Patrick Turner wrote:
Somebody said, and Andre replied.....
Modeling and analysis are essential; but the map is not
the world.
Actually, the only °essential* is having some method of deciding where
you want to arrive. High fidelity went wrong long before Mr Leak's
inspired marketing terminology (Point One) became an engineering
article of faith, but that set the seal on the decline.
So what happened before Leak that was the beginning of the fidelity decline?
Invention of pentodes and bean tetrodes? Beginning of FB use?
Indirect heating of cathodes?
Patrick Turner.
Pick any of those, Patrick, or of these: the start of the search for
power, speakers becoming more insensitive, gramophone records becoming
cheap enough to be everyday items for everyman with the consequent
proliferarion of cheap gramophone consoles, and no doubt a long, long
list of other factors someone may wish to add.
Or, if you're into icon-smashing, choose the day Theo Williamson showed
the world how to use NFB competently to get a *lot* of power without
paying the electrical price, Hafler and Keroes on their finest day
(this is again about power and NFB), CFB from Walker and Williamson
(again, about more power for less cost). It is all a matter of where
you're looking from. You might, for instance, consider the Williamson
and then the Quad II as the zenith of hi-fi, with a long cheapening
decline into silicon; it is an equally valid view (and depends, always,
on which speakers you have in mind to use with their amps...).
In general, these men were driven by external events in a marketplace,
and it is in the external events we must seek our answer.
Andre Jute
Visit Jute on Amps at
http://members.lycos.co.uk/fiultra/
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