Audio Luddite

This is a familiar question. The extremist audio geeks love to go on about how good or even perfect digital recording-streaming-hi-rez anything is. Mathematically it may even be true. If the world is all about math.

I have two main issues with that.

First is that old recordings are usually better. Specifically before a generation of "mastering engineers" started to ruin sound by massive processing to compensate for bulk consumption of audio product through poor systems. In the era from about the 1950s when stereo was invented to sometime in the early 1990s recordings and mastering was done with great care and excellence.

New recordings of popular music (for streams), and remastering of older stuff has been compromised. Example, a remastered Dire Straits Brothers in arms was compressed and ruined and is just inferior to all previous media issues. So streams of it in any format are just not very good.

Another example is that Cat Stevens album I want a fresh copy of, but new issues were remastered into a poor state. Wherefore art though Mofi?

My point is old recordings were done very well. And it really does not matter if it was analog or digital. Dire Straits Brothers in Arms was recorded 16 bit red book and is brilliant. Almost any TELARC CD or LP is just about as good as things get. Old Taped recordings can be great too. There may be a bit of noise and even drop outs, but that Getz Gilberto recording is amazing.

In response to demand companies that make boutique versions of old albums are doing well enough to get giant labels like Universal to release artisanal versions of memorable performances. Example DG (Universal) and DECCA (also Universal) press new versions of brilliant taped performances on high end vinyl. Pure analog and all that.

I have the DG Rites of Spring by Abbado and the London Phil. It is wonderful. Pure tape to Lathe no messing about. The justly famous Jazz at the Pawn Shop is also wonderful, even if slightly technically compromised as it was not a studio recording.

The second problem is with respect to the mathematics any recording that respects the Nyquist limit and all that theory is good enough. Here is a link to an article that claims CD and SACD and High Rez are indistinguishable if the masters are good enough.

High sampling rates may benefit the DAC device output filter, but that is trivial. The circuit geeks have figured that out. Done well even CD is good enough for playback. For recording and mixing extra bits are useful to keep the noise down below audibility.

What we have is people arguing about numbers that may not be relevant. As an engineer I think that engineering and science are fields where choices are made based on numbers. At some point though the numbers do not direct one way or another. As an old school audiophile I also use my ears. I listen for ambience and resolution and clarity. I hear that in both CD and Vinyl. I miss that in many stream sources. Can a normal human or even one with record breaking hearing tell the difference between the better media?

I have several albums in both formats. They compare well. I generally prefer the LP version, which may indicate my CD player is not great. But my TELARC CDs sound awesome.

That brings me to my conclusion. If the best version of a piece of music is on an LP it is the best version. It is not a matter of handling a physical thing or even liner notes. If it is the best it is good enough. Anything with better numbers is not better if you cannot hear it.

To be fair the other extreme of pure analog or death is just as silly.

Grado Opus 3 cartridge

Yamaha CD S300

ARC SP14 Preamp

Nakamichi PA7 Amplifier.

Thick speaker cables.

It was a national holiday here on July 1. My daughter and her kids and dog came to the village for a parade and fun street food. She bumped into an old friend from high school who was meeting up with some more old friends later. Soon enough they were all coming over to our house for a barbecue. We had just enough food. Salmon, hot dogs and a steak for the carnivores. And a few bottles of wine.

I had been playing background music on the system for a few hours. I had got the streaming thing back online as there is a new broadband modem in the house. It needed a full reset. So I was streaming a bit of everything.

This old HS friend, Mike, was in a band, later was an assistant director in the film biz, and was now working in odd jobs between gigs. The grandkids were impressed that he was a "rock star" ( pretty good singer with a sound a bit like Led Zeppelin). He mentioned that he was looking for a "record player" which got me going. He recalled I had a fancy system, so we had to go listen to it. We did.

I gave him a choice of two albums. Both were 45 RPM 180 gram doubles. He picked Dire Straits. I put it on. Mike and the Italian boyfriend of the other HS friend listened from the "good spot". This is an Album?! The geek in me said yes it is plastic, but the original recording was digital. The clarity is very good, and these guys had never heard such a system before. (It is better than what I had when they were in high school which was still pretty good)

It was fun. He asked about the speakers and yes they are strange good and unobtrusive. I built them. Yadda Yadda.

It was well warmed up and was signing. The Naka-san is back from it's days off. There was only one tube in the line that being in the preamp. The rest was solid state.

Grado Opus 3 cartridge.

Phase Linear 8000a turntable.

ARC SP14 Preamp.

Nakamichi PA7

I remember old TV shows from when I was a kid. One had a guy who lived in some African jungle and did adventures. He knew something was up when he heard drums off in the distance played by the native tribes. In US westerns there were also smoke signals done by indians. Hey it was last century OK?

I was flipping through the "usual places" and found this bit of silliness.

It is silly of course, but speaks to a key controversy. I can see both sides here. Do you want perfect accuracy, or pleasant sound, even if the pleasantry is like sugar in coffee? I do not like sugar in coffee if the coffee is good. Is the coffee good?

It is interesting that a device was made to present the sound of particular tubes using good math, and very powerful computing power to fiddle with an otherwise accurate signal. Much of the cost here was to provide this feature. The cost is not trivial.

Most interesting is the method used was to measure how a particular vacuum tube distorts and model that with polynomial equations then feed that into a digital signal processor to add that profile to the original signal. The lesson here is that tiny amounts of added stuff is audible and creates the "warmth" or voice of a tube. I suppose that it means you could enjoy tube rolling without having to buy thousands of dollars worth of tubes to feed tens of thousands of dollars of amplifiers. Makes it almost sound affordable.

In my own case I have an amplifier that is very accurate and it reveals almost too much detail in some recordings That is Naka-san. It is built to avoid very complex high order distortion by avoiding global feedback. It is really accurate. I also have an amplifier with very low distortion, but that definitely adds something to the music, being my ARC Tube amp. I enjoy listening to both. They are both high end. I even get the lips parting thing with the tube amp, but that may be too much. The mechanics of a piano and the valve train of a saxophone are not essential to the music.

So the controversy is preference of a particular voice versus truth. Is better, better? My tube amp has a pleasant voice, but it is not a strong dominating voice. It is subtle texture on top of a really accurate presentation.

In the above piece, and in many other "audiophile" reviews the idea of something being more musical is said. Does musical mean more distortion? The textures that the ARC Cl60 adds make drums sound more like they have skin, and wooden instruments sound more woody, things like that. It also enhances the complexity of that electric guitar on Dire Straights "Brothers in Arms-the man's to strong". Those things are not musical to my ear, but they are nice. My fancy transistor Naka-san is more accurate, and it sounds very nice too. I see musical as a smoothness and lack of harshness which is true of all my equipment.

The longest day and time to fire up Naka-san. Put the Audio Research Space heater to bed until fall.

Had a friend over. He is German, specifically Bavarian. Last time he was over we did not even talk about audio stuff, this time we did. And we listened too. And there was beer. Pilsner Urquell if you must know.

He had not heard Naka-san in the system and he was impressed. His speakers are big Bang and Olufsen's which he had fiddled with. As with many old school products the inside was wired with tiny fine wires and the connection to the amplifiers were with a tiny DIN plug. He replaced the wires with heavy stuff and the connections with solid modern terminals. (OK DIN plugs are modern in a way, but come on!) He learned how much fun it is to solder next to a big magnet. He said the sound opened up and it was like a veil was removed. Yup he talks audiophile speak.

He asked me how much would it cost to make speakers like mine. Oh that is dangerous. He wondered about the midrange driver, what kind of driver was it? I told him it was the woofer. It was a two way system with damn expensive cross over parts. (Solen) I had to remove the covers to show him. He said he did not believe it. Hey I know about stuff.

His electronics is a vintage German receiver called a Kirksaeter. I think it is well regarded, certainly by him. Probably adequate to drive my things. I like building things. Could get interesting.

His son is a well trained pianist, but works as a computer programmer. ( hey I am old school and refuse to use "coder" as a job title) He is going to visit him in Montreal for a month. I asked what if any system he has. He said he has a piano.

Funny how musicians fall into two fairly distinct groups. There is that bifurcation thing again. One side gets all fussy and demanding with raging audiophilia with fancy systems. The other side is happy with a blue tooth speaker or even an AM radio.

It may be a self protective measure as if you are in to quality music, once you enter the madness of high end audio.....

Obsession is a dangerous thing.

It is about time to swap out the Tuber for the Naka-san. It is getting warmer, I set up the AC unit in the front room.

In other tube news.

I got a junk mail from one of my tube shops, Tube Depot. They are having a sale on a selection of NOS tubes. They quote names like Mullard, SED, Tung-Sol, Siemens and Telefunken. All in the celestial sphere of glass heads. The ad touted the warmth and richness and specific attributes of each type and what the can bring to your system.

I am so glad I am not a tube roller. I do not like the idea of changing the sound of a system with different brands of gain devices. I think for a given circuit it should not change very much if at all if you swap out one 12AX7 for another brand. I know things age and very subtle parameters can change, but the device should be tolerant.

It takes a helluva lot of work and time to bias the tubes in my ARC. Not the kind of thing you want to do very often. I also could not afford it. She has 12 tubes.

They wanted over $359 USD for one EL34 tube. If you have a Dynaco ST70 you need 4 matched ones. This tube set is a few hundred dollars more than you would pay for a fully restored example of that Amplifier.

I have only ever replaced tubes that had problems. Though I admit to flipping through a few tubes in my Schitt headphone amp which has one tube in it and I had a handful laying around. Oh and yes they sounded different dammit.

I wonder about having a NOS sale. NOS is new-old-stock. That means never used, factory fresh, and they don't make them anymore. Once gone they are gone. I suppose they are getting expensive to keep around. All these types are manufactured today in fairly good facilities. Though most are made in Russia (bad Putin BAD). They are also made in China and in Eastern Europe. You can get brand new ones.

Supposedly if someone builds an Amplifier it is configured with current tube parameters and should work as intended with current stock.

As real as it gets.

The Vancouver Orpheum Theater for the VSO. A Gershwin concerto, a thing about Finland by a Peruvian composer, and Ravel's Daphnis and Chloe.

It is a 90ish year old venue in the old school tradition of lots of Baroque shapes. The sound defuses with a vengeance. That was the goal after all, so everyone can hear it.

Gershwin made a hit with Rhapsody in Blue and he was commissioned to do a "proper" Piano concerto which he did. He did all the orchestration himself this time, but it sounded a lot like Rhapsody in Blue anyway. The Pianist was amazing by the name of Helene Grimaud. Such fast fingers.

The Ravel was very interesting as they absolutely filled the stage with musicians. There were 8 percussionists! Oh and a full choir with about two dozen more placed up in the balcony for a surround sound thing.

Again my theme here is the image I heard was nothing like a stereo playback. Every instrument was audible and clear. The textures and timbres of each was clear. But there was none of the precise location in space that golden ears crave. You could see where they were. There is nothing more realistic than reality. I am still impressed with how a solo violin can fill such a space with sound.

I am going to look for a recording of that Ravel. I have an excerpt I think. It was particular fun as the conductor Alexander Shelly did the whole thing from memory. He spoke briefly before the performance and was clearly having fun.

It is Carlos Santana Shaman. I got the ARC CL60 in line. It must come out soon, the weather is getting warm. I have to enjoy it while I can. This is a digital recording and it sounds fine. It is a 2002 copyright.

The ARC amp adds a wonderful texture to sound. The percussion is more alive and real. The first track had castanets which felt like they were in the room. Oh the third track has Seal who is a big black guy with a rasp in his voice. Damn!

I know it is a tiny subtle distortion. And maybe a tube amp drops down the ultrasonic noise from DACs. I don't care. It is good.

There is detail and wonderful subtle sounds. This is why the money is spent. I can hear it. Front and back tracks all are clear. No sound can hide from the steam powered system.

All my amps sound different. Really close, I am sure I could pick them out blind. (Challenge to those testing people)

I had the system warming up on two passes of a TELARC CD. If you have a CD player buy TELARCs. They are the most obsessive high end things. They don't make them anymore, but they are out there. Two essentials. One is the 1812 overture with real FN cannons, the other is Carmina Burana. I got both and a dozen others.

But this Santana is a damn good Arista label. Now owned by Universal who own everything but what Sony does. Made before the stupid loudness wars. Buy old it is better.

It is weird to me that CDs are old tech. It is weird to me that cassettes are coming back. You have to spend serious money to get them to sound just OK. Vinyl is far better, and good CDs are a whole nuther level. (most CDs are just OK but good ones!)

Of course I am listening to a tube amp. They are tricky. Some are great. Some are just sticky sweet syrup. The good ones..... I am going to say Conrad Johnson and ARC are worth it. The rest....

Yes I have had a bit of red wine. More than a bit. Just the right amount. Had a nice steak right off the BBQ.

I was thrashing about the internoise and tripped over this.

Care and quality.

I doubt that there is a single streaming platform that cares so much about the music and how it is packaged. Just get the file on the server and collect the money is that business model. Impex is all about caring for the product and the experience you get when you use their stuff.

I have two IMPEX records. One is the most expensive album I ever bought (Getz/Gilberto). It comes with a detailed book describing the process they used to get the recording done, but also the effort they went to involving the family of Stan Getz and telling the story of the original recording.

The other is an excellent version of Famous Blue Raincoat. Not the ultra expensive one, the just really good 33.333RPM copy they put out.

They are both excellent.

I love back stories and the when where and why of a thing. IMPEX cares too.

I wish they would do a Catch Bull at Four. I know they would do an outstanding job of it.

I listened to both of my Cat Stevens LPs last night. Tea for the Tillerman and Catch Bull at four. They are good clean copies and I have taken good care of them, but they are 50 years old. They sounded very good. I know they could sound better.

While I was listening a thought came to mind. The testing people and the golden ears go on and on about phono pickups, this is good this is bad this is better. Blah Blah Blah. I hear very little about microphones. There are at least three technologies used. There are many models from several manufacturers. They can all sound different and bring a particular voice to a recording. But even the digital drones do not debate the need for microphones. They do not care that recording engineers pick and choose them to voice a recording. They do not debate which is more accurate. They cannot test one without using another microphone. They are trapped.

I think phono pickups are simpler and probably more consistent than microphones. They have an easier job. If they have reasonable frequency response the job is half done. They live in a very well defined place and work within simple constraints.

Last night listening to my 50 year old plastic disk I did not even think about which phono pickup was in the turntable. The sound was good, clean, clear, no problems.

I do not often listen to radio in the car. I never do at home. So whatever is the top 40 or whatever it is called I do not hear. Has been that way for a very long time.

So I am a bit isolated from what is popular or new. Or what was popular and new decades ago. What I get, I get from other places like a news source. That is how I found The last dinner party. I found Mike Dawes on a YouTube musician site.

Most recently it was in an audiophile equipment review. I like interesting and complex sounds. Apparently so do golden ears. Last week I read a thing that mentioned Peter Gabriel, a name I had heard before. He had some hits but those did not interest me at all.

There was a review of an amplifier where the GE was using a particular track of Mr Gabriel's for evaluating bass. That track was "The rhythm of the heat" from his fourth album from 1982. The back story is really interesting, look it up if you can. I listened in the car a few times and hey not bad. One other track was a crazy thing that reminded me of Indonesian Gamelan music. There were a couple of tracks that got airplay, but I never cared for "Shock the Monkey". (WTF is that about)

My car audio is stock and sounds OK. But power and range aint in it.

Last night I fired up the steam powered system and streamed this album. I see now why the GE used it for Bass evaluation. There are some BIG drums. Great space and dynamics that the car system just could not do. Impressive to the point I may look to buy the album. I can of course stream it as I did last night, but hey its what I like.

I followed that with a track from Paul Simon's Rhythm of the Saints which has a similar world music thing. Brazilian and African drums and a fair bit of fun. I had that on CD but it was destroyed. Big drums.

Big percussion is complex as most of the sound is not the low frequency stuff, but higher harmonics and information. The BASS is a foundation that makes it work. It just does not sound the same without that as it was in my car. The ARC is still on duty and it likes drums. Kinda funny as it is a tuber, but it has good bass if it is on the track. It is not perfect, but it is deep. The tested bandwidth is 12hz to 40 khz.

I was flipping through the noise in the ASR site. It is full of contrasts and contradictions. One user who often posts technically sophisticated replies and even burns to other people surprised me when he wrote about how he liked and appreciated Vinyl LPs.

He liked the "ceremony" and full experience of pulling out an album and doing the spin up thing. It came across as rather apologetic. He had the fancy streamer stuff but, sorry, still liked plastic. Why be sorry?

I have heard this a few times from a few places. The tone was "yes I know digital is better, but..."

Trying to express the preference for the sound by a back door is not really right. I may have even done that a bit to try to bridge to the digital people. I do go on about liner notes and how good they are to appreciate a piece. But I gotta say that Apple Music stream of the Beethoven Violin Concerto had a great set of documents to go through with more detail than anyone could want. (over 20 pages?)

Fundamentally I find the sound is better on vinyl. Just better.

Aside from the potential for higher dynamic range and resolution in digital it is usually used very poorly. Compression and limiting and loudness wars to make pop music sound good through wireless earbuds results in very compromised sound. Who cares if you can have 24 bits of resolution if you only use 8?

When done properly it is excellent. Think Telarc for that.

Older music that has been remastered also gets poor treatment. Example of Dire Straights Brothers in Arms (original studio recording in digital 16bit 44khz) recently remastered for re-release with massive screwing up to sound good to the "new" ear bud audience. It is compressed, and limited and simply ruined.

I had a simple consumer LP that sounded far better when compared to a lossless stream, and got a MOFI skateboard trick (45-180-double) LP that blows every recent "remaster" into the weeds. Plastic wins that round.

Much of the recent vinyl issues come from two ideas. One is to preserve the quality of the original recording. The other is to tone down the loudness war nonsense of some recent stuff because vinyl is just not as tolerant of it. So even some new stuff can sound better on vinyl.

Though apparently Taylor Swift's stuff is not great.

The shopping adventure is made more "interesting" as you have to figure out who drove the mastering process. Example that I cannot find a proper new copy of Cat Stevens Catch bull at 4. In contrast that Deutsche Grammophon of Rites of Spring which was recorded on tape and remastered by artisans who did an incredible job.

The old analog recordings are very good. They are not perfect, there are flaws, but damn they sound good. The extreme example is Getz Gilberto. Recorded the early 60s before they knew what stereo was. I have a silly expensive version (one step impex) that has zero processing. The simplicity and naturalness of the sound is remarkable. It is also a historical document of Jazz at a crossroads. ( I did spend too much money on it)

There are many others. The MOFI business model is based on getting access to original masters of well recorded albums and treating them well.

Mike Dawes that amazing guitarist issued a vinyl LP "Galactic Acid" that bragged it was the best sounding recording he had ever done. The Last Dinner Party's first LP was mastered by Sterling Labs and was incredible. (and had wonderful liner notes)

Late Sunday afternoon. We were tired, and nothing was thawed out from the freezer. The leftovers from earlier in the week were done. OK lets go into the village for dinner.

We wanted Greek Food, but it was Greek Orthodox Easter. They use the old Julian Calendar for religious purposes. It does not line up with our world. So the place was closed. I did not want Pizza, but it is very good from this tiny shop on the corner. So we walked on and tried to decide where to go.

There is a pub that has lots of seafood pub style, but also has Thai food, and I like spicy. So that is where we went. And there was live music.

There was a tiny stage with a drum kit and some PA. There was only one guy this day. He had a guitar and one of those machines to play rhythm. I do not know one guitar model from another but it was electric and had a hollow body. It looked a lot like the type George Benson plays. So he did some songs. He was an OK singer and player. Hey music is done for love, not showing off. (usually)

I had a beer. There was a golf tournament on the TV. We had some breaded shrimp while waiting for the unpronounceable Thai food to arrive. The music was fine behind me. I noted that it was not loud, but there was a lot of distortion in the tone. That was almost like an extra string. Electric Guitar Players love that. I mused that it was either a tiny tube amp, or it was a digital processor thing. A clipping tube amp should be loud right?

Then he played a George Benson version of "On Broadway". Everyone knows that one. The tone was very much like George Benson. The guitar sounded right. He fiddled with the lyrics quite a bit. Doing a pub gig people ask for more songs than anyone can remember exactly. It was enjoyable. It was live music.

Live music is cool. That Absolute Sound idea about it being the ideal your home system should match is nonsense. The PA system was a simple jazz / pop small group thing. Often they have three players, and there was only one this night. It did not have subterranean Bass and shimmering treble. It was what it was.

My most recent other live music experiences were also different than this "Absolute". Those were a Symphony Orchestra and a Chamber Orchestra. No PA there, but still it did not have holographic imaging and many of the hallmarks we look for in great recordings. Recordings are different. This was not "Jazz at the Pawn Shop".

I have not yet found a reliable review of one of those tiny class D Chinese amplifiers. By that I mean a sounds like review by at least an apprentice golden ear. But I have found a Stereophile review of a Chinese "hi end" amp made by Eversolo who have made a few those small Class D amps. The model in question is the Eversolo AMP-F10.

Stereophile did a relatively positive review in the classic "it sounds like" style.

I want to be clear that sounds like style only works to sort devices that are otherwise noted as at least OK. I have seen so many likes of less than OK devices to rely only on that.

The cool thing here is that when the designers at EVERSOLO wanted to take a kick at the high end they went class A/B. It is in every way a classic big iron linear power supply to an analog transistor output. They didn't try to do it Class D. So they think in their own minds A/B is better? I will link the review below as it has some cool tidbits like what music they listen to in Shenzen China.

In typical fashion they overclaim the power. The lead in on the website says 950 Watts, but it really is 200 Watts per channel at 8 Ohms. The higher number is when it is bridged into mono into 4 ohms. It is not an inexpensive device.

For all that it did fine. It was being compared to a Benchmark AHB2 which is a good one. Generally the AHB2 was better in detail and clarity while in some tracks the Chinese beast showed a heavier bass. So it was good, but not as good as.....

I had seen a good review of an ARC Class D amp, but it had a linear power supply, and the Class D "module" was built of discrete components by ARC. That's the hard way.

The fun part here was, as I said, that Eversolo thought they had to do a high end amp old school.

As a bit of spice the Audio Science Review site has comments on this particular model as being not very reliable.

The issue of being able to hear well enough to differentiate amplifiers and other devices goes way back. I recently read a review of a reborn product from the UK Audio firm Quad. They go back to the Jurrasic era of audio (the 60s!). In the 70s they made some good stuff with creative solutions to circuits and transducers. They are exploiting the golden aura of dim memories and actually pretty cool industrial design.

Back in the day they used a method called current dumping which bears a close resemblance to recent "revolutionary" ideas about feed back and feed forward and feed sideways. They were good, if limited by ideas of speaker protection and British Stodginess.

They built some really cool stuff including full range electrostatic speakers starting in 1957 and they still make much updated examples.

Their new stuff is up to date and still looks cool and works fine. They now have a remote!

The reviewer, a Mr Martin Colloms, related how the publishers he worked for back in the day refused to acknowledge that electronics that measured well could all sound different. Specifically they believed he could not possibly hear what he said he did.

This attitude included the creative engineer behind Quad, Peter Walker. Give him full credit he called the bluff and Quad arranged a test. A blind test controlled by Quad technicians. The goal was could this person tell that there were differences between a Quad amplifier and another similar unit. It was not identifying which was which, only that A was A and B was B. It was blind, volume matched and fair.

Quad was disappointment they could not prove he could not. That is actually proving he could, right?

This issue goes back 64 years. Yes there has been progress in amplifier design, I guess, but distortion has always been low to vanishing. One thing I never have been clear on, is at what number represents the threshold of human sensitivity. Another thing that measuring people fail at is to characterize how a complex musical signal is modified by distortion in the audible range. They believe they do not have to. My ARC has tiny measured distortion at single digit Watt output. It also has a very distinct texture and color to the sound. The Franken-amp is cleaner, and Nakamichi-san is clearer still at the same levels. They all report the same magnitude of test numbers.

Testing people are wrong.

I was bumping around the internoise as I often do. I checked out Rick Beato on Youtube and it was weird.

I guess some fans of a Quebecois "rock" duo have swamped him with emails and comments that he had to check out this bleeding edge duo. He was bullied into it which may mean we have a new marketing technique out in the wild.

The groups is called "Angine de Poitrine" which is french for the medical condition Angina Pectoris a serious heart condition. More simply as Chest Pain. Oh and they are weird. Being weird is a well worn marketing idea.

Painfully awkward costumes but with that very skilled musicianship.

I liked it. The music is described as microtonal where the usual musical notes are replaced with different intervals and structures. It is also called "math rock" but that may be because the experts had run out of words.

I liked it because it was different. It was new. It was not at all main stream or even seeming from the same planet.

I like good food. I have another blr-thing about fitness and stuff so I am aware of food abuse. I am not fat. I do not diet, or fast, or any of the health trends or fads. I just want the food I do eat to be good. It must fuel my body, and be fun to eat. Oh and I ride a road bike a few thousand kilometers a year.

I am sensitive to taste. I can tell the difference between different roasts of different coffee beans. I may be borderline obsessive as I now roast my own coffee. (Borderline?!)

I far prefer a steak cut from a dry aged primal to the stuff from a mega-store cooler. It is different. It is better. Oh and yes more, expensive. The best steak I ever had was one I cooked. It was a massive thick Prime Rib that I prepared sous-vide then finished with 6 minutes on a very hot barbecue. Salt and pepper and nirvana. It was my birthday!

I like good wine. Not expensive wine, just good wine. Rich deep flavor and complexity. Usually red, but there are a few very good whites. I recall a nice dinner in a middle eastern bistro and I had the house red wine. It was amazing. I enjoyed it so much I asked to see the bottle. This was a red that ticked all the check boxes and was a grape I had never heard of, the Cabernet Frank. It is usually planted as a safety crop as it ripens earlier than the fancy grapes and can be blended to fix issues with the grapes they prefer. I now seek it out. It is not expensive.

I want to feel and experience things in the best way I can. Being an audiophile is just an extension of this same thing. Good sound is enjoyable on its own terms. It is an added dimension to the experience of the music itself.

If you can stomach fast food burgers then compressed streaming tunes into wifi earbuds is fine. It is convenient. I can't do that. I suppose if it is the only thing you have to listen to it is the best thing you have. I can see testing people run analysis of a McDonald's beef patty and an artisanal roast. They are both beef, they test the same for e-coli. Oh there are traces of enzymes and funny things on the aged beef. The numbers are not as good as for the simple patty.

Just like cameras in smart phones. If you have any understanding of resolution and F-stop you know better, it not then not.

There are levels of quality for everything you can do.

You do not have to dine at a fancy restaurant to have great food.

You do not have to buy expensive wine to have a great one.

You do not have to buy a Leica Camera for fine photos, a Canon or Fuji will be fine. Please just not a smart phone.

You do not have to spend as much as a nice car (or house) on your audio system. The replacement cost for my entire system is now about $6000 give or take. I think it is as good as any I have ever heard and better than most. I paid a lot less than that.

Phase Linear 8000a II turntable

Grado Opus 3 / audio Technica AT7V depending on mood

Audio Research SP14 preamp.

Audio Research Classic 60 / Nakamichi PA-7 depending on temperature.

One of the Iconic duos of American music Simon and Garfunkel did a free concert in Central Park in Manhattan. It was free, but was televised to raise money to help restore neglected parts of the Park.

Of course there was an Album. It was a double album actually with 19 songs that people my age (and younger) consider timeless. If you google Simon and Garfunkel it will be on the list if you want details.

Of course I have that album. It is a live album with crowd noise and PA Distortion and all that. Hard core audiophiles would not like it, but I do. Live albums have none of the phony, fix it in the mix, bullshit. (or at least less of it) An outdoor park with 500,000 people has a different type of ambience.

And there is nostalgia. I heard these songs when I was young. They were deep and mostly hopeful. I recall studying some of the lyrics in an English course as it was poetry, not teenage angst.

Simon wrote the songs, and Garfunkel was mostly harmony, but really good at it. I recall when they broke up we all wondered how they would do as Garfunkel was the better singer.

I played the album. Of course I played it, that is what I write about here.

It is not an audiophile record, but it is very good with much to recommend it. The sound is clear and represents what the experience of being there would have been like. It was with the ARC tube amp and the golden light was perfect. It added a humanity to the vocals and a richness to the acoustic guitars.

One key bit is just before the "sound of silence" when the crowd was shouting out requests, one voice carries over the rest calling; "Sound of Silence, sound of silence." That may have really happened or they added it in, but it is there clear as anything.

One measure of the quality is I forgot it was a recording. It was just a bunch of songs I like, sung by the people who wrote them.

I was reading some old school hearing people audio reviews. They have terms to describe what they hear. "This Amp has more SLAM than the reference Dinosaur 800!" or "The treble in the fish-fire 10 is very fine grained." What if anything does this mean?

Experience has shown me that things sound different. The differences can be described. Maybe they can be measured. Maybe they are measured, but what does 7th harmonic distortion 95db down sound like?

I have fiddled with things over the years. I recall pulling the cover off an old OP AMP preamp and putting a bigger capacitor in the power supply. It probably would have made zero difference to the measurements at all. It did make it sound different. The Bass was much better. Why, it was because there was a bit more power available for low frequencies which are the most demanding. The Bass was more impactful, it had slam! (in a preamp!)

My interpretation is that bigger power reserves help for big transient power demands which appear as something the word slam captures. How better to describe it. Testing people could open covers and wire the power rails and watch for voltage drops, but that is troublesome and a little bit dangerous. So we hear SLAM, and they see nothing on the scopes.

This is most apparent in power amplifiers as well they have the power.

My old Carver 200t amp does not have slam. Even though is advertises up to 120 Watts per side it sounds weak compared to a much older 60 Watt per side amplifier I have compared it to. The numbers show it is stronger, but it is weaker because of the strange and creative way the power supply is rigged. RMS constant sine wave power does not need slam.

The review I was reading was about an ARC amplifier like mine. They were praising it's slam as being almost as good as a big transistor amp. It has stupid large high voltage power capacitors you could start a car with. They also praised it's treble fine grain. What the hell is grain?

In a photograph grain is visible. In sound what is it like? Maybe it is like the noise fine sand makes as it is poured out of a container. Speaking about that same amplifier I know that high treble (at least what I can hear) is not perfect. There is a very fine and complex distortion up there that reads as a texture. Odd harmonics mixed in there being added to the signal so it is no longer 95db down.

I can tell you that the Nakamichi-san amplifier has comparatively seamless and clear treble. No grain at all. It is superior to the ARC Cl60 in that way. But sometimes superior is not better. I like the sound the ARC has.

There is no contest as to the ultimate SLAM. Nakamichi-san has the title in my house. It has dual mono power supplies, with BIG capacitors and lots of amperes available to push the woofers around. Spin up a copy of Saint-Sains Organ symphony and listen to that last bit. Slam. The last movement of Berlioz Symphony Fantastique demands slam. If you have heard either of those you know what slam is.