Audiophile urban myths and legends

[magiccarpetride]

A friend of mine, who is a hi fi salesman, told me the following incident that happened to him:

He went to visit his steady customer (he calls his customers 'patients'), and the guy bragged how he had finally managed to make his digital system sound like a pure analog system. Gone are the issues with glassy, brittle tiring sound that has those unpleasant metallic overtones that people are always complaining about when reviewing digital playback.

So my friend was curious to hear this new pinnacle of digital playback, sat down for a listen, and immediately noticed that something's off. He examined his patient's hi fi and realized that the guy somehow managed to blow his tweeters on both speakers. His hi fi couldn't basically reproduce any frequencies above 4 kHz!

OK, that's a hilarious anecdote, but my point here is that later on I heard the exact same story that allegedly happened to some other guy in some other city.

Hmmm, that looks like a perfect urban myth in the making.

Then later on I heard a story about some therapist who was working with a blind and mentally disabled woman who was at that time in her forties. Part of his therapy was to play music while working with her. Well, the storyline goes that each time he'd put a CD on the patient would complain loudly, and if he would then switch to the turntable, she would smile.

Another urban myth?

Do you have any other such myths and legends, heroic stories that propagate through the community and then get retold as if they happened to a particular person?

[Phil Bishop]

Love it :lol:

It's not really an urban myth as such but I was reminded of a funny occasion just the other day when I bought an old 1965 test pressing of an LP by Pepe Jaramillo. Now, for those who don't know Pepe Jaramillo was a Mexican musician who used latin rhythms and percussion - very much picked up later by the likes of Santana. In the 1970's my parents were starting to get comfortable financially and bought a state-of-the-art B&O stereo, the envy of their friends (and mine). I once came home to find them playing a Pepe Jaramillo LP and it sounded a bit manic to me - they had played a whole side at 45 instead of 33 RPM!

Now, before we all fall about laughing at their antics, I also know hi fi enthusiasts who have done the same with 45 RPM LPs, playing them at 33 RPM and wondering late on in the side why the female vocalist sounds a bit odd :lol:

My admission is I have wondered for a while why things sound quieter not realising that one channel is out. I also had a phono pre-amp for a while with a mono switch and would sit there for a while wondering why the stereo LP I was playing sounded a bit odd - I had not flicked the switch back!

Cheers

Phil

[Pigmy Pony]

A few years ago a friend bought me "Lioness: Hidden Treasures" by Amy Winehouse on vinyl.

The first track I was "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow" and my first thought was "who's he?" Turned out to be Amy, singing at 45rpm, and being played back at 33.

The real sickener was that my LP12 had no 45rpm adaptor, so Amy went unplayed for another two years. :(

Going back another four decades, when me and my stoner friends had a listening session, we would sometimes deliberately play David Essex's "Rock On" single at 33rpm because we thought it sounded better that way.

1973 was a strange year... :)

[sumday]

My dad was the only person who bought a copy of the Velvet Underground and Nico LP and DIDN'T form a band.....

He trotted that one out every Christmas to little applause.

[Yomanze]

A few years ago a friend bought me "Lioness: Hidden Treasures" by Amy Winehouse on vinyl.

The first track I was "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow" and my first thought was "who's he?" Turned out to be Amy, singing at 45rpm, and being played back at 33.

The real sickener was that my LP12 had no 45rpm adaptor, so Amy went unplayed for another two years. :(

Going back another four decades, when me and my stoner friends had a listening session, we would sometimes deliberately play David Essex's "Rock On" single at 33rpm because we thought it sounded better that way.

1973 was a strange year... :)

He he, same with Dolly Parton's Jolene, the 45 sounds great at 33.3. :)

[DSJR]

Best I can come up with is Isobariks sounding so smeared most of the time, it didn't matter what the wiring was to them. If you had them out of phase with each other and in a reasonable size room, it didn't seem to matter.. The active version could be even worse, as inverting the phase of the mids or tweets from the bass, made little difference in the large dem room our London store had...

[walpurgis]

He he, same with Dolly Parton's Jolene, the 45 sounds great at 33.3. :)

Would anyone actually admit to owning a copy of that? :eek:

[jollyfix]

Yep me.... I own a copy. Great played at 33...

[rigger67]

Would anyone actually admit to owning a copy of that? :eek:

Great record :ner:

Love a bit of Dolly.

There's actually a really cool dance remix of the track too and it's a GUARANTEED floor-filler at weddings.
Wait till the women have started to hit the dance-floor, say around half nine, ten-ish, then lead it in with a reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaally long intro-mix so they all pick up on the guitar.
They'll be whooping with delight, dancing their wotsits off and singing at the top of their lungs before you know it .. all the while you stand there, beaming at each and every one of them ;)


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xkl36pu8aLY

[martian sunrise]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doz1QJ7LwjA

[Barry]

Best I can come up with is Isobariks sounding so smeared most of the time, it didn't matter what the wiring was to them. If you had them out of phase with each other and in a reasonable size room, it didn't seem to matter.. The active version could be even worse, as inverting the phase of the mids or tweets from the bass, made little difference in the large dem room our London store had...

I won't ask you which London store that was, but when I heard the Isobaraks at a well-known emporium in Wigmore Street, and commented/complained that the sound was unfocused and 'swimming about', the demonstrator simply replied: "How do you know it's not meant to sound like that?". :doh:

[Yomanze]

I won't ask you which London store that was, but when I heard the Isobaraks at a well-known emporium in Wigmore Street, and commented/complained that the sound was unfocused and 'swimming about', the demonstrator simply replied: "How do you know it's not meant to sound like that?". :doh:

He he he, or: 'are you sure that your Isobariks are set up properly? No one really knows how...'

I've heard crazy things like 'if you move them, you need to wait until they settle down'.

Such is the folklore associated with some Linn gear...

[anthonyTD]

Sounds surprisingly good!:eek::D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doz1QJ7LwjA

[struth]

sounds like cher

[pandoraefretum]

I started with gain and cutoff on minimum on my right subwoofer today...
Gently turning it up, with the music on, listening carefully with my ear close... nope nothing yet
Put some other bassy music on and kept turning it up... still no bass from it...
Kept turning it up, thinking maybe I mis-wired it ? kept turning up... with my hand now gently on the cone edge waiting for it to vibrate..
should be thumping a bit by now.... this thing is dead !

Looked at the mains switch... duh, on the OFF position !

[mr sneff]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZCE-r8y6S4

[Natara]

Sounds like Pro Rock :lol:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doz1QJ7LwjA

[nickbaba]

Then later on I heard a story about some therapist who was working with a blind and mentally disabled woman who was at that time in her forties. Part of his therapy was to play music while working with her. Well, the storyline goes that each time he'd put a CD on the patient would complain loudly, and if he would then switch to the turntable, she would smile.

I believe this 'myth' has some basis in fact - if I remember rightly it appears in the fascinating book Perfecting Sound Forever.
I don't have the book to hand at this moment but there's a story in there about a therapist who was using music as part of his treatment of patients with depression and anxiety. This was in the early 80s and he was having great results using vinyl LPs. In the late 80s he switched to CDs, using the same music, and the therapy no longer worked! The patients no longer reported getting the same benefits from the music when it was played as 16 bit/44.1kHz digital.

On a related point, I read an interview with Tim de Paravicini recently where he said he had calculated that if we wish digital playback to equal analog reproduction we would have to use a resolution of 24 bit/400kHz.
I wonder if digital would then have the same therapeutic benefits as analog again?!

[Barry]

I believe this 'myth' has some basis in fact - if I remember rightly it appears in the fascinating book Perfecting Sound Forever.
I don't have the book to hand at this moment but there's a story in there about a therapist who was using music as part of his treatment of patients with depression and anxiety. This was in the early 80s and he was having great results using vinyl LPs. In the late 80s he switched to CDs, using the same music, and the therapy no longer worked! The patients no longer reported getting the same benefits from the music when it was played as 16 bit/44.1kHz digital.

On a related point, I read an interview with Tim de Paravicini recently where he said he had calculated that if we wish digital playback to equal analog reproduction we would have to use a resolution of 24 bit/400kHz.
I wonder if digital would then have the same therapeutic benefits as analog again?!

CD players have moved on considerably since the '80s. I heard the early ones and they were dire in comparison to LPs. These days I think that both are equally good in their own ways; different in presentation, but just as good. (And just as amazing, in that a satisfying and emotionally involving sound is wrought from two seemingly clumsy replay technologies.)

[walpurgis]

CD players have moved on considerably since the '80s. I heard the early ones and they were dire in comparison to LPs. These days I think that both are equally good in their own ways; different in presentation, but just as good. (And just as amazing, in that a satisfying and emotionally involving sound is wrought from two seemingly clumsy replay technologies.)

I agree with that Barry. Both can be very enjoyable done right.

[struth]

Might be dealing with the subconscious and not audio qualities

[Macca]

On a related point, I read an interview with Tim de Paravicini recently where he said he had calculated that if we wish digital playback to equal analog reproduction we would have to use a resolution of 24 bit/400kHz.


Here's what he says:

I did my own summation—and this is from 20 years ago—that if we did 384kHz at 24-bit, we'll have a system that will resolve on a par with the best analog. That's the holy grail. And the problem, for the computer people, is having the balls to go that whole hog.
Read more at https://www.stereophile.com/content/tim-de-paravicini-king-tubes-page-2#O1HT8cyFmhCsUJqk.99


But he is making two false assumptions. 1) That we can hear sounds up to 45Khz which we can't and 2) that analogue can record and replay sounds at those frequencies which it can't.


No wonder there are so many urban myths when you've got respected designers propagating them.

[Mike Reed]

CD players have moved on considerably since the '80s. I heard the early ones and they were dire in comparison to LPs. These days I think that both are equally good in their own ways; different in presentation, but just as good. (And just as amazing, in that a satisfying and emotionally involving sound is wrought from two seemingly clumsy replay technologies.)

Never a total convert to CD (did't start until 2001), having valved CDPs has changed my aural perception somewhat. T de P's CDPs are valved, so there was probably a very good reason why he designed them thus. I don't have one, but they are well thought of, as is the relatively recent Rega one. There is something 'organic' in valved stuff which seems to benefit CD playback as far as analogue ears are concerned, at least.

[andyrlb]

I had a buyer for my ( 1970’s )meridian M2’s whom I was talking to over a period of several days and I’d sent him all the reviews etc , photos of the the rear connections.
Then he calls about an hour from collecting them saying “ Andy” “ where is the USB port “ ffs.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[struth]

Had a lot of usb ports in the 70's so a fair question [emoji849]

[Pigmy Pony]

Dunno about USB, there were a lot of hairy ports in the 70's :D

[andyrlb]

Yuk


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[nickbaba]

But he is making two false assumptions. 1) That we can hear sounds up to 45Khz which we can't and 2) that analogue can record and replay sounds at those frequencies which it can't.

Well, he doesn't exactly claim people can 'hear' up to 45k, his exact words are "people can discern and detect sound up to 45kHz", which may or may not relate to hearing, in the sense that we can't hear below 20Hz but you sure can feel it in your body as a physical sensation on a big sound system.

"First of all, the frequency response should extend from 3 Hz to 50 kHz, because we experience those frequency limits. We are able to detect audio up to 50 kHz. We don't hear it, but we experience it in other ways. I can give you tinnitus very quickly if I run an ultrasonic cleaner at 45 kHz. You are aware that it's on, and your ears ring when it's shut off. On the low end, we detect mechanical vibrations down to 3 Hz. When a marching band walks past you, you feel the drums in your stomach and bones. And that's all part of the sound...Digital should use a 400 kHz sampling rate and 24-bit words. Then it will satisfy the hearing mechanism and won't have a digital sound. Digital has a "sound" purely because it is based on lousy mathematics. The manufacturers presuppose too simplistic a view of our hearing mechanism."
Tim de Paravicini, the Audio Interview: In Pursuit of Excellence
by Bruce Bartlett
http://www.ear-usa.com/tim-de-paravicini/

Regarding the 2nd point, it's true that analog playback doesn't necessarily deal particularly well with high freqs, but I think the point he's making is that digital ignores everything above 20kHz (and below 20Hz) and supposes that's the limit of our hearing, whereas in the natural world there are overtones and resonances well above 20kHz that contribute to the perceived richness and complexity of a sound, and with well executed analog recording, at least, there's no artificial cut-off to the frequencies that are being captured.

[Macca]

I agree that we can 'hear' through our skin and such but I reject the idea that the 20Hz cut off is what gives digital its sound since we can and do make digital recordings that cover up to twice that frequency bandwidth and no-one can distinguish between them and the same recording cut off at 22khz.

I think he is starting from a false assumption, which is that analogue is what it really sounds like and digital is wrong whereas all the facts point to it being the other way around. Although I'd agree you can get products which sound 'digital', a sort of 'synthesised' character to the sound that is not entirely natural, this is not the case with all digital sources, indicating that the cause of it is not the fundamental nature of digital but some other factor of the design.

[Yomanze]

Here's what he says:

I did my own summation—and this is from 20 years ago—that if we did 384kHz at 24-bit, we'll have a system that will resolve on a par with the best analog. That's the holy grail. And the problem, for the computer people, is having the balls to go that whole hog.
Read more at https://www.stereophile.com/content/tim-de-paravicini-king-tubes-page-2#O1HT8cyFmhCsUJqk.99


But he is making two false assumptions. 1) That we can hear sounds up to 45Khz which we can't and 2) that analogue can record and replay sounds at those frequencies which it can't.


No wonder there are so many urban myths when you've got respected designers propagating them.

Well done Tim, not. He might be an amazing analogue designer, but has no idea about digital.

When you break it down, vinyl has a maximum bit depth of around 12 bits (assuming best-case scenario of 70db dynamic range from vinyl). 16/44.1kHz is what is required to *perfectly reconstruct* a signal of 96db dynamic range, and from 20Hz to 20kHz.

[nickbaba]

I have nothing against digital - when I'm composing and recording music I work entirely in the digital domain (just like 99.99% of people these days), mostly at 24bit/48kHz, and it sounds fine to me.

I wonder what the therapist's clients were experiencing however, assuming the story is true and not just a myth?

At the time I recall the therapist blamed it on the fact that digital music 'samples' sound in many many discrete slices per second, and he felt that the body was aware of that on some level, that the music was not flowing continuously as it does with the smoothly fluctuating voltages of the analog realm.

[GrahamS]

There was a console just inside the entrance to one of the cutting rooms where local productions were cut from the final master tape to lacquer. On the console facia there were two black knobs, marked "Highs" and "Lows" respectively. As a newbie, I asked the cutting engineer what the console was for and he told me, after swearing me to secrecy, that it was for producers to "tweak" the final sound. When I expressed my amazement that anyone would be allowed to interfere with the final lacquer, he told me to open the bottom of the console cabinet and handed me a screwdriver to turn the catches. I did so and looked inside - there were no connections to anything in there and it didn't do a thing to the sound. The cutting engineer explained further that local producers felt that it was their right to oversee any part of their own production and that they would come in to the cutting room when he was cutting their production and insist on "More bass" or More tops." The cutting engineer would invite them to tweak for themselves, using the dummy console.

Everything is subjective...

[Pharos]

When TdP offered me a job in '91, he also declared that he was computer illiterate.

[walpurgis]

I dare say most of us also were back then.

[Barry]

I dare say most of us also were back then.


I still am!

[struth]

Not sure i'm computer literate, but I can write my name and count to 5 ;)

[Macca]

I was then but I'm not now.

Unless someone wants a COBOL programme knocking up?

No, I thought not.

[Mike Reed]

I was then but I'm not now.

Unless someone wants a COBOL programme knocking up?

No, I thought not.

Gosh but that reminds me that my (brief) job at N.C.R. Baker St. in 1970 was writing COBOL just before I went to college. I had no idea what was going on then and this has stayed with me since ! I do remember the room full of gigantic R2R machines all whirring away.

[nickbaba]

There was a console just inside the entrance to one of the cutting rooms where local productions were cut from the final master tape to lacquer. On the console facia there were two black knobs, marked "Highs" and "Lows" respectively. As a newbie, I asked the cutting engineer what the console was for and he told me, after swearing me to secrecy, that it was for producers to "tweak" the final sound. When I expressed my amazement that anyone would be allowed to interfere with the final lacquer, he told me to open the bottom of the console cabinet and handed me a screwdriver to turn the catches. I did so and looked inside - there were no connections to anything in there and it didn't do a thing to the sound. The cutting engineer explained further that local producers felt that it was their right to oversee any part of their own production and that they would come in to the cutting room when he was cutting their production and insist on "More bass" or More tops." The cutting engineer would invite them to tweak for themselves, using the dummy console.

Lol - that's a classic! Thanks for sharing that - gave me a giggle. Thing is I bet they could hear the difference too, and went away happy!

[GrahamS]

Lol - that's a classic! Thanks for sharing that - gave me a giggle. Thing is I bet they could hear the difference too, and went away happy!
They could (or at least they said they could) and they did!

[Smoking Joe]

There was a console just inside the entrance to one of the cutting rooms where local productions were cut from the final master tape to lacquer. On the console facia there were two black knobs, marked "Highs" and "Lows" respectively. As a newbie, I asked the cutting engineer what the console was for and he told me, after swearing me to secrecy, that it was for producers to "tweak" the final sound. When I expressed my amazement that anyone would be allowed to interfere with the final lacquer, he told me to open the bottom of the console cabinet and handed me a screwdriver to turn the catches. I did so and looked inside - there were no connections to anything in there and it didn't do a thing to the sound. The cutting engineer explained further that local producers felt that it was their right to oversee any part of their own production and that they would come in to the cutting room when he was cutting their production and insist on "More bass" or More tops." The cutting engineer would invite them to tweak for themselves, using the dummy console.

Everything is subjective...

We did something similar in our office building. The staff were forever saying "I'm too warm" or "I'm too cold" and putting in requests to have the airconditioning highered and lowered. It was a total pain in the ass. So our facility manager says he knows how to get rid of this headache and keep everyone happy at the same time...... we put up termostat controls on the walls around the office area and sent an e-mail around informing people now have direct control over their own office space temperature. People were delighted and there were no more complaints or requests.
The thermostats were of course doing nothing as they were never wired in, just randomly screwed to the wall near the biggest complainers. :-)