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Dolby
07-28-2005, 03:37 AM
I have an Marantz CD17 MkII KI Signiture - which is a reasonably high-end CD player, and reviewed well in most magazines.

In the classified, I saw a Theta Pearl transport and Theta Cobolt DAC - which I'm told is a better sound than my Marantz. The Marantz, however, costs nearly FOUR times the price of the Theta setup!

I also saw a Meridan 203 DAC and old Meridan transport - which I'm told would rival the Marantz. The Marantz is SIX time more expensive!

Question is : Would I be able to look in the classads, make up an entire high-end system from 10 years ago, for the price of just a high-end CD player today? Why would people want to go for the new stuff - other than the looks?

Resident Loser
07-28-2005, 04:38 AM
Why would people want to go for the new stuff - other than the looks?

...with another question. Why do folks "trade-up" anything? Cars? Houses? Spouses? Could be the joy of getting something new...dissatisfaction(real OR imagined) with what they currently own...simple wanting the newest, most expensive or feature laden bit of planned obsolescence...envy...keeping up with the Jones'...yada, yada, yada...

I have stuff runs the vintage gamut from the mid-70s to about a year ago...I'm a creature of habit and I prefer the older, better built (IMHO) gear with features I require such as true "tape mon" and dubbing facilities...flexibility is important to me...I feel the HT market(AND multi-channel AND digital) has "dumbed down" the simpler aspects and reasonable prices of stereo reproduction in favor of the ability to bring laser-toting lizards into your living room...it's well nigh impossible for me to replace(on a point-by-point basis) the system I currently enjoy and I refuse to purchase the more "esoteric" high-priced stuff simply as a matter of principle, the "best-bang-for-the-buck" theory...and there are but two reasonably-priced receivers that would suffice, however I'm not THAT desperate.

Given the fact that CDPs basically read zeros and ones, sound difference(at least IMO) is contrived and produced by the anaolg circuitry simply to provide a specific sonic signature. There is an expensive unit(the name of which escapes me) that uses an off-the-shelf Marantz drive, its own DAC and is packaged in what is really a bit of industrial sculpture...It has "signal shaping" or some other euphemism for tone controls(HORRORS!!!the audiophiles cry). As far as I'm concerned the only difference is the owner's ability to say to all and sundry "Lookee what I can afford".

jimHJJ(...can't beat the "my dog's bigger'n your dog" factor...)

Geoffcin
07-28-2005, 04:58 AM
I have an Marantz CD17 MkII KI Signiture - which is a reasonably high-end CD player, and reviewed well in most magazines.

In the classified, I saw a Theta Pearl transport and Theta Cobolt DAC - which I'm told is a better sound than my Marantz. The Marantz, however, costs nearly FOUR times the price of the Theta setup!

I also saw a Meridan 203 DAC and old Meridan transport - which I'm told would rival the Marantz. The Marantz is SIX time more expensive!

Question is : Would I be able to look in the classads, make up an entire high-end system from 10 years ago, for the price of just a high-end CD player today? Why would people want to go for the new stuff - other than the looks?

I've heard the latest, and best from Meridian, the 800 (over $20k)

http://www.avrev.com/equip/meridian800/

Which to me is about as good as CD can possibly get. I really don't think the bar for CD quality has gone up since oversampling was introduced. My CD player is about 5 years old, and give me about 95% of that quality. CD is now a mature technology, and so any incremental gains are going to be tiny.

That being said, the Meridian gives you DVD-Audio quality that is clearly better than ANY CD. With the proper system would provide you with an unrivaled audio experienced. What I heard at HE2005 was better than ANY 2-channel audio setup I've ever heard.

http://forums.audioreview.com/showthread.php?t=11462

kexodusc
07-28-2005, 05:43 AM
I share similar sentiments. I have 2 players right now, an Arcam that I think sold for about $700-$800, and a cheapo Yamaha for about $150-$200.
I use the Arcam in my 2-channel system, and the Yammie in my HT when I'm doing more casual, less critical listening. But my experiments on both systems have demonstrated that the Yamaha is easily as good sounding as the Arcam on my HT system when using it's optical cable (both running through my receiver), and only slight less resolved on through analog on my stereo system with more revealing speakers. Most of the time I can't tell a difference when I'm playing rock music, but on some jazz and classical, there does seem to be a bit of upper end harshness in the Yammie, (or smoothness in the Arcam,) though, and I perfer the Arcam.

That said, if I had to put a number to it, I'd probably say the Yammie is 90-95% as good, and maybe 1/4 the price...

Funny thing is, my $110 Toshiba DVD-A/SACD player sounds better than both units when playing either of those formats, a noticeable step up. I think Geoffcin's right, and at this stage in the game you pay quite a premium for incremental performance improvments in CD.
I have $470 Yamaha Universal player that's better still for SACD, but not DVD-A.

I try to always maximize performance buy getting the best value equipment, but sooner or later I feel I have to take a step up in price, as cost-inefficient as it might be, to get better performance.

Dolby
07-28-2005, 06:05 AM
So in summary, one could spend $2000 on an old Meridian/Theta/Wadia/Krell stereo system (transport, DAC, amplifer) system - and possibly get performance that'll rival $5000 new systems?

Geoffcin
07-28-2005, 06:35 AM
So in summary, one could spend $2000 on an old Meridian/Theta/Wadia/Krell stereo system (transport, DAC, amplifer) system - and possibly get performance that'll rival $5000 new systems?

A lot of quality amps hold value for decades. You probably could get an older Meridian CD player that is virtually as good as the best CD player now for a lot less.

http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/cls.pl?dgtlplay&1127410789

A friend has an 10 year old McCormack CD player and it sounds great. Not as smooth as my Arcam, but really dynamic.

hermanv
07-30-2005, 09:49 AM
In electronics it is largely true that there is little new under the sun. Witness the resurgance of 80 year old directly heated triode amplifier designs, the simple is best school of electronics and the continuation of a love for the sound of tubed electronics.

Now having said that, I don't think it is nearly as true for digital electronics. The whole field is new enough that "discoveries" are still being made and incorporated into new designs. D to A chips continue to improve, oversampling and up conversion continues to expand its penetration into cheaper players. Digital "enhancements" keep getting more complex and the reviewers tell us that these techniques improve the sound that is acheivable in cost no object systems.

There is of course the question of balance, there's little point in putting a $20,000 CD player ahead of a $150 Pioneer receiver (an exageration but the point is valid). All systems have a performance limit or floor caused by many factors. If the limit in your system is near the output end, such as speakers or the power amplifier, improving the input has very little value.

My first "high end" CD player was a Denon 20 bit 8 times over sampled player. It sounded better than a mass market unit but not much. As I continued to improve the rest of my system the difference between the players became more marked. In other words the improvement of a CD player can only be heard if the rest of your system is up to the task of letting the imrovement pass through. As you might guess the Denon eventually became the limit in my system and it was replaced by a pair of seperates, a transport and an outboard D to A.

If you read my posts you will find me a strong advocate of outboard D to A's. The CD player is a mechanical device. It will wear out and relatively soon. Why pay for expensive digital to analog conversion every time the transport fails? I'm on my third transport but my current D to A will probably stay in my system for many, many years. I mainly buy transports that are mechanically sturdy. Unlike others, I do not hear a difference in one transport to another, but my D to A has quite a complex jitter correction circuit which might explain why.

So, yes buy older electronics made by well regarded brands, temper this with the knowledge that digital conversion circuitry continues to improve. Newer CD players will probably outperform older players assuming the price points were similar when the equipment was new. I find that the more expensive equipment almost allways sounds bettter (damn!)

sam9
07-30-2005, 09:56 AM
"Witness the resurgance of 80 year old directly heated triode amplifier designs, the simple is best school of electronics and the continuation of a love for the sound of tubed electronics."

You write that as if it were an accepted fact. It's an opinion. There are those even among the ranks of the "Golden Ears" who hold that valve amplifier are at best a charming and expensive anachonism whose claims to fidelity are based on nostalgia.

This isn't an attack, just a reminder that there is a difference between a respectable opinion and a blanket assertion.

hermanv
07-30-2005, 10:29 AM
Huh?

I said said "witness the resurgance..."

Isn't there a resurgence? I think that there is a resurgance. I did NOT say I thought they were better. I re-read my post and just can't find what you read into it. I didn't assert that old directly heated cathode designs were better, I didn't assert that simple was better. Although I did imply that some people thought so.

I mean there alone stands a huge debate, but I didn't bring it up. Personally my opinion is that the SET for example is not better. Different? Yes. Listenable? Yes, but not better.

On the other hand, it is a fact that there is little change in the design of amplifier circuits and it is also a fact that tubed electronics continues to be popular for audiophiles long after the tube dissapeared from virtually all other electronic applications.

So please, where is my assertion of fact that is instead an opinion?

This also is not meant as an attack but I can't seem to see what you see in my sentence

Geoffcin
07-30-2005, 01:23 PM
On the other hand, it is a fact that there is little change in the design of amplifier circuits and it is also a fact that tubed electronics continues to be popular for audiophiles long after the tube dissapeared from virtually all other electronic applications.


Even though a lot of people have, and continue to use old amp tech. Designs like the newer PWM tech from companies like Bel Canto and PS Audio, and the ultra-low distortion tech that is used in the Halcro amps, show that things have moved quite a bit. Even within modern conventional design, a lot of companies are moving away from global feedback, and are still managing to keep excellent specs. Other companies like Musical Fidelity are reevaluating some of the older tech. like choke regulation, and applying it to more modern tech like MOSFET output devices. Tubes are also being used in very sophisticated designs by makers like BAT, Audio Research, and others. A tube amp designer from 40 years ago wouldn't know what he was looking at if he opened a modern tube amp from Audio Research. Yes, older designs persist, but modern amp makers continue to push the envelop in design.

Florian
07-30-2005, 01:25 PM
There is a reason why i say "nothing happend the last 20 years"

I want a Audio Research Reference setup on my Divas

hermanv
08-01-2005, 11:44 AM
Even though a lot of people have, and continue to use old amp tech. Designs like the newer PWM tech from companies like Bel Canto and PS Audio, and the ultra-low distortion tech that is used in the Halcro amps, show that things have moved quite a bit. Even within modern conventional design, a lot of companies are moving away from global feedback, and are still managing to keep excellent specs. Other companies like Musical Fidelity are reevaluating some of the older tech. like choke regulation, and applying it to more modern tech like MOSFET output devices. Tubes are also being used in very sophisticated designs by makers like BAT, Audio Research, and others. A tube amp designer from 40 years ago wouldn't know what he was looking at if he opened a modern tube amp from Audio Research. Yes, older designs persist, but modern amp makers continue to push the envelop in design.Of course inovation and refinement does continue, but many of these ideas are hardly new. I designed my first switching amplifier in the late nineteen sixties and the idea was hardly new then. Feedback has gone through several cycles of being popular and un-popular as a cure for amplifier problems and the idea of combining old and new technologies is re-invented with each new technolgy that appears. In their power amplifiers, I believe BAT uses a design technique called a cyclotron dating back many many years, not to say it hasn't been refined, from what I read BAT makes excellent sounding equipment.

One of the reasons that you don't often see things such as choke regulation in a MOSFET design is that most of these combinations of old and new ideas end up increasing the cost of the end result (Halcro being an excellent example of how to get good sound by trading money for it).

Often this additional complexity and cost does result in a beter sounding amplifier. I think maybe that the ability of the marketplace to accept the selling equipment at this price point has changed much more than any technological breakthroughs. IMHO a higher percentage of audiophiles have accepted that it takes very expensive equipment to get the best sound.

As I write this I think that a top of the line audiophile amplifier has always cost about as much as an inexpensive car. It's more that the mass market equipment has dropped in price amazingly if inflation is factored in.

I don't own one but from what I understand a forty year old top of the line MacIntosh design can still hold it's own with the best modern equipment. Didn't they recently re-issue an old design at around $9,000?

True inovation would be geting that quality at one tenth the price. Discovering that old hand wound capacitors sound better and cost more that modern capacitors doesn't count as innovation. Many newer highly regarded designs are old topologies with highly expensive selected single components, film and foil caps, foil inductors, resistors on a glass base transformers with expesive winding techniques, etc.

Maintaining good measurements without global feedabck means that more of the feedback (or degeneration if you preffer) is local. Neither tube nor transistor linearity has improved much in 30 years. High amounts of local feedback was applied by Bell Labs to their first oceanic telephone cable vacuum tube amplifiers built what, in the thirties? A signal from America to Europe had to go through something like 30 amplifiers, the cumulative distortions were murder until the circuit was made nearly distortion free.

Yes there are incremental improvements but basic circuit topologies remain largely unchanged. Even the idea of using an inverse version of a stage to feedback a correctiion signal as in the super triode amplifier or in the super linear solid state amplifiers is hardly new. It was rarely used due to cost, not because no one had thought of it.

More seems to be understood about materials technologies than about new circuit designs. Ultra pure materials, specialty capacitors, excotic platings on connectors, silver wire, a return to ceramic tube sockets seem to me to have done more for sound quality that any new topologies.

Because of delays these forums sort of tend to push people (including me) into black vs. white statements and a high degree of generalization. Mostly there is some middle ground that is reached quickly when you have a verbal discussion with someone that results in more immediate feedback. The quicker feedback lets you concentrate on the exact point of disagreement and acheive consensus much more quickly.

I say this because this is not a case of one is right and the other is wrong, there is a great amount of gray here subject to interpetration. :)

RGA
08-01-2005, 12:13 PM
Well the best cd player I have heard - and I'm not alone - are the Audio Note CD players(specifically the one box CD 3.1 at about $4k) of no times oversampling which is closer to the very first cd players in certain technology than any others (except a few that are now copying Audio Note). Relatively they are inexpensive as upper class cd players go. This no times oversampling cd player you can hit and it doesn't skip - there is no error correction and no digital filters.

I can't say you'll like them but I can tell you that the difference between this cd player versus a Linn CD12 is far greater than the Lijnn CD 12 versus an Arcam Alpha 7 or my Cambridge Audio. And the price difference is roughly 30 times more expensive for the Linn over the Arcam -- and yet you'll hear far more difference with the 3.1 at about 5 times. CD player differences are subtle most of the time even ones that use tube stages like the Ah Tjoeb.

I can tell you if I had to do it all over again I would have bought the Sony Mega Changer I have and NOT the cambridge Audio which if I really listen critically is a better player but it's simply not better enough to warrant all the extra money and none of the fun mega changer features. My next cd player will be one of the no times oversampling dacs from Audio Note - biased or not I know what I heard. Is newer better? No it's in the technology being used -- most use pretty much the same design and as a result pretty much sound very similar as to be not worth bothering. And if you can't find a good one go Vinyl.

shoe
08-02-2005, 11:26 PM
A lot of quality amps hold value for decades. You probably could get an older Meridian CD player that is virtually as good as the best CD player now for a lot less.

http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/cls.pl?dgtlplay&1127410789

A friend has an 10 year old McCormack CD player and it sounds great. Not as smooth as my Arcam, but really dynamic.
Dear sir
Can you tell me which McCormack CD player your friend has? I was looking into buying a McCormack signature CD player from 1995 .

Geoffcin
08-03-2005, 04:21 AM
Dear sir
Can you tell me which McCormack CD player your friend has? I was looking into buying a McCormack signature CD player from 1995 .
Hi Matt,

Yes, that's the same model unit that a friend of mine has. It's a very dynamic sounding unit, built like a tank, and he wouldn't part with it for anything! It's also got variable output so you can experiment with a direct-to-amp connection if you want to bypass the preamp.

The great thing about Audiogon is that you can roll used equipment and not loose any $$$. No matter how much you try things out in a store, you never really know how much you like it until it's been in your system for a while. A lot of people on Audiogon live like this, swapping out components, and you can get some really good equipment on there. As much as I really like my Arcam Alpha 9 CD player, I've been tempted to sell it, and try something else!

Woochifer
08-03-2005, 11:34 AM
ANY consumer electronics product that you buy will depreciate the minute you open the box, that's the main reason that you can buy so much more from 10 year old gear than going with an all-new setup. The problem with used is exactly that, it's used. When you buy a new component, there's no unknown history behind it.

CD player transports can and do wear out. Amplifier switches and controls can and do wear out.

If you're finding these bargain prices on components that are supposedly that much better than the Marantz that you own (and how do you base this opinion? your own listenings, or even worse, hype from reviewers and people who might have paid full price on those components when they were brand new?), you gotta ask yourself -- why is it so cheap?

I think that vintage components that still have value, will continue to have value and people will pay accordingly for those components. Amps will hold their value because the standards don't change much, and amps have fewer wear components (unless you're talking about tubes).

With a CD player, you got multiple reasons for the price to drop -- 1) the transport will not last forever -- either the drawer will get jammed, the laser assembly will start getting stuck, or the laser itself will burn out, it's only a matter of when it will break and 10 years of continuous use is a lot of mileage; 2) the filtering and sampling techniques used on older "high end" models has trickled down to the more affordable models in the ensuing years; 3) there's the unknown history of the component (was there a baby in the house that used to smear peanut butter on the buttons or drop coins into the slot? did it get knocked out of alignment during the last earthquake?); and 4) just normal wear and tear.

If anything, the performance that you can buy for the money nowadays far exceeds what you could get in the entry level class 20 years ago (factor inflation into the calculation and it's shocking how far things have come). Consider that the original Sony CDP-101 (an atrocious sounding CD player IMO) cost $800 when it was introduced in 1982. In today's dollars, that would equate to over $1,600, yet a $20 portable CD player that you buy at a local drug store will outperform that model. The build quality is generally where you see the compromises occurring, as things are generally not built as ruggedly as they were before.

Woochifer
08-03-2005, 12:38 PM
Well the best cd player I have heard - and I'm not alone - are the Audio Note CD players(specifically the one box CD 3.1 at about $4k) of no times oversampling which is closer to the very first cd players in certain technology than any others (except a few that are now copying Audio Note). Relatively they are inexpensive as upper class cd players go. This no times oversampling cd player you can hit and it doesn't skip - there is no error correction and no digital filters.

Impossible for it not to have error correction, since it's part of the CD standard. The CIRC error correction is an 8-bit parity code that's part of every CD's audio datastream (it's a ~25% redundant code that gets used to fill in missing bits with no interpolating).

Woochifer
08-03-2005, 01:14 PM
There is a reason why i say "nothing happend the last 20 years"

I want a Audio Research Reference setup on my Divas

Quite the contrary, plenty has happened over the last 20 years, with by far the biggest impact among the entry level components.

20 years ago, you still had a sizable portion of the speaker market devoted to imitating the JBL L100 (and these generally sounded far worse than the L100s, which had a very credible sound with a lot of the recordings from that era). Speakers of the quality of today's Paradigm Mini Monitor or Energy C-1 or B&W 600 series or other typical speakers selling anywhere near the $300 mark will far outperform what you typically saw at that price point in 1985 ($300 in 1985 dollars would equal about $550 in today's dollars). For the money, the level of performance that you get today is generally better than what that same amount of money would have bought you in 1985.

Even with vintage audio components, consider that a 75 wpc Marantz 2275 receiver would have cost you $600 in 1976. In today's dollars, that would equate to over $2,000 -- just think of how good a set of two-channel components you can buy today for that amount of money. It's easy to nitpick about how much better built things were in the old days, but in equivalent dollar terms, things from the old days also cost a lot more. If you're willing to pay that amount for the same type of audio gear, then you'll find even better quality for the most part today.

Also, the quality of the CD players has evolved dramatically in the meantime. The Meridian CD players that were made in 1985 already got outperformed by Philips' bitstream players by the early-90s, and if you mod one of those Philips players, forget about any comparisons to the Meridian. And let's not even mention how a $20 CD player will outperform the original Sony CDP-101 ($800 in 1982, more than $1,600 in today's dollars).

And in the meantime, let's not forget what else has occurred with the DVD, and multichannel audio, and DVD-A, and SACD, and 96/24 PCM, and DTS 96/24, etc. Plenty has changed since 1985, and for the most part I'm glad that it has.

Florian
08-03-2005, 01:25 PM
I was refering to speakers in the Ultra High End sector. Nothing happend there, the old speakers like Apogee DIVA, Apogee Grand, Duntech S. 2001, Genesis 1.1 are still the best speaker systems in the world and are quite old. And my speakers actually gained in value :p I agree a lot has happend in the last 20 years in terms of electronics, but my friends goldmund ref3 TT or Forsel Airtight are still the best TT's in the world. In the Ultra High End, not much changed at all.

-Flo

Woochifer
08-03-2005, 02:24 PM
I was refering to speakers in the Ultra High End sector. Nothing happend there, the old speakers like Apogee DIVA, Apogee Grand, Duntech S. 2001, Genesis 1.1 are still the best speaker systems in the world and are quite old. And my speakers actually gained in value :p I agree a lot has happend in the last 20 years in terms of electronics, but my friends goldmund ref3 TT or Forsel Airtight are still the best TT's in the world. In the Ultra High End, not much changed at all.

-Flo

In YOUR opinion, those are the best in the world. (Can't really make a universal proclamation unless you have actually heard every speaker or TT in the world.) Sure, good components will always be good components. But, at the same time, the level of performance that you can buy for the money has gone up in nearly all facets of consumer electronics.

Remember that the original topic of this thread discussed CD players. And in that category, plenty of "ultra high end" CD players from 20 years ago can't hold a candle to what midlevel CD players will deliver today. Also, in the "ultra high end" category, you now have 384/24 resolution outboard DACs, DVD-A, SACD, and a whole slew of new bass management and room calibration tools that were unavailable to consumers 20 years ago.

hermanv
08-03-2005, 02:38 PM
If you're finding these bargain prices on components that are supposedly that much better than the Marantz that you own (and how do you base this opinion? your own listenings, or even worse, hype from reviewers and people who might have paid full price on those components when they were brand new?), you gotta ask yourself -- why is it so cheap?
Over the years I have listened to many brands and like most tire kickers I often want to see (hear) the stuff I couldn't hope to afford. By doing this and comparing carefully, I have found some reviewers that seem to share my tastes in how equipment should sound. If you are going to read the magazines this is pretty much what you have to do. Unfortunately in todays world it's naive to trust someone you don't know. I have a couple of names whose opinions seem worthwhile to me. Also it is usually posible to find usefull information even in the amateur reviews by reading carefully in order to discern whether the reviewer has a sense of balance in his statements.

As to why so cheap, most well regarded equipment sells for near 50% used, some even goes up in price. Certain pieces are very rare on the classifieds lists, I believe this is a hint that most people that own one are happy to keep it. Beware the newest products that suddenly show up in high volumes on the used sites. If it's too good to be true, it probably isn't.

Its like anything else, a healthy dose of common sense will get you a long ways down the road. I have saved real money in buying high end gear at used prices. I limit my purchases to gear that is made by manufacturers that have been around for a while and those that get consistently high marks by both the magazines and my peers. I live near San Francisco so my most expensive purchase was from there, I drove down and listened to the item first. I saved about $1,500, well worth the effort.

No, there are no guarantees that you won't make a bad buy, but there is little guarantee that buying new will allways result in a happy conclusion either.

Florian
08-03-2005, 11:48 PM
In YOUR opinion, those are the best in the world. (Can't really make a universal proclamation unless you have actually heard every speaker or TT in the world.) Sure, good components will always be good components. But, at the same time, the level of performance that you can buy for the money has gone up in nearly all facets of consumer electronics.

Nope, not my opinion. The opinion of many of the best reviewers on the planet. Who is here to contest the speakers i listed? Tell me a speaker better than the Infinity IRS-V, Apogee Grand/DIVA, Gensis 1.1 or ML Statment E2? Or who is here to contest a Goldmund Ref3 or a Forsel Airtight?

-Flo

PS: I stick by my opinion, nothing really changed exept a few more filters and faster dacs.

Geoffcin
08-04-2005, 04:33 AM
Nope, not my opinion. The opinion of many of the best reviewers on the planet. Who is here to contest the speakers i listed? Tell me a speaker better than the Infinity IRS-V, Apogee Grand/DIVA, Gensis 1.1 or ML Statment E2? Or who is here to contest a Goldmund Ref3 or a Forsel Airtight?

-Flo

PS: I stick by my opinion, nothing really changed exept a few more filters and faster dacs.

You seem to be mistaking size with quality. Speakers like the Infinity IRS-V were NOT any better than the smaller models of their IRS line except for the fact that they could fill a larger room, go a couple of Hz lower, and could get to a nominally higher volume. The Emit tweeter, while a very good unit, has some serious issues, and was NOT the best high frequency driver of it's day, or today for that matter. The woofer stacks of the IRS-V also has some issues. Positioning a beast like that required a lot of tweaking. New large designs from Wilson and others are MUCH better overall IMHO about doing what "unlimited size" speakers do well.

The large, (but not immense) German made Acendo speaker that I recently heard at HE2005 would also eat the IRS-V for lunch on nearly any parameter you could think of, and that was a 3-way speaker with a ribbon tweeter and transmission line loaded woofer.

http://forums.audioreview.com/showthread.php?t=11457

I've been lucky enough to see the evolution of CD from it's inception, and I absolutely agree with Woochifer on this: The idea that CD tech has not improved over the last decade is absurd, and can be easily demostrated to anyone with just a cursory demo.

I will agree with you though that TT tech has reached it's zenith many years ago, and has no where else to go.

Florian
08-04-2005, 05:43 AM
I dont mistake size with quality ;-)

The goal is to recreate a life event in a room, and you need a large speaker with that. The IRSV and the emits were very critical when it comes to heat and moisture but is still a reference in many ways. If you compare the MIDFI (now)(B&W, Klipsch, Kenwood, Jamo etc...) to 20 years ago a lot has happend. But not much changed in the ultimate goal in my book

-Flo

http://www.jfsounds.de/fs.jpg
http://www.jfsounds.de/fs1.jpg

Woochifer
08-04-2005, 10:39 AM
Nope, not my opinion. The opinion of many of the best reviewers on the planet. Who is here to contest the speakers i listed? Tell me a speaker better than the Infinity IRS-V, Apogee Grand/DIVA, Gensis 1.1 or ML Statment E2? Or who is here to contest a Goldmund Ref3 or a Forsel Airtight?

-Flo

PS: I stick by my opinion, nothing really changed exept a few more filters and faster dacs.

Of course it's your opinion and your opinions of those reviewers. If you say these reviewers are the "best reviewers on the planet," what's your basis for coming to that conclusion? Have you read everything from every reviewer on the planet? Is there some universally agreed upon criteria for what constitutes the "best reviewers on the planet"? If I read what they say and think they're full of crap, am I therefore lying because of your universal declaration to their credentials? To me, reviewers are just as human as anyone else is, and subjective evaluations are just that.

You speak to what you hear as if it represents universal truth, and like I said, unless you've heard every speaker, turntable, and CD player that's ever been built, then your opinion is nothing more than your opinion, and an incomplete one to boot. Trying to extend a subjective personal opinion to represent some version of universal truth is both arrogant and ignorant.

I've heard the Apogee Full Range and Duettas repeatedly, and to me, they weren't all that special. The Infinity IRS was an extraordinary speaker to my ears. Again, this is MY opinion, and I don't expect others to share that view, nor presume that what I hear is more factually correct than what someone else perceives.

If you don't think CD players have changed over the past 20 years, tell me, have you actually compared high end CD players from that era to more recent midmarket units? Better bring your ear plugs because most CD players from 1985 were not especially pleasant to listen to.

Florian
08-04-2005, 11:22 AM
Take a C.E.C driver or a old Krell Studio drive with a X64 dac and tell me that the new stuff is better? Ofcourse its all on personal basis but if you ask 100 reviewers they will definetly tell you that the Genesis 1.1 IRS V and Apogee FR and DIVA are among the very best speakers on the planet. Unless you ask Mr. AN of course.....

Question directly to you, do you think that the IRS-V, Fullrange, DIVA and Gen 1.1 are not amongst the very best in the world. I know some of you guys are generally against speakers you cant afford, but come on. Do you really believe they are not amongst the very best`?

-Flo

Woochifer
08-04-2005, 12:46 PM
Take a C.E.C driver or a old Krell Studio drive with a X64 dac and tell me that the new stuff is better? Ofcourse its all on personal basis but if you ask 100 reviewers they will definetly tell you that the Genesis 1.1 IRS V and Apogee FR and DIVA are among the very best speakers on the planet. Unless you ask Mr. AN of course.....

Unless you've actually polled 100 reviewers who've heard all of those speakers, you're only guessing which speakers THEY would put up there among the best, and letting your personal biases get out of hand in making presumptions about how others would view those speakers that represent YOUR personal best list. Who really cares what others think? I determine the speakers that I consider my personal best, and you determine which speakers you regard as the best. And these shots that you like taking at RGA are immature, especially considering you're a board moderator.


Question directly to you, do you think that the IRS-V, Fullrange, DIVA and Gen 1.1 are not amongst the very best in the world. I know some of you guys are generally against speakers you cant afford, but come on. Do you really believe they are not amongst the very best`?

I've heard the Apogee Full Range multiple times, and I would certainly not rank them among the world's best (not that I would ever be arrogant enough to come up with that kind of a list to begin with), since they're not among my personal favorites. I've heard other Genesis models before, but never put them up among my personal favorites either. The IRS, I would definitely rank among the best speakers that I've personally heard. Are there even better speakers out there? I'm sure there are, and I look forward to hearing some of them. Whether any of the speakers I've heard represent the best in the world, I'll leave that question to people who have actually heard every speaker ever built.

And I think you need to stop presuming that people are generally against speakers that they can't afford. (and even there, "afford" is a very loose term; a lot of people on this board have the money and the means to buy the most expensive speakers; in other words, they can afford to, but CHOOSE not to because they see better value elsewhere) Has it ever occurred to you that people don't like some of the ultra expensive speakers that they listen to simply because they don't like how they sound? I didn't care much for the Wilson Sophias, and would easily choose any number of far less expensive speakers -- even if price was NOT a consideration. Similarly, the Apogee Duettas and Full Ranges have never been among my favorite speakers, so why would I even care how much they cost? If I was in the market for a pair of ribbon speakers in that era, I would have opted for the Carver Amazings because IMO those speakers simply sounded better, not because they cost close to half of what the Duettas were selling for.

RGA
08-04-2005, 04:08 PM
Woochifer - yes AN uses no after the fact error correction in their DAC's - OverSampling is a form of error correction in certain respects and no noise shaping, re-clocking or jitter reduction and no digital filters.

Flo
I have heard the Apogee Duetta SIg-- Stereophile claims that this was the BEST sounding of all the Apogees ever made. If I liked it I would have it sitting in my room because at that time I had the amp to be able to run it.

There are many different roads to what the best is...UHF magazine prefers the notion that the best sound comes from a point source (small speaker generally of one or two way design). I'm not saying they;re right but there is a LARGE following to this idea of what the best sound would be and no panel would fall under this notion. Simply put electrostats and panels have strengths and weaknesses --if you buy into what they offer they will be great but the weaknesses over the years put me off.

There is more to a system than matching the SCALE of the event -- if one wants to do that one should be buying large horn speakers.

And as for reviews they are no better than anyone on this board except perhaps they have flare in their writing. You should not NEED other people telling you what to buy. I never said the AN Dac was the best I said you'd definitely notice the difference. To my ear that difference is a substantial improvement - whether other people agree I don't really care - many people do which is why they keep making them. And $50,000US for a DAC - it had better be damn good for that kind of coin.

Woochifer
08-04-2005, 05:39 PM
Woochifer - yes AN uses no after the fact error correction in their DAC's - OverSampling is a form of error correction in certain respects and no noise shaping, re-clocking or jitter reduction and no digital filters.

And that kind of approach has been used by other manufacturers. What you're describing is actually the same approach that Sony used in the original CDP-101, and the results in that case sounded horrendous. AN is obviously doing a lot more than just eliminating the oversampling and digital filtering (for $4,000, they'd better be). At one time, Yamaha sold a CD player with a switch that disabled the filtering altogether. Not sure how good it sounded, but they switched over to bitstream sampling not long after that.

CDs have to have error correction because the CD media itself has imperfections and missing data. Without the 8-bit error correcting CIRC code underlying the 16-bit audio data, read errors are inevitable, but with the CIRC code in place, it's actually possible to have a CD playback with no read errors because missing bits are seamlessly reinserted into the audio data. Only if the errors go beyond the CIRC code's correction capacity do portions of the audio data go missing. And here, the CD player can use interpolation to fill in the gaps, or just let the gaps go.

RGA
08-04-2005, 11:04 PM
Woochifer

You are quite correct that the AN DAC follows many elements of the original CD players - and Peter is quite good about noting his sources on most of his products -- and does so often on forums. There are quite a few differences obviously because you won't mistake the sound of the original Sony AT ALL for the AN players. http://audionotekits.espyderweb.net/agrovedac.html

Of course the trade off is the traditional measurements will show worse such as distortion among other things - but it's still a fraction of what even low distortion speakers offer up so to my way of thinking who cares unless one can hear it as distortion? Like I say I can't gaurantee one will like it but it will sound different. I know i'm considered a homer but I have never heard digital replay sound ENOUGH better to warrant a serious investment -- until I heard their cd playback. I understand others are copying it.