Krell Announces Reference Blu-ray Player

[Housey]

You accuse 9designs2 of giving cr*p examples however you then state 4 characteristics associated with cars 'none of which are subjective'. Specifically:

speed (for sure speed can be measured)
composure (subjective)
prescience (the ability of the car to see in to the future?? subjective i guess lol)
feel (again subjective)

Doesnt sound too far away from the magazine journalists that you lambast so much (not that I'm defending them)

Presense, bloody spell checker!

Feel is far from subjective. How it steers, how it brakes, how it provides feedback. All clear.

 

[Housey]

And the law of diminishing returns is fine, I get it, but there are still obvious differences such as how much quicker a GT3 is to a Boxster, it's measurable. Also, my involvement has massive influence on it too, can't say the same with hi-fi...well unless you put a brick in top and stand on one leg with your eyes closed...

 

[Mr_Sukebe]

What is being debated here, whether the Krell BD player is worth the money, or all high end kit?


The Krell is probably going to be the most difficult to defend, particularly so if it's an Oppo clone like the Lexicon. Having said, does anyone here know what's under the bonnet? It's possible that Lexicon really have done something special. My guess is probably not on the video front, but you never know. The key differences that I've read about on more upmarket BD players has been on their analogue outputs. eg. the Denon 3800 is rated by a number of chaps on the AVF as being a great front end from an audio perspective.
Any other debate on the Lexicon by most people here has probably as much point as trying to suggest which supercar would make the best track day tool, as most have zero or very little experience, and can only related 2nd or 3rd hand experiences.

Regarding high end in general, I don't understand why anyone differentiates it from other luxury goods such as jewelry, watches and similar. Does a Zenith watch really justify it's costs? Having owned one, I can happily say that it was beautifully made, but didn't tell the time any better than the Seiko auto I now have.
As it happens, high end audio does tend to get better, but the cost/benefit ratio are just as difficult to understand as most other expensive hobbies for people who aren't interested.
For example, a relative of mine has been getting ready to put his new "train set" together (and whilst I vaguely get why he wants, I'll say now that it's not my cup of tea). Unlike most though, instead of wandering down to his local shop and buying some Hornby kit, he's been focusing on some euro made kit. So each loco is probably £300-400. Yes they have sound generators, lights that come on and do look beautifully engineered, but...
I think you can probably guess where I'm going.

As for being able to measure the differences.
Housey, you mention being able to measure "feel" within a car. From my understanding of car setups, yes though elements can be measured, but they need some serious kit and a lot of knowledge to be able to genuinely say "adding a 1mm adjustment to this setting will do...". Virtually no one on the motoring forums has that knowledge, yet people are happy to make statements and judgements on cars.
In this forum, we have a lot of people with little genuine exposure to high end gear, happily stating that much of it is snake oil.
Do you really think there's a difference between someone saying that all BD players are the same and that the Lexicon can't possibly be better, and someone on the motoring forums suggesting that as a Mustang GT has similar performance to some Porsches, that there's no benefit or difference in how they drive?

 

[lucid]

In this forum, we have a lot of people with little genuine exposure to high end gear, happily stating that much of it is snake oil.

This statement cuts to the chase. Personal experience and the ability to appreciate the differences as cost & performance increases is vital.

Wine connoisseurs were mentioned earlier in this thread. I think that is an appropriate point of comparison. There aren't many of us that have a pallet developed enough to fully appreciate the difference between a decent £20 bottle of red and something costing in the hundreds.

It's the same with Hi-Fi components. The difference with Hi-Fi though is that you're dealing with a combination of different parts. It's very easy to mess up a system and kill the performance advantage of in individual item by poor choice of ancillary equipment or bad set up.

It's little wonder so many people think that anything more than a basic hi-fi is simply a marketing exercise. I'd be willing to bet that the vast majority of people who consider themselves owners of decent entry level hi-fi systems still probably haven't heard a good entry level system. There are very few dealers who are capable, or have the right products available, to put together a decent £1500 CD system that actually plays music rather than just generating technically impressive noise.

 

[SimonR]

Lucid, I agree with much of what you say, but having studied for a Post Grad in acoustics, and spent may hours undertaking noise measurements, the one component in all of this that is variable is the listener / viewer. Some much drivvel is talked about room acoustics, components etc, when often the reality is that it comes down to subjective judgement of peoples own hearing. Very very few people have perfect hearing, I know I dont, I have lost 20% my hearing in the normal vocal range in my left ear (due to chronic ear infections). The increased use of in-ear headphones and overblown car stereos has resuted in an overall increas in hearing impediment, often with person not being aware of the damage. The effect of this is is to skew the auditory perception of sound, often resulting in no 2 people hearing sound exactly the same way. So without objective measurement, using instruments like octave or spectrum analysers, subtle nuances detected by one person, may be totally lost on another. For my disertation I undertook a study of custom car stereos, fitted to vehicles (on cruises mainly), looking at users listening time and levels. The conclusion was that over 80% of those people were exposed to noise (music) in a manner that in a work place would demand hearing protection and without would lead to irreparable hearing damage. Notably this was likely to be low frequency sound (heavy bass), but again this would skew a listeners perception.

The upshot for me is that I like very bright sounding systems, which compensates for MY hearing gamage. To someone else listening to my hifi, it may sound awful, to me its just fine.

 

[Housey]

As for being able to measure the differences.
Housey, you mention being able to measure "feel" within a car. From my understanding of car setups, yes though elements can be measured, but they need some serious kit and a lot of knowledge to be able to genuinely say "adding a 1mm adjustment to this setting will do...". Virtually no one on the motoring forums has that knowledge, yet people are happy to make statements and judgements on cars.
In this forum, we have a lot of people with little genuine exposure to high end gear, happily stating that much of it is snake oil.
Do you really think there's a difference between someone saying that all BD players are the same and that the Lexicon can't possibly be better, and someone on the motoring forums suggesting that as a Mustang GT has similar performance to some Porsches, that there's no benefit or difference in how they drive?

Firstly and for clarity, I have NEVER said ALL high end kit is snake oil, I have said the industry (and in fact the advocate lobby come to think of it!) is riddled with snake oil practitioners, for it most certainly is. There are many elements of hi-fi that grow in ability and wow factor with money, I'm in agreement 100%. I am however dubious (based on MY experience!) that much of what is claimed for delivery mechanisms for digital media is utter ********, but not all. I am lucky enough to be able to afford the odd luxury so can speak from some experience as I have said but for me my main issue is with those who only see one side and try to imply that this simply isn't the case when the reality is they are often simply in a placebo effect, for they are, without perhaps realising it. I can give examples of this, but don't feel I need to as you can take me at my word or chose to ignore me, for we are debating what in reality is a subjective...

A quick performance car done well has many factors that make it special, at what it's aimed to to. Go quickly as well as it can in the circumstances it is designed for and THIS can be measured. While I am absolutely an advocate of experience over quoting others, I don't feel the need to imply that disagreement is always down to ignorance, like some seem willing to do here. It may be that people have experienced it and simply think you are wrong and as you can't PROVE your right by any meaningful metric I'd suggest it is somewhat subjective too.

I have a foot in both camps, sitting nicely in the middle. I see some kit adding massive value, some less, some none and I make the call when I come to buy and just because some people tell me it's better and get all agitated when I don't agree (as has happened on a few occasions in demo rooms) I still sleep happy.

 

[Mr_Sukebe]

Sounds like we're singing from the same hymn sheet. Personally I'd rather approach every new product with a degree of skepticism and try to see it on it's own merits. A classic example being BD players. I've tried three in my own system, and once I'd accounted for the different calibration of each, couldn't tell the slightest difference. That was despite the general "comments" on a certain other AV forum suggesting that one of them was really good, whilst another was really naff.

I have to say that some of the snake oil leaves me really amused.
At one show I went to, there was a chap dem'd a variety of bits of kit. One of these was a little box with a blue light on. He went to great lengths explaining how it did something really special when he turned it on. What really surprised me were the number of people who agreed with him. Seemed like an awful lot of dosh for a small silver box with a blue LED on it.

For all that, there is some stuff that can be genuinely useful to know. A few months ago I bought a Squeezebox Touch, and used it standalone with an external USB HDD. Some slightly mad chap (German IIRC) came up with a series of little tweaks that could aid the sound quality. One of these was to not use it standalone, as the CPU loading "might" affect sound quality. Quite how that is, I have no idea. Out of curiosity I thought I'd give it a test, and unfortunately he's right, which I hate as I now have to dig out my laptop to get the best out of my system.

 

[lucid]

SimonR, I'm with you in some respects regarding listener differences. If the listener is stone deaf then there's not a lot of point buying a good Hi-Fi. OK, I'm taking the mick a little, but you get the point But I think it has to be accepted that we all hear sound a little differently, but I also think we all cope with that as our "normal" level. In other words, if your hearing is so knackered that music leaves you cold then you ain't gonna be spending any time in a hi-fi shop, so it's all a bit moot

Addressing a more general point; folk bang on about measurable differences WRT Hi-Fi (and cars, in this thread at least). A kind of "if it can't be measured then it doesn't exist" approach. And I can see how comforting that absolutist view is, but I have a couple of thoughts...

1) how are we so sure that we have the technology to measure everything that matters?

2) although a Teutonic pocket rocket would measure better in most categories, it wouldn't stop a day on a track with a Caterham 7 putting a huge smile on my face


I don't know of a meter or gauge that can measure emotion, but I can tell when I'm using a product designed for fun whether this elusive quality is missing. I've owned and used Hi-Fi and AV gear that measures exceptionally well but still hasn't put a smile on my face, so measurement isn't the final word.

 

[oli collett]

Addressing a more general point; folk bang on about measurable differences WRT Hi-Fi (and cars, in this thread at least). A kind of "if it can't be measured then it doesn't exist" approach. And I can see how comforting that absolutist view is, but I have a couple of thoughts...

1) how are we so sure that we have the technology to measure everything that matters?

2) although a Teutonic pocket rocket would measure better in most categories, it wouldn't stop a day on a track with a Caterham 7 putting a huge smile on my face


I don't know of a meter or gauge that can measure emotion, but I can tell when I'm using a product designed for fun whether this elusive quality is missing. I've owned and used Hi-Fi and AV gear that measures exceptionally well but still hasn't put a smile on my face, so measurement isn't the final word.

With regards to point 1, I'm not aware of any evidence to suggest that the human ear can hear things that cannot be measured. One thing I do know is that we can measure acoustics that we are unable to hear, but of course this does not make the inverse true.

I think people need to remember that science doesn't have to mean plugging things in and looking at graphs, ideally it means measuring listener responses under controlled conditions - the problem is that controlled conditions and good tests are difficult to do without a lot of work, but measuring the output of a device is not so difficult. A graph measuring the outputs does not prove that differences are purely in the listeners head, but it can cast a lot of doubt upon claims they are making.

 

[lucid]

With regards to point 1, I'm not aware of any evidence to suggest that the human ear can hear things that cannot be measured.

The human ear is only one component in the way we hear and respond to music. If you are only considering th way the ear works and how science can measure that then you're looking at the tree when you should be looking at the wood.

I think people need to remember that science doesn't have to mean plugging things in and looking at graphs, ideally it means measuring listener responses under controlled conditions - the problem is that controlled conditions and good tests are difficult to do without a lot of work, but measuring the output of a device is not so difficult. A graph measuring the outputs does not prove that differences are purely in the listeners head, but it can cast a lot of doubt upon claims they are making.

Sigh. This is going the same way that al these discussions go. It's a pointless exercise. Come listen for yourself.

 

[oli collett]

The human ear is only one component in the way we hear and respond to music. If you are only considering th way the ear works and how science can measure that then you're looking at the tree when you should be looking at the wood.

I'm not sure what you mean by this? I'm not talking about isolating peoples ears, I'm talking about isolating the human.

Sigh. This is going the same way that al these discussions go. It's a pointless exercise. Come listen for yourself.

Well yes, I do tend to repeat myself a lot, it's not intentional but people either respond with straw men or miss-understand my position (as you appear to be doing above). I'm interested in understanding what the difference is once bias is removed so that we can further our understanding of what works/doesn't work in hi-fi by evaluating evidence.

Earlier on, you posted the following:

First and foremost I am a calibrator. That means I am assessing the performance of equipment using test gear and test discs. Go have a read of some of the better reviews that use similar methods to get a feel for what's involved and how these methods can help differentiate products.

I then asked the following:

Can someone point me towards some tests in which they've compared the output of the krell vs. a less expensive player? I've not been able to find a lot - I'm curious as to what ways the output would be different

Would you be able to help out in this regard? As I said I wouldn't consider this as any kind of proof whatsoever but it would at least provide some kind of evidence towards a position either way.

 

[marl]

The human ear is only one component in the way we hear and respond to music. If you are only considering th way the ear works and how science can measure that then you're looking at the tree when you should be looking at the wood.

I think you've hit the nail on the head here! As other posters have said not everyone hears the same thing - I guess that's why one man likes Thrash Metal and another likes Folk.

I've had an interest in Hi-Fi for many years, and have went to shows/dems/musical evenings and know a lot of guys who listen much more attentively to music than I do. They also listen for things that I'd pay no attention to. I'm also convinced that some of these guys have a better memory for the sound, or sonic signature of a component than I do. I wouldn't say they have better hearing than me, but they process sound differently.

 

[Housey]

So if the human ear is the factor that determines the quality of sound, why waste money on calibration? Calibrating a subjective is impossible and simply levels the field to the level of the person who determines the finite elements of their calibration. In other words who calibrates the calibration?

 

[lucid]

oli collett,
My point #1 was about the human tendency to think that the knowledge we have now is enough for a complete understanding of the way things work. It isn't. The best we can do is hypothesise, test and the refine our ideas and understanding. We were once absolutely certain that the Earth was the centre of the Universe.... Until it was proved wrong and a better model was developed. We were once certain that the planets revolved around the sun in circular orbits. We were absolutely convinced it was the right idea. .... Again that was proved wrong and a better model was developed. You see a pattern forming?

Now, I'm being asked to believe that all we need to assess the quality of Hi-Fi is to take some measurements!! The idea is being promoted with absolute conviction too; not by you, but by the absolutists who would say there'd no audible difference between a £100 CD player and £500 CD player if they measure the same.

My response is that the model isn't complete. What we can measure only partly describes what is happening in well designed Hi-Fi.

Here's an example of how the model is, IMO, incomplete. A good Hi-Fi allows me to better hear the emotion that the singer puts in to their performance. I don't think our measuring techniques are sufficiently refined to show me a display or graph that correlates to this phenomenon.

I'm all for gear being designed properly. The measurements I take when calibrating allow me to see how close the manufacturers get in the first place before I begin the tweaks needed to optimise the performance. But I know they can only describe certain aspects of the product's performance, and I wouldn't rely on them alone in making a product recommendation.

 

[lucid]

So if the human ear is the factor that determines the quality of sound, why waste money on calibration?

Well, I calibrate displays for colour accuracy, video dynamic range and gamma tracking. I also do some audio set-up work to get home cinema sound systems working properly in listener's rooms.

We all of us hear differently, but I don't believe that means its OK to put up with a poorly performing sound system.

Once a customer has already spent £500+ on an AV amp and £1500+ on speakers then proper set-up (£275) makes sense. It has a bigger positive impact on system performance than spending another £1000 on upgrading equipment. For those with the disposable income on hand, a professional audio set-up delivers good value.

Calibrating a subjective is impossible and simply levels the field to the level of the person who determines the finite elements of their calibration. In other words who calibrates the calibration?

Ah, I think you might misunderstand what a calibration is, or at least from reading the above.

It's not someone making it up as they go along. There are certain standards, and there is equipment capable of measuring to an acceptable tolerance so as to remove the human factor. Calibration should create the conditions where a system can perform at its best.

 

[rubberduck]

Just to chip in with my opinion

I think the ultimate aim of hifi is in the accurate reproduction of sound. Now, we can probably use equipment and instruments to measure how accurately a certain system reproduces sound which means we could see HiFi as being somewhat of a science. On the other hand, it is logical to assume that no system will ever be able to provide 100% accuracy and so will contain inaccuracies or errors for want of a better word. This is where I believe the human element comes in to HiFi as it is how we respond to these inaccuracies (which will vary from system to system) that determines if something sounds good or not so good.... Just a thought.

 

[oli collett]

oli collett,
My point #1 was about the human tendency to think that the knowledge we have now is enough for a complete understanding of the way things work. It isn't. The best we can do is hypothesise, test and the refine our ideas and understanding. We were once absolutely certain that the Earth was the centre of the Universe.... Until it was proved wrong and a better model was developed. We were once certain that the planets revolved around the sun in circular orbits. We were absolutely convinced it was the right idea. .... Again that was proved wrong and a better model was developed. You see a pattern forming?

Yes, this is exactly the thinking that I am advocating - using science to gain a better understanding of the world

Now, I'm being asked to believe that all we need to assess the quality of Hi-Fi is to take some measurements!!

I don't think I've ever said this, but I have said they provide at least some objective evidence

The idea is being promoted with absolute conviction too; not by you, but by the absolutists who would say there'd no audible difference between a £100 CD player and £500 CD player if they measure the same.

Which I agree is not really a sensible way to go about this, my only thoughts are that measurements can be shown to prove that differences are there, we can't prove a negative, but they can at least provide doubt.

My response is that the model isn't complete. What we can measure only partly describes what is happening in well designed Hi-Fi.

Here's an example of how the model is, IMO, incomplete. A good Hi-Fi allows me to better hear the emotion that the singer puts in to their performance. I don't think our measuring techniques are sufficiently refined to show me a display or graph that correlates to this phenomenon.

Yes I agree, for starters it's difficult enough to describe what differences there are, which is why I want to see more calls for listening tests which remove the bias from the listener so that we can prove that something does make a difference.

What I don't understand is why the people who believe that such equipment does sound x times better than another don't seem to be bothered about proving it. I'm not talking about the consumers so much but more than manufacturers and journalists. If Krell can afford to spend so much on developing such a piece of kit, would it be that hard to provide some evidence in real listening tests?

 

[Housey]

Well, I calibrate displays for colour accuracy, video dynamic range and gamma tracking. I also do some audio set-up work to get home cinema sound systems working properly in listener's rooms.

We all of us hear differently, but I don't believe that means its OK to put up with a poorly performing sound system.

Once a customer has already spent £500+ on an AV amp and £1500+ on speakers then proper set-up (£275) makes sense. It has a bigger positive impact on system performance than spending another £1000 on upgrading equipment. For those with the disposable income on hand, a professional audio set-up delivers good value.

Ah, I think you might misunderstand what a calibration is, or at least from reading the above.

It's not someone making it up as they go along. There are certain standards, and there is equipment capable of measuring to an acceptable tolerance so as to remove the human factor. Calibration should create the conditions where a system can perform at its best.

Oh I know exactly what it is, I'm stimulating discussion...

 

[lucid]

What I don't understand is why the people who believe that such equipment does sound x times better than another don't seem to be bothered about proving it. I'm not talking about the consumers so much but more than manufacturers and journalists. If Krell can afford to spend so much on developing such a piece of kit, would it be that hard to provide some evidence in real listening tests?

Because once you get past the basic design competencies that can be measured then you're left dealing with matters of choice and taste.

Consider this: Two physiologically identical twins. One likes the taste of broccoli, the other hates it. Where's the meter or machine that could measure for that???

 

[lucid]

Yes, this is exactly the thinking that I am advocating - using science to gain a better understanding of the world

I'm in favour of improving our understanding. But there's a world of difference between professional scientists who all accept the inherent flaws in our attempts to measure anything, and the armchair enthusiasts who just don't get that; and so have a rather blinkered view of "if it can't be measured then there's no difference" and that's their only response in these sorts of debates.

... my only thoughts are that measurements can be shown to prove that differences are there, we can't prove a negative, but they can at least provide doubt.

OK, let's take two amplifiers... What do you propose to measure to show there's a difference in performance?