[Vintage-Audio] Audiophool Cables

Thu Mar 6 11:20:24 EST 2008

Depends upon the speller. If you are trying to make fun at 
these skilled folk then all kinds of spelling seems to 
appear. Like Awed-eye-oh-file. or Audeofylle. But I think 
the common spelling is Audiophile. I scoffed these folk for 
quite a while as I am a resistor/capacitor type engineer, 
but them folks can hear things that are not in any graphs or 
equations.

My problem is so what.

Just what are you trying to do with your music listening? I 
can think of several different things and I am sure there 
are nearly as many as there are listeners.

If you are trying to get a sound that sounds just like the 
musicians would sound like if they were in your house, good 
luck. Even this has a couple variations. what if the music 
was presented in a stadium with several thousand watts and 
several thousand people, or in a theater with all of those 
acoustics and noises, or in a tightly controlled studio with 
room and other stuff electronically added? I have a friend 
who wanted his music to sound like a rock concert. His audio 
system consisted of a reel-to-reel tape deck or three a 25 
watt amp and a 15 inch single channel Klipsch-horn speaker. 
He could (and did) break windows at 25 ft. in his apartment 
(yes, he lived in a second story apartment).

If one wants any fidelity from recorded media then you have 
to go a very long way. ALL RECORDINGS ARE COMPRESSED. Yes, 
all, even master tapes. You will not find any source for the 
dynamic range you can experience in a live exposure. There 
is a couple good and a couple bad reasons for this 
corruptions. In the vinyl world, the music had to be limited 
to prevent the grooves from either being too deep or two 
wide (stereo) and to reduce excursions and allow 
tonearm/needles to stay in the grooves. When it became 
popular to play recorded material in a car with all of its 
background noises, they found that half of the music 
couldn't be heard over the ambient noise, so instead of 
putting compressors in the car equipment, they simply raised 
the average sound level on the recording, keeping the peaks 
the same (this is called compression). The radio stations 
loved it as now they could keep their loudness up, a thing 
tat seems to attract listeners. Radio stations add another 
10 or more dB compression to the recorded material anyway.

Who does this crime to the music? The mixer does most of it 
as he is operating under some proven guidelines that sell 
music. The engineer does some as he must keep the recorded 
material within the limits of the recording equipment, but a 
good tape deck has 60-80 dB dynamic range and a DAT has over 
120dB so that doesn't explain the 15-20 dB resulting dynamic 
range of rock CDs (It only gets up to 30-40 dB for good 
classical CDs). As Duane can hear a flea fart (let's say 
this is around the limit of audibility of 0 dBSPL) and a 
full orchestra blast of say 105 dBSPL and throw in a few 
more for real life and you would like to get around 120 dB 
of dynamic range out of the recording if you are trying to 
make the orchestra appear in your front room.

Another issue is that the CD is set up so the loudest part 
is mashed down so the average is about 10 dB below the max. 
This is not necessary anymore as the CD recording and 
playback hardware can now use the full dynamic range of the 
CD (in the beginning the artifacts and crap in the lower 
bits could be heard so they simply moved the music up some 
20 or more dB, mashing the top end, and it is still there 
today although the artifacts and noises in the lower bits 
are gone).

An interesting hunk of lore and illustrative of the power of 
the mixer in recordings is in the making of the recording of 
the theme song from the movie Shaft. The movie is fine, but 
the CD sound was mixed before the movie was released and the 
sound is quite different. The cymbal crashes at the lead-in 
and throughout the recording define the music rhythm and are 
the key to the entire piece. Distinctive and very 
rememberable, but as lore has it was a mistake. The mixer 
twisted his knobs until the sound was right to his ears, and 
he has great ears, but the tweeters were burned out in his 
studio monitors resulting in some 20 dB more highs than he 
heard. Great story, but not too probable...yet...

WBob, WB6JPI

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Duane Fischer, W8DBF" <dfischer at usol.com>
To: <w9ran at oneradio.net>; "Vintage home and professional 
audio equipment from 1975 back" 
<vintage-audio at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Wednesday, March 05, 2008 5:44 PM
Subject: Re: [Vintage-Audio] Audiophool Cables

> Question: How is the much malined term for a serious audio 
> devotee known as an "Audiophyle" actually spelled?
>
>
> Duane Fischer, W8DBF/WPE8CXO
> dfischer at usol.com
> HHI: Halligan's Hallicrafters International
> http://www.w9wze.net
> HHRP: Historic Halligan Radio Project
> hhrp.w9wze.net
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Robert Nickels" <w9ran at oneradio.net>
> To: "Vintage home and professional audio equipment from 
> 1975 back" <vintage-audio at mailman.qth.net>
> Sent: Wednesday, March 05, 2008 11:02 AM
> Subject: [Vintage-Audio] Audiophool Cables
>
>
>> You've seen the fancy expensive cables and other crap the 
>> audiophooles claim makes all the difference in the world. 
>> Of course we know this is silly, but try to convince THEM 
>> of that!   This guy ( Dr. Bob Dean) who has a pretty 
>> serious home theater and a brother who is an audio guru 
>> decided to do just that.  Results are as expected.
>>
>> 73,  Bob W9RAN
>>
>> I'm so sorry, but I do not buy into 90% of the hype 
>> brought to us audiophiles by the commercial sector of our 
>> hobby and the home entertainment industry at large. My 
>> brother, an audio engineering whiz kid has proven to me 
>> what is real and what is not. Let me rehearse with you an 
>> example of how he does this.
>>
>> We gathered up a 5 of our audio buddies. We took my "old" 
>> Martin Logan SL-3 (not a bad speaker for accurate noise 
>> making) and hooked them up with Monster 1000 speaker 
>> cables (decent cables according to the audio press). We 
>> also rigged up 14 gauge, oxygen free Belden stranded 
>> copper wire with a simple PVC jacket. Both were 2 meters 
>> long. They were connected to an ABX switch box allowing 
>> blind fold testing. Volume levels were set at 75 Db at 
>> 1000K Hz. A high quality recording of smooth, trio, easy 
>> listening jazz was played (Piano, drums, bass). None of 
>> us had heard this group or CD before, therefore 
>> eliminating biases. The music was played. Of the 5 blind 
>> folded, only 2 guessed correctly which was the monster 
>> cable. (I was not one of them). This was done 7 times in 
>> a row! Keeping us blind folded, my brother switched out 
>> the Belden wire (are you ready for this) with simple coat 
>> hanger wire! Unknown to me and our 12 audiophile buddies, 
>> prior to the ABX blind test, he took apart four coat 
>> hangers, reconnected them and twisted them into a pair of 
>> speaker cables. Connections were soldered. He stashed 
>> them in a closet within the testing room so we were not 
>> privy to what he was up to. This made for a pair of 2 
>> meter cables, the exact length of the other wires. The 
>> test was conducted. After 5 tests, none could determine 
>> which was the Monster 1000 cable or the coat hanger wire. 
>> Further, when music was played through the coat hanger 
>> wire, we were asked if what we heard sounded good to us. 
>> All agreed that what was heard sounded excellent, 
>> however, when A-B tests occurred, it was impossible to 
>> determine which sounded best the majority of the time and 
>> which wire was in use. Needless to say, after the blind 
>> folds came off and we saw what my brother did, we learned 
>> he was right...most of what manufactures have to say 
>> about their products is pure hype. It seems the more they 
>> charge, the more hyped it is.
>>
>> So you see, my friend, that is why I have joined up with 
>> this site (audioholics) because their approach to good 
>> sound and education to acquire good sound and video is 
>> based on science, not hype, hypnotics, placebo effects or 
>> wishful thinking.
>>
>> Excerpted from: 
>> http://forums.audioholics.com/forums/showpost.php?s=97d4a3c39d247bf955a57b3953326a34&p=15412&postcount=28
>> _______________________________________________
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>> ** For Assistance: dfischer at usol.com **
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>>
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>
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