The Fallacy of Accuracy

[fas42]

I think by "lack of distortion" he means faithfulness to the original signal rather than simply measured harmonic and/or IM distortion. In other words, all kinds of "distortion" meaning any change to the original signal, whether easily measurable or not.

Exactly. Most systems make you aware of how "the speaker sounds", not what the recording is about - a failing, IMO. The reason for that is that the types of distortion which are hard to measure, but which distract one from the musical message, are very pernicious - relatively subtle, but the damage is done; you can't just flow with the music, and only the music ...

People talk about systems "getting out of the way" - that's exactly how it has to happen; if the system doesn't do this then it is inaccurate.

 

[PeterA]

Amir is 100% right but as usual oversimplified thinking on the topic... Loudspeaker design is juggling compromises, simple as that, and the old saying "there's more than one way to skin a cat" definitely applies.

For example take a list of well regarded speaker designers, say Linkwitz, Geddes, Danley, Sanders, A Jones, Toole... these guys are all skinning the cat in a different way and ending up with a result that closely matches the results of the preference testing done by Toole/Olive despite the fact the designs are sometimes VERY different from one another.

And to discuss this without also discussing the room and associated treatments/acoustics is meaningless. Some speaker designs work better in different acoustic environments, i.e. a dipole shouldn't be slammed into a corner while some speakers are designed ONLY to be placed in corners as part of their design. Wide dispersion direct radiator speakers require different treatments vs a directional designs like GedLee speakers.

So given the inherently compromised exercise of speaker design and their suitability for different acoustic environments, ALL of which may adhere to preference testing research, it's not surprising to me there are such a large variety of designs. And despite the fact that all these well-designed speakers perform well according to the preference testing people still have much different preferences within that envelope. What does preference testing say about paper vs aluminum coned woofers? Diamond vs beryllium tweeters? And on and on... all these things make a massive difference in the overall sound of the speaker while not effecting frequency response or dispersion, or any factors that might change it's ranking in how closely it conform to known preference testing.

So what might look like "chaos" to some is really not chaotic AT ALL when you understand the design intent and chosen compromises made by the designer. It is true there are many speakers that do not follow the preference testing, but even if you completely ignored these more compromised designs you'd STILL have a huge variety of different designs that do conform, and they get there in their own way and they all have advantages and disadvantages.

So no, there isn't going to be any "convergence" in speaker design anytime soon, but if there was going to be one it would be for a point source horn because that's the most ideal design.

Nice post Dave. Do you think Wilson and Magico speakers adhere to preference testing research? I wonder because their potential buyers would seem to be a narrow group of audiophile listeners, and not the general music listening public. Their respective marketing efforts would suggest that they are designing products which portend to be accurate, in Wilson's case, accurate like the sound of live music in the Wiener Musikverein, and in Magico's case, accurate to the signal it is being fed.

 

[microstrip]

(...) Their respective marketing efforts would suggest that they are designing products which portend to be accurate, in Wilson's case, accurate like the sound of live music in the Wiener Musikverein, and in Magico's case, accurate to the signal it is being fed.

Are sure? Except for the S5 all other older Magico speaker measurements that I have seen show a tailored response, not accurate on axis frequency response. HFNRR reported that the presented measured response of the S3 is distinctly concave through the presence zone. He have to agree that in this aspect no speaker challenges the Revel Ultima Salon2. And the S5 seems to be the champion of low distortion.

 

[Folsom]

If you were at Axpona your impression of Magico would be detailed in the way the signal delivers, even if they are tailored in some form. And with Wilson it appeared to try and fake real live performance.

However it sounded like the higher end Magico room's amps and perhaps preamps were going for the faked live experience - what I call macro - except that the speakers are too detailed to let the illusion go by without noticing the ques from the recording/mastering process.... a bad match IMO. The Wilson rooms gave no illusion of refinement.

 

[fas42]

However it sounded like the higher end Magico room's amps and perhaps preamps were going for the faked live experience - what I call macro - except that the speakers are too detailed to let the illusion go by without noticing the ques from the recording/mastering process.... a bad match IMO. The Wilson rooms gave no illusion of refinement.

The "too detailed" effect is actually distortion - the electrical environment that the recording was made in is drawing too much attention to itself, the latter's "space" has become as important as the captured musical event. This is fine if you're a recording engineer, and you want to hear the subtle mistakes that were made - the playback distortions automatically emphasise what was done in the recording process, so the underlining here is helpful.

But as consumers most of us just want to get to hear what the artists were doing, not the engineers - refinement of the system overall is necessary, so that the cues of the music are returned to their, correct, prominence.

 

[Folsom]

The "too detailed" effect is actually distortion - the electrical environment that the recording was made in is drawing too much attention to itself, the latter's "space" has become as important as the captured musical event. This is fine if you're a recording engineer, and you want to hear the subtle mistakes that were made - the playback distortions automatically emphasise what was done in the recording process, so the underlining here is helpful.

But as consumers most of us just want to get to hear what the artists were doing, not the engineers - refinement of the system overall is necessary, so that the cues of the music are returned to their, correct, prominence.

I prefer something totally different from you. And I absolutely don't agree with you. The fact that the microphones are sensitive enough to pick up the studios lack of headroom, wall treatment, etc... is not distortion but rather the opposite. Also I immensely enjoy hearing everything that is there. The more clear all of that is, the more clear the actual artist and their instruments approach realism with the veil of a medium that was processed, between us.

If you mean it's a distortion of the live performance, well yes and no. Some of it is like when headroom falls a little short, but it isn't when you can hear the types of walls in the place. That's as live as it gets. You're in a different room than your own listening to them play. I get to travel to different venues all the time right from my own chair.

 

[fas42]

We're on the same wavelength, Folsom, in terms of what we're after - however, what I was commenting on was the type of system which subjectively exaggerates every little detail, and does this by a subtle type of distortion. A good system allows one to hear, focus on every detail of what the performers were creating, without drawing your attention to inadequacies of the recording itself - an example of what can result is being able to listen to tracks of swing orchestras recorded in the 1930's, at high volume, and only being aware of the musicians creating the experience and the space they're in, and not registering the limitations of the age of the recording.

 

[Folsom]

The only thing I'm particularly familiar with that does it in an exaggerated way is some tube equipment. It's likely relatable to the operating voltages as far as I can tell. The translation back to speaker level seems to heighten things. ClassD output filters can do something similar as they tend to stretch the waveform a little.

However on a very good stereo you can hear everything, it's just that the levels are proper. In my opinion you shouldn't have to concentrate to get what's there at a proper level. It will simply come to you and be additive to the experience, not sticking out.

 

[DaveC]

We're on the same wavelength, Folsom, in terms of what we're after - however, what I was commenting on was the type of system which subjectively exaggerates every little detail, and does this by a subtle type of distortion. A good system allows one to hear, focus on every detail of what the performers were creating, without drawing your attention to inadequacies of the recording itself - an example of what can result is being able to listen to tracks of swing orchestras recorded in the 1930's, at high volume, and only being aware of the musicians creating the experience and the space they're in, and not registering the limitations of the age of the recording.

Some wire and connectors can accentuate leading edges, making for "false detail", it sounds exciting at first and for those who don't know better it can be interpreted as superior, but over time it's fatiguing and hard to listen at high volumes for very long.

 

[microstrip]

Some wire and connectors can accentuate leading edges, making for "false detail", it sounds exciting at first and for those who don't know better it can be interpreted as superior, but over time it's fatiguing and hard to listen at high volumes for very long.

It can be one of the reasons why it is so difficult to carry listening tests with cables. Often this accentuation will make you perceive more detail the first time you listen to this specif cable, but most of the main detail will be there at the second time or with other cables. Repetitive listening will obscure the difference as you will focus on the detail , not any more on the transient. And listening fatigue can not be tested with shootouts - they are intrinsically tiresome.

In the long term this enhanced transients do not sound natural.

 

[DaveC]

It can be one of the reasons why it is so difficult to carry listening tests with cables. Often this accentuation will make you perceive more detail the first time you listen to this specif cable, but most of the main detail will be there at the second time or with other cables. Repetitive listening will obscure the difference as you will focus on the detail , not any more on the transient. And listening fatigue can not be tested with shootouts - they are intrinsically tiresome.

In the long term this enhanced transients do not sound natural.

Yup, with experience you can recognize this issue right away but it is a problem for some who get these fatiguing cables and thing they are better than everything else they have tried because of it. I've seen it a half dozen or so times, and it's always the same. The cable is touted as being on another level vs all the others they have tried, making all the others seem boring and unresolving, it's usually not that expensive and it uses silver wire and cheap connectors with certain materials and platings. An example is typical 4N silver wire combined with Neutrik connectors.

And people often like cables that "do something" to the sound, they hear a change and think it's better but often it's not. Over time people will come to the same conclusions, the best cable does nothing at all.

 

[Steve Williams]

Over time people will come to the same conclusions, the best cable does nothing at all.

+1

 

[DaveC]

Nice post Dave. Do you think Wilson and Magico speakers adhere to preference testing research? I wonder because their potential buyers would seem to be a narrow group of audiophile listeners, and not the general music listening public. Their respective marketing efforts would suggest that they are designing products which portend to be accurate, in Wilson's case, accurate like the sound of live music in the Wiener Musikverein, and in Magico's case, accurate to the signal it is being fed.

Thanks, I've thought about it and to be honest I don't know for sure. These type of speakers I rarely think are more than just OK, although I have heard some systems that are very nice.

Just in general I think any speaker designer knows about Toole's research and preference testing, and IMO they would be very foolish not to take it seriously. But this just gives an overall high-level guide to what people prefer and there are many ways to achieve it.

I also think preference testing has a big problem and that is acclimation, we are used to what we are used to and anything different doesn't sound right. Of course, customers are going to bring their preferences with them when they audition speakers so we (speaker designers) would be wise to realize this. The one area I believe this applies to is dispersion, and the preference for wide dispersion complete with first reflections. I believe this is not nearly as good as a tighter dispersion that reduces first reflections, but it's not what people are used to and it takes some time to acclimate them to my speaker, which has more controlled dispersion vs a typical direct radiator. However, when people listen to my speaker for a while and get acclimated to that it seems similarly strange to go back to my direct-radiator reference speaker, even though my reference speaker is much closer to "ideal". I've found, without exception and in a group size of around 20-25 people so far, that given the chance to acclimate to either wide or narrower dispersion speakers they always prefer narrower because it recreates the venue in a much more believable way, the soundstage is more 3 dimensional and immersive. Even people who have no idea what a soundstage is and what stereo is capable of describe it to me, it's very interesting!

 

[microstrip]

(...) Over time people will come to the same conclusions, the best cable does nothing at all.

Tens of cable manufacturers claim that their cable it the one that "does nothing at all".

Long ago I did an experiment - I compared the sound of my ESL63 directly soldered to the output of Meridiam 205 monoblock amplifiers versus when using a given good quality speaker cable - I am not very sure anymore, probably some mid price Audioquest or Van den Hul - and everyone who participated preferred the sound with the cable. I was really deceived.

 

[DaveC]

Tens of cable manufacturers claim that their cable it the one that "does nothing at all".

Long ago I did an experiment - I compared the sound of my ESL63 directly soldered to the output of Meridiam 205 monoblock amplifiers versus when using a given good quality speaker cable - I am not very sure anymore, probably some mid price Audioquest or Van den Hul - and everyone who participated preferred the sound with the cable. I was really deceived.

Speaker cables are probably not the best choice for such an experiment as there's far more variability in the amp/speaker interface vs interconnect cables. Because of this people's experiences with speaker cables are more unique to their system, which means their results are not likely to be as similar in other systems vs ic cables. Speaker cables do something to damp the back-emf coming from the driver/crossover network, and this emf plus the amplifier's sensitivity to it are quite variable compared to the high impedance and much less reactive load seen by interconnect cables.

I think it's a good sign that tens of cable manufacturers have the same goal, but I would suspect their success at achieving the goal is far more variable. I've been building cables for many years and I can say that achieving a neutral result using materials that are anything but neutral is a challenge, and I ended up designing my own wire to get closer to my goals. I also have a unique construction geometry that I doubt any other cable manufacturer uses. Andre Marc's review of my cables is written far better than I can write and I couldn't have hoped for a better review. When the reviewer describes my cables in a way that is 100% in line with my design goals it makes it hard to believe that some people think there is no audible difference between cables, as the chances of this happening by accident are pretty close to zero.

I knew this was going to be a tricky review after several weeks of critical listening in that I was going to have to figure out a way to describe the sound of “nothing”. It was like hearing a direct link from component to component and amplifier to speaker. Also, the power cords were among the most impressive I have used, and that goes for models costing as much as five times more, with similar connectors. The task at hand is similar to trying to describe the clarity and of the purest water stream without sounding pompous.

Then it dawned on me the perfect word to describe ZenWave cable is indeed purity. The shimmer of a lightly struck cymbal, the strum of an acoustic guitar, and the presence of a close mic’d vocal were so pristine, and so precise in their location on the imaginary soundstage we call recordings, it removed much of the need to suspend disbelief.

 

[fas42]

Long ago I did an experiment - I compared the sound of my ESL63 directly soldered to the output of Meridiam 205 monoblock amplifiers versus when using a given good quality speaker cable - I am not very sure anymore, probably some mid price Audioquest or Van den Hul - and everyone who participated preferred the sound with the cable. I was really deceived.

My experiments have demonstrated, for me, that hard wiring of amplifier output to the speakers is best - obviously this is highly inconvenient, but has always given me the "cleanest" sound - I couldn't live with a system where I couldn't do this, or has some method which is equivalent.

 

[Steve Williams]

Frank

Have you experimented with different types of solder?

 

[fas42]

No, not at all. Perhaps there may be some subtle impact there but personally I can't see that it would be as important as getting a good quality solder joint. What I mean by that is the surfaces of the metal parts are brought to bear upon each other as tightly as possible, that the mechanical aspect of the joint is sound, and that the solder just fills the gaps left, pushes any air away. The idea is that the distance the signal has to travel through purely solder is as short as possible, the solder is really doing the job of keeping air away from the surfaces. Air and metal to metal contacting are a bad combination, all sorts of subtle chemical processes degrade the quality of the link - best is to eliminate them as much as possible.

 

[Steve Williams]

I know that some speaker manufacturers use different types of solder

 

[NorthStar]

That's a good question: http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/equipment-tools/171788-solder-audio.html

• http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/class-d/134829-best-type-solder.html
• http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/pass-labs/242913-best-solder-wire-pass-diy-amplifiers.html

• http://www.head-fi.org/t/533536/best-type-of-solder-for-audio-quality