Meeting a High Priest of the world of hi-fi BS.

[Globalti]

Unfortunately Mrs Gti is a victim of this BS with her skincare; she swears that a £90 jar of cream is better than a £2 jar of Nivea although, thankfully, she never pays full price but only buys when she sees stuff cheap in TK Max.

 

[Fab Foodie]

I love stories about HiFi BS, I don't really have any, but it's always fascinated me. I was into music, which necessitated having something to play it on and flirted with the idea of buying high end equipment years ago. I bought NAD and Thorens gear, sanity prevented me from buying exotic cables and interconnects. Places like Currys etc are still trying to get mugs to buy 'upgraded' hdmi cables because they say they produce a better picture and sound.

My other project is to refurb my TD160/SME III turntable for which I have just bought a new cartridge....

 

[Globalti]

The crazy thing about all this is that, as somebody mentioned above, there is a marked difference in the qualities of different performances, orchestras or soloists, different recordings and different labels, with Deutsche Grammophon being one of the best labels for performance and recording of classical music for example. Even a live recording and a studio recording will differ massively so it depends on the sound you prefer.

 

[Venod]

Interesting that he mentioned a Danish speaker guy, I have some Dali speakers from Richer sounds that were not expensive but they are very good, are the Danes well known for speakers ?

 

[twentysix by twentyfive]

Any Hi Fi buffs ever had a hearing test I wonder? If the receive end is cr&p the send end doesn't matter. Unless some clever kit can somehow compensate at the send end.

 

[twentysix by twentyfive]

are the Danes well known for speakers

Hamlet does a very good "Yorick" speech

 

[swee'pea99]

Well, he was right about the reviews.

In the early 80s one leading HiFi magazine switched to blind testing. This led to a situation where solid core mains cable (as plastered into walls) came second in a group test of others costing scores of pounds per metre. A number of cheap amps were also judged to sound better or as good than others costing several times as much. The advertisers threatened to pull their ads and that was the end of blind testing reviews.

Not electrostatic but build your own speakers - get a kit from IPL Acoustics and save a fortune.

Once worked on the technical side of Afamous Photographer magazine, and got sent back for a redraft when I rated something poor. I protested on the grounds that it was poor. I also questioned why everything we reviewed was only ever Very Good or Excellent for everything - what's the point of a supposed measuring system when you only use 40% of the supposedly available metrics? I was told the advertisers wouldn't like it if we started saying things were poor, so we mustn't. Even if they were poor. Needless to say, the readership treated these reviews like gospel.

 

[MichaelW2]

Unfortunately Mrs Gti is a victim of this BS with her skincare; she swears that a £90 jar of cream is better than a £2 jar of Nivea although, thankfully, she never pays full price but only buys when she sees stuff cheap in TK Max.

My wife is similar. I saw one comparison of various bits of makeup at low, high, and fecking rediculous prices. It seems that eye makeup gets better with price but everything else is the same gloop in different bottles.

 

[MontyVeda]

Christ, HDMI is digital. It either sends sufficient data to be successfully decoded, or it doesn't. Should have locked the fellow up for attempted fraud.

same with Hi-Fi... there's numerous articles in What HiFi about the magical qualities of OF copper and gold plated connectors, but according to my brother, it's mostly BS. All you need is a good connection between the player and the amp and amp and speakers. There's no difference between a good connection and a great connection.

 

[raleighnut]

Any Hi Fi buffs ever had a hearing test I wonder? If the receive end is cr&p the send end doesn't matter. Unless some clever kit can somehow compensate at the send end.

Even someone with duff hearing should be able to hear the difference between a crap system and decent HiFi it's all subjective, the object of a decent system is to recreate the sound as accurately as possible so that it sounds realistic. My own system is not that expensive in Hifi terms but would cost the average 'joe' far more than they were willing to pay but the real advantage with high end audio components is they are repairable not 'throwaway' when they malfunction so they end up costing less in the long run plus they hold their value better if you decide to sell them for example my QUAD 303 power amps cost me £120 for one 30+yrs ago and £150 for the other about 15yrs back but they're now fetching £250-300 on the bay of evil.

 

[Rezillo]

Did you do this, and if so, which kit?
Anyhow, interested in hearing your views!

I built the S4TLs over 20 years ago. Since then, I've upgraded the drivers and crossovers three times as IPL have improved them. They sound great. I've also built several other IPL kits and have changed the drive units as IPL brought out new ones. The M3 is popular in terms of sound quality in relation to size if you need a smaller speaker.

The Fountek CD3 ribbon tweeter is a big step up. The cost of better drive units is a no-brainer in DIY terms The price of better commercial speakers goes up exponentially compared to the modest increase in cost of the better drive units they contain. Doing it yourself saves a fortune.

I built a pair of speakers out of the drivers I had left over. Ivan, the main behind IPL, gave me free crossover design help and I paid a small sum for a custom set of inductors and capacitors from him. Really good service.

The kits are fairly easy to build except that iron-on veneer requires a bit of skill. Buy a bit more and practice first!

 

[Pale Rider]

There's a bloke here selling some speakers for £24,000, and also claiming the manufacturer ripped him off for thousands over a turntable.

Perhaps this is what @Globalti's man meant when he spoke of charlatans in high-end hi-fi.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Horning-...279577?hash=item2f378a64d9:g:IwUAAOSw3H1dm7C0

 

[Drago]

are the Danes well known for speakers ?

Probably.

 

[Fab Foodie]

I built the S4TLs over 20 years ago. Since then, I've upgraded the drivers and crossovers three times as IPL have improved them. They sound great. I've also built several other IPL kits and have changed the drive units as IPL brought out new ones. The M3 is popular in terms of sound quality in relation to size if you need a smaller speaker.

The Fountek CD3 ribbon tweeter is a big step up. The cost of better drive units is a no-brainer in DIY terms The price of better commercial speakers goes up exponentially compared to the modest increase in cost of the better drive units they contain. Doing it yourself saves a fortune.

I built a pair of speakers out of the drivers I had left over. Ivan, the main behind IPL, gave me free crossover design help and I paid a small sum for a custom set of inductors and capacitors from him. Really good service.

The kits are fairly easy to build except that iron-on veneer requires a bit of skill. Buy a bit more and practice first!

Thanks Rezillo. as soon as my recent spending splurge has settled I shall be in for a pair! I don't intend using iron-on veneer to finish them. Just not sure what yet. A piano-black finish would be nice, but time consuming (a friend did this with home-builds and it looked fab). I have a few ideas....

 

[Joey Shabadoo]

Any Hi Fi buffs ever had a hearing test I wonder? If the receive end is cr&p the send end doesn't matter. Unless some clever kit can somehow compensate at the send end.

I'm not a buff but I do have damaged hearing - so I get my wife to set levels for me. As I almost exclusively stream music from Amazon Music, the two Sonos speakers I got last week are more than good enough in my (damaged) opinion.