10 biggest lies in audio

Very good - in general.

I'm not sure i agree with the vacume tube - it depends if you're going for a coloured 'warm' sound or a transparent 'i want to hear exactly what's on the CD sound'

That article is strictly hifi, as in guitar amps you want lots of nice distortion that you get with tubes and isn't as easy otherwise.

The rest is spot on though.
 
cornyfeet said:
i disagree with the power one, used a tacima and helps a lot.

another area where clean power has an impact on performance is in overclocking, an example of this would the product that helped 'clean' the power fed to ram to assist oc'ing.

http://www.ocztechnology.com/products/power_management/ocz_ddr_booster_diagnostic_device-eol

would this indicate that power supply has an impact on electronic devices performance?
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Surely cleaning up the power as much as you like still means your amp/reciever uses the same power module inside it and hence the internal components are just "seeing" the same amount of power. I've never understood that one.

Comparing to overclocking is perhaps not a fair analogy. You hardly "overclock" your Hi Fi system by definition? To make it anything like overclocking you would have to be modifying internally how hard your amp drives said speakers etc?
 
The point is that a well designed amp (and indeed motherboard) should have a high enough quality power stage for the power source not to effect it.

In overlocking stable power is important - so a decent overclockers mobo will have a good power stage. Same applies in amplifiers.
 
I fully agree with that article except the 'burn in' part.

Capacitors all have a settling time, determined by the manufacturer.

Some settle almost instantly, some take up to 200 hours to settle within -10% to +50% of their rated capacity.
 
I think I may have mentioned this before ;)

Sadly folk like Peter Aczel are few and far between in the hi-fi media world.

Anyway, roll on the next x number of pages, and £1 goes to the first person to post a link to some sound research that disproves any of his points (doesn't matter who conducted it, as long as the method is sound) :)
 
Yip, having studied signals at Uni, this pretty much holds true to everything I know and try to implement, hell, I still use CAT5e cable for my speakers :)
 
Whilst I agree with the sentiment of the piece, and with many of the points the author makes, I've got to disagree with his view of Digital Audio.

Any signal, analogue or digital, is only as robust as the medium that contains it. A digital stream on a less-than-perfect CD or a shakey bit of AES cable will drop bits, and unlike distortion and noise induced in analogue systems, the resulting digital noise is much less pleasant, even when compensated for as many CD players do. I'd much rather have a slight, rounded vinyl pop on some audio than a delta pulse click at 0dBFS.

The same argument can be made for vacuum tubes. The reason people prefer them to transistor amps isn't because they induce less noise, but because their inherent noise is far more pleasant, and in cases can subconsciously improve the perceived quality of audio.
 
Disagree with the burn-in - as above - capacitors and loudspeakers can deffinatly improve with a good few hours running.

Vacuum tubes again - sometimes you want the rich warmer sound they tend to produce over the harsher digital equivalent.
 
mosfet said:
Any signal, analogue or digital, is only as robust as the medium that contains it. A digital stream on a less-than-perfect CD or a shakey bit of AES cable will drop bits, and unlike distortion and noise induced in analogue systems, the resulting digital noise is much less pleasant, even when compensated for as many CD players do. I'd much rather have a slight, rounded vinyl pop on some audio than a delta pulse click at 0dBFS.
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Digital mediums need to be pretty bad before you get induced noise. The error detection and correction will rectify all reasonable errors in normal use. If they don't it's not a digital problem but a damaged CD or faulty player.

And I guess vacuum tubes come under the category of post processing.
 
Rroff said:
Disagree with the burn-in - as above - capacitors and loudspeakers can deffinatly improve with a good few hours running.
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The B&W guys say a speaker burns in within it's first use. I'll take their word for it.

Capacitors have a rated settling time, as I said. If you look at the manufacturers websites they are quoted there.
 
not sure i believe in burn in of speakers, none of the speakers have bought have changed sound tbh. I think it's more about getting accustomed to a new set of speakers, and thus it's more the listener's ears that need a burn in period imo.
 
Agree with it all, so much **** and bow lox spoken in AV circles it's beyond a joke. I have had people trying to convince me they can hear a HUGE difference in a system they think has changed (cable, source) but I know has remained the same, ie mine, to prove a point. I spent a lot of time with Nimbus some years back, people who build the CD mastering machines and had my eyes opened to the 'tricks' of the trade (not purveyed by them I hasten to add) and take it all with a wry smile and trust my ears, not someone else's trying to tell me my ears are wrong. Amps and Speakers are where the big difference lie, outside of that, bar the source the difference are small.....or more often none existent.
 
Yamahahahahaha said:
The B&W guys say a speaker burns in within it's first use. I'll take their word for it.

Capacitors have a rated settling time, as I said. If you look at the manufacturers websites they are quoted there.
Click to expand...

I'm thinking it depends a lot on the speaker quality, manufacturing process and so on...
 
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