You just don’t get it Ethan. Kavi listens to the direct mic feed, then to his recording of that mic feed. He listens for any difference between the two, for any degradation caused by the recorder. He has concluded that his recorder is the most accurate, lowest-distortion, transparent recorder available at this time (when he finds something more transparent, he will use it.). You claim he’s wrong? Gee, I just don’t know who has more credibility here---a Grammy Award-winning professional recording engineer, or you. Who are you again?
Do equipment stands have an impact on electronics?
Mechanical grounding or isolation from vibration has been a hot topic as of late. Many know from experience that footers, stands and other vibration technologies impact things that vibrate a lot like speakers, subs or even listening rooms (my recent experience with an "Energy room"). The question is does it have merit when it comes to electronics and if so why? Are there plausible explanations for their effect on electronics or suggested measurement paradigms to document such an effect?
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Well, he’s wrong. And you (and he) are the ones who don’t get it. And Argument From Authority never impresses me. But you don’t have to believe me. Honest, I don’t care who you believe. But if you're serious about understanding audio, you’d do well to cancel your subscription to the audiophile magazines and join the AES instead. |
My two cents as a 40 year technology professional who only dabbles in audio as a hobby these days is that its always all about how noise and distortion is effectively kept to a minimum and more ways than ever to tackle that beast cost effectively these days. No individual or entity has exclusive rights to a secret sauce. The rest is mostly personal preferences which differs for each but has nothing to do with science and technology solving a problem better for the most part. Also I will cast some lots in Ethans camp though its a bit narrow-minded and say that room acoustics are perhaps the first and primary thing to consider before during and after buying any home audio solution. If you get the acoustic fit into the room right to meet your needs its pretty clear sailing these days from there. |
ethan_winer ... Yes, many fabulous recordings have been made on old school analog equipment. But that equipment has lower fidelity than even consumer-grade modern digital converters. So again, the perception that analog recordings are more "lifelike" than digital is a psychoacoustics effect caused by the addition of distortion.This is an old, tired and transparently silly argument. It's the logical fallacy of causal reasoning. If distortion were the key to the preference for analog recording, then obviously more distortion would only improve those recordings. But of course, those who've made the best quality analog recordings typically did so while working to keep those distortions to the lowest possible level. You have simply confused cause and effect. Honest, I don’t care who you believe.Oh, you care very, very much ... so much so that you've resorted to profanity-laced ad hominem attacks here that have resulted in multiple deleted posts. |
Man, I’m still surprised by the amount of hubris out there. I’ll never forget the first time I heard a direct-to-disc LP, the second Sheffield. That label’s recording engineer Doug Sax went back in time, resurrecting recording without an electronic recorder at all, cutting a lacquer directly from his mixing console. The transparency, the "aliveness" of that recording, was astounding. It showed how much distortion was being added by the recorder itself. The bypass test, in which the component being tested is inserted into the reproduction chain, the audibility of it’s insertion being listened for, is the ultimate test of a components transparency. That audibility will vary according to who the listener is, it has been established. The "better" the listener, the more audible the component. Perhaps Kavi Alexander has a much lower tolerance for digital and/or solid state distortion artifacts than your average AES member. To claim that his recordings sound "good" because they contain pleasing "musical distortion", when one has not even heard one of his recordings, and further that Mr. Alexander is "wrong" for preferring analog to digital (and tubes to solid state!), is not only ignorant, but arrogant. The lack of humility is a very unflattering trait. |
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