#audophile

OK weird.

Much of the stuff is photos of old stuff from brochures and magazines (like paper OMG). I guess some people kept all that stuff. Grandpa was a hoarder of audio mags? I see lovely ads for crap product. It was crap 60 years ago and still is today (like the BOSE 901). There are some bits showing good stuff but not much. And there are the confused people who don't understand obsession with vacuum tubes and LP records.

There are links to very artistic audio themed soft-core porn. Some are adds for console stereos draped with girls in lingerie. A good stereo will bring the girls in for sure. At least that was thought in the 60s? And there are people posing as golden ears. Some experts might be expert, but you gotta pay the bills no matter the crap information they put out. Number ten in this guy's top ten turntable list is pure crap now and forever.

I have even seen totally phony photo-shopped systems that I know could never exist. You know a turntable has to be at least a bit more than 12" across to fit an LP which is 12 inches in diameter. So that picture just don't scale right.

I guess in summary it is not much fun to look at that tag as there is so much dross.

If you are an audiophile then you probably know good from bad or want to. If you are just interested or new to this then there is a problem. There is a hell of a lot of misinformation conspiracy and noise.

First problem is the term audiophile. It means literally you love sound. The presumption is you appreciate the quality of sound. That is different than liking music in general, or some specific type of music. That would be a musicophile. All it takes is adding -phile to the end of a word.

So if you like music as opposed to just the sound of steam locomotives passing by and care for good clean sound then you are bumping up against this other -phile thing. Do not be intimidated. I assure you that listening to a favorite artist with all the sounds fully resolved and blasting away in your home is a good thing.

It is strange to me that people will spend a small fortune on a sound system for their car and far less in their home. Though I suppose if you live in an apartment loud music will make no friends, but being a big bass thumper in traffic is OK and even expected. Hey if you love that sound well sorry to tell you... yup audiophile.

Now to cost. There can be a lot of money spent. Some people will spend six figures restoring a car from when they were young. It is a hobby where it is possible to spend gobs of money. And there are many people, and companies who will help you spend your money.

You can spend much less and get good results. My equipment has only two relatively new things in it. One Phono Cartridge, and one vacuum tube. All the rest of the electronics are decades old. My speakers are a few years old but I built those as I know best. The cost has been interesting. By selling off older even collectable stuff I have spent effectively no money over the past 7 or 8 years. Yes I bought that stuff once long ago, but economically it was sunk money.

I have the advantage of experience and know the good stuff from the less good. I know what brands to look for. I also know which products have cults around them that blur the flaws. I call myself a "cheap audiophile" as I will not spend more than low four figures on anything. The most expensive thing I ever bought was under 2k bucks. Most was far less than that.

One of the links the tag search brought up was guy who did not understand why anyone would buy Vinyl Records. The equipment is expensive and the media is less available than digital streams. There was one reply about the tangible nature of an album and actually owning a thing rather than just being allowed to access it. I will go further.

I have avoided high end streaming because of cost and complexity. To get good sound out of numbers you need several lumps and most are expensive. You need a computer or a server that is logged into a provider like "tidal" or "qobuz" or "apple music". Then you need a device that can store the bits on a drive either an SSD or even a spinning magnetic disc to avoid drop outs that can be the music server, but not the computer. Then you need a DAC to convert the particular stream to analog sound which is finally fed into your audio system proper. Aside from the subscription (I have apple music) you need three lumps that each cost more than a good turntable if you want audiophile sound.

In order to add a high end streaming line to my system would cost more than the replacement cost of my system as it is right now. So I have a low end solution. I plug my Iphone into my CD player with a nice-ish DAC in it. It is OK sound. But I swear if I play an LP of the same music after hearing it off my iphone to CD quality there is no comparison the LP is better.

And yes when it comes to vacuum tubes I vacillate. They are expensive and wear out. They sound nice. They have more distortion and artifacts than solid state, but it is nice sounding distortion. A big part of this hobby skews preferences to nice sounding distortion. Vacuum tubes and moving coil phono cartridges are prime examples.

My most recent experience was going from a full vacuum tube preamplifer to a hybrid with only one tube. The sound was rich and deep and involving before. Yummy like a good sticky baklava dripping with honey. Now it is detailed and frankly palpable. I can hear a singer part their lips before a phrase. You have to hear that to appreciate it.

I have been recently been tempted with two vacuum tube unicorn amplifiers for a very good price for that type of device. That price is double what a competitive solid state amplifier would be. And like I say at the local pub after my fourth beer, I want another but I don't need another. I am seriously tempted. I have a nascent love for the sound I know is in them. They have a voice and it is good. Actually this is a key aspect of the hobby. It is an emotional response to something. It is irrational.

My wife and I had a lovely evening with dinner and a visit from my daughters college room mate. She was moving back East from two years in Tofino BC, and stopped by to visit. We had a nice dinner with some wine, and once home opened another bottle and fired up the steam powered stereo.

That wine was a lovely red. The girl had worked in a wine shop and knew her stuff. So sipping and talking and listening. My wife wanted to play some of her Apple Playlist so we plugged in her Iphone.

When we do that the DACs in my CD deck are used. It can decode 24 bit and 96 khz data streams. That is about all that you can get from apple in lossless. The stream was probably running 44khz and 16 bit, but once that was thought to be perfect. Music played, she got in the groove. Not bad frankly.

Anyway the streams were not great compared to my recent experience. I mean good for cars or earbuds while working out, but..... She played Fleetwood Mac "The Chain", I mumbled something about vinyl. So our guest asked;" You have this on Vinyl?" Damn right I do!

I went down to the vault and pulled up the album and spun up "The Chain". Night and day. So much clearer. So much quieter. So much better. This LP was brand new in 1977 when I bought it. It still sounds new. Vinyl rules.

Now it could be that the wine was deadening our senses, but I doubt that. We were splitting a bottle 3 ways over about 4 hours. It was really nice as the wine changed over time and it breathed. Fruity notes became recessed and the dark tobacco and leather surfaced. But I think we were actually having a parallel experience. Fine wine fine sounds, and deeply appreciating both. No, senses if anything heightened.

So not too much wine. Not enough time. The next morning was a work day. Had to shut down for shut eye.

Oh the Red was a Merlot-Cab Frank from the Okanagan Valley in BC.

We were catching up on some things and at one point he mentioned that you cannot buy any good audio equipment that is not made in China. Whatever happened to the US or Europe?

I did not have all day so I mentioned that Lots of those old non-Chinese companies are still around, and frankly I could not think of a single Chinese audio product I would buy.

The conversation went on to other things, but got me thinking. I tend to think of great replies and directions of discussion after it is all over. I shoulda said....

You can buy first rate equipment from the US, Canada, UK, Germany, France, hell even New Zealand. There are one or two Chinese products, but not inexpensive and apparently warranty is an alien concept there.

Full disclosure I have been dealing with Chinese businesses for 30 years and currently work for a Chinese company. The main complaint we have here is lack of truly reliable supply in China for parts and components. Trust but verify and verify again. That is a whole other story.

There is very good stuff made in Korea, but Japan makes the best engineered equipment bar none. Much of it is small and modest, but exquisite They are limited by the small sizes of their homes so small is best.

I just looked at the local Best Buy site. They do not sell a single thing worth buying for a quality audio system. AV receivers are big and probably Chinese, I do not look close. It is all convenience and smartphone connectivity and I guess the volume controls work.

If you want the best stuff though it is North America and Europe. It is also usually stupid expensive if new. One of the best Solid state Amplifier lines on the planet is made by Bryston in Canada. They have an amazing multi DECADE warranty. Sound good too. Preamplifiers are a dangerous matter of taste and all the best are not Asian.

Of course if my friend mentioned cost then it gets harder. My response is buy good old stuff. There is a lot of stuff from 40 years ago and more that is coveted. Old worn parts must be replaced, but the basic ideas from then are still valid. Just look at the vacuum tube cult. That goes back almost 100 years. If you stuff 60 year old glass in your system you are one of the club. There is a lot of sales bullshit, but there is no really new technology.

The used market is a rich hunting ground. That is probably why I dwell on it. There are a few small companies that play in the cheap seats, but make good things. So new and not budget busting. It is possible.

I have a second full system unused in my house. If I sold it as a set for $3000 it would qualify as entry level audiophile. As of today it would be an ARC SP12 preamp, a Harman Kardon Citation 12 Amplifier, a Harman Kardon ST 5 turntable with Grado Cartridge, and large Advent speakers. By 1980 standards that is just a notch or two below the very best. Upgrade would be to double the Advents which would double the amps power as well as have some serious audiophile magic. All of it American Made. (Cue the Bald Eagle fly over).

I ran through my new LPs again. The craft braided connectors still in place. I untangled the old long Audioquest Reference wires out and cut them while I listened.

The Audioquest things are shielded. That means there are the two main insulated lines in what is called a twisted pair and a bare stranded wire that touches an aluminum foil wrap around which is thick insulation. The wires are heavy. I think about 18 gauge. That borders on speaker wire. So I cut off a 32" length and got new RCA plugs soldered to one end. On shielded sets you must connect the shield to one end only. That is to prevent the shield taking some of the signal and or making a grounding problem.

It was hard to get good solid joints in such a tiny place. It took too long. One pair is all I could manage before I had to take a break. Damn fussy work.

I will also make a shorter piece say 18" to run from the CD to the Preamp. I may also make another braided set. I have some more wire and it is kinda fun.

In my break I started to read up on speaker wire. Another experiment perhaps? One article / column / blog was on PS Audio "copper" about balancing parameters to meet an optimum propagation velocity. Errr. I smell snake oil. The goal was to hit just the right inductance and capacitance and resistance to make magic happen.

To be crystal clear the inductance they were getting was measured in Micro-Henries and the capacitance in Picofarads. Inside my speaker there is an inductor in series with the woofer of 1.7 mH. MicroHenries are 3 decimal points to the right of that. Does not matter! Also the tweeter has a 4.42 mf capacitor in series. Picofarads are also 3 decimal points to the right and also do not matter! The speed of the signal is like 70% the speed of light, so it must be magic. It makes a difference in gigahertz but not audio frequencies.

Fortunately I pulled out of that Rabbit Hole with another article where some experienced listeners did blind testing of speaker wire. They used simple stranded wire of various gauges as well as one fancy many dollars per foot woven by virgins high end stuff. The simple conclusion is use thicker wire like 16 gauge plus. If the runs are long maybe thicker and if short then even 18 gauge is fine. This is plain two conductor stuff here.

The fact that they used a blind comparison and zeroed in on simple is better is telling. It is telling us that snake oil makes money. My current set up uses 16 gauge two conductor and might benefit from getting thicker as the runs are long. The left side has about 20 feet from the amp through the wall under the floor up through a heater vent and to the speaker. I could buy another roll of 16 and double up the run. Does that mean I have to braid it? It is kinda fun. Simpler to just get some big stuff. 100 feet of 14 Gauge is $46.00 plus tax. Might do that for Shits and giggles.

Anyway the LPs sound very nice. I think I am getting used to the sound of the short braids. I will swap in the Audioquest shorties and see if it is length that had the effect.

I stumbled across a blogazine under PSAudio called "Copper magazine." In it was a set of articles / missives / essays by people who have years of experience with ultra-high-end audio equipment.

Worth a read. "Confessions of a setup guy" or something like that was interesting. At one point this man was hired to set up and maintain the systems in Long Island for Harry Pearson (HP) of Absolute Sound Magazine. ASM was a big part of my early audio life. They were more than a bit crazy and obsessive to a fault. But a long line of designers and manufacturers lined up hoping to get a positive mention in their pages when they got around to actually publishing. War stories from audio.

There is some wisdom in those pages.

The foundation of Absolute Sound was the idea that the only basis for judging the quality of equipment was comparing a system to actual live musical performance. Screw science and hang out in jazz clubs and the opera house. Not a bad idea, and tax deductible. That mag is still in business.

The idea sounds good, but it is riddled with inconsistency. For one few people live in a house with a concert hall in it. The room is a big part of the sound. No amp and speaker is going to eliminate the room. Yes you can treat it with foam and stuff to absorb sound, but that is really hard and unnatural and getting more than a bit silly especially if you have a wife and family. Another thing is every jazz club has a sound system and that is used to assist the performance and is likely less than high-end. So use a super system to listen to a pedestrian one.

If you really want to experience a recorded performance as it was in a concert hall or whatever binaural headphones work very well. How many systems center on those? How many records are there?

In my experience some equipment they drooled over was really not that good. I heard flaws in several speakers they loved. There were serious flaws in the ARC SP 3a1, but with HP's help that set ARC on its way to prosperity.

I think the best you can get is a fleeting illusion. On my best recordings it is like a curtain is drawn across the wall of my living room with an orchestra or band right there. I obsess on a different lower level. But I try to just enjoy the music. It helps if it is more real. I know it is not real. There is no absolute status. I have explored the dark side. I have records I should not have bought as the music does not thrill or entertain me. They are test records. Oh listen to the impact of that drum!

I have two. The conversion is complete.

I wonder why people who do not know why a thing is tried or done the way it is must make up some strange ideas to fill in the blanks. I was just reading up on the state of knowledge and awareness of LT TTs out in the internoise. Oh boy! Lots of noise, little fact.

Some were saying LT TTs are the best. Some were saying they damaged records. Some said you could not use different pickups or had to use specific brands. Bits of truth in there occasionally. Some were hilariously wrong.

What was agreed was that when vinyl LPs went extinct the market for these things collapsed.

A linear tracking tonearm runs laterally straight across the record. When a master record is cut on the lathe the cutting head moves straight across in the same fashion.

The idea is that you are getting the information off with the precise geometry that was used to put it there. Seems like a good idea. The pickup is tangent to the groove everywhere ideally.

In an ideal conventional pivoting arm the tonearm swings across the record and is tangent in only two spots. Everywhere else it is twisted out of alignment. The error is not great, but it happens.

Another factor is that a pivoting arm is drawn towards the center of the record by the friction of the stylus and the offset of the pivot to the tangent line. The stylus leans on one side of the groove. That is the "skating effect" that the anti-skating device is used to counteract. The skating effect varies with the friction which varies with the sound intensity and the phase of the moon. Bottom line if you get the anti-skating adjusted really well it is at best a compromise. I know I tried for years to get that right with my pivoting arms. If that factor is off it changes the sound.

So two things that pivoting arms have trouble with. The same two things do not happen at all in the ideal LT TT. Note I said Ideal.

So to it! I have two such machines. They offer radically different solutions, and both work really well.

My Harman Kardon ST5 has a purely mechanical solution. It is really very elegant if you like that sort of thing (I do!) The arm that holds the pickup can pivot a bit and rides on a carrier that has a little idler wheel on it that in turn rides on a rotating shaft. There is a small angle between them so the carrier is dragged laterally by this angle sort of like a sail boat tacking in the wind. As the arm pivots the angle changes. If the arm is pulled toward the center the little wheel pulls the carrier faster. Pulled the other way and it slows or reverses. It is a very simple and effective mechanical feed back.

The HK ST5 can hold and play any phono pick up that mounts with two screws like 90% of them do.

My Phase Linear TT which is really a Pioneer PL 1000a uses fancy electro mechanics to do the job. The arm mounts on a carrier and it too can pivot. As it moves right or left that is detected by a light sensor that sends a signal to a linear induction motor that moves the carrier in response. Mechanically simple, electrically not so much, but effective.

It too can use any standard phono pick up. It also has a standard cartridge head shell so you can swap out pick ups in under a minute.

There are a reasonable number of these types of turntable. They all were purpose built with integrated linear tracking arms. I think all but one were Japanese. Yamaha made some as did Mitsubishi, Technics and others I cannot recall right now. They are all, lets call it "high end". Expensive in the day and usually built as a statement of the company's capabilities.

Some did it very well others did it better. Harman Kardon was the outlier and was built in the USA. The arm and its function were really good. The basic turntable needs tweaks to bring it into the high end. Frankly HK should have done better. All of these units let you use whatever pickup you want to.

There is another to discuss. Bang & Olufsen made a number of turntables in Denmark. All of those could only be used with B&O custom pickups. The advantage is they were well matched and some of those were very very good. They made both pivoting arms and LT. They are beautiful and functional. The better ones are true high end. I see them for sale occasionally and get twitchy.

B&O stopped making the pickups years ago, but another company took up the work and make exceptional products with a broad range of price. If you join that club it may cost you.

These "good ones" reduce and may completely eliminate the tracking angle error and they all are very effective at killing the skating force problem. I think the latter is the best advantage. You do hear things and they are better. Incorrect skating force will make an LP sound off and can deflect the stylus laterally and maybe out of its ideal performance range.

In a pivoting tone arm you can hear when the anti-skate is dialed in. It is better when it works. Simply not a problem with linears.

There are others out there and those are less than high end usually. The selection is rather large. If you search online for Linear Tracking Turntables most of the hits will be one of those. They are very compact and use what is called a P mount pickup. There are many of the P mount type available, but it is not the "normal" type. Still you have a selection to choose from and they offer some of the LT TT advantages.

Do they hurt records. NO! There are many pickups that may hurt LPs but they are not unique to linears. If you take care with your software fear not!

Do they sound better? I think yes. My Phazer sounds better than my recently departed Sony 2251. It is high end and was close to SOTA in the late 70s. (I was there do not quibble)

Finally there are a few linear tracking tone arms out in the market. They can be mounted on most any turntable even boutiques. Some of them use air bearings but depend on the tiny stylus to provide the force to overcome the mass of the carrier and arm. I do not like that, but it can work. Others use gears and belts and motors and pulleys. Many things can be made to work.

There is a lot of nonsense on the internet. SURPRISE!

Usable reliable and truthful information is quite rare. You can filter out a lot of crap with some basic knowledge.

First and most important is there is no best anything. All sound systems distort and change the sound of the source. I have superb sounding CDs and LPs. The LP is not always better, but I may prefer it. It is taste, it is preference. It is hearing a difference that you like, but may not be technically correct.

Golden ears sit on the mountain tops and pronounce this and that. But the mountain may be something other than stone. I know of at least one very well magazine recommended speaker that was made from quite poor materials and components. It did not sound truthful. The guy made a lot of money off it.

So let's talk about amplifiers. A basic amplifier has a simple job to do. I therefore prefer simple solutions. Separate units instead of integrated ones or receivers. Example my 1970s HK Citation 12 amp. It is a dual mono class AB quasi-complementary 60 Watt per channel Stereo amplifier. What does that mean?

Amplifier Class means the type of circuit used. It is not in any way a quality measure. People that promote "pure class A" as a quality medallion are full of shit. Almost all small signal amplifiers are class A.

Class AB or A/B describes that for higher power levels, above say 5 Watts, the signal is shared between more than one output device. For the Citation 12 it is two transistors one for positive and one for the negative voltage rails. Complementary and quasi-complementary refer to using either transistors of opposite polarity or the same polarity respectively.

It is not just transistors. Tube power amps are also class AB but have an elegant solution by having transformers on the output. Both tubes have the same polarity, as well tubes cannot have opposite polarity. Electrons are electrons after all and are negative. They get the opposite voltages by circulation of the currents backwards through the primary windings of the output transformer. Both run off high negative voltage rails. One output device(s) goes one way the other the other way through the windings.

So the Citation 12 has two output devices per channel that are the same polarity hence the quasi.

Dual Mono means that past the power cord both channels are completely separate. There are two power supplies so cross talk between channels is impossible.

Compare that to my Carver M200 T amp. It is rated at 100 Watts per channel. It has a funky "magnetic field" power supply but that is shared between both stereo channels. Carver is a brilliant designer, but a better marketer. ALL power supplies for audio use magnetic fields in their power transformers. (Exception being digital switching types but they have lousy current capability)

The Carver has 100 Watts to the Citation's 60, but the little one is far more clear and has better stereo imaging BECAUSE it has no cross talk through the power supply.

In terms of db the difference is 2.2 db between 100 and 60. (10 times log of 100/60)

The Carver was never SOTA, but it was well received. The old HK sounds better because of the power supply. (it was almost SOTA for a brief heady time) That is not preference, but measured performance.

So What is a Watt? Straight power. A low efficiency speaker may deliver 85 dba from one Watt of power. 85 dba is actually quite loud. My invisible speakers are rated at 88 dba / Watt at one meter distance. Thing is music has a huge range of dynamics so you actually need far more power than one Watt. The one meter figure is important as sound intensity falls off rapidly with distance.

There is a trend for some people to use tiny simple very low power class A amplifiers based on the opinion they never need any more than the 5 to 10 Watts (optimists) these little (expensive) jewels provide. For chamber music and much jazz that is fine.

For Rock, Symphonic music and loud jazz you need more power. A lot more.

For myself I appreciate the power reserve and headroom of big amps. My black box 416 is 240 Watts per channel that is four times the power of the little Citation 12. That is 6 db more. I hear the difference as more clarity and ease. It is simply cleaner. These db are stingy aint they? You dump all those Watts and get only a few lousy db.

In a pinch the Citation is good enough. It is only 6 db shorter and will get pretty loud. It is a lot better than the Carver because it is dual mono. My black box 416 is dualish mono. One transformer but two completely separate power supply rectifiers and filter systems.

Several respected amplifiers adopt the dual mono or dualish mono approach. Bryston and Adcom come to mind. Those are good units. The benefit is you get much better clarity in the stereo image. Shared power supplies always cause a fuzzy center to well recorded stereo images.

Many people will have completely separate amplifiers for each channel for basically the same effect.

As far as the tube vs transistor vs FETs thing it really comes down to cost. The cheapest decent tube amp is more expensive than a much better transistor amp.

Right now there are several tube amps for sale on the audio-mart. For $1300 you can have 35 watts per channel in a Dynaco ST70. It is a decent little amp, but not close to SOTA. For a bit more $1500 you can have a pair of 60 Watt Quicksilver mono amps. Both will need new tubes soon. Those are not cheap!

At the same time there are a couple hundred fine transistor amps on the same market for less than $1500. There is even a 250 Watt per channel Bryston for only $1000 bucks.

All these are oldish. So the choice is bang for buck really. For any Tube amplifier you can get a significantly better solid state unit for the same money or MUCH less.

For that reason I stick to Solid state transistors to drive my speakers.