What annoys me today in marketing and media that too often today then talking on hi-fi, science is replaced by bizarre belief structures and marketing fluff, leading to a decades-long stagnation of the audiophile domain. Science makes progress, pseudo-science doesn’t. Hi-fi world is filled by pseudoscience, dogma and fruitloopery to the extent that it resembles a fundamentalist religion. Loudspeaker performance hasn’t tangibly improved in forty years and vast sums are spent addressing the wrong problems.
Business for Engineers: Marketers Lie article points tout that marketing tells lies — falsehoods — things that serve to convey a false impression. Marketing’s purpose is to determining how the product will be branded, positioned, and sold. It seems that there too many snake oil rubbish products marketed in the name of hifi. It is irritating to watch the stupid people in the world be fooled.
In EEVblog #29 – Audiophile Audiophoolery video David L. Jones (from EEVBlog) cuts loose on the Golden Ear Audiophiles and all their Audiophoolery snake oil rubbish. The information presented in Dave’s unique non-scripted overly enthusiastic style! He’s an enthusiastic chap, but couldn’t agree more with many of the opinions he expressed: Directional cables, thousand dollar IEC power cables, and all that rubbish. Monster Cable gets mostered. Note what he says right at the end: “If you pay ridiculous money for these cable you will hear a difference, but don’t expect your friends to”. If you want to believe, you will.
My points on hifi-nonsense:
One of the tenets of audiophile systems is that they are assembled from components, allegedly so that the user can “choose” the best combination. This is pretty largely a myth. The main advantage of component systems is that the dealer can sell ridiculously expensive cables, hand-knitted by Peruvian virgins and soaked in snake oil, to connect it all up. Say goodbye to the noughties: Yesterday’s hi-fi biz is BUSTED, bro article asks are the days of floorstanders and separates numbered? If traditional two-channel audio does have a future, then it could be as the preserve of high resolution audio. Sony has taken the industry lead in High-Res Audio.
HIFI Cable Humbug and Snake oil etc. blog posting rightly points out that there is too much emphasis placed on spending huge sums of money on HIFI cables. Most of what is written about this subject is complete tripe. HIFI magazines promote myths about the benefits of all sorts of equipment. I am as amazed as the writer that that so called audiophiles and HIFI journalists can be fooled into thinking that very expensive speaker cables etc. improve performance. I generally agree – most of this expensive interconnect cable stuff is just plain overpriced.
I can agree that in analogue interconnect cables there are few cases where better cables can really result in cleaner sound, but usually getting any noticeable difference needs that the one you compare with was very bad yo start with (clearly too thin speaker wires with resistance, interconnect that picks interference etc..) or the equipment in the systems are so that they are overly-sensitive to cable characteristics (generally bad equipment designs can make for example cable capacitance affect 100 times or more than it should). Definitely too much snake oil. Good solid engineering is all that is required (like keep LCR low, Teflon or other good insulation, shielding if required, proper gauge for application and the distance traveled). Geometry is a factor but not in the same sense these yahoos preach and deceive.
In digital interconnect cables story is different than on those analogue interconnect cables. Generally in digital interconnect cables the communication either works, does not work or sometimes work unreliably. The digital cable either gets the bits to the other end or not, it does not magically alter the sound that goes through the cable. You need to have active electronics like digital signal processor to change the tone of the audio signal traveling on the digital cable, cable will just not do that.
But this digital interconnect cables characteristics has not stopped hifi marketers to make very expensive cable products that are marketed with unbelievable claims. Ethernet has come to audio world, so there are hifi Ethernet cables. How about 500 dollar Ethernet cable? That’s ridiculous. And it’s only 1.5 meters. Then how about $10,000 audiophile ethernet cable? Bias your dielectrics with the Dielectric-Bias ethernet cable from AudioQuest: “When insulation is unbiased, it slows down parts of the signal differently, a big problem for very time-sensitive multi-octave audio.” I see this as complete marketing crap speak. It seems that they’re made for gullible idiots. No professional would EVER waste money on those cables. Audioquest even produces iPhone sync cables in similar price ranges.
HIFI Cable insulators/supports (expensive blocks that keep cables few centimeters off the floor) are a product category I don’t get. They typically claim to offer incredible performance as well as appealing appearance. Conventional cable isolation theory holds that optimal cable performance can be achieved by elevating cables from the floor in an attempt to control vibrations and manage static fields. Typical cable elevators are made from electrically insulating materials such as wood, glass, plastic or ceramics. Most of these products claim superior performance based upon the materials or methods of elevation. I don’t get those claims.
Along with green magic markers on CDs and audio bricks is another item called the wire conditioner. The claim is that unused wires do not sound the same as wires that have been used for a period of time. I don’t get this product category. And I don’t believe claims in the line like “Natural Quartz crystals along with proprietary materials cause a molecular restructuring of the media, which reduces stress, and significantly improves its mechanical, acoustic, electric, and optical characteristics.” All sounds like just pure marketing with no real benefits.
CD no evil, hear no evil. But the key thing about the CD was that it represented an obvious leap from earlier recording media that simply weren’t good enough for delivery of post-produced material to the consumer to one that was. Once you have made that leap, there is no requirement to go further. The 16 bits of CD were effectively extended to 18 bits by the development of noise shaping, which allows over 100dB signal to noise ratio. That falls a bit short of the 140dB maximum range of human hearing, but that has never been a real goal. If you improve the digital media, the sound quality limiting problem became the transducers; the headphones and the speakers.
We need to talk about SPEAKERS: Soz, ‘audiophiles’, only IT will break the sound barrier article says that today’s loudspeakers are nowhere near as good as they could be, due in no small measure to the presence of “traditional” audiophile products. that today’s loudspeakers are nowhere near as good as they could be, due in no small measure to the presence of “traditional” audiophile products. I can agree with this. Loudspeaker performance hasn’t tangibly improved in forty years and vast sums are spent addressing the wrong problems.
We need to talk about SPEAKERS: Soz, ‘audiophiles’, only IT will break the sound barrier article makes good points on design, DSPs and the debunking of traditional hi-fi. Science makes progress, pseudo-science doesn’t. Legacy loudspeakers are omni-directional at low frequencies, but as frequency rises, the radiation becomes more directional until at the highest frequencies the sound only emerges directly forwards. Thus to enjoy the full frequency range, the listener has to sit in the so-called sweet spot. As a result legacy loudspeakers with sweet spots need extensive room treatment to soak up the deficient off-axis sound. New tools that can change speaker system designs in the future are omni-directional speakers and DSP-based room correction. It’s a scenario ripe for “disruption”.
Computers have become an integrated part of many audio setups. Back in the day integrated audio solutions in PCs had trouble earning respect. Ode To Sound Blaster: Are Discrete Audio Cards Still Worth the Investment? posting tells that it’s been 25 years since the first Sound Blaster card was introduced (a pretty remarkable feat considering the diminished reliance on discrete audio in PCs) and many enthusiasts still consider a sound card an essential piece to the PC building puzzle. It seems that in general onboard sound is finally “Good Enough”, and has been “Good Enough” for a long time now. For most users it is hard to justify the high price of special sound card on PC anymore. There are still some PCs with bad sound hardware on motherboard and buttload of cheap USB adapters with very poor performance. However, what if you want the best sound possible, the lowest noise possible, and don’t really game or use the various audio enhancements? You just want a plain-vanilla sound card, but with the highest quality audio (products typically made for music makers). You can find some really good USB solutions that will blow on-board audio out of the water for about $100 or so.
Although solid-state technology overwhelmingly dominates today’s world of electronics, vacuum tubes are holding out in two small but vibrant areas. Some people like the sound of tubes. The Cool Sound of Tubes article says that a commercially viable number of people find that they prefer the sound produced by tubed equipment in three areas: musical-instrument (MI) amplifiers (mainly guitar amps), some processing devices used in recording studios, and a small but growing percentage of high-fidelity equipment at the high end of the audiophile market. Keep those filaments lit, Design your own Vacuum Tube Audio Equipment article claims that vacuum tubes do sound better than transistors (before you hate in the comments check out this scholarly article on the topic). The difficulty is cost; tube gear is very expensive because it uses lots of copper, iron, often point-to-point wired by hand, and requires a heavy metal chassis to support all of these parts. With this high cost and relative simplicity of circuitry (compared to modern electronics) comes good justification for building your own gear. Maybe this is one of the last frontiers of do-it-yourself that is actually worth doing.
1,580 Comments
Tomi Engdahl says:
Norman Taylor if it’s a valve amp it’s not hi-fi in the first place.
Chris Cowey Not entirely true. It is possible to have tube amps with extreme linearity, low noise, negligible distortion.
OTOH if one uses a SE tube power amp, without feedback and maybe even without an output transformer, well, then they are definitely listening through a filter, except for the very first few milliwatts.
A weight on a cover is not going to do squat about vacuum tube microphony. This is what snake oil relies upon: an individual smart enough with just enough knowledge (but not enough) to think themselves into an explanation of how something could work…when it actually does nothing at all.
Tomi Engdahl says:
I just wish more people were willing to admit that the characteristics they like of tube amps are all forms of distortion. It’s perfectly okay to prefer it, but it’s wrong to say it’s more pure.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Depends on the signal. Run tube processors on everything during production, solid state for playback. That way you get precise control, the wonderful sound of tubes, and they aren’t just crunching the whole master but being applied where needed.
Tomi Engdahl says:
From https://www.facebook.com/share/p/r7yLer7SmpW7szeZ/
Simon Humphries I’ve worked with horns in professional systems. They are for directivity in large spaces and always a fidelity compromise. Ive commissioned multiway setups and even with expensive DSP behind them the result is a compromise. Even in a large space phasing and colouration (distortion) issues persist. It might look “cool” and be made of fancy materials but it’s still a horn. These don’t even have proper waveguide shaping or loading. They are just for flexing.
The only “horn” arrangement that works for hifi is the time aligned dual concentric. (Tannoy or Fyne)
lszh cables says:
We are a company specializing in the production and sales of low smoke halogen free cables with 10 years of industry experience. https://www.lszh-cables.com/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Very few horns actually qualify as high fidelity, a lot fewer than horn fans want to believe. The majority are various shades of awful. High sensitivity is useless wankery outside of pro audio situations where fewer speakers for the SPL are desired for logistical reasons, sacrificing quality for quantity every time. As for integration?
Tomi Engdahl says:
40% of Audiophiles May Be Gone Soon, and No One Is Replacing Them
https://www.headphonesty.com/2024/09/audiophiles-gone-soon/
YouTube data shows that most audiophiles are old dudes arguing over gear no one else wants.
I recently came across some startling data from the YouTube channel, Audio Resurgence, which showed just how small and, well, old our community is becoming. And if the numbers don’t change, almost 40% of audiophiles could be gone in the next few years, with no one to replace them.
The first video (a Krell KSA 80 amplifier review), gathered around 9,500 views.
But, here’s the kicker: every single viewer was male. Not a single woman tuned in.
That’s not even the worst part. No one under 35 viewed it as well. Of all the viewers, 44% were between 55 and 64, while 41% were over 65.
Despite the video’s lighter tone and trendier approach, the audience was still the same: older men who’ve been into the hobby for decades.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Have a read Tom Neudorfl there are some big words in there, but feel free to ask and adult for help with them. http://www.gedlee.com/Papers/Distortion_AES_I.pdf?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR2Azzt2RqSX4-gW5TkmCHKdL-EGaG_t5p1ld62jm3IgZ2KKK68BpHu6-G0_aem_U3FLv063sTdMg2HeYINuiQ
Tomi Engdahl says:
“Audiophilia” sounds way dirtier than it should.
Oh, definitely a paraphelia. Many of them even have a vinyl fetish.
So is “audiophallic” which can often be used to describe the larger speakers, if you know what I mean…
Tomi Engdahl says:
Amplifiers have two limits. One, a voltage limit, at which point the output signal will clip and introduce distortion. Two, a current limit, at which point the output signal will again clip and introduce distortion. Ideally, the voltage limit will be reached at the same point that the current limit is reached. This is the condition of maximum dynamic range.
Connecting an 8 ohm speaker to a 3 ohm amplifier will work, but the voltage limit will occur before the current limit occurs. This is not normally a problem, as you probably will not run the system at maximum volume.
The issue of high return signal will not occur, as these are audio frequencies, not radio frequencies, and characteristic impedance will not enter in to the picture. (This is not a transmission line. lol)
I am not sure about the transformer option. I don’t think you are going to notice a difference running 8 ohm speakers from a 3 ohm amplifier. Good luck.
Tomi Engdahl says:
It’s not actually an “audio transmitter” , the audio amplifier you have is capable of producing its rated power( without overheating the output stage ) into impedances of 3ohms or more. That’s why it’s “RATED” impedance is 3ohms, it will function perfectly well with an 8 ohm speaker, you will just have to wind the volume control up a bit.
The speaker impedance is nominal anyway, the actual impedance at a particular frequency is determined by the type of enclosure the speaker is mounted in.
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_characteristics_of_dynamic_loudspeakers?fbclid=IwY2xjawFn6aJleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHeDjdfywDEgrjr6Erd8_BnqlaroGlw9CblXNeP9p9qnP8t8lKApoG0K9Qw_aem_4GdRF4DCx6A9_0JHrZ-1nw#/media/File%3ASpeaker_impedance.svg
Tomi Engdahl says:
Bob Turner
Sunshine S
I can’t agree more to Bobs post ! Speaker impedance is like one piece of a puzzle that has A thousand pieces ! The more you learn about speakers, the more you realize you don’t know about speakers & how they react to different situations!
Absorption coefficients !
RT60!
Temperature!
Relative Humidity!
Barometric Pressure !
All effect the loading of a speaker & hence the (impedance)
Tomi Engdahl says:
If sound quality was that dependent on exact speaker impedance, every single setup you have ever listened to would sound like dog crap in a wet card board box. The rated impedance of a speaker is always a nominal value. The actual impedance varies wildly across the frequency range of the speaker and depends not only on the speaker element itself but also on the cabinet, placement and, to some extent, on the power levels you’re playing at. I wish people would stop trying to apply magic to audio, it’s complicated enough with all these myths.
If your amplifier is rated for loads of 3 ohms, then any speaker that doesn’t go below that impedance will work perfectly fine.
If it doesn’t sound good? There may be a million reasons for that, impedance mismatch is not one of them.
Edit: I got a tad carried away there and managed to miss that basically all my points had already been made by Bob
Tomi Engdahl says:
Timothy Croom I was messing about with electronics in the 70′s and that was when headphone impedance changed from ~1000ohms down to 8ohm levels, and crystal earpieces were common, and if you worked with telephone equipment, they were 600ohms.
Tomi Engdahl says:
By the time most people reach adulthood they no longer believe in magic. Not everyone though.
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.stereophile.com/audaciousaudio/krell_ksa-300s_power_amplifier/index.html?fbclid=IwY2xjawFx_H5leHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHfj9RNi1L0zI_02_A6b9YmZmlOzGhwuqUuUBUNcTcF87RhIA655R0suWVw_aem_4VomOFWYV_Jn1J8s7VOqVA
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tim Pailthorpe like Bill Monroe said, “if it ain’t cryo, it ain’t no part of nothing”.
Tomi Engdahl says:
I wonder if these snake oil salesmen believe in their oil, or if it’s all a big act
Tomi Engdahl says:
The latest audiofool jargon is “micro detail.”
When you hear this BS audiofool term, you can just turn around and walk away or take off your glove and slap the fool in the face with it.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Most class D amps more or less measure the actual current through the voice coil and use that as feedback.
Quality integrated ones (as in the speaker) also add drive tuning for the actual speaker driver, as well as dsp processing to correct for non-linearities and other flaws.
Has been done for many years, see e.g.
https://www.aes.org/technical/heyser/aes134.cfm
Ölä Sïgürðsön this is all true and indeed is why high power class D sound reinforcement is capable of astonishing results these days. But…what does this have to do with the nonsense of “current-driven” amplification?
Tomi Engdahl says:
Everything about your loudspeaker is designed with voltage drive in mind, starting from the proper operation of the crossover right to the linearity of the drivers. If you had a speaker designed for current not voltage, there are potential improvements.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cracks me up when the phooles poo poo solid state amps and cd players with .000-nothing distortion and 100 + dynamic range, then in the next breath rave about the magical sound from LP’s.
70db dynamic range and 1-2 % distortion at best with a perfectly cut record and quality cartridge/stylus all the while playing through a tube amplifier also with 70 db dynamic range and 1-2 % distortion.
Greg Glavich Your generalisation tends to falsify the truth.
An LP has a dynamic range of 60dB (outer grooves). But tube amps with a DR of 70 dB and THD of 1% were superceded in the 1950s.
The PPP tube amp which i designed and built as a diploma project many years ago has noise floor of -100 dB and THD at full power at 0.08%.
Bart Youngblood My amp was fairly conventional with two pairs of EL34 pentodes in push pull parallel mode to give 50W power bandwidth 20Hz to 50kHz with THD at 0.08%
NFB of 26dB was required to achieve the figs required, and unconditional stability was a prerequisite. The OPTs. designed by Arthur Radford were built for me by Sowter UK.
OPT = Audio Output Transformer
Tomi Engdahl says:
Has a place in Studios where you need to “Sync” several ADCs and DACs but it’s totally useless for home audio…
Konstantinos Tziv I agree. And in studio you wouldn’t go for such overpriced stuff.
Also, see https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/does-your-studio-need-digital-master-clock
TL;DR
“Overall, it should be clear from these tests that employing an external master clock cannot and will not improve the sound quality of a digital audio system. It might change it, and subjectively that change might be preferred, but it won’t change things for the better in any technical sense. A‑D conversion performance will not improve: the best that can be hoped for is that the A‑D conversion won’t become significantly degraded. In most cases, the technical performance will actually become worse, albeit only marginally so.”
Ölä Sïgürðsön Thank you, this was very helpful. Home systems don’t seem to need this.
A “master clock” allows local oscillators to lock to the same frequency. Every piece of digital gear has at least one internal oscillator that acts as the master clock for that piece of equipment. These oscillators are usually crystal based and very accurate but can vary with temperature and age. So if you connect two or more pieces of equipment together their oscillators will have slightly different frequencies. You would never be able to hear this difference if we’re just talking about clock rate as the 10MHz might be 10,000,005Hz for one clock while the other is 9.999,995Hz which down converted to the sampling rate is minuscule. The problem is at the interface between the gear and arises due to accumulated phase error of the two clocks when one clock ”walks” past the other. It can lead to dropped frames of the digital interface. Most digital audio systems have an error correction feature that replaces dropped samples with interpolated data. This is how CDs handle disc read errors. Home systems where you have maybe a CD player feeding a DAC the error rate is so low it’s something you’ll never hear. In a studio where you’re connecting a digital mixer to digital effects to a digital recording system with maybe 50 tracks it can quickly accumulate to become problematic. So they will designate one piece of equipment as the master clock and distribute it to all the other equipment. The “slave” clocks in the other equipment will lock their phase locked loops to the phase of the master clock and the whole system will be synchronized. You could pretty much use any fairly accurate clock to lock the whole thing together and modules that are sold as master clocks are probably better described as clock distribution as they provide multiple outputs at a defined level typically 1V into 50Ohms.
Bonus nachos: 10 MHz is not a frequency that is ever used in digital audio.
Vogel Perspektiven No matter how fancy the 10MHz clock, is has to be locked to some frequency that is a multiple of the sample rate.
It’s function is to separate you from your money.
Master clocks are only useful if you have several devices generating digital audio that needs to be synchronized for playback or mixing.
So useless for most listening situations
A master clock is used in pro audio installations to ensure all equipment is sample-synced to a single source. This is especially important when bouncing audio between different applications, external devices, or syncing audio to video at variable frame rates to prevent sync drift. While digital is ostensibly generation-proof, some drift can occur without a master sync. There is some benefit of sound quality, as well, especially at higher sample rates.
I know rubidium and cesium clocks are more accurate then quartz but are they need for music? I think not. Unless you have excess cash you want to depart from.
It’s this:
The Esoteric CD players and DACs have the option to hook up this overblown crystal oven in lieu of the internal crystal. Why? Audiophools have themselves convinced they can hear the barely at the threshold of laboratory measurement levels of difference in jitter that might result from a less than perfect crystal.
Reduces the thickness of your wallet allowing for alignment of your spine and chakras to make your soundstage more transparent
Tomi Engdahl says:
Being an audiophile isn’t only about what you can hear, it’s often about what you believe you can hear.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Repairing The Questionable £25,000 Tom Evans Audiophile Pre-Amp
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/14/repairing-the-questionable-25000-tom-evans-audiophile-pre-amp/
It’s not much of a secret that in the world of ‘audiophile gear’ there is a lot of snake oil and deception, including many products that are at best of questionable value. The Tom Evans Mastergroove SR mkIII preamplifier is one example of this, as [Mark] from the Mend it Mark YouTube channel found in a recent video when he got one to repair which the manufacturer claimed ‘could not be fixed’. This marvel of audio engineering provides amplification for record players, for the low-low price of only twenty-five thousand quid, or about 29.000 US bucks. So what’s inside one of these expensive marvels?
Claiming to be a high-end unit, with only ten units produced per year, you’d expect a gold-plated PCB with excellent noise isolation. The unit does come with an absolutely massive external power supply that dwarfs the preamplifier itself, but the real surprise came after opening up the unit itself to take a peek at the damage, some of which was caused by transport.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why Your 16-bit CDs Might Sound Better Than 24-bit Hi-Res Streaming
https://www.headphonesty.com/2024/11/cds-offer-sound-quality-high-res-streaming/
Tomi Engdahl says:
News: Bose buys McIntosh
Get your popcorn ready for the audiophool reactions.
Bose Corporation Snaps Up High-End Audio Brand McIntosh
https://www.forbes.com/sites/marksparrow/2024/11/19/bose-corporation-snaps-up-high-end-audio-brand-mcintosh/?fbclid=IwY2xjawGptShleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHZUg7OI30zFSmJtF6RIlqYqrDhmdHakkrMg4vWzG92-dt-YBr07xnMUiNw_aem_d_QvHEro8hGYCqeTtY20JQ
Bose Corporation has just announced that it has acquired the McIntosh Group, the high-end and iconic U.S. audio brand that also owns the Italian premium speaker make Sonus faber. The McIntosh Group manufactures high-end amplifiers, speakers, turntables and other audio products. The move significantly expands Bose’s portfolio.
This strategic move brings together two industry pioneers with more than 175 years of technical expertise and a reputation for craftsmanship and excellent sound quality appreciated by audiophiles around the world
Tomi Engdahl says:
a normal person’s “overkill” is an audiophool’s gotta have.
A standard single-precision floating point value has only a 23-bit mantissa.
The reason such things make sense is that they are so trivial to implement that smaller word size/integer implementations are pointless; chips with more-hefty circuits are trivial to fabricate, and high-precision/high-dynamic range claims are good for product marketing.
You need a good deal of precision/dynamic range when you’re processing audio (i.e., creation). For playback — not so much.