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- 16.05.2005
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The 10 Biggest Lies In Audio By : Peter Aczel.
strongly suspect that people are more gullible today than they were inmy younger years. Back then we didnt put magnets in our shoes, the police didnt use psychics to search for missing persons, and no head of state since Hitler had consulted astrologers.
Most of us believed in science without any reservations. When the hi-fi era dawned, engineers like Paul Klipsch, Lincoln Walsh, Stew Hegeman, Dave Hafler, Ed Villchur, and C. G. McProud were our fountainhead of Audio information. The untutored tweako/weirdo pundits who dont know the integral of ex were still in the benighted future.
Dont misunderstand me. In terms of the existing spectrum of knowledge, the audio scene today is clearly ahead of the early years; at one end of the spectrum there are brilliant practitioners who far outshine the founding fathers.
At the dark end of that spectrum, however, a new age of ignorance, superstition, and dishonesty holds sway.
Why and how that came about has been amply covered in past issues of this publication; here I shall focus on the rogues gallery of currently proffered mendacities to snare the credulous.
1. The Cable Lie
Logically this is not the lie to start with because cables are accessories, not primary audio components. But it is the hugest, dirtiest, most cynical, most intelligence-insulting and, above all, most fraudulently profitable lie in audio, and therefore must go to the head of the list.
The lie is that high-priced speaker cables and interconnects sound better than the standard, run-of-the-mill (say, Radio Shack) ones. It is a lie that has been exposed, shamed, and refuted over and over again by every genuine authority under the sun, but the tweako audio cultists hate authority and the innocents cant distinguish it from self-serving charlatanry.
The simple truth is that resistance, inductance, and capacitance (R, L, and C) are the only cable parameters that affect performance in the range below radio frequencies. T
he signal has no idea whether it is being transmitted through cheap or expensive RLC.
Yes, you have to pay a little more than rock bottom for decent plugs, shielding, insulation, etc., to avoid reliability problems, and you have to pay attention to resistance in longer connections.
In basic electrical performance, however, a nice pair of straightened-out wire coat hangers with the ends scraped is not a whit inferior to a $2000 gee-whiz miracle cable. Nor is 16-gauge lamp cord at 18¢ a foot. Ultrahigh-priced cables are the biggest scam in consumer electronics, and the cowardly surrender of nearly all audio publications to the pressures of the cable marketers is truly depressing to behold.
2. The Vacuum-TubeLie
This lie is also, in a sense, about a peripheral matter, since vacuum tubes are hardly mainstream in the age of silicon.
Its an all-pervasive lie, however, in the high-end audio market; just count the tube-equipment ads as a percentage of total ad pages in the typical high-end magazine. Unbelievable!
And so is, of course, the claim that vacuum
tubes are inherently superior to transistors in audio applicationsdont you believe it.
Tubes are great for high-powered RF transmitters and microwave ovens but not, at the turn of the century, for amplifiers, preamps, or (good grief!) digital components like CD and DVD players.
Whats wrong with tubes?
Nothing, really. Theres nothing wrong with gold teeth, either, even for upper incisors (that Mideastern grin); its just that modern dentistry offers more attractive options. Whatever vacuum tubes can do in a piece of audio equipment, solid-state devices can do better, at lower cost, with greater reliability.
Even the worlds best-designed tube amplifier will have higher distortion than an equally well-designed transistor amplifier and will almost certainly need more servicing (tube replacements, rebiasing, etc.) during its lifetime. (Idiotic designs such as 8-watt single-ended triode amplifiers are of course exempt, by default, from such comparisons since they have no solid-state counterpart.)
As for the tube sound, there are two possibilities: (1) Its a figment of the deluded audiophiles imagination, or (2) its a deliberate coloration introduced by the manufacturer to appeal to corrupted tastes, in which case a solid-state design could easily mimic the sound if the designer were perverse enough to want it that way.
Yes, there exist very special situations where a sophisticated designer of hi-fi electronics might consider using a tube (e.g., the RF stage of an FM tuner), but those rare and narrowly qualified exceptions cannot redeem the common, garden-variety lies of the tube marketers, who want you to buy into an obsolete technology.
3. The Antidigital Lie
You have heard this one often, in one form or another. To wit: Digital sound is vastly inferior to analog. Digitized audio is a like a crude newspaper photograph made up of dots.
The Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem is all wet. The 44.1 kHz sampling rate of the compact disc cannot resolve the highest audio frequencies where there are only two or three sampling points.
Digital sound, even in the best cases, is hard and edgy. And so on and so forthall of it, without exception, ignorant drivel or deliberate misrepresentation.
Once again, the lie has little bearing on the mainstream, where the digital technology has gained complete acceptance; but in the byways and tributaries of the audio world, in unregenerate high-end audio salons and the listening rooms of various tweako mandarins, it remains the party line.
The most ludicrous manifestation of the antidigital fallacy is the preference for the obsolete LP over the CD. Not the analog master tape over the digital master tape, which remains a semirespectable controversy, but the clicks, crackles and pops of the vinyl over the digital data pits background silence, which is a perverse rejection of reality.
Here are the scientific facts any second-year E.E. student can verify for you: Digital audio is bulletproof in a way analog audio never was and never can be. The 0s and 1s are inherently incapable of being distorted in the signal path, unlike an analog waveform.
Even a sampling rate of 44.1 kHz, the lowest used in todays high-fidelity applications, more than adequately resolves all audio frequencies.
It will not cause any loss of information in the audio rangenot an iota, not a scintilla.
The how can two sampling points resolve 20 kHz? argumentis an untutored misinterpretation of the Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem.
(Doubters are advised to take an elementary course in digital systems.)
The reason why certain analog recordings sound better than certaindigital recordings is that the engineers did a better job with microphone placement, levels, balance, and equalization, or that the recording venue was acoustically superior. Some early digital recordings were indeed hard and edgy, not because they were digital but because the engineers were still thinking analog, compensating for anticipated losses that did not exist.
Todays best digital recordings are the best recordings ever made. To be fair, it must be admitted that a state-of the-art analog recording and a state-of-the-art digital recording, at this stage of their respective technologies, will probably be of comparable quality. Even so, the number of Tree-Worshiping Analog
Druids is rapidly dwindling in the professional recording world. The digital way is simply the better way.
4. The Listening-Test Lie
Regular readers of this publication know how to refute the various lies invoked by the high-end cultists in opposition to double-blind listening tests at matched levels (ABX testing), but a brief overview is in order here.
The ABX methodology requires device A and device B to be levelmatched within ±0.1 dB, after which you can listen to fully identified A and fully identified B for as long as youlike.
If you then think they sound different, you are asked to identify X, which may be either A or B (as determined by a double-blind randomization process). You are allowed to make an A/X or B/X comparison at any time, as many times as you like, to decide whether X=A or X=B. Since sheer guessing will yield the correct answer 50% of the time, a minimum of 12 trials is needed for statistical validity (16 is better, 20 better yet). There is no better way to determine scientifically whether you are just claiming to hear a difference or can actually hear one.
The tweako cultists will tell you that ABX tests are completely invalid.
Everybody knows that a Krell sounds better than a Pioneer, so if they are indistinguishable from each other in an ABX test, then the ABX method is all wetthats their logic. Everybody knows that Joe is taller than Mike, so if they both measure exactly 5 feet 111⁄4 inches, then there is something wrong with the Stanley tape measure, right?
The standard tweako objections to ABX tests are too much pressure (as in lets see how well you really hear), too little time (as in get on with it, we need to do 16 trials), too many devices inserted in the signal path (viz.,relays, switches, attenuators, etc.), and of course assorted psychobabble on the subject of aural perception. None of that amounts to anything more than a red herring, of one flavor or another, to divert attention from the basics of controlled testing.
The truth is that you can perform an ABX test all by yourself without any pressure from other participants, that you can take as much time as wish (how about 16 trials over 16 weeks?), and that you can verify the transparency of the inserted control devices with a straight-wire bypass.
The objections are totally bogus and hypocritical.
Heres how you smoke out a lying, weaseling, obfuscating anti-ABX hypocrite.
Ask him if he believes in any kind of A/B testing at all.
He will probably say yes.
Then ask him what special insights he gains by (1) not matching levels and (2) peeking atthe nameplates.
Watch him squirm and fume.
5. The Feedback Lie
Negative feedback, in an amplifier or preamplifier, is baaaad. No feedback at all is gooood. So goes this widely invoked untruth.
The fact is that negative feedback is one of the most useful tools available tothe circuit designer.
It reduces distortion and increases stability.
Only in the Bronze Age of solid-state amplifierdesign, back in the late 60s and early 70s, was feedback applied so recklessly and indiscriminately by certain practitioners that the circuit could get into various kinds of trouble.
That was the origin of the no-feedback fetish. In the early 80s a number ofseminal papers by Edward Cherr (Australia) and Robert Cordell (USA) made it clear, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that negative feedback is totally benign as long as certain basic guidelines are strictly observed.
Enough time has elapsed since then for that truth to sink in.
Todays no-feedback dogmatists are either dishonest or ignorant.
Fortsættes..
strongly suspect that people are more gullible today than they were inmy younger years. Back then we didnt put magnets in our shoes, the police didnt use psychics to search for missing persons, and no head of state since Hitler had consulted astrologers.
Most of us believed in science without any reservations. When the hi-fi era dawned, engineers like Paul Klipsch, Lincoln Walsh, Stew Hegeman, Dave Hafler, Ed Villchur, and C. G. McProud were our fountainhead of Audio information. The untutored tweako/weirdo pundits who dont know the integral of ex were still in the benighted future.
Dont misunderstand me. In terms of the existing spectrum of knowledge, the audio scene today is clearly ahead of the early years; at one end of the spectrum there are brilliant practitioners who far outshine the founding fathers.
At the dark end of that spectrum, however, a new age of ignorance, superstition, and dishonesty holds sway.
Why and how that came about has been amply covered in past issues of this publication; here I shall focus on the rogues gallery of currently proffered mendacities to snare the credulous.
1. The Cable Lie
Logically this is not the lie to start with because cables are accessories, not primary audio components. But it is the hugest, dirtiest, most cynical, most intelligence-insulting and, above all, most fraudulently profitable lie in audio, and therefore must go to the head of the list.
The lie is that high-priced speaker cables and interconnects sound better than the standard, run-of-the-mill (say, Radio Shack) ones. It is a lie that has been exposed, shamed, and refuted over and over again by every genuine authority under the sun, but the tweako audio cultists hate authority and the innocents cant distinguish it from self-serving charlatanry.
The simple truth is that resistance, inductance, and capacitance (R, L, and C) are the only cable parameters that affect performance in the range below radio frequencies. T
he signal has no idea whether it is being transmitted through cheap or expensive RLC.
Yes, you have to pay a little more than rock bottom for decent plugs, shielding, insulation, etc., to avoid reliability problems, and you have to pay attention to resistance in longer connections.
In basic electrical performance, however, a nice pair of straightened-out wire coat hangers with the ends scraped is not a whit inferior to a $2000 gee-whiz miracle cable. Nor is 16-gauge lamp cord at 18¢ a foot. Ultrahigh-priced cables are the biggest scam in consumer electronics, and the cowardly surrender of nearly all audio publications to the pressures of the cable marketers is truly depressing to behold.
2. The Vacuum-TubeLie
This lie is also, in a sense, about a peripheral matter, since vacuum tubes are hardly mainstream in the age of silicon.
Its an all-pervasive lie, however, in the high-end audio market; just count the tube-equipment ads as a percentage of total ad pages in the typical high-end magazine. Unbelievable!
And so is, of course, the claim that vacuum
tubes are inherently superior to transistors in audio applicationsdont you believe it.
Tubes are great for high-powered RF transmitters and microwave ovens but not, at the turn of the century, for amplifiers, preamps, or (good grief!) digital components like CD and DVD players.
Whats wrong with tubes?
Nothing, really. Theres nothing wrong with gold teeth, either, even for upper incisors (that Mideastern grin); its just that modern dentistry offers more attractive options. Whatever vacuum tubes can do in a piece of audio equipment, solid-state devices can do better, at lower cost, with greater reliability.
Even the worlds best-designed tube amplifier will have higher distortion than an equally well-designed transistor amplifier and will almost certainly need more servicing (tube replacements, rebiasing, etc.) during its lifetime. (Idiotic designs such as 8-watt single-ended triode amplifiers are of course exempt, by default, from such comparisons since they have no solid-state counterpart.)
As for the tube sound, there are two possibilities: (1) Its a figment of the deluded audiophiles imagination, or (2) its a deliberate coloration introduced by the manufacturer to appeal to corrupted tastes, in which case a solid-state design could easily mimic the sound if the designer were perverse enough to want it that way.
Yes, there exist very special situations where a sophisticated designer of hi-fi electronics might consider using a tube (e.g., the RF stage of an FM tuner), but those rare and narrowly qualified exceptions cannot redeem the common, garden-variety lies of the tube marketers, who want you to buy into an obsolete technology.
3. The Antidigital Lie
You have heard this one often, in one form or another. To wit: Digital sound is vastly inferior to analog. Digitized audio is a like a crude newspaper photograph made up of dots.
The Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem is all wet. The 44.1 kHz sampling rate of the compact disc cannot resolve the highest audio frequencies where there are only two or three sampling points.
Digital sound, even in the best cases, is hard and edgy. And so on and so forthall of it, without exception, ignorant drivel or deliberate misrepresentation.
Once again, the lie has little bearing on the mainstream, where the digital technology has gained complete acceptance; but in the byways and tributaries of the audio world, in unregenerate high-end audio salons and the listening rooms of various tweako mandarins, it remains the party line.
The most ludicrous manifestation of the antidigital fallacy is the preference for the obsolete LP over the CD. Not the analog master tape over the digital master tape, which remains a semirespectable controversy, but the clicks, crackles and pops of the vinyl over the digital data pits background silence, which is a perverse rejection of reality.
Here are the scientific facts any second-year E.E. student can verify for you: Digital audio is bulletproof in a way analog audio never was and never can be. The 0s and 1s are inherently incapable of being distorted in the signal path, unlike an analog waveform.
Even a sampling rate of 44.1 kHz, the lowest used in todays high-fidelity applications, more than adequately resolves all audio frequencies.
It will not cause any loss of information in the audio rangenot an iota, not a scintilla.
The how can two sampling points resolve 20 kHz? argumentis an untutored misinterpretation of the Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem.
(Doubters are advised to take an elementary course in digital systems.)
The reason why certain analog recordings sound better than certaindigital recordings is that the engineers did a better job with microphone placement, levels, balance, and equalization, or that the recording venue was acoustically superior. Some early digital recordings were indeed hard and edgy, not because they were digital but because the engineers were still thinking analog, compensating for anticipated losses that did not exist.
Todays best digital recordings are the best recordings ever made. To be fair, it must be admitted that a state-of the-art analog recording and a state-of-the-art digital recording, at this stage of their respective technologies, will probably be of comparable quality. Even so, the number of Tree-Worshiping Analog
Druids is rapidly dwindling in the professional recording world. The digital way is simply the better way.
4. The Listening-Test Lie
Regular readers of this publication know how to refute the various lies invoked by the high-end cultists in opposition to double-blind listening tests at matched levels (ABX testing), but a brief overview is in order here.
The ABX methodology requires device A and device B to be levelmatched within ±0.1 dB, after which you can listen to fully identified A and fully identified B for as long as youlike.
If you then think they sound different, you are asked to identify X, which may be either A or B (as determined by a double-blind randomization process). You are allowed to make an A/X or B/X comparison at any time, as many times as you like, to decide whether X=A or X=B. Since sheer guessing will yield the correct answer 50% of the time, a minimum of 12 trials is needed for statistical validity (16 is better, 20 better yet). There is no better way to determine scientifically whether you are just claiming to hear a difference or can actually hear one.
The tweako cultists will tell you that ABX tests are completely invalid.
Everybody knows that a Krell sounds better than a Pioneer, so if they are indistinguishable from each other in an ABX test, then the ABX method is all wetthats their logic. Everybody knows that Joe is taller than Mike, so if they both measure exactly 5 feet 111⁄4 inches, then there is something wrong with the Stanley tape measure, right?
The standard tweako objections to ABX tests are too much pressure (as in lets see how well you really hear), too little time (as in get on with it, we need to do 16 trials), too many devices inserted in the signal path (viz.,relays, switches, attenuators, etc.), and of course assorted psychobabble on the subject of aural perception. None of that amounts to anything more than a red herring, of one flavor or another, to divert attention from the basics of controlled testing.
The truth is that you can perform an ABX test all by yourself without any pressure from other participants, that you can take as much time as wish (how about 16 trials over 16 weeks?), and that you can verify the transparency of the inserted control devices with a straight-wire bypass.
The objections are totally bogus and hypocritical.
Heres how you smoke out a lying, weaseling, obfuscating anti-ABX hypocrite.
Ask him if he believes in any kind of A/B testing at all.
He will probably say yes.
Then ask him what special insights he gains by (1) not matching levels and (2) peeking atthe nameplates.
Watch him squirm and fume.
5. The Feedback Lie
Negative feedback, in an amplifier or preamplifier, is baaaad. No feedback at all is gooood. So goes this widely invoked untruth.
The fact is that negative feedback is one of the most useful tools available tothe circuit designer.
It reduces distortion and increases stability.
Only in the Bronze Age of solid-state amplifierdesign, back in the late 60s and early 70s, was feedback applied so recklessly and indiscriminately by certain practitioners that the circuit could get into various kinds of trouble.
That was the origin of the no-feedback fetish. In the early 80s a number ofseminal papers by Edward Cherr (Australia) and Robert Cordell (USA) made it clear, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that negative feedback is totally benign as long as certain basic guidelines are strictly observed.
Enough time has elapsed since then for that truth to sink in.
Todays no-feedback dogmatists are either dishonest or ignorant.
Fortsættes..
