[Audio Empire]

On Mon, 12 Mar 2012 03:40:07 -0700, wrote
(in article ):

On Sunday, March 11, 2012 4:37:19 PM UTC-4, Audio Empire wrote:

But this brings me to a problem=20
that I have with almost all audio publications. At most of the ones with
which I am familiar, the various editors will tell you privately that the
idea of power cords, interconnects, and speaker cables having any sonic worth
is ridiculous, but that those products represent good advertising dollars,
that they cannot afford to get on these manufacturers' bad side or to ignore
them. I find this somewhat dishonest.

Yeah, but it's that or moronic. There's no third choice.

I'd have bet they were true believers--either they believed in the magic
of cables from the get-go, or their economic interest led them to drink
the Kool-Aid. There's at least a tiny bit of integrity in knowing and
admitting privately that you're promoting snake oil. Emphasis on tiny.

Yeah, well, I'm sure that some are "true believers." It's easy to do, I've
been fooled. I've swapped cables and "thought" I heard a distinct difference.
Expectational bias is a very powerful illusion and humans are VERY
susceptible to it. What kept me from drinking the "Kool-Aid" was my
electronics engineering background and the fact that I worked in an Aerospace
company's 'Cable Lab' for three years testing all kinds of cables and
connectors carrying about every kind of signal that one can possibly imagine.
I knew that what I thought I was hearing was not just unlikely, it was
impossible!

I'll tell you another little secret -
it's getting harder and harder for reviewers to find anything to discuss
(beyond features) about amplifiers too. Most are so transparent these days
that you have to really stress them in some way to hear any real differences.
At normal listening levels, today's solid-state amps are much more alike than
they are different. What you mostly get for your money as you spend more are
more power and stiffer DC power supplies. They make a difference, to be sure,
but it usually doesn't show-up under most normal listening conditions.

This is hardly a secret to those of us familiar with Tom Nousaine's 1990
AES lit review of DBT amplifier tests. But this is actually very good
news. It means there's a straightforward route to quality sound:
1. Choose a capable and good-sounding set of speakers.
2. Make sure you have enough amp power to drive them (trivial in most
cases, but there are exceptions).
3. Set up your room carefully (the hardest step of all). That's pretty
much it. Now if we could find a few publications to promote this
approach, rather than promoting the snake oil, maybe we can interest a
few more people in the benefits of good sound.

When I said "secret" I meant it in the sense that the similarity of
amplifiers is a secret as far as the audio press is concerned. If they don't
discuss vanishingly miniscule differences in amplifiers in amplifiers, what's
there to write about?

It's ironic really. Audio types used to laugh at Julian Hirsch's equipment
reviews at the long defunct "Stereo Review" for stating in seemingly every
review, " This amp, like all modern amps, is perfect and has no sound of it's
own." It wasn't true then (most amps were tubed and the few that were
transistorized had that early "transistor sound"), but it is true now - even
modern tube amps.