Audio nonsense

oldhvymec

I agree with you 100%

Not every solution neatly appears when there's a problem but when the timing's just right, it's amazing what works. Sometimes the solutions are ahead of their time, or simply not yet known by those who can benefit from them.

 

Subscribing to known and accepted maths and physics that have accumulated over the history of human thought is not a belief system.

however using it as a means to prevent or thwart experimentation is

suggesting that it is capable of describing the sum total of all physical and biological phenomena in the universe is

Sometimes the solutions are ahead of their time,

my dear departed grandmother used to tell me wondrous tales of electric cars

one of the main problems they posed was their ghostly silence..

@waytoomuchstuff This forum may be a good source to flush out the pretenders from legitimate products.

The principle is very good on so many levels, but evidence is that the suggested means of implementing it is flawed.

On the other hand, would you support the establishment of an independent regulatory outfit to govern the sale of all products associated with audio industry?  Some already exist, of course, for certification, standards, safety and other reasons.

@dill , a bit hot under the collar? Look, everyone is entitled to set up their system any way they want. However, there is right and there is wrong. IMHO systems that are set up correctly always sound better to everyone that listens to them. Instruments sound more realistic and images more specific.

The other problem is most audiophiles do not really know what to expect out of a system because they never heard a correctly set up great system. They are out to sea without a compass. They love music and they are true audiophiles, they are just short on experience. I was like that for over a decade until I met Peter McGrath at Sound Components in Miami when I was a medical student. I think he is still working for Wilson and he is a renown recording engineer. He taught me what to listen for and had systems that were totally SOTA at the time. 

Setting up a system is like setting up a projector. You can never get a projector right by eye. It takes expensive equipment and somebody who knows what they are doing to calibrate a projector. I would never try to do it on my own. Setting up an audio system is even more complicated requiring more trial and error but with the right equipment it goes much faster if not less expensive. Depending on the room you have to be ready to spend money and change the aesthetic of the room. For many this is impossible do to the WAF. You have to have a room where everybody is willing to let the audio system dominate. You can do a lot with DSP but you are never going to make a bad room perfect with significant physical changes.

Another thing. Many would be surprised at how well less expensive systems can sound when calibrated correctly, much better than expensive systems that are not. There is hidden performance is a lot of systems. Everybody already has more than 1/2 the equipment to do the job, the laptop computer. All you need is a USB microphone and a computer program. You run a sin sweep on your system, a continuously accelerating sin wave from 10 Hz to 20 kHz. You do one channel at a time. You will see the frequency response of each channel and they will be anything but flat and the channels will be very different. I have seen differences of 10 dB between channels. That means at a given frequency one channel will be twice as loud as the other. Shift your balance control 10dB and see what happens to your image. When this happens only at certain frequencies it is hard to pick out but it does smear the image. Instruments will still have a location but they will be blurred. People will tell you their system images fine and they honestly think they do. They just have not heard a system that really images. They have nothing to compare it to.  

Many will argue, sometimes violently with this assessment and I am truly sorry. This is a fact of life. If your system is set up correctly you are extremely lucky. If you want to improve your system an order of magnitude get the darn microphone and get started. I promise you will be amazed at what you can do.