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

[ColinJ]

This hifi talk has got me thinking...

I have 5 unused hifi(-ish!) speakers - 3 from a surround sound system which I bought before I realised that (a) having lots of speakers in a small room isn't very practical, (b) 6 channels x 75W is a good way of picking fights with neighbours in the same terrace, and (c) I couldn't care less about surround sound!

The other 2 speakers are the ones that I used when I was a student 35 years ago - I think they are Mission 77s. They were not brilliant but adequate for listening to John Peel most nights while I was studying.

I have kept the 2 huge main surround sound speakers and the amp for my little music studio in my attic. (I can get away with a bit more volume during the day when my neighbours are at work.) The other speakers are currently going to waste.

The sound quality of my Samsung TV is appalling so I bought a soundbar for it. I didn't have a lot of cash so I picked one up for £99, reduced by about 50% in a sale. It is a HUGE improvement on the TV speakers, but definitely NOT hifi. It is a bit lacking in treble, but so are my ears these days anyway! The main area which I would like to improve is the bass end which doesn't really exist on the 'subwoofer'. It is actually more of a 100-120 Hz resonator! There is a boomy peak which drops off rapidly and there is nothing much below that.

It struck me that my 5 spare speakers are not too bad in the range 60-250 Hz so one of them might make a good replacement for the surround sound subwoofer. I do have enough space for one speaker below the TV. I'm not sure if the soundbar would have enough oomph to drive the replacement speaker but it is worth a go. I could always use a separate amp if I needed to. The thing that stopped me doing this before is the unusual socket for the subwoofer cable. I'll have to see if I can find a suitable connector for sale somewhere because I'd rather not cut the existing cable if I don't have to.

++++

As for hifi nuts... I once worked with some excellent electronics engineers who designed, built and tested top end analogue audio gear. They loved to point out that audio signals which absolutely HAD to pass through cables costing £100+/metre in order to 'maintain signal transparency'/'prevent audio smearing'/'enhance subtle audio transients'/[Insert hifi BS of choice here] had already passed through tens of metres of cables costing 10 pence/metre before being recorded or transmitted!

 

[dodgy]

I remember you used to be able to buy really expensive 'kettle plug cables' to replace the 'poor quality' ones supplied with HiFi separates. But let's not worry about the cable that comes to your house and fuse board from the local substation

 

[PapaZita]

They loved to point out that audio signals which absolutely HAD to pass through cables costing £100+/metre in order to 'maintain signal transparency'/'prevent audio smearing'/'enhance subtle audio transients'/[Insert hifi BS of choice here] had already passed through tens of metres of cables costing 10 pence/metre before being recorded or transmitted!

Silly isn't it? And the funny thing is that unlike much of the expensive stuff the 10 p/metre cable probably is good cable, in that it is well shielded, had sensible connectors, etc. Of course, another important measure of "good" for cables in a professional environment is how well they survive being walked on, tripped over, having chairs or equipment rolled over them, etc. I suspect most engineers would trade 0.1 dB at 25 kHz for a reduction in the size of the pile of cables needing repair when everyone else has gone home.

 

[raleighnut]

A friend of mine used to work on a hi-fi magazine - as a photographer rather than a reviewer, but he recalls they did an article looking at the stereos owned by some actual musicians; one in rock band, a jazz musician and someone in a classical orchestra. All had fairly ropey hi-fis, so after some judicious listening and trying stuff out, they set each up with a reasonable mid-range system. All the musicians naturally had a good ear and all thought their new systems were indeed much better, but none had been particularly unhappy with their old ropey systems - it seems they were listening to the music "through" the systems, rather than listening to the systems themselves, and thus were less troubled by the sonic deficiencies but were more concerned with listening to the underlying music.

A also recall reading an article in Wireless World many years back, which was looking into the the claim of "valve sound" being a big thing compared to transistor amps. A debate that continues to this day. Wireless World was a professional electrical / electronic engineers' magazine with some academic rigour behind it (we'll forgive them the daft series of articles by an anti-relatively crank, but hey ho). Anyhow they took a valve and transistor amp from the well respected company Quad, and did proper blind listenings with very precisely matched levels and so on, then did a serious statistical analysis of the results. It turned out the listeners, all "experts", preferred A to B very slightly more than they preferred A over A, or B over B - and all within the bounds of chance. Thus, it wasn't even possible to reliably tell the difference between Quad's valve or transistor amps by listening. Of course Quad don't make crap kit, so that's not to say that a cheap and nasty amp would be the same, but it was interesting.

QUAD actually did the 'blind test' thing themselves in the late 70s using their 405 current dumping, 303 traditional class A/B and their QUAD 11 valve amps and no one could tell the difference then. However they were all designed by the same guy (Peter Walker) who also came up with one of the great and oft quoted lines in HiFi "The best Amplifier would be a straight cable with gain" QUAD actually did this to prove their new design of amplifier circuit called 'Current Dumping' in which a very high quality low powered amp corrects the output of a high powered but lesser quality amp (they won an award for this design)
HiFi reviewers at the time decried this new type of amplifier as substandard so QUAD set out to prove them wrong and succeeded.

They are also famous for demonstrating their products at a 'Show' using a bright orange speaker cable and when asked where they purchased this esoteric cable replied "B&Q", it was the same mains cable you'd find on Lawnmowers/Strimmers etc.

 

[slowmotion]

I bid for and won a pretty exotic valve amplifier on Ebay ten years ago. I phoned the company that made it and asked if they would recommend a loudspeaker cable....

"Well, blind tests have shown that house wiring 2.5 TWE cable does as well at £100 a metre exotics. It's all a bit psychosomatic really."
Refreshing!

 

[Profpointy]

QUAD actually did the 'blind test' thing themselves in the late 70s using their 405 current dumping, 303 traditional class A/B and their QUAD 11 valve amps and no one could tell the difference then. However they were all designed by the same guy (Peter Walker) who also came up with one of the great and oft quoted lines in HiFi "The best Amplifier would be a straight cable with gain" QUAD actually did this to prove their new design of amplifier circuit called 'Current Dumping' in which a very high quality low powered amp corrects the output of a high powered but lesser quality amp (they won an award for this design)
HiFi reviewers at the time decried this new type of amplifier as substandard so QUAD set out to prove them wrong and succeeded.

They are also famous for demonstrating their products at a 'Show' using a bright orange speaker cable and when asked where they purchased this esoteric cable replied "B&Q", it was the same mains cable you'd find on Lawnmowers/Strimmers etc.

Another anecdote also attribted to Peter Walker / Quad was a demonstration of the difference between a few hundred yards of mains cable versus a sensible length of a supposedly high quality speaker cable - difference : none

 

[bruce1530]

Of course, another important measure of "good" for cables in a professional environment is how well they survive being walked on, tripped over, having chairs or equipment rolled over them, etc.

One of the most critical measurements of the “goodness” of a cable in a live sound environment is “how well does it coil”.

 

[Fab Foodie]

BBC 6 Music for me in the smallest room.

Most of the records are rubbish, but at least there's no adverts and it does wonders for my street cred.

Same here...covers a multitude of dins....

 

[Profpointy]

Another quite entertaining evening I had after purchasing a turntable table from fleabay - ie a glass shelved adjustable isolation stand for the turntable itself. It was a couple of hundred quid which was fair enough for what it was. I went to pick it up from the sellers at their house / demo premises, and I got the full treatment listening to their top end stuff. They were genuine enthusiasts and it was quite fun as I quite obviously wasn't going ro buy their top end stuff. The Naim amp set up alone was something like £60k as each driver in each speaker had its own dedicated amp, and each amp was top end with its own super duper power supply - maybe I didn't like their music examples but to be honest it didn't really impress me that much, but the funny thing was them explaining that the speakers went up to 60kHz and why that was somehow a good thing. This is simply nonsense as you can't hear 60kHz and even if you could, it isn't actually on the record in the first place.

One thing quite good I did get from them was listening to the same track in MP3 format, CD format and "studio master" format. MP3 format sounded surprisingly good despite beinf much maligned, but CD was quite obviously a good deal better once you listed to both back to back. Even CD format is much maligned by some hi fi pundits, not surprising as it was limited by the practicalities of its time, but to my years studio master, whilst clearly better it wasn't hugely better and was a much smaller gap than that between MP3 and CD

Now all that said - few years back I replaced my speakers with some older but high end Kef speakers - £500 off fleabay, some £3k new apparently and the sound was truly amazing. I'd not have been disappointed had I paid the £3k so isn't all BS, but there is a lot of BS all the same. If the claims some of these guys make are true, why don't they publish the results in proper journals and sit back and await the early morning call from Stockholm?

 

[raleighnut]

Another quite entertaining evening I had after purchasing a turntable table from fleabay - ie a glass shelved adjustable isolation stand for the turntable itself. It was a couple of hundred quid which was fair enough for what it was. I went to pick it up from the sellers at their house / demo premises, and I got the full treatment listening to their top end stuff. They were genuine enthusiasts and it was quite fun as I quite obviously wasn't going ro buy their top end stuff. The Naim amp set up alone was something like £60k as each driver in each speaker had its own dedicated amp, and each amp was top end with its own super duper power supply - maybe I didn't like their music examples but to be honest it didn't really impress me that much, but the funny thing was them explaining that the speakers went up to 60kHz and why that was somehow a good thing. This is simply nonsense as you can't hear 60kHz and even if you could, it isn't actually on the record in the first place.

One thing quite good I did get from them was listening to the same track in MP3 format, CD format and "studio master" format. MP3 format sounded surprisingly good despite beinf much maligned, but CD was quite obviously a good deal better once you listed to both back to back. Even CD format is much maligned by some hi fi pundits, not surprising as it was limited by the practicalities of its time, but to my years studio master, whilst clearly better it wasn't hugely better and was a much smaller gap than that between MP3 and CD

Now all that said - few years back I replaced my speakers with some older but high end Kef speakers - £500 off fleabay, some £3k new apparently and the sound was truly amazing. I'd not have been disappointed had I paid the £3k so isn't all BS, but there is a lot of BS all the same. If the claims some of these guys make are true, why don't they publish the results in proper journals and sit back and await the early morning call from Stockholm?

Aah a member of the Naim 'Flat Earth' society, reasonable kit but very overpriced.

 

[Grant Fondo]

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 ?

Not sure but I have got Dynaudios and they rock!

 

[ColinJ]

One of the most critical measurements of the “goodness” of a cable in a live sound environment is “how well does it coil”.

Unless it is a power cable...

Some of my former colleagues were fitting out a van in the company car park. It was winter and they were freezing so they put a fan heater on and used a long extension cord to power it. It was one of those on a big reel which was supposed to be unwound before use. They kept tripping over the wire so one of them had the bright idea to coil up the slack. They left the heater on while they had a break in the main building and came back to find the vehicle on fire!

 

[raleighnut]

Unless it is a power cable...

Some of my former colleagues were fitting out a van in the company car park. It was winter and they were freezing so they put a fan heater on and used a long extension cord to power it. It was one of those on a big reel which was supposed to be unwound before use. They kept tripping over the wire so one of them had the bright idea to coil up the slack. They left the heater on while they had a break in the main building and came back to find the vehicle on fire!

They'd created an inductance coil.

 

[Grant Fondo]

I wanted to hear some electrostatic speakers, having heard some about 45 years ago and always remembered being blown away by the richness and depth of the sound. So I contacted a hi-fi shop. The owner invited us to his house on Saturday morning to hear some speakers. After some satnav problems we found the house, a huge pile on the outskirts of town and rang the doorbell... nobody came. Rang again.... nobody. So I hammered on the massive door and immediately it swung open revealing a man who asked us to remove our shoes and showed us into the lounge. First shock - the room was full of massive ugly wooden objects like giant Russian dolls, which I realised were speakers.

There were two others about 8' tall and looking like the monoliths from 2001 a Space Odyssey, which he told us were by a famous Danish engineer. The room was cramped, cold, damp and messy and one entire wall was taken up with CDs and records. There was a nasty green sofa and lots of unbelievably vulgar stands holding all kinds of amps and other equipment. The man took us up to a bedroom where there were some more conventional looking speakers arranged facing the bed. His dog was whining and sniffing at a door and he told us: "Oh my wife is in the bathroom". The door opened and a woman came out, grabbed the dog and scuttled out. The man put on a CD of a woman singing a jazz song, hopeless for demonstrating the speakers. He berated us with his views on the wi-fi business, saying that magazine journalists all live in million-pound houses thanks to the huge bungs they receive for writing good reviews, the industry is full of charlatans and thieves and there was only one way to buy hi-fi equipment, which is from him because only he knows what's good, etcetera etcetera. There was a record deck, which had an interesting clear perspex turntable and I asked the price: five thousand pounds. I was feeling intensely uncomfortable and could see that Mrs Gti was in a state of shock at the way what should have been a pleasant, relaxing experience was unfolding into something altogether weird and upsetting.

I realised I had made a mistake in approaching this bloke and an exit strategy was needed so I simply said: "Sorry, we're wasting your time, I can see that you are in a different world to the one we inhabit, we'd better leave now." He accepted but continued to berate us with his views on life, how everybody was corrupt, how he wrote the only true reviews for the hi-fi magazines, right up to the moment we got in the car and drove off. We felt we had escaped a bizarre experience and when we Googled those hideous speakers we discovered that they cost £75,000 and weigh 160 kilos each.

I realised then that the world of hi-fi is based on even bigger BS than I thought - when a length of speaker cable can cost £400 but you can buy 10 metres of 1.2mm two-core copper cable for £6 and we had just met one of its self-appointed High Priests. It was a thoroughly upsetting experience, especially the realisation that some gullible people actually fall for this mumbo-jumbo. People like him are the proof that if you price something extravagantly and make it look ostentatious there are enough fools out there for you to get very rich indeed from peddling falsehoods. How much of that applies in the rest of the world of luxury goods? We are still feeling upset by the experience two days later.

That is a great story. Glad you got out in one piece! I remember seeing some speaker cable in a rosewood box in the Princes Building in Hong Kong for $HK15000 (approx £1200 at the time). High end hi fi is just like high end everything else.

 

[bruce1530]

Unless it is a power cable...

Some of my former colleagues were fitting out a van in the company car park. It was winter and they were freezing so they put a fan heater on and used a long extension cord to power it. It was one of those on a big reel which was supposed to be unwound before use. They kept tripping over the wire so one of them had the bright idea to coil up the slack. They left the heater on while they had a break in the main building and came back to find the vehicle on fire!

yeah, running power thru a coil is a bad idea.

But you still want your power cables to be able to be nicely coiled when not in use.