Are Hifi Reviews Flawed?

[Welder]

I wish you hadn’t done that Dave

[MartinT]

Ken Kessler in my case.

For me too, and John Atkinson.

[Marco]

A good equipment example for this thread are Stan's DAC's. I'm sure Stan would be the first to agree that they are not as good as he could make them if money was no object, but then that would be missing the point entirely. Stan has cleverly found the middle ground and has produced a DAC that sounds great, costs very little, and the icing on the cake is that he is engaged with his customer base in the development of upgrade mods. His DAC's are as good as he can make them for the price and no one could argue that he doesn't know what his products are capable of

Indeed, Dave. I'm glad you mentioned the Beresford DAC, because along with Anthony's amps, it's another case in point, in terms of the sonic advantages of equipment made by small, specialist manufacturers.

How much continual tweaking, measuring and listening do you think Stan carries out to acheive the sonic results his DACs give? Do you think that they would achieve such high sonic standards if he simply built them to a 'required specification' and then left it at that?

No chance!

He continually strives to achieve even greater excellence with his designs, which is what all the best audio designers do, and without doubt, *that* is the recipe for creating the best sounding equipment.

John, I'll get to your last post in a moment

Marco.

[The Grand Wazoo]

I simply think that, like many others of his mindset, brought up on strict scientific values, he took his eye off of the ball, as it were, from being too influenced by the validity of objective measurements, when designing audio equipment, the sonic reproduction of which ultimately must satisfy the scrutiny of the human ear more than it does the readout on an oscilloscope.

But in 1953, who was listening to amplifiers before they bought them?
Not many of Quad's customers, I don't suppose.

[Marco]

Indeed, and that's why there was a lot of crap made then, as well as some truly outstanding stuff, because like you say, listening to equipment from both the perspective of the buyer and designer was, shall we say, 'unfashionable'. It's probably also a significant reason why Quad IIs sound how they do!

However, it's no coincidence, I feel, that those who did as much listening then as they did measuring, ended up both designing and owning the best sounding kit at the time

Marco.

[Reid Malenfant]

I think a lot of what you are talking about is much more directed at valve amps Marco, after all, you don't hear of people transistor rolling

They are very much a different entity & each manufacturers product can differ by a much wider margin than any transistor. As i mentioned earlier, as long as you have a good design then components will have a minimal input to the sound quality as most components will be pretty well matched.

With valves you have all sorts of different versions, in comparison transistors are much more homogeneous, gain excepted..

[synsei]

Although what you say is true to a certain extent Mark, the same still applies albeit to a lesser degree with SS equipment. I will admit that it is probably easier to design a consistent mass-market SS product than one with valves, however the basic premise is the same whether your dealing with tubes or SS. Again, the Beresford DAC's are evidence of this...

[Marco]

Hi Mark,

I agree to an extent, as the behaviour of valve equipment is rather more 'organic', but there's still plenty of margin for fine-tuning the sonic performance of solid-state gear.

Testament to that fact, is the huge array (to my ears) of sonic signatures created by various SS pre and power amps, currently on the market. Try listening to amps from Naim and then to some from, say, Meridian, and you'll see where I'm coming from

Anthony is well placed to comment on this issue, as he designs both valve and SS gear, as indeed for that matter, is Nick (lurcher). Therefore, as experienced audio designers, I shall ask them to offer their thoughts on the discussion

Marco.

[Reid Malenfant]

Although what you say is true to a certain extent Mark

Dave, if you can build stuff that is within 5% tolerence then it should all sound the same I think say 50% tolerance might well make a diffrence, that'd be maybe 6Db, but 1%, having a laugh

It's down to the design & not the components at the end of the day.. Get it right & you'll be able to reproduce a good component without too much "trimming", or bu**er all...

You only need to introduce lots of adjustment if you can't get similar components that will bring the design into the spec you need or want

[Reid Malenfant]

Testament to that fact, is the huge array (to my ears) of sonic signatures created by various SS pre and power amps, currently on the market. Try listening to amps from Naim and then to some from, say, Meridian, and you'll see where I'm coming from

Yes! Bias the bloody lot of them into class A though & you might not hear so much of a difference. I'd still prefer the low feedback version though, let it do it's thing with less restrictions

I know we are going round in circles, been here before & all that

But you must take into account all the new readers to the site So it all gets repeated once again & i'm only too happy..