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High End Myth Glossary.

Disclaimer:
Many of the glossary terms bellow are entered with little or no comments. Large comments might require large space and time investment. If anyone reading this glossary is offended, than I'll keep you a company as well. Every myth-paragraph bellow adds a price to the audiocomponent only without substantial improvements and "upgrades" to your system.

Feel free to add to the list bellow:

1. Cables' price should be arround 10...20% of the whole system i.e if the system costs $100k than $10...20k should be for interconnects and speaker cables.

2. Directional signal cables.

3. Zero Negative Feedback.

4. $10k 10Wpc amps.

5. No need for larger output power. Place compact system speaker into the plywood horn enclosure and use SET 1W/ch.

6. Tube watts v.s. SS watts.

7. CD-players or digital separates over $1.5k(Analogue sources stay somewhere next to but not to the same degree for example $10k cartridges)

8. Audiable differences in .3dB or in .5%THD v.s. .001%THD.

9. Auditioning of audio furniture.

10. Stereophile or other oriented magazines one-person "expert reviews"

11. $5000 Mark Levinson amp looks like it should sound excellent...

12. $12k CD-player reads CD with greater precision.

13. tubes $900/matched pr

14. amp stands $600/pr.

15. microphonic-free chasis, power interconnects and speaker wires. tubes and transistors can certainly be added as well.

16. wire reactance influence on audio freequencies.

17. Nirvana speaker wire has substantially less reactance than Home Depot.

18. S/N ratings of CD-player(larger than CD's dynamic range 16bit = only 60dB!)

P.S. I would be also glad to see Worst-of section in forums here.
128x128marakanetz
sean
6,231 posts
 
Numbers don't lie but you have to know how to interpret them. That specific analogy simply means that the Yamaha produces lower THD, it doesn't tell us anything about how the unit will sound or how those figures were derived. You have to look at the BIG picture and have a LOT of spec's / background on the unit and methods used for testing for the "numbers" to mean anything. Sean
>

PS... Lots of global or local negative feedback will produce very low THD figures, but it also produces a very "sterile" sounding component. One is better off with a product that uses a very solid circuit design to start off with with just enough feedback used to keep the device "clean" and "stable". There are many mass produced products that utilize "thrown together" circuit designs and then utilize GOBS of feedback to correct the poor design. Unfortunately, it is much cheaper to build a junky circuit and make it "measure good" / correct it with a lot of feedback, so that's what a lot of manufacturers do. That's why so many pieces of gear sound like crap i.e. there are more "band-aids" than healthy designs out there.
gregm
3,405 posts
 
Sean sez:
Numbers don't lie but you have to know how to interpret them
I agree. It further seems that some "standard" measurements (or the way they are made) hardly correlate with the sonic result. Especially when it comes to amp-speaker interface. OTOH, engineers DO know circuit analysis -- so, it stand to reason that there SHOULD be SOME measurements made that actually reflect what everyone HEARS. I don't know where the catch is -- maybe the industry doesn't want to change the "standard" specs?
For an interesting discussion on this subject take a look here and here
Cheers
marakanetz's avatar
marakanetz OP
5,473 posts
 
Sean,
Most of the such recievers are built on OP-Amps that by definition have humangous gain and thus need huge neg. feedback to correct distortions. Most of these chips(used in consumer audio products) are produced in China and do have terrible characteristics far different from catalogue specified. A feedback at the same time can't be infinite and should be carefully selected so such unit will not go to oscillations...

By definition it's far more easier to produce a transistor with clean and linear characteristics(or tube) than OP-amp. A good OP-amp has much larger tolerance in its IO characteristics than a good transistor(or tube) by all logical terms but designing and building an audio component is much simplier and faster and so cheaper using OP-Amps, however there are many successfull audio-components in today's high resolution audio equipment built on OP-Amps: compact phonostages such as NAD PP1, Michell ISO by Tom Evans; preamps such as McCormack RLD, McCormack Micro Line Drive; poweramps such as Audio Research D series have input and driving circuitries using OP-Amps.

Gregm,

To understand measurements that everyone HEARS you should know ALL electronic parameters of at least audio amplification equipment. Challenge yourself and many secrets will be uncovered for you...
rex
245 posts
 
Audiophile Core Myth: If I can't hear the difference between X and Y, no one else can either. Anyone who says he can is delusional or terminally stupid.

Corollary: If I have an EE degree (or wish people to think I do), my opinions cannot be questioned.
themadmilkman
182 posts
 
Oh, that is too true, Rex.

Also, Marakanetz-- I'm curious about your "Zero Negative Feedback." Please do illuminate me, as I am a fan of no feedback designs.
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