Point to expensive hifi?

[Woochifer]

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 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.

[Florian]

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]

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.

Home Entertainment 2005 show report; part 2

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]

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

[Woochifer]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.