP style warm and fuzzy sound. When EMI dared a recording of RVW's 1st Symphony under dear old Todd with the real dynamic range of the concert hall, the critical response from the cloth eared at 'Gramophone' persuaded them to remaster it compressed to 'comfortable' 25dBish range. Happily the better way that the likes of Robert von Bahr, Jens Braun, Mike Clements and Tony Faulkner (to name a few of my favourites) demonstrated so clearly eventually took hold.

 

,,, I might have more time for all of these claims if reviewers could back it all up in double blind tests and with measurement, but most hi-fi reviewers have a pathological aversion to the idea of double blind (such as ABX) testing and many ignore measurement.

There was also the thing that CDs sounded better if you used a black felt-tip pen to darken the rims, and also putting them in the fridge overnight.

 No. no, no! A very expensive consecrated green felt pen was necessary, and it was the freezer, but for no more than 15 hours!...

 

This nonsense was a simple one to run a double blind test on.  Even the most devout believers could detect no difference whatsoever between the treated and untreated discs.

 

The first response was that clearly either or both of the recordings or the replay equipment didn't have the resolution to reveal the difference. But I had that covered by the use of four sets of several 'sanctified' discs, acknowledged by the very gurus before whom the devout prostrated themselves to have 70 dB dynamic range, and they had all heard the pppp lowest volume passages, (except the most persistent idiot who had acute mid range hearing loss). Then came the 'listening fatigue' claim. The trouble there is that full double blind with multiple trial and control samples takes all day. But hey, if you are too tired to tell the difference over a day of listening, then clearly you aren't tough enough to claim audiophile epaulettes. That proposition was as welcome as a turd in a punchbowl...

[jjb1970]

And the scary thing is that as bad as classical labels were they were nothing like as bad as labels for pop music etc which really did strangle the CD and later digital formats in general and transform something that should have urinated all over vinyl into a bit of a farce. I place a lot of the blame on record review magazines and hi-fi magazines that for various reasons quickly decided they preferred "analogue" sound (which really meant narrow dynamic range with audible distortion sound) and decided there was much more mileage in peddling various myths about turntables, tone arms, cartridges etc. The problem with CDs was never a technical one with the format (Phillips and Sony engineers did a masterful job in settling on 44.1KHZ 16Bit, something based on a lot of research which established it met or exceeded audible limits for discerning qualitative improvement in sound quality, a fact many hi-fi buffs completely ignored as they preferred to follow every passing snake oil vendor) but always one with how record labels decided to master recordings and a hi-fi equipment industry that had too much to lose from admitting the truth that digitalisation had effectively democratised stereo equipment, at least in terms of the source.

 

I was arguing with a friend about MQA a couple of weeks ago and it became rather heated. The record labels are re-mastering older recordings to unlock the potential that was purposely thrown away (it is this that makes people think high-res sounds better than CD quality, not the higher frequency and bit depth IMO) and charging £££££s for these downloads. Now I'd actually be willing to buy a lot of my music again in order to get much better masters but it is nothing to do with wanting high-res and everything to do with record labels manipulating the market and offering a product they could have been offering for over 30 years within the red book standard for CDs. And that really makes me cross.

 

One of my favourite blogs is that of Mark Waldrep, for any music and audio enthusiasts it's well worth reading and following:

 

http://www.realhd-audio.com/

[jjb1970]

On cables, a tight connection between the male and female, good joints between the wire and connector do make a difference but I can't honestly remember having a cable that didn't offer a tight connection and good joints. Similarly wire needs to be the right gauge but again that isn't a cost issue and good, well made cables that are good as anybody needs can be bought for peanuts.

[spikey]

After an on-off romance with mid-range hi-fi in the 60s and 70s and subsequent involvement with musos, guitars, amps and whatnot, I never cease to be bemused by the way that very few "audiophiles" seem to have ever heard a full-blown symphony orchestra live.  That is when you understand the meaning of the term "dynamic range".

Edited November 1, 2018 by spikey

[jjb1970]

I get the impression that for some people it isn't even about music, but just an obsession with equipment and in some cases audio jewellery.

 

I think the future is system speakers, active speakers with built in D/A conversion, with wireless functionality and the traditional conception of hi-fi will die out. System speakers eliminate most of the equipment and clutter and since the amplifiers can be precisely matched/designed to the speaker can offer superb performance and efficiency. Just synch a computer, tablet, smart phone or digital audio player or connect via a digital connection and hey presto, genuine hi-fi performance without the hassle. Think the sort of BT speakers Bose, JBL et al sell but high performance hi-fi stereo or multi-channel. There already some superb active speakers with onboard D/A conversion, and I think the trend will only grow. I also think we'll see a lot more use of DSP, especially to compensate for room acoustics, the technology has been widely used in AV surround sound for a long time and finally audio enthusiasts are recognising the value of using DSP as an easy way to optimise speakers for room acoustics (most are utterly obsessed with the idea that any signal processing at all is evil, even though some degree of equalisation is pretty much essential for correctly matching speakers to room acoustics).

[Stentor]

For me the High Priest of esoteric Hi-Fi was the great Peter Belt https://www.stereophile.com/content/peter-belt-1930-2017

 

I remember being told by one fan that I should rearrange the books on my shelves and put paper bookmarks in certain pages to improve the sound of my system.

 

On cables there is a great deal of merit in regularly unplugging and replugging connections to remove the build up of crud which reduces their conductivity. I’m convinced that it is his action which is actually responsible for the improvements that “new cables” bring rather than the new kit itself.

 

Most importantly your ears tell you what sounds good not the specs of your system. Ask yourself why you enjoy a certain kind of music more than another. Is it because your system can only play back one kind of music? A good system should allow you to enjoy any kind of music but many don’t.

 

So if you enjoy listening to good music find a decent dealer where you can listen to the system and take a selection of music you know and ask them to play you stuff you don’t know.

 

Where I go in Diggle the owner David is brilliant, he gives you plenty of time to decide and if you don’t like it when you get home he will change it for something you do like. I’m not at all local to Diggle but the long trip there is worth it because David knows his stuff.

[pete_mcfarlane]

I remember being told by one fan that I should rearrange the books on my shelves and put paper bookmarks in certain pages to improve the sound of my system.

 

 

That's starting to sound like Feng Shui, and is probably as equally ineffective.

[Free At Last]

I recently visited an old friend I hadn't seen for a few years who was a hifi buff having a dedicated music room with all high end gear. It had all gone. On my asking why he said he has tinnitus so what was the point.

If you have cloth ears and/or are tone deaf don't waste your money on expensive hifi unless it is for bragging purposes.

 

 

[johnarcher]

I recently visited an old friend I hadn't seen for a few years who was a hifi buff having a dedicated music room with all high end gear. It had all gone. On my asking why he said he has tinnitus so what was the point.

If you have cloth ears and/or are tone deaf don't waste your money on expensive hifi unless it is for bragging purposes.

I have sympathy for your friend. I've never gone for (or been able to afford) the stuff the reviewers really enthused over, but enjoyed good sound from my Thorens/SME/Shure V15 combination in the late '70's up to Arcam cd amd amps more recently.

Until the tinnitus struck, I hardly listen at all now.

[jjb1970]

I think a lot of the differences in audio equipment, especially cables and all the other accessories, is in the mind. If people read a magazine review telling them something is great and they take reviews seriously, and they spend a lot of money on it then they are expecting to hear a difference. Hence the value of level matched (and that is a very important aspect) double blind testing such as ABX testing.

 

Peter Aczel of the Audio Critic summed it up to near perfection with his article on his legacy, available here:

 

http://www.biline.ca/audio_critic/audio_critic_web1.htm#acl

 

I still love reading the Audio Critic and pretty much anything ever written by Peter Aczel. There is a very famous Spanish test which also sums up quite a lot, it is referenced in lots of articles but I think this is the source:

 

http://matrixhifi.com/ENG_contenedor_ppec.htm

[jjb1970]

http://www.realhd-audio.com/?p=6296

 

Quadrophonic vinyl is back, for the true digital hating audiophile........

[45156]

This weekend I visited a friend who is a true audiophile, with all Naim gear, except for a Linn LP12 Sondek turntable fitted with a Transfiguration cartridge which cost around £5k on a Naim Aro arm.  He has had this system for some years now, and has moved it to his new house, where it was set up again by an expert.  Due to an accident, he damaged the cartridge beyond repair, and had to change to a Dyna Vector.   His expert had now ceased business, so he went further afield to find a new expert, who on checking his LP12 found that the azimuth on the arm was wrong, and could not be brought into alignment at all with the transfiguration cartridge.  It transpired that it has never been right since new! 

Since then, he has paid over £1500 just to have all the capacitors changed in his power supply, preamps and amps - did it improve the sound- it may have done, but was ir worth the money - probably not.  However, as the system overall cost more than many new cars (by a country mile), I honestly can't hear enough of a difference to warrant spending that amount on a system.

 

My Arcam/B&W set up is still working well after 10 years, though I did upgrade the CD player to an FMJ when our local hi-fi shop was closing, and was selling them off as a clearance.  The Alpha 8 amp is plenty good enough, and the B&W DM603 speakers perform well.  I certainly can't hear £20k of difference from my friend's hgh end system.

[Reorte]

Most importantly your ears tell you what sounds good not the specs of your system. Ask yourself why you enjoy a certain kind of music more than another. Is it because your system can only play back one kind of music? A good system should allow you to enjoy any kind of music but many don’t.

Well that's the real crux of it - do you enjoy it? Whilst I firmly agree that there's no technical advantage of vinyl over CD or other (uncompressed, or at least losslessly compressed) digital formats that doesn't mean someone is wrong to prefer vinyl - at the end of the day the subjective experience is what music is about rather than the technical specs, and when it comes to vinyl the record sleeve, holding it in your hand, seeing it spin, they're all part of that subjective experience IMO (says someone who doesn't have a turntable and doesn't intend to get one).

Edited November 5, 2018 by Reorte

[jjb1970]

I have nothing against anybody who just loves the sound of vinyl (or cassette tape, or reel-reel 15 IPS tape or any other format). Analogue formats still have adherents and users and if people prefer a particular sound then their preference is no more right or wrong than any other choice. However there is a huge difference between recognising the concept of euphonic distortion and that many people like such distortion (i.e. typical vinyl sounds) and claiming it to be technically superior as many audiophiles do. Many still claim digital formats are technically inferior (even reel - reel tape has a small but vocal following) when in terms of just about every objective parameter digital formats are technically superior. That isn't to say people are wrong to like analogue formats, like I say that is personal choice, but I think people should be honest in admitting that preference is actually for a euphonically distorted and degraded sound compared to digital.

 

I suspect a major reason for all the tweako stuff in digital goes back to the various tricks and adjustments associated with vinyl. In the realm of vinyl a lot of those audiophile tweaks really did make a difference and there was a whole range of complex interactions affecting sound quality (btw, I also think some of it was snake oil too), many just don't seem to get that digital is difference and if anything messing around with digital data chains is more liable to make things worse than better (which bizarrely is the point if you want it to sound more analogue like). The digital revolution effectively democratised hi-fi as now any computer or tablet or smart phone can act as a source and with a good DAC (which shouldn't be read as meaning expensive) offer a source which is better than people could dream of not that long ago. However, at some point you still need good speakers or headphones (and in the case of speakers, attention to placement and room acoustics.

[jjb1970]

If you want vinyl sound without the hassle there are plug in software products that simulate vinyl, this one is free:

 

https://www.izotope.com/en/products/create-and-design/vinyl.html

 

This is a nice one:

 

https://www.kvraudio.com/product/abbey-road---vinyl-by-waves

 

Personally I find these a bit gimmicky but at least if you use software and DSP you have the option of reverting to a much cleaner version.

[BR60103]

"...you'll only get the full stereophonic effect if you sit in the bottom of that cupboard."  M. Flanders, ca, 1959

 

Edit: Full line  "If you raise the ceiling four feet, put the fireplace from that wall to that wall, you'll still only get the stereophonic effect if you sit in the bottom of that cupboard."

Edited November 7, 2018 by BR60103

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

... in the case of speakers, attention to placement and room acoustics.

 My standard line with hi-fi retailers is that they are in the wrong business. Now that source and amplification have been sorted out at relatively modest price - and 'democratised' is a good term for this - the differentiator in loudspeaker replay performance is the acoustic of the room. They should be selling houses, either purpose built or modified to provide this.