Huh? What magical event do you think happened around 1990-ish? Did it change the orbit of the earth or something like that?
Earlier mistakes w.r.t. THD while ignoring IMD were recognized, fixed the most egregious problems with digital, shift to portable listening habits, MP3 in the mid-90s, demographic shifts, off-shore manufacturing, you name it. It all resulted in a commodification of audio with less emphasis on high end and less "real" things to sell to audiophiles/budding audiophiles.
So you don't think anything in audio has improved since 1990-ish? That's pretty silly.
Coming to that conclusion is pretty silly, but look at amplifiers, most of the "improvements", except Class-D, would fall under art, not engineering, i.e. voiced for a particular target listener. Sure there are ever more expensive units every year, but pick two with the same design goals, and you would have a hard time telling apart a 30 year old and 3 year old one. Old is new w.r.t. tubes, which comes down to preference, not engineering. Digital has plateaued effectively for some time, though, again, voiced products result in differentiated sales, but not an advance in state of the art, no matter the level of special pleading. One area that has probably advanced is power delivery, but is that due to poor product design?
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I‘m going to throw in the ‘weakest link‘ philosophy, although I have no personal attachment.
A system is only as good as its weakest link. Spending should be directed to ensure that system components are balanced in performance and that no single component becomes a bottleneck in the chain. |
I think the op is arguing that it would be rare that your speakers would not be the weakest link. |
The posts on this thread thread appear to have deviated considerably from commenting specifically on the original poster’s postulate. In my opinion it would be considerably more interesting if subsequent posts were to concentrate on the issue at hand.
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Hey Pesky
Thanks for the REFOCUING of the main issues here.
Which can be stated as
1) can anyone provide evidence that a low db speaker is tube friendly?
2) which other speaker design will out perform a FR/Compression tweet with tube amplification?
Folks are posting opinions which have nothing whatsoever to do with these 2 crucial/critical/yet unresolved questions
Neither of which has been presented to the audiophile community , at least not as clean, concise as I have.
WE are in consideration of the performance of a tube amplification, , specifically which sytle of engineering designs will best suit the requirements of tube amplification.
Most are just ranting and raving opinions which have nothing at all to do with this critical question.
I am not going to rehash what I wrote above.
Only those who have actual experience with FR , canunderstand many valid points i raise in my posts.
If audiophiles wish to hang on to old rusty, crusty ideas about tube amplification and speakers required, go right ahead,
Remain in lala land.
You are missing out on acheiving high fidelity, which is the gaol of our hobby.
My wife suggests i wait til i have cash for the real deal, Berlin FR and pass up on the 2 chinese labs making clones of the Berlin :abs FR.
This is the road i will take, It will be some time before i can recover from the $1800 Thor upgrade disaster.
Box/xover designs are worthless trash AFAIC
Seas, Scanspeak, Troels Gravesen are all working with old dated trash technology. |
I‘m going to throw in the ‘weakest link‘ philosophy, although I have no personal attachment.
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Richard Gray loaned me his baby Gray, a modded Dyanco EL35 from the 70's.
Closely matched the Jadis Defy7 which retailed for $9k.
Just about any well designed tube amp will do, but as for speakers,
Only FR will meet the requirements to voice tube amplification. |
