A quest for perfection.

DaveyF

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Jul 31, 2010
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I had the pleasure of hosting an a'phile friend last night and he brought up what I thought was a great question. The question: what do you think will be the advancements that we are likely to see in audio in the next few years? Where will these advancements come from....the speaker side, the amp side, the digital side, the analog side or ?? or maybe a completely different area that is unexpected...( cables come to mind or power conditioners/delivery, as an example).
Since the quest for the "absolute sound" is probably endless, what or where in your opinion is the likely next breakthrough in sound reproduction in the home? Thoughts.:)
 

puroagave

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Sep 29, 2011
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i thought i saw the future when merdian pushed forward active speakers, dsp and and advanced digital processing. that technology only seems relavent today to multichannel and home theatre. ive been in the hobby a while and if i were asked th same question 30-yrs ago i would have thought we'd see many more advancements; i would have never predicted the fascination with SET/Horns and amps based on 80-year old tube circuits, idler drive TT, etc and have them be considered SOTA.

ihmo, relative to 2-ch audio much of the current hardware particulary analog is just "old wine in new bottles" (as writen in the pages of TAS). I know many of you will dispute this as you have to justify your recent purchase of the mk III, special edition (fill-in-the-blank) latest and greatest acquisition.
 

andromedaaudio

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Speakers ,because i am happy with an integrated tube amp , with technologie that was or could be made 40 years ago , in a sense not much progression after all .
 

FrantzM

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Apr 20, 2010
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i thought i saw the future when merdian pushed forward active speakers, dsp and and advanced digital processing. that technology only seems relavent today to multichannel and home theatre. ive been in the hobby a while and if i were asked th same question 30-yrs ago i would have thought we'd see many more advancements; i would have never predicted the fascination with SET/Horns and amps based on 80-year old tube circuits, idler drive TT, etc and have them be considered SOTA.

ihmo, relative to 2-ch audio much of the current hardware particulary analog is just "old wine in new bottles" (as writen in the pages of TAS). I know many of you will dispute this as you have to justify your recent purchase of the mk III, special edition (fill-in-the-blank) latest and greatest acquisition.

You're not alone in this thinking. I do however believe that there has been made in speakers and the digital side of reproduction. I am not at all sure about what is so new about circuity in analog amplification today. I am waiting to be proven wrong on this account


P.S idler pulleys are to me very surprising ... They are by their nature noisy and imprecise and yet find (some) favor from a crowd which has been known to measure the speed of their platter rotation to three decimals ...
 

Andre Marc

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Mar 14, 2012
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I had the pleasure of hosting an a'phile friend last night and he brought up what I thought was a great question. The question: what do you think will be the advancements that we are likely to see in audio in the next few years? Where will these advancements come from....the speaker side, the amp side, the digital side, the analog side or ?? or maybe a completely different area that is unexpected...( cables come to mind or power conditioners/delivery, as an example).
Since the quest for the "absolute sound" is probably endless, what or where in your opinion is the likely next breakthrough in sound reproduction in the home? Thoughts.:)

Unfortunately the quest for perfection has zero correlation to the quest for enjoyment.
 

Andre Marc

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That does not sound logical at all, care to elaborate.....but maybe you agree with my point that stereo is so imperfect that pefecting it will not get you to a live event...

Actually, I don't agree about stereo. I have written before that it is actually a lot closer to how we process sound than many believe.

But to elaborate, focusing on audiophiles, enjoying music on a high fidelity home playback system and seeking perfection are not the same thing.

From experience, those seeking perfection are endlessly evaluating SOUND, not listening to music.
 

FrantzM

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Apr 20, 2010
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Actually, I don't agree about stereo. I have written before that it is actually a lot closer to how we process sound than many believe.

But to elaborate, focusing on audiophiles, enjoying music on a high fidelity home playback system and seeking perfection are not the same thing.

From experience, those seeking perfection are endlessly evaluating SOUND, not listening to music.

Not sure I get your points.. Could you elaborate?
 

cjfrbw

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Apr 20, 2010
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Not really. I think what I make clear is that seeking perfection in a stereo system does not guarantee musical enjoyment.

Heisenberg uncertainty principle in audio? The more perfect the stereo, the more it becomes an unapproachable monolith subject to entropy, and thus, imperfection.

With the internet, audio is a diversifying hive. Hives demand hierarchy, status symbols, and fashion slut novelty, thus "perfection" will always be re-defined and a moving target with different cells of belief systems.

Antique sound has been rediscovered because apparently we were allowed to find a lot of the best stuff first.
 

Johnny Vinyl

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Not sure if its the next thing, but I'm seeing more high-end quality Integrated amplifiers being introduced and getting some surprisingly wide acceptance. The move by baby-boomers into smaller homes, condos or townhomes might make that a very viable option.
 

mep

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I think it’s a somewhat lopsided two-legged race with digital on the lead leg and speakers on the trailing leg. In comparison to all other high-end doo-dads, trinkets, and gadgets, nothing else improves at the speed of digital IMO because that is where the most engineers and money are right now. I do believe that speakers are getting better in terms of the quality of the drivers, the cabinet materials/construction, and the software/hardware tools to make better crossover networks and integrate all of the pieces.

To my knowledge, no one is coming up with new designs for R2R tape decks and putting them in production. And please, don’t tell me that the Otari 5050 is a new design just because it is still in production supposedly. We are stuck with improving designs that have been around for many years. For those at the top of the cartridge food chain, people feel there are real advancements being made there. Of course everyone that builds turntables and arms would have you believe that the technology is advancing at warp speed. Ditto for amps and preamps.
 

Andre Marc

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Mar 14, 2012
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Heisenberg uncertainty principle in audio? The more perfect the stereo, the more it becomes an unapproachable monolith subject to entropy, and thus, imperfection.

With the internet, audio is a diversifying hive. Hives demand hierarchy, status symbols, and fashion slut novelty, thus "perfection" will always be re-defined and a moving target with different cells of belief systems.

Antique sound has been rediscovered because apparently we were allowed to find a lot of the best stuff first.

When Bruce Lee first started to study Kung Ku, he was told "A punch is just a punch". He though there HAD to be more to it than that.

When started his own discipline, he was determined to find the metaphysical and spiritual components of a punch.
After ten years of spinning it around, he arrived at the following conclusion: "A punch is just a punch".

With the advent of higher resolution speakers, amps, cables, and even recordings...music is not any more enjoyable than 40 years ago.
 

andromedaaudio

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Mep from what i "learned" at WBF is that tapemachines from 40 years ago are the best sources as well , go figure .
Thats why i said sometimes : Is high end going forward or moving in circles , for example wilson is using a silk soft dome ????
 

mep

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Mep from what i "learned" at WBF is that tapemachines from 40 years ago are the best sources as well , go figure .
Thats why i said sometimes : Is high end going forward or moving in circles , for example wilson is using a silk soft dome ????

I hear you bro. You would think from reading some of the posts about Wilson switching to silk dome tweeters that they had just come on the market when in fact they have been around for many years.
 

daytona600

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Sep 9, 2012
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DSP & room correction seems to be getting a lot of recent press, From low behringer to high trinnov
 

mep

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I think it is somewhat funny/ironic that the most high-tech piece of audio gear in my house is the Onkyo TX-NR3010 AVR receiver I just bought which lies in a sealed box in my house due to my tendon injury. This thing does digital room correction and has electronic crossovers built in. Now mind you that my Home Theater room is in an entirely different part of my house and is isolated acoustically from my two-channel stereo room. I just bought the Mytek Stereo 192 DAC so I could play back DSD files in my he-man rig and now I read that the Onkyo TX-NR3010 can also play back DSD files!

I’m looking forward to healing from my operation that is scheduled for tomorrow and being able to set up my new AVR rig and improving the HT which I have neglected for years.
 

FrantzM

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Apr 20, 2010
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I think it’s a somewhat lopsided two-legged race with digital on the lead leg and speakers on the trailing leg. In comparison to all other high-end doo-dads, trinkets, and gadgets, nothing else improves at the speed of digital IMO because that is where the most engineers and money are right now. I do believe that speakers are getting better in terms of the quality of the drivers, the cabinet materials/construction, and the software/hardware tools to make better crossover networks and integrate all of the pieces.

To my knowledge, no one is coming up with new designs for R2R tape decks and putting them in production. And please, don’t tell me that the Otari 5050 is a new design just because it is still in production supposedly. We are stuck with improving designs that have been around for many years. For those at the top of the cartridge food chain, people feel there are real advancements being made there. Of course everyone that builds turntables and arms would have you believe that the technology is advancing at warp speed. Ditto for amps and preamps.

Agreeing entirely
 

NorthStar

Member
Feb 8, 2011
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Vancouver Island, B.C. Canada
1. Better and more quality music and movie recordings.
2. Better speaker's designs (sound) to match individual's rooms (active digital signal processing integrated in them).
3. Perfectionment of Auto Room EQs; with adaptive room treatments in a realistic listening space, and preserving the natural direct sound, and its reflections and diffusions and reverberations.
4. Much better digital stages.
5. Total eradication of digital jitter.

Just to start of.

Oh, and they can kill analog all together (less troubles, less money made by the 'fundamentalists' of our industry, and a more peaceful world to live in). ...I think. :b

Brief:

Better sound material from better music engineers.
Better reproducers adapted to our individual room.
Better digital sources; cleaner with more dynamism, and less distortion.
Better digital Room EQ systems (zillion times more sophisticated and much easier to implement and run by the user; all automatic, and very fast).
Better and less expensive cables; AC power cords, speaker wires and interconnects.
 

Groucho

New Member
Aug 18, 2012
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I don't think there's much more to do. Arguably, digital reproduction of the stereo recording is to all intents and purposes perfect, and we're almost at the stage of having the world's entire music library at our fingertips via the internet. Very possibly, amplifiers are also there - despite the endless discussions. Class D are very small and efficient if that matters (but I have little experience of them). The only thing left is the speaker and the listening room. We have active speakers with DSP and they're superb (listening to some now). Room correction is good, so I'm told - I must get round to trying it properly. A while ago there was talk of 'digital speakers' using arrays of piezo 'binary' transducers but I don't think that got anywhere. Electrostatics are good, if a little impractical. My one hearing of magneplanar speakers was quite convincing too.

Unless we feel the need to adopt multi-channel recording in a big way, I don't see there's many problems left to solve. When the oil runs out we'll only have headphones anyway!

Edit: I agree with the previous post about the quality of some recordings. But it's amazing how many 40-odd year old recordings still sound magical.
 

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