What Makes a Good RIAA or Line Stage?

Dear Thom: This is the subject of your thread: +++++ " What Makes a Good RIAA or Line Stage? " +++++

We all already talk about many subjects for a better audio device design and I think that other one is lay-out, two same designs could sound different with different lay-out. Not many people think seriously about but the circuit board layout is of paramount importance for the performance in audio devices.

Regards and enjoy the music.
Raul.

Hi Raul,

Yes, layout is indeed important. Jim Hagerman is too modest to admit it in this thread, but he put enormous amounts of work into the layout of the Trumpet. I recall him mentioning that he went through some 14 major architectural layout changes.

In order to get the best performance out of a single chassis design, he kept returning to the two tiered layout. Yes, grounding schemes and general layout plays a big part the final product - especially one so sensitive to noise as an RIAA stage.

We're all coming from a perspective that all of the components under consideration are at a very high level of resolution - that we're all after a design that will give us as much resolution we can get. I'm debating those special components which make it past the final cut if you will, and "fun factor" has to be a major acceptance criterion. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either lying or is a tortured soul.

Surely, once you've peeled away layers of distortion, input overload and such, you can never tolerate these flaws in a component. As I've written on several occasions, a poorly designed RIAA stage can overload and sound uncannily like tracing distortion. Nobody wants this, and yet there is a surprisingly large number of highly regarded components which exhibit this and other design flaws.

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This thread is taking a philosophical turn, but I think that's o.k. because it gives us insight into the whole person - be it the designer or the end user.

I always look at any design as a manifestation of the designer's personality. I've known a couple of audio designers who could be characterized as having obsessive compulsive disorder. Their designs were equally dysfunctional. In spite of their painstaking attention to detail, their end product was as flawed as their personalities were.

I am not arguing for being sloppy and careless in stating the above. Please do not misinterpret this as being the case.

I have to "out" you on this whole "false colorations" thing however. Your "it has to be perfect" mantra is really tiring me out. You are beginning to sound like one of those Audio Puritans.

Given a choice of a "correct" design (whatever the heck that is) which doesn't allow me to enjoy 30% of my record collection and a "flawed", colored design which allows me to pull out ANY record in my shelf without having to ask if its sonics are "worth" putting on my record player, I'll take the latter in a heartbeat.

I can't begin to count the number of components I've owned which took all of the fun out of hi-fi because they were "accurate".

I'm sorry, Raul but as good as the Essential is, it is as colored as many of the other fine RIAA/line stages I rank in the top tier (and the Essential is a fine piece). Please get over it and realize that no one can be all things to all people.

Is the very fine Essential is more harmonically correct than many of the other fabulous components out there? Absolutely not. The Essential to my ears is very much an Avery Fischer Hall type of component - a very lean and modern sound. Other fine units we've discussed in various threads cover other parts of the sonic spectrum - ranging towards pre-renovation Carnegie hall, for example.

Which one is correct? Both are correct and neither is. At some point, one is forced to choose, and here's where the "fun factor" helps to break the tie.

I'm coming down on you hard, because in your writing, you are portraying yourself as being 180 degrees apart from my sense of you and your goals after our fun day together two weeks ago. I think you are more in the "audio fun" camp than you prefer to admit in public. This may be a language thing, but consider yourself "outed". Please don't redouble your efforts to prove me wrong. Resistance is futile.

Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and let your hair down. You'll feel better. I promise you.

Regarding Audio Puritans, I will go so far as to discourage perspective Galibier customers from buying one of my turntables if they give me so much as a hint that they are Audio Puritans. Life is too short to work with someone whose sonic goals are that different from mine. I would prefer that they purchase a mainstream turntable and let me spend a weekend climbing a cliff or going skiing.

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About marketing ...

"The lady doth protest too much, methinks"

You don't need to tell me that your work came out of passion, because as I mentioned earlier, none of us are buying 40 foot sailboats from our income in audio. All of us are about passion, and I applaud yours and Jose's efforts, because you have achieved something very special. Is it better than everything else out there? Absolutely not. Let's not create a mythology here. This is what I object to.

We need to return to the subject of this thread. I'm getting tired of this.

Cheers,
Thom @ Galibier

Jose, or anyone else, have you correlated RIAA error to colorations? As in, error of x amount or of y type leads to a z coloration.

Dan, in my experience the term "coloration" involves 2 facets:

On one hand you have a measurable deviation of flat frequency response of X dB, sustained over Y Hertz of bandwidth, which will cause an identifiable sound similar to that produced by the bands of an equalizer. ABX tests have been conducted showing that the audibility threshold is lower as the bandwidth of the deviation is increased. This simply means that we are more sensible to this error when it spans several octaves. RIAA stages are particularly vulnerable to this kind of coloration, simply because the RIAA curve is made up of 3 turnover frequencies affecting big portions of the audible band.

On the other hand, coloration is also a characteristic sound caused by a circuit's more intrinsic factors that can't readily be measured with conventional frequency-domain analysis. Nevertheless it manifests itself as a "fingerprint" in the sound (punching bass for instance). This type of coloration, at times enjoyable, will reveal itself more with the passing of time. This is mainly the reason why ABX kind of tests commonly reveal the first type of coloration, but fail with the second.

Enjoyable or not, decreasing coloration is a good thing in order to preclude our ear from extrapolating the musical signal into a predictable sound.

Raul, give it a rest. You're making the same points over and over again.

The salesmanship is getting old.

Thom, a replay curve that deviates more from the RIAA standard can sound better on select recordings, but it will almost certainly also sound worse on other recordings, compared to a replay curve that deviates less. My experience is that a flat RIAA curve is likely to allow you to enjoy more of your LP collection, not less. If 0.1dB or better is possible, go for it, as I think that on the whole, you will be ahead. The one categorical exception is when an LP contains sampling noise (sometimes CRT monitor noise). There are albums by Kraftwerk and Lorie Anderson that have this which I find painful. Everything sounds find until the sampler kicks in, and then I look for a wad of cotton, or wish that I'd designed an RIAA playback network that shelved down the top end (grin).

As an aside, the other possible solution for an RIAA playback curve would be to implement an EQ trim control, like with the FM Acoustics designs, or maybe a Cello/Viola Pallette. I've listened to and played with both, and yes, I can see their point.

I also find that a theoretically "better" solution - better power supply, better regulators, better amplification circuitry etc. will nearly always improve the sound of nearly every LP that you own. I don't find that "more accurate" means that you become more picky about the LPs that you can find enjoyable. Yes, you may become more aware of recording, EQ or mastering issues, but the music and performance comes through even more strongly, more than enough to overwhelm trivial concerns about the recording. The better my designs become, the more I appreciate a greater number of musicians.

I do find, however, that when it comes to component selection, you have to use your ears and subjective taste, in addition to your head. I've picked components that on paper should have been the cat's meow, but in listening turned out to be a pig's kiss instead. The designer cannot know each minute particular of every component that he chooses, and as they say, the devil is often in the details. So unlike the case with overall topology or circuitry or layout, with components I find it necessary to have a "range of candidates" on hand and go with whatever sounds the best - in the context of the circuit being tested. Engaging in this is more like cooking or choosing clothes than it is intellectual design, and is the phase where the more artistic types can strut their stuff, and pull level with or even ahead of other designers who may be their intellectual superiors. That's the fun part about audio (designing it as well as using it) - there is a place for the sensibilities as well as the intellect.

regards, jonathan carr