My Audiophile Journey

tmallin

WBF Technical Expert
May 19, 2010
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I have been interested in and purchasing audio equipment for some 45 years now. I grew up in the heyday of AR--Acoustic Research--speakers. I vividly remember my older brother taking me at age 12 to the AR demonstration room in Manhattan's Grand Central Station where visitors could hear the same material played first through the AR 4x, then the AR 2ax, AR 5, and finally the top-of-the-line AR 3a speakers. I could fully appreciate the gains in clarity and extension of each costlier model even then. Oh, how I yearned to own those magnificent AR 3a's! But my first component system was comprised of an AR XA turntable, Shure M91E cartridge, AR 4x speakers, and a Dynaco SCA-35 integrated tube amp, the best I could afford (or at least the best my parents thought I could afford) from my meager earnings and savings at age 14.

Since then, speakers and other components have come and gone, one usually being replaced by something more expensive or at least of a very different design in a never-ending quest to narrow the gaps between reality and reproduction. Understand first that, unlike most folks these days, but like some of the reviewers at TAS, I still use the absolute sound of live unamplified acoustic instruments playing (usually classical) music in the hall in which they are recorded as a standard against which to judge the sound of audio equipment.

I hear such music regularly, both as a performer in choirs and choruses and from the audience at all sorts of unamplified classical music concerts. The venues where I regularly hear such music vary from ordinary living rooms, to churches, concert halls, and opera houses.

For 12 years I also miked and mixed live PA audio and made recordings of music and speech for one of the largest churches in our area using professional sound equipment valued at more than a quarter of a million dollars. Most of the music I have been involved in miking, amplifying, and recording has been of the pipe organ, piano, instrumental ensemble, vocal ensemble, orchestral, choral, and solo varieties typical of traditional services in large churches.

Also understand that tonal balance, dynamics, and the ability to play large orchestral works at subjectively realistic levels are quite important to me. While I fully admit to the synesthetic joys of a visible auditory soundstage populated by firmly placed three-dimensional images, great imaging and soundstaging will not distract me from serious deficiencies in tonal balance, dynamic contrasts, and dynamic range.

When judged against this standard, to my ears, most serious modern (as opposed to vintage) audiophile speakers, even with most recordings having audiophile aspirations, sound tonally more than a bit thin (meaning lacking tonal weight from the bass through lower midrange) and more than a bit bright (meaning exaggerated upper mids through lower highs). Most such speakers are also totally unable to compass the dynamics of live music at any frequency, much less with the effortlessness of the real thing. And especially in the bass, most such speakers just don’t move enough air to at all resemble the sense of tremendous power and scale one hears from organ, bass drum, tympani, lower strings, and the lower brass in a hall.

My first published work writing about things audio was a long letter I wrote the The Absolute Sound back in 1992. It was published in issue 77, the one with the rock canyon on the cover. In it, I talked about how a "Rosetta Stone" recording might be made to help audio equipment reviewers know when a reproduction system was getting close to accurately reproducing its input.

In the late 1990s, when the Internet started to take off as a place where consumers could voice opinions, I started writing reviews of equipment I owned at Audio Review. My Audio Review comments about the Legacy Audio Whisper loudspeakers caught the eye of Clement Perry, publisher of The Stereo Times. I then did a review of the Whispers for that on-line publication. I also contributed articles about modifications for the Radio Shack analog SPL meter, as well as audio system grounding.

Around 2002 I became a regular contributor to the original (not the current) Harbeth Users Group (the posts of which are no longer on line, but my own contributions to which I have preserved on disc and elsewhere). It was there I first learned about Harbeth loudspeakers, which have been among my favorite references ever since. Robert E. Greene, REG of The Absolute Sound, was also a frequent contributor there and wrote the first published reviews of Harbeth loudspeakers. Comments by Greene and others on this group led me to first audition Harbeth speakers and then buy a pair of Monitor 40s in 2004.

Thereafter, in 2005, Robert E. Greene started his own Yahoo group forum, REG's Audio Forum. I have been a frequent (some might say too frequent) contributor there from the start. I have enormous respect for REG. Yes, by his own admission, he can be curmudgeonly--so strongly opinionated in a direction contrary to the current audio tides--as to turn some people off. But, on things audio, it seems to me that he is most often correct, or at least has very well-thought-through reasons for the strong opinions he holds.

Many of my own posts from the original Harbeth Users Group, as well as many of my comments from the first few years of REG's Audio Forum, can be found on line in the audio category of my own My Space blog, "Christian Apologetics Amidst Audiophile Musings." To avoid being offended by politically incorrect Christian apologetics, you can just select the audio category for viewing.

A (too?) detailed description of my current reference audio system can be found at: http://cgi.audioasylum.com/systems/808.html
 

amirm

Banned
Apr 2, 2010
15,813
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0
Seattle, WA
First, my warm welcome to you in joining our forum. Steve could not speak more highly of you.

You indirectly touch on two topics of high interest to me:

1. Battle between pro equipment and consumer. I have always had a leg on each side, having no problem with Genelec speakers in one room, and Revel in another. Proponents of each side though, scuff heavily as to the merits of the other. Since you have been involved in both, I would be curious to hear your point of view of whether one camp knows more than the other :).

2. You speak of merits of vintage gear. I thought advances in computer modeling and speed of our systems has allowed us to much better optimize speakers in the last decade or so. Does not go counter to the argument that the older designers were better? Mind, you I am not standing in the line of fire with an opinion of my own :D, but rather, just asking the question.
 

marty

Well-Known Member
Apr 20, 2010
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Tom,
I enjoyed your first post. Having been a fan of your writing for quite a while over at REGs, I was pleased to learn your background. One thing that always came though in your writing was your sense of, for lack of a more complex way of saying this, what sounds musically "right". It was therefore no surprise to learn of your musical background, recording endeavors, of of course, your singing (with which I was already familiar). When I checked out your audio asylum listing of your current equipment, I was most intrigued by the PS Audio player and DAC. I'm surprised not to see mention of it elsewhere in this forum. By all accounts, this is a unit that I'd love to hear more about, and in particular, how it compares to the 'high priced spread" (i.e Spectral, Boulder, MBL., Meridien, Playback Design). Even better, at around 6K, it would go head to head with a Meitner CDSA and that is the head to head comparison that intrigues me the most since I am a CDSA owner. if anyone has any experience out there, we'd love to hear from you.

The other item of interest that you have popularized, or at least commented on, is a rather unusual speaker placement of 45 degrees with respect to the listener, although if I am not mistaken , you advocated that mainly for the Gradients. I don't know if you have your Harbeths set up like that but it is certainly an unconventional set-up, or at least one that I have not seen advocated in many circles. I'd appreciate some commentary on its strengths/weaknesses when you have a moment.
Marty
 

tmallin

WBF Technical Expert
May 19, 2010
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PS Audio Perfect Wave Transport and DAC

I posted my original review of these items over on REG's Audio Forum back on 10/2/09. The messages of that forum are all "public"--you don't have to be a member of that forum or have a password to view them. You can view the review at:


http://groups.yahoo.com/group/regsaudioforum/message/29697

For follow up comments from me, see:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/regsaudioforum/message/29711

and

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/regsaudioforum/message/29804

Since I wrote the above comments, I really haven't conducted the pending experiments I mentioned as forthcoming in my original review. I really haven't changed the system much at all. I did swap out my Oppo BDP-83 for the BDP-83SE. The decoded HDCD and SACD playback is now better yet when I feed the analog output of the Oppo through my TacT for A/D conversion and then on to the PS Perfect Wave DAC at 96/24 for D/A conversion and volume control. I haven't changed much or done those experiments because I remain very satisfied with the sound of the PS Audio Perfect Wave duo as I originally configured them. I usually don't try to fix what I don't hear as broken.

The only thing I'd change in what I said at the above links is that with further break in, I now think Filter 2 is usually the best sounding on many more discs. Filter 1 is still best for many older CDs.

I would also add as to the pecking order of the PS duo versus other good digital products: I strongly prefer the PS duo to the sound of the $6k Ayre C-5xemp, the one with the apodising filter. If you read the Stereophile reviews of this Ayre unit, the $20k Boulder, and the $16k Meridian with the apodising filter, and the comparative comments JA has made about these three units, it seems to me that JA like the Ayre AT LEAST as much as those others. I prefer the PS duo hands down to the Ayre, which I regularly hear at one of my favorite local audio salons. I have not heard the Meitner or dCS products recently enough to make any comparison to those.
 
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amirm

Banned
Apr 2, 2010
15,813
37
0
Seattle, WA
I really haven't changed the system much at all. I did swap out my Oppo BDP-83 for the BDP-83SE. The decoded HDCD and SACD playback is now better yet when I feed the analog output of the Oppo through my TacT for A/D conversion and then on to the PS Perfect Wave DAC at 96/24 for D/A conversion and volume control.
You mean the transformation to and from digital actually improves the sound??? If so, what would be the theory behind it?
 

tmallin

WBF Technical Expert
May 19, 2010
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90-Degree Speaker Separation

Checking my listening notes, I first started listening with the speakers arranged so that they subtend a 90-degree (right) angle when viewed from the listening position back in August 2004, almost six years ago. At that time I was using the Legacy Audio Whisper speakers. Since then I've used 90-degree separation for most of the time I've owned and used the Harbeth Monitor 40, Gradient 1.3, Gradient 1.5, Ohm Walsh 5 Series 3, and now the Harbeth Monitor 40.1 speakers.

There have been brief interludes of experimenting with other speaker arrangements, such as an Ambiosonics set up where my M40s and Gradient 1.5s were set up about 30 inches apart with less than 20 degrees of separation. Right now, with my current M40.1 set up, if I sit back in my chair, there is about 75 degrees of separation. To get 90 degrees, I scoot forward so that I'm sitting at the front edge of the chair.


Having the speakers subtend a 90 degree angle as viewed from the listening position means that they are 45 degrees off the central axis. This is the theoretically best way to play back stereo recordings made with a Blumlein coincident microphone array. It is also the best way to play back recordings made with other single point mike arrays such as X-Y and M-S, but there are even fewer commercial recordings made with those techniques, I think, than with Blumlein.

My subjective reactions seem to bear out the theory. With 90-degree separation, Blumlein recordings snap into sharp focus. It's like you are focusing a variable focus camera lens. With 60-degree separation, Blumlein recordings sound, to put it bluntly, "spatially confused" and out of focus. If this is how you listen to them, it would not surprise me that you would not be impressed with Blumlein recordings.

The perhaps surprising finding is that I also find that recordings made with most other techniques, such as widely spaced stereo omnidirectional mikes (such as Telarcs, Mercury Living Presence, and RCA Living Stereo) mikes or pan-potted multi-mono mixes (most pop recordings) sound as fine
or better with this 90-degree set up than with the more common 60-degree separation.

In my experience, the only exceptions are early stereo recordings which
lack center fill, or some early pan-potted recordings where everything
is panned hard right and left or even hard left, hard right, and dead
center. For such recordings, playback with less stereo separation can
make these recordings sound less unnatural. Just move your chair back a
couple of feet, or temporarily set up another chair directly behind your
primary listening chair.

Setting the speakers up with 60-degree separation (each speaker 30
degrees off the central axis) places the two speakers and the listener
at the vertices of an equilateral triangle. Other arrangements with less stereo separation produce
isosceles triangles with the legs between the listener and the two
speakers being of equal length, but different from and less than the distance between
the two speakers.

In the case of 90-degree separation, the triangle has the properties of
a right triangle, the right angle being the angle between the listener
and the centers of the two speakers. The altitude of the triangle from the base line
defined by the line between the two speakers to the listenng position is exactly half as long as
the distance between the two speakers. Thus, if the speakers are 90
inches apart, the listener is 45 inches from the line connecting the two
speakers. The listener is 45 inches times the square root of 2, or 45 x
1.414, or about 63.63" from each speaker.

The relationships are always the same in such a triangle, of course.
If the distance between the speakers is 2, the distance from the
listener to the line connecting the speakers is 1, and the distance from
the listener to each speaker is 1.414.

From this it follows that you can easily achieve a 90-degree separation
between the speakers by just measuring the distance between the speaker
centers, then divide that distance by two and move your listening seat
so that your ears are that distance from the line connecting the two
speaker centers.

Part of my preference for wide stereo separation is a matter of personal taste. This taste corresponds to my preference for concert hall listening from the first few rows of the hall. I prefer the greater sense of immediacy and immersion to the admittedly better mix of direct sound and hall ambience one hears from a few rows further back. While I definitely don't want recordings made from the perspective of the performers, with direct sound coming from all directions around you, I do like the players to be close up up front, not "way out there" in front of me.

From such a close-in audience perspective, the front row of a symphony orchestra subtends at least a 90-degree angle. Even with small chamber music ensembles, I frequently hear living room concerts where I'm sitting only about five feet from three or four musicians. Side by side, from such close distance, such a small musical ensemble still subtends quite a wide angle. Thus, for me, maximally realistic and maximally enjoyable home music reproduction requires wide stereo separation.

If you prefer your music listening from the back half of the hall or from the balcony, you may well not like to have your speakers widely separated. From further back, even large ensembles subtend a relatively small angle, say 30 or 40 degrees. To each his own. If everyone preferred sitting close the way I do, the front seats at concerts would be even more expensive than they are.
 

tmallin

WBF Technical Expert
May 19, 2010
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No, Amir, I did not mean to imply that adding an extra A/D - D/A conversion improves the sound. I do it out of "necessity."

If you read my review, you will see that the PS Perfect Wave equipment will not play SACD layers of discs and will not decode HDCD recordings. The PS equipment also does not have an A/D converter and has no analog inputs. The Oppo's D/A converter can handle both SACD programs and decoding HDCD programs. To get SACD playback and decoded HDCD, I have to play the disks in the Oppo and take the Oppo's analog output through my TacT's A/D converter and feed the TacT's digital output at 96/24 resolution into the digital input of the PS Audio Perfect Wave DAC. For ordinary CDs and for DVDs and the Reference Recordings HRx 176/24 WAV file discs, the PS Audio Perfect Wave Transport and DAC handle everything and I do not use the Oppo.

I'd say that in most cases, decoding the CD layer of SACDs with the PS equipment sounds at least as good as playing the SACD layer with my Oppo in the way described above. For HDCD recordings, however, using the Oppo is superior. Undecoded HDCD recordings sound a bit too bright, have high frequency grain, and have compressed dynamics (especially in the highs) compared to properly decoding the HDCD. The PS duo, as good as it is, can't make up for these problems. Thus, for HDCD recordings, what you lose by inserting an extra A/D - D/A step is more than made up for by what you gain by correcting the tonality, eliminating the grain, and expanding the dynamics.
 

tmallin

WBF Technical Expert
May 19, 2010
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Chicagoland
You indirectly touch on two topics of high interest to me:

1. Battle between pro equipment and consumer. I have always had a leg on each side, having no problem with Genelec speakers in one room, and Revel in another. Proponents of each side though, scuff heavily as to the merits of the other. Since you have been involved in both, I would be curious to hear your point of view of whether one camp knows more than the other :).

2. You speak of merits of vintage gear. I thought advances in computer modeling and speed of our systems has allowed us to much better optimize speakers in the last decade or so. Does not go counter to the argument that the older designers were better? Mind, you I am not standing in the line of fire with an opinion of my own :D, but rather, just asking the question.

As to 1., I lean toward SOME pro-audio gear, that designed by folks using their ears to pursue natural sounding reproduction, rather than just seeking maximal SPL capability or a magnifying glass for hearing musical problems. The Harbeth Monitor 40.1s I use and the JBL Pro LSR 6332 speakers are both designed by designers whose primary audence has been the pro-audio market. Harbeth supplied the BBC for many years and JBL Pro, well, you know . . . .

As to 2., the primary strength of vintage gear is its natural tonality when using the sound from the audience of unamplified classical music played in a good hall as a reference. Part, a major part, of speaker design is art, not science. The personal taste and good judgment of the designers are VERY important, at least as important as computer modeling aids. Forty years ago, designers were more in touch with concert hall sound as a reference. Further, the science of proper dispersion of sound in a home listening room was developed well enough back in the 1960s. From recent products, it would appear that many current designers just ignore what has long been known as they pursue more trendy sounds. As I said at the conclusion of my discussion of my vintage audio posts:

"I don't really think we have made much real progress in terms of tonal reality, and that's what makes these old speakers so much fun to listen to. The old speakers have the "tonal juice" some of us crave. Realistic bass heft without boom, lower midrange warmth, midrange smoothness, and relaxed, sweet highs. When played back through the old AR speakers, modern CD recordings produce a tonal balance closer to what one hears live from the audience at an unamplified classical music concert in a decent concert hall than most modern speakers. The designers of these old speakers were trying for that kind of realism and made some very astute design compromises given the technology available at the time to get very close indeed.

"Much of high-end audio took a detour beginning in the late 1970s into the pursuit of spatial artifact reproduction, a detour from which it has not yet recovered. Accurate tonal balance was sacrificed on the altar of giving our eyes something to do by creating detailed spatial artifacts. Even with only two reproduction channels we can now hear more about the apparent spatial relationships of the performance than one could ever hear at a live concert with your eyes closed.

"Such spatial effects are fascinating for the listening room, yes. But realistic they are not. Audio reproduction has become a thing unto itself. No one seems to care that you can't tell an oboe from a clarinet or even a bassoon on many modern speakers, as long as you can "see" the singer's lips part centered tightly in space in front of the speaker plane and hear the spittle surface tension break before the first word comes out of her mouth. Never mind that such effects would never be heard live and unamplified, and would even be uncommon in a live amplified concert with the singer holding the mike to her lips."
 

Steve Williams

Site Founder, Site Owner, Administrator
Tom

I am most fascinated by your 90 degrees of speaker separation. Is this something that you recommend for all speaker designs

In the set up of my Wilson X-2's and all Wilson speakers for that matter it is recommended that the distance from tweeter to tweeter X 1-1.4 = listening postion with the speakers toed in just sufficiently that the inner side of each speaker be seen by the listener
 

tmallin

WBF Technical Expert
May 19, 2010
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Tom

I am most fascinated by your 90 degrees of speaker separation. Is this something that you recommend for all speaker designs

In the set up of my Wilson X-2's and all Wilson speakers for that matter it is recommended that the distance from tweeter to tweeter X 1-1.4 = listening postion with the speakers toed in just sufficiently that the inner side of each speaker be seen by the listener

I know that Wilson has some unusual recommendations for speaker set up based on what they call a voicing technique. They may actually design their speakers to work best with this sort of set up technique. If you are happy with your present set up, I'm not about to tell you to change it, Steve. Large Wilsons are also difficult to move around once rooted/spiked, so it might not be something you experiment with lightly. :)

I'm not aware of ANY speaker manufacturer which recommends 90-degree separation. However, if you dig back into the dawn of the stereo age, the Bell Labs work suggested that 90-degrees was the theoretical ideal. Why 60 degrees became the "standard," is obscure. REG has suggested it was just a misunderstanding of the original Bell Labs work.

Many audiophiles separate their speakers be even less than 60 degrees. I saw a recent Stereophile reviewer, KR as I recall, state that even in his surround system, with a center channel speaker between the left and right, that his left and right speakers were each only 22 degrees of the center line, for a total separation of 44 degrees. That does not fit anyone's recommendation; the standard THX recommendation is 60 degrees between front left and right. But many dealer set ups are narrower than 60 degrees as well. When I listen at such dealers, I usually just move the listening chair closer.

As to the amount of toe in, I also usually toe in the speakers to each aim directly at their respective ears, left speaker at left ear, right speaker at right ear. This only works well, however, if the speakers you are using are not overly bright on axis. With many speakers, the treble will be more naturally balanced if the speakers are either not toed in that much, or are "overtoed" to cross in front of the listening position. My old Legacy Whispers, for example, sounded best overtoed so I could just see the outside edge of each speaker from the listening position and that was the manufacturer's recommendation as well. Harbeths have exquisite subjective mid and high frequency balance on axis, however, and so aiming the speakers directly at my ears works best.

The amount of toe in you apply is a separate consideration from the angular separation, but the two are usually interrelated. It may well be be that with wider separation you would need to toe in the speakers a bit more for best high frequency balance. If you face the speakers straight ahead, with no toe in, then obviously the wider the subtended angle between the speakers, the further off axis you are listening. If the best high frequency balance depends considerably on how far off axis of the tweeter you listen (which is common with speakers), then you may want to toe in the speakers more if you a large angular separation.

This also suggests the reason why leaning forward in a chair does not automatically give you the best benefits of wide separation. As you lean forward, you are more off axis of the tweeter, not less. To really hear wide angular separation at its best, you will probably also have to rotate the speakers to change the amount of toe in. And this is just an example of how all aspects of speaker set up are interrelated.
 

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