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
#1 Any perceived differences in sound that cant be quantified by measurement is self delusion. (if so, buy yourself a Technics receiver from 1980 that has <.0001 distortion)
#2 Cone shaped feet under speakers/components have no effect on sound. (at least try them under a turntable)
#3 I understand at least 1/2 of what Marakanetz is talking about at any given moment.
Marakanetz - Just in case you, or anyone else really thought I was serious about that, let me make it more clear: The reference to WE 300B's was a joke to illustrate how ridiculous the presumption that, "I" know exactly what "YOU" (and the rest of the world) should prefer, really sounds to me. Sorry if I didn't make it sound ridiculous enough in my post!!(??)
Marakanetz

6 db/bit of dynamic range is the right answer, strange as it seems - check out any engineering textbook on digital signal processing.