Good sound
What is good sound ? Even a simple question like this will elicit no real answer. Good sound to different audiophiles means many different things. Some feel that the emotional response to a sonic performance is the be all and end all of quality. This does have some merit. Hifi is not about macho amps, inflated egos and outdoing your neighbour antics. It is about music and if the music gives you a high, it must be good. Another camp feels that accuracy is the hallmark of quality. The program must be faithfully performed. The sound should be reproduced as close as possible to the way it was recorded. Note that what is accurate need not be pleasing (the truth hurts sometimes). There are many divisions in between these two extremes.
Hifi jargon
Like any other hobby, jargon flies hard and fast in the hifi community. Here is a humorous fictitious story. A man joins in a conversation between two newbies. They are discussing speaker X. He tells them, "Speaker X has a less than satisfactory on axis response you know. Its transient's are slow due to improper crossover design. The soundstage is also squashed due to its poor dispersion pattern.". Absolutely baffled, the newbies nod in agreement. The man smiles, he doesn't have a clue what he is talking about. Read the bluffer's guide to hifi and you can silence most less than knowledgeable audiophiles. Grasping jargon is useful because it allows you to understand other audiophiles and hifi articles. Jargon conveys ideas more effectively and effeciently. Read a hifi magazine to learn about jargon. Choose a simpler magazine like What Hifi. Magazines like Hifi News and Record Review and Stereophile tax your brain to the max when it comes to jargon. Just for you, I'll take a stab at trying to explain some more important jargon. Transparency is the ability to peer into the recording. A transparent system allows you to hear small minute details of the performace. Think of hifi as a window. A transparent hifi has the window open letting you see everything outside clearly. A not so transparent sytem may have a closed dirty glass window. The pits would be one of those translucent windows. Imaging is the placement of the performers and instruments on the stage. A system with good imaging can have the female singer distinctly in the centre of the stage with the brass player on the right and the drummer on the left (assuming that was how they were placed). Really good systems can present a whole orchestra with great accuracy allowing you to guess how the different sections were placed. Related to imaging is the concept of soundstage. A performace in a 100 foot wide stage with a high ceiling should sound like that, not a small soundproof recording studio. Soundstage width is quite easy to recreate, soundstage height and depth tend to more complex. Pace is the speed and rhythm of the system. A system may sound slow and stodgy, unable to keep up with a fast bass line. Another system may be so lightning fast that transients begin and stop with atomic clock accuracy. A system with good pace accurately keeps up with the music's tempo.
A balanced set up
Like all things in life, your hifi should be balanced. No, I'm not talking about balanced topology but a balanced presentation. Overdoing anything should be avoided if possible. Your set up should reproduce the whole frequency spectrum without too much annoying anomalies. Remember your neighbour's system that had the really boomy bass ? You get the idea. This is usually where the beginner will trip up. Virtually everyone I know goes through a stage. I went through a few stages, maybe even more are to come. Eddie may have started out an imaging man, everything had to be pin sharp to get him his hifi fix. Then Eddie goes through a bass stage, extension down to 25 Hz made him a happy man ... so on and so forth. Most beginners I know start out on the detail and impact stage. Only problem is that it is quite easy to fool untrained ears. Boomy bass sounds like impact and bright treble sounds like detail. 4 months later, our hypothetical beginner sells his hifi to the preowned shop and purchases something less aggressive. Many manufacturers I know try and trip up your A/B selection. Components can have a rising treble to simulate detail. A big hump near the 100-250 Hz range sounds like deep bass. CD players cheat by putting out more voltage than normal to sound louder and more impressive. I try and keep things in perspective by comparing all systems to a reference. My reference is the concert hall. True that it is unscientific since the recording wasn't made in MY concert hall. But it's better than nothing. Strange thing is that I feel that many hifi systems sound larger than life, more exciting than the actual performance. Hence, the need for a balanced set up. A tight bass is more important than more ill defined bass. Treble should be informative but should not spotlight every darn instrument. Vocals should blend in and not to stick out like a sore thumb, sounding shouty and overpowering. Make sure that your system reproduces the soundstage in a natural and informative way. Some systems I know sound unbelievable big. Huge orchestra, huge vocalist, huge string quartet ... Wait a minute, that's not right is it ? A well balanced system sounds big when the recording is big. A large well spaced orchestra should sound wide (if it was recorded properly in the first place) and a small string quartet should sound intimate. Some recordings help by providing your with a diagram of the recording venue and the microphone positioning. A test disc with a walkaround should help you determine how good your system can reproduce space. I like the track on the XLO Test and burn in disc. The Chesky one is good too.
Is accuracy of reproduction always good ?
Somedays I wonder whether transparency is always good. A system that is so accurate that every single nuance is faithfully reproduced should be satisfying shouldn't it ? Many recordings are substandard. I don't really blame recording companies. Many sound engineers try and mix the sound to make it appealing on the majority of sound systems. Unfortunately that means all those cheap boomboxes, car stereos, and mini systems. Some recordings are so bad as to be absolutely unlistenable on my system. When that happens, the experience is so depressing that I don't enjoy the music. It's a pity when you like the music very much. I walk across my living room and play it on a lesser more forgiving system and everything is allright again. I'm not advocating systems that are so flawed that inferior recordings cannot be distinguished from top notch ones. What I am suggesting is looking for systems that have good damage control. One that sounds good with not so good recordings and excel with good recordings. If you know of such a system, do drop me a line. Does that mean that the high end audiophile should only buy first rate recordings ? A few years ago, I had an enlightening experience at a hifi shop. I was auditioning a system with a variety of discs, two classical and a pop disc. Another customer saw my discs which was from some mainstream label and DG and arrogantly told me how he only bought CDs with good recordings. He prided hinself on the fact that he only bought Telarc discs etc. He said that's the only way to enjoy hifi. I think he should get a life. Hifi is about music. No point being like some people I know. They buy top flight systems to stay at home with a handful of audiophile recordings of music they don't even like. By all means buy discs with superior recordings, I just think musical content is always the prime consideration.
Whoa ! Snake oil alert
It is not without reason that audiophiles are one of the most ridiculed groups of people on the planet earth. Obsession with equipment and blind faith in advertising literature result in less than rational behaviour. Advertising fluff in hifi seems to be worse than in almost anything I've ever seen except maybe for washing detergent ads. The power of the mind is extremely strong and if you want to hear an improvement, you will. Some golden ears claim that they can detect the differences between different components and cables without any difficulty. Some will tell you that playing with cheap cables, e.g. below $300, you are simply wasting your time. I admit that in a level matched blind test, I often have great difficulty telling apart some cables and components. The wisdom in splurging lots of money on stuff that claims to improve your hifi can sometimes be very flawed. Technically some of the claims by manufacturers are doubtful. Unfortunately, I am not an EE so I use my ears. Even then, the sad state of hifi affairs is that there is virtually no direct correlation between price and performance. So caveat emptor friends.
Room acoustics is probably one of the most negelcted areas in the enthusiasts setup. Maybe in the rush to purchase a really cool system, people forget about the room where the hifi is going to be placed. It's a pity. I have seen really good systems reduced to sonic spaghetti because of poor acoustics. That's why in hifi shows in cramped hotel rooms, some small speaker setups can trounce the Wilson WATT, Thiel CS 5i etc in terms of imaging, soundstaging and all round coherency.
The room of course has a dramatic effect on your music. Stand in your bathroom and clap your hands. The likelihood is that you will hear a terrible echo. Now try that in your lounge and then go out into the open and try it again. I suppose you get the point. The room walls, the ceiling and the floor all reflect the sound radiated by your speaker. By either increasing or decreasing the amount of reflections you can tailor the sound to suit you. Lets talk about room factors that affect acoustics.
1. Damping. If you can start with an empty room. You quickly realise that the system is bright, has lots of air and has a rather boomy sound. Throw in a sofa set and things start to change. Throw in rugs, curtains, cupboards etc. If you throw too many things in a room, the room will sound 'dead'. The music appears to have little air and instruments do not appear to have natural decay. Try to strike a balance.
2. Reflections. If you are forced to put your speakers closer to the rear wall than necessary, you may want to consider reducing the relfections by padding the wall directly behind the speaker. Or you can try some of the commercial solutions like Sonex, Room Tunes etc but I find them really expensive. If the wall behind your speaker are glass windows or French windows, you may want to invest in heavy drapes. This has a got an added benefit for home theater fans since it keeps the room nice and dark. Control side wall reflection also by putting a bit of furniture etc.
3. Shape. If you have a perfectly square room, you are really going to suffer. Circular rooms are also weird. I can't count for nuts, so try the computer program "Listening room" to figure all your room resonances. If you are having a serious bass boom, try throwing a carpet in between the speakers and your listening position. This can work wonders if you have a concrete floor.
Comments ? Mail me at ericshifihaven@hotmail.com