You can be happy with less than high-end gear.
An interesting comparison: Matrix HiFi --> Blind testing high end full equipments
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You can be happy with less than high-end gear.
An interesting comparison: Matrix HiFi --> Blind testing high end full equipments
Another "flawed" test and highly subjective author.......................... just my .02 y'all understand.
Are you for real? Your test results CLEARLY indicate that 67% of the participants heard a difference and had a preference. Since when does price paid automatically correlate with sound quality?Quote:
How can it be possible that a basic system with such a price difference against the "reference" one, poorly placed, using the cheapest signal cables found, couldn't be distinguished from the more expensive one?
Forward extremes, boom and sizzle. Sucks a listener in at first, eventually to spit them out fatigued and dissatisfied over the long haul. Or, maybe to 37% it did sound better.Quote:
And, most of it all, how come the cheap system was chosen by so many people as the best sounding of the two?
Best? Best at what? Could you get any more subjective than that?Quote:
Shouldn't the differences be so evident that it'd be a child's game to pick the best?
EDIT: Logically, amplifier and digital source should be about the 2 least influential components in any given system. To have either or both impart a significant audible difference suggests an obvious flaw, or intentional voicing characteristic. The loudspeakers chosen for the test might be a "bottleneck" with limitations that prevent less subtle differences from being immediately noticeable.................... they should have used Altecs!
Surely, the folks selling Behringer gear and Sony DVDP's will want to hand out reprints.:D
It's natural that different people prefer different sound systems, and price may not be a reliable indicator of popularity. Having tried various electronics with my speakers, the better amplifiers did make a clear improvement in clarity and detail that both I and my friends heard. Not scientific evidence I suppose, but there it is.
/Why yes; I am using Altec horns.
These tests crack me up! The speaker is the weakest link in any sound system, so one must start with the highest efficiency, resolution, widest BW, lowest distortion pair practical to even begin to have a worthwhile test........................ All this test did was highlight that most folks either like their music euphonically distorted ['colored'] more than others or at least were indifferent to it. Little surprise there, a certain four letter manufacturer has been the world's number one provider of consumer sound systems for many years now following this marketing strategy.
GM
Quote:
Originally Posted by fpitas
100% agreed, but in the right place and time the better amp may be 20 bucks and the worst one several thousand. Regardless, speakers and sources, especially analog, are still the most important. Transducers, whether it be microphones, cartridges, or speakers, are the first place to fix. You will then be able to judge amplifiers And digital decoders....
Oh Greg, you're such a Bozo. ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by GM
I was listening to an old jazz recording via Pandora (paid version) the other day. There was a pronounced bass part (electric) in this particular piece and what stopped me in my tracks, and caused me to sit and listen, was a faint clicking sound that ran along with the bass line. I thought there was problem. Turns out what I was hearing was the bass players fingernails touching the strings as he plucked. Hoo-hah.
High efficiency Altecs allow all that detail to come through, but they also exaggerate any flaws or shortcuts taken in amplifier design. They will make a bad amplifier sound much worse by enhancing noise and/or distortion. On the other hand, they will make a good amplifer sound almost liquid.
Listening to music on this level is a skill. I am still learning. I still can't hear the diffence between lamp cord and $1800 speaker cables...let alone $1800 speaker cables that are suspended off the floor by little stands.
I don't know who these people are that participated in this "test, and what qualifies then to come to their conclusions, but to ask an untrained listener what they think is "best" is an exercise in futility.
You may be interested to read Roger Russells take on speaker wire:Quote:
Originally Posted by alancohen
Speaker Wire
what i want to know is, how much does a long speaker wire run hurt the overall quality of the sound? if were talking over 75 feet wouldn't it pay to run a lowloss coax between a preamp and a mono amp at each speaker?
Well, just how many feet of wire is in that inductor in your crossover and how much does that hurt your sound?
I'm using a $100 Rat Shack Sherwood amp and my Altecs still sound great.
Choosing wire size is a function of voltage drop over distance, so as long as the peak current requirement doesn't dictate an unacceptably large wire gauge for the app to maintain a low voltage drop, then there should be no perceived loss of sound quality [SQ] regardless of length.
GM
Roger Russell is a great fellow, he is very knowledgeable, he is NOT the God of speaker wire, however.
If an inductor was simply a "conductor", that's what science would have called it.
A 75foot pair(speaker wire) is 150 feet of circuit. Be sure to remember this complex math when consulting the magic speaker wire length charts. The posters of these tables and charts always seem to neglect this little diddy.
The electron is a wonderful thing, understanding how various circuits and components affect it's behavior is even more so.
You've seen wire selection charts that don't consider the return path?
GM
Since we're talking about speaker wires, I thought I'd point out that they can affect the amplifier under some conditions. Here's some simulation data:
Loudspeaker Cable Characteristic Impedance
Rod's idea of RF terminating the cables is a good one in general. Nature abhors an unterminated cable ;-)
Actually Rogers table does take this into account. He even says so on his page.Quote:
Originally Posted by bowtie427ss
He also states that when wire length is over 50 feet, reactive components start to become significant.
This is a damn good read if you haven't already. GM (not *our* GM) makes some compelling points. You can get the teaser read here on google books:
Perfecting Sound Forever
Some of the charts i've seen give the specs for a single conductor relative to gauge and length, others do not specify one way or the other.Quote:
Originally Posted by GM
Probably was poor choice on my part to mention RR as his is one of the only commonly parroted tables that specifies clearly that it is for 2 conductor wire, many others do not.
I most often think of/refer to the chart found here where most of the specs are given for a single conductor as i would expect from a wire manufacturer: Peavey.com
But, where the specs for power and damping are concerned it gets confusing. Did they include data for both single conductors and pairs in the same table? Maybe this is not such a good reference after all?
The problem with audio is no two sets of ears combined with a brain are exactly the same. the ears render the info, the brain interprets.
As far as speaker wire,have no problem with opinions with a qualifier.
I have to support about 90% of what Russell says. If somebody wants to use wire that doesn't make sense to me, hey it's their life. I don't believe in magic. I do believe there's a lot we don't know.
Thing is, Roger doesn't say "speaker wire doesn't make a difference". In fact, he points out a number of cases where it certainly does make an audible difference. (The high resistance wires, the amp with ringing problems, the Monster Cable demo, etc.) Notice that he always qualifies his statements with the rule of thumb that the DCR of the speaker wire should be less than 5% of the total impedance of the speaker circuit.
In my case, my amp is less than 10 feet from the speakers. Take a common $0.50/ft speaker wire, say 12 ga Belden 5000UE. It has a DCR of 1.6 ohms/1000 feet. (Just looked it up at the Belden web site.) So I am looking at less than 0.016 ohms from the speaker wire. By Rogers ROT, with my 8 ohm ML-1Cs, the wire should be less than 0.4 ohms. So I am in great shape. If I go to smaller 14 ga 5100UE ($0.30/ft), the DCR goes up to 2.53 ohms/1000 ft. Since 0.0253 is still a factor of 20 lower than Rogers ROT, I am still in great shape. Why would I ever want to pay large sums for fancy speaker wire?
Zooming back a bit to non-speaker interconnects, one thing that (even slightly) more expensive interconnect cables do have is nice connectors. I do like cables with nice sturdy connectors that make good solid contact and have good strain reliefs.
Amp on a budget, still a current model:
http://www.theaudiocritic.com/plog/i...e&articleId=22
It is always interesting trying to discern which speaker sytem is more accurate. I listened to some very high end jbl studio monitors the other day, new they were over 40,000 to give you an idea. I brought some of my very best recordings and they didnt sound as good as I thought they would in this system. One particular song was a cut by Louis Armstrong, in my system, it sounds like every word sung, is so pronounced and spitty with lots of expressive sss's, in this system they didnt even exist. The funny thing is an audiphile vocals disk this gentleman put together of his favorites sounded amazing in my system. what's more accurate who's to say...
From time to time you can pick these up on ebay in good used working condition for as little as 60-70 bucks. Lot of amplifier for the entry fee. Perfect for guys that want to get their feet wet going active without breaking the bank.Quote:
Originally Posted by mah
i don't care for the output display, i prefer led's in parallel scales, would probably disable all but the clipping LED's if i used one regularly.
You'll hear a lot of gripes about the Behringer stuff. Considering the pricepoint versus performance, i've been pretty satisfied with any Behringer gear i've used. I got a bad DCX 2496 when they were still fairly fresh to the market, but that got squarely sorted out and i currently own 2 of those, a mixer(sounds better than it has a right to), a sample rate converter/DAC, an ECM8000 mic that i use with the Samson D-1500 RTA as well as an early analog CX-2300 active XO(this thing is heavy and not built like the other Beri gear, even has quality 4 screw mounted XLR I/O's).
Don't get me wrong, i probably wouldn't use any of that gear on the road or for a paying gig. But, for at home use, and casual events and experimenting if it works right out of the box, it'll probably work well for a good while. All of the Behringer problems i experienced came in the box with the brand new unit, i have yet to experience a "down the road" failure or issue.