High End Audio

[Outside_Lookin_in]

Imagine this coupled with SBT

 

[bosshoss]

I fully agree with everything the guy said. Problem is, it costs one million dollars or more, and you can get the same sound quality with a regular "very good" system and a few hundred dollars worth of STB. And after you equal his best system, you can go further than he has ever dreamed.

I've heard (very) big all-horn systems with a $350k Wavac amplifier and I know how they sound - excellent on acoustic instruments and vocals. They fall down on loud rock band recordings.

Elvis sang into a single mic, with an acoustic guitar and 2 mono Ampex recorders. Relatively easy to get realistic sound reproduction using that recording setup.

I still admire what he's doing, and I think it's great that someone is doing it. For the mega-wealthy few. Personally I wouldn't want most of it because it's ugly, bulky and no longer necessary in a post-STB world. He's using a sledgehammer to solve a problem that could better be solved using a magic wand.

 

[bosshoss]

Just one further thought on extremely expensive, high quality components vs. STB -

I was able to equal and surpass the performance of my $6,000 Synergistic Research power cables using pair of $10 Chinese cables plus STB. I wouldn't even want to go back to the SR cables. It's possible that they would sound even better than the $10 cables, if they were also treated with STB. But it's also possible that they wouldn't. I can't test them because the SR connecting plugs are too big to fit into the Kii speakers.

Maybe the $6k cables put all that expense into solving (with less success) the same problem that STB is solving. Maybe you can't solve the same problem twice. Maybe there's now no diference between "adequate" and "superlative" after STB treatment? Probably not with speakers, but perhaps with electronics. Almost certainly with cables. Maybe ultra-expensive cables and amps are now completely obsolete.

 

[Outside_Lookin_in]

I assume the $10 cables were for an experiment? Or is that what your Kii system is normally plugged in with?

What you say about the horn speakers makes sense: they should be fantastic for acoustic instrument reproduction, but rock is played with enclosed paper cone speakers, so you'd think that would be the best mode of reproduction (which would also preclude using electrostatic speakers, by the same logic).

 

[mr. splendid]

I think with horn speakers you have to make sure that they work within the size of your room . I'm using these
https://www.blumenhofer-acoustics.com/Products/SerieGenuin/GenuinFS2/GenuinFS2.php#rwml-EN
I know you might call them hybrids . I was tempted by the bigger FS1 , but they wouldn't have worked with the size of my room . BTW what piqued my interest into these , was a glowing review from an UK reviewer that used 60's soul records to test them .

 

[Outside_Lookin_in]

Thanks for confirming my suspicion. How well do they work at low volume?

 

[bosshoss]

I assume the $10 cables were for an experiment? Or is that what your Kii system is normally plugged in with?
.

Yes the Kii comes supplied with Chinese cheap plastic cables. You can't use oversize cables, because the plugs won't fit in the narrow space available. A huge oversight on the part of the Kii cabinet designer. The only way around the problem is to use cheap cables, or an adapter which defeats the purpose of expensive cables. Or you can buy the $30k Kii bass extension system, which has plenty of room for oversize plugs and solves the problem at a price.

If it hadn't been for Kii's error, I would never have discovered STB, because I would have used my SR cables, and would not have needed to experiment to improve the cheap cables. The "B" component would have still been incubating in its little jars on the shelf in the garage.

 

[Outside_Lookin_in]

Or you can buy the $30k Kii bass extension system, which has plenty of room for oversize plugs and solves the problem at a price.

 

[mr. splendid]

Thanks for confirming my suspicion. How well do they work at low volume?

They work quite good at low volume , the soundstage maybe gets a bit smaller but the balance between the instruments remains . I'm running them with tube amps , I could imagine that a quick reaction solid state amp might work even better for low volume .

 

[bosshoss]

A link to this was posted on an audio forum. Some interesting stuff, if you can spare the time to watch. According to these experts, STB can not possibly work, all power cables sound the same, and the Furutech record demagnetizer is a bunch of baloney.



And they are so sure of themselves. That's what comes from being audio experts and professors. Not like us cranks.

 

[MopTopMike]

What are the credentials attached to these opinionators?
I trust my own ears. Not words.

 

[Outside_Lookin_in]

I'm convinced. I'm getting rid of all my records and only listening to youtube videos on my laptop.

 

[Ned]

I have a set of Mark's latest creations & have access to a wide variety of high end cables , streamers & DACs of esteem. I have been tabulating a list of my observations.

Mark - is this the best place to post my results ?

Ned

 

[bosshoss]

Yes here or in the "Another New Sound System" topic Ned. Whichever you prefer. In case you've missed the recent dialog, another new set of very powerful materials will be on its way to you (and to everyone else who has expressed an interest) very shortly, called the Platinum Pack.

 

[Outside_Lookin_in]

I have a set of Mark's latest creations & have access to a wide variety of high end cables , streamers & DACs of esteem. I have been tabulating a list of my observations.

Mark - is this the best place to post my results ?

Ned

It would be more relevant on the other thread

 

[Outside_Lookin_in]

The extremes some audiophiles go to to try to achieve perfect sound. Not for the faint of wallet.

A New 4K Visit to Michael Fremer's Listening Room

 

[masterbeat64]

Mr Fremer appears to be the archetypal 'Sound over Music' audiofool. I doubt very much that he uses an original 45 of 'Jailbait' to evaluate his expensive assembly of audio goodies.

All things considered, my own 54 year audio adventures would seem to qualify me as a crank. When you have a serious record collecting habit and a relatively limited income, you will almost always prioritise the records. However, due to my late father's tutoring I did appreciate the need to respect my records by playing them on a decent system. Hence 70% of my audio purchases were, and still are, second-hand or self built./refurbished.

I was fortunate that my first career mentor was a former WW2 communications specialist with SOE. His civilian job was with R&D at the famed M-O Valve company, manufacturers of high quality tubes. Through him I met another ex M-O V engineer who designed tube amp circuits. In 1979 this gentleman gave me a copy of a US magazine called 'The New Testament', a very amateurish A5 pamphlet similar to a punk music fanzine.

The New Testament concentrated solely on reproducing the sound of vinyl records via tube amps. The author took an iconoclastic view of the then high-end tube amp makers such as Conrad Johnson and Audio Research, pointing out that roughly 70% of the customer price of these amps went to cover advertising, fancy cabinet decoration and bribes to reviewers. He detailed a costing of one tube amp which showed that the parts costs were less than 10% of the total price. He also questioned why if the amp was so perfect, a (more expensive) upgrade would appear a few months later? Clearly, for all his insights, this person had a poor grasp of commerical reality. He did however, include a schematic of what he claimed to be the ultimate tube phono only preamp. He christened it the NB-1, with NB short for 'No Bullshit'

I built an NB-1 using military grade tubes, Lemo plugs and sockets and other quality components. I remember as though it were yesterday the first time I cranked up the NB-1 and played a 45, a mono recoring from 1958. The sonic image was truly astonishing. But the NB-1 had a flaw in the power supply design which seriously limited tube life. My old M-O V friend modified the NB-1 to overcome this and I still use a mono version of the amp for playing 45s. But in all those years, despite endless tinkering and tube rolling, I have never been able to capture that magic I experienced with the original beast. Almost like seeing Elvis in 1954 or The Stones in '63 and then having to be content with listening to their records.

Here's to audio crankery and $10 interconnects!

 

[Outside_Lookin_in]

I've come to believe that a large part of why you cannot recapture the sound of stereos decades ago, is due to the gradual polluting of the power supply over the decades. I can't prove that of course, partly because I don't have a time machine.

 

[masterbeat64]

I've come to believe that a large part of why you cannot recapture the sound of stereos decades ago, is due to the gradual polluting of the power supply over the decades. I can't prove that of course, partly because I don't have a time machine.

Your speculations are undoubtedly correct. The growing use of electrical power supply cables for data transmission and communications purposes, especially in the US, is a probable contributor to this pollution.