My T+A M40-HV’s have 6SN7 tubes on the input side. The amps sound great.
Galen
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Seems to be an intelligent choice.
Better than no marketing as a marketing scheme.
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Marketing studies us all. ICONOCLAST studies the given market that may be untapped for a 100% to the actual science design cable as can possibly be made within a given price bracket. That’s not everyone…and if you buy it, it isn’t a scheme. It is just the intended market and it is designed to be the best starting point for that sector of the market.
All products have to be made to a consistent bill of material, product structure and process master. Ideally made or to a house sound or anywhere in between, everyone who buys a product expects the same starting point for a specific product.
Best,
Galen
Yes and no for the prevalent exercise entirely. Some product are way worse than others (perfume!) since they as much have a fuzzy basis (smell like a flower or a citrus fruit?) and we can’t categorize or search for the minutia we enjoy as much. What if all cars were sold with just mystical properties and you wanted a sport, luxury, or work related vehicle? Where are the specifications? Where would you start? Drive them all? Test them all for speed, quietness or load capacity? You’d never get the job done. Specifications are important as it narrows the choices to a given sector you’re buying within and the details within that sector is your optimized preference.
Of course marketing will make their choice of vehicle look like it will make you faster, more comfortable or able to do more work than any other choice in that sector…but seldom will marketing waste their time trying to enter all three sectors at once. And yes, they will use flowery adjectives to do it. How the car or truck works when you drive it is also marketing. Marketing pulls you in then sales adds the value to the decision. Liking it still doesn’t mean we will buy it.
Someone said there are no bad products, only bad prices!
Best,
Galen
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So in summary, if I am not Galen, I can’t know.
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Not at all.
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But but but!
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aangen,
Just the opposite, only you can know. It matters not one IOTA to anyone else. No other person can even hear the way your ears do, so trying to “prove” your choice isn’t even possible. Audio is the most personal hobby that exists for that reason. I think it is great no one can judge me as no one can hear like me, or others like you.
It is important to have unbiased and consistent initial product’s measured, yes measured starting point. Measurement needs a metal heart. After that everyone gets to work from there. If a comment to a measurement was an arrow with a poison tip, it will hit a heart made of a metal plate and bounced off. We need unflinching accuracy as a standard.
It doesn’t matter to me, nor should it matter to you, what is enjoyable or how we got there. And yes, no one but you can be in that club. In this hobby, everyone gets to be right. Nobody can hear like you and two people listening to the same system hear it two different ways. How we can interpret what others hear is just a really rough starting point. It is in no way “me” or “you”. But true with regards to what I hear, you’d have to be me to know me and you can’t do that. Summary - you don’t have to know me to know you.
Best,
Galen
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Well stated.
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Okay, I’ll bite. Just who would that be?
What i’m getting from all this is a lot of pontification, and odd parallels implying what others may do, or are perceived to be doing. On the suppliers side and the consumer side.
I am the first to admit I don’t know what I don’t know. Certainly no specialist in cable and wire manufacture.
My ears can readily inform me as to what is linear sounding, and how a lower noise floor can allow me to hear into the music.
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Most of my local audiophile friends are measurementalists, “meter readers” to quote Robert Harley. Ask them how they like their gizmo and they’ll tell you how it measures, how it did in Atkinson’s tests, etc. It takes work to get a right brain answer out of them.
Years on, I can say with certainty that this left brain group are much less settled, at peace with their systems. If someone came into the room with a calibrated mic and a meter that showed a dip or a peak, they’d be miserable.
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Calculations have their place as do measurements, but they are at best a design tool, and starting point for evaluating components. Calcs give the designer a target. For the designer measurements determine how close the product came to their design goals.
Measurements can assist the informed audiophile as to how robust a particular design is, identify any shortcomings, and possibly assist in matching accompanying components.
The limitations of calculations and measurements are they represent what we understand regarding the design and implementation stage. They fall short in regards to what and how we hear and react to the presented music.
To my mind the art of audio gear design as well the ability to assemble a musical listening system relies on elements well beyond measurements. Calculation bsed design criteria truly provides for a soid foundation, but knowing more could be had and not pursuing is a missed opportunity. The art of tweaking or wringing out the last iota of what may be gleaned from a recording. Aspects that are beyond the textbook. One basic example would be tuning with various capacitor types, or resistors for that matter. I tip my hat to those who choose to delve into the deep waters and explore beyond what a textbook or measurement driven review may provide.
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Dr. Ian Cutress of Anand tech said it decades ago with regards to PC parts. No bad stuff, just the price.
On challenging your ability toi pick stuff you enjoy, how could I? You won that argument before it was even presented. Only you know you. What I am challenging is how much of a test instrument any of us are. Designers can’t make things on pure auditory authority of their ears.
Below needs POPCORN! Get some or skip it.
Your, or my, ears do not inform us of linear sound. Test after test after test confirms this. We can play multiple test tone at various frequencies at specific dB values and have the listener suggest if they are the same dB SPL. Yes, and I personally got it wrong EVERY time until the differences are more than over 3 dB on average on my left ear and 5 dB on the right ear at their BEST response range. That was like thirty years ago (better ears then). No one else did much better. This is because of the Fletcher-Munson curve and ears are not exactly the same between them. Turning your head changes it. Look what it takes for human to perceive the same linearity! We suck. Sure, we form a reference to sounds we hear all the time, but not the “accuracy”. We curve fit to our ears issues.
Our ears are not linear. They are a completely bi-functional uncalibrated instrument. What ears are good at is finding our enjoyment of sound, not the same as linear. I’ve already mentioned how we are almost universally tilting the bass a LOT in order to enjoy it. For equal loudness perceived by the “typical” person we need to boost the bass a bunch and cut the treble (see curves).
Our ability to pick and choose enjoyment is uncontested, yes. But let’s be certain what’s really happening. We are picking to taste not accuracy. We can’t. Our ears just aren’t good enough to do accuracy and actually change a lot over the day, even. Some people are pretty good to the overall population but none can contest an instrument over frequency.
A speaker or amplifier is linear across a wide SPL range. Per the curves, we can see our ears are not even close to the same instrument as SPL changes…how on earth can we be accurate? We can’t. Listen at 80 dB SPL or there abouts helps, as we do best in that range.
As far as noise floor goes. Sit in an anechoic chamber. I have, it is fun but kind of scary at the same time. We make so much internal noise that it masks stuff anywhere close to -60dB or more. I’d even argue that’s debatable to perceive. Some do a little better but nothing like -80dB or more. Attributes that lead to lower TESTED noise floor can be fundamentally good for a circuits transient response and slew rates that are “quick” and give the perception of air and hearing into the music. This is good stuff, but it isn’t directly the noise floor. Again the human ear can’t hear “nothing” very well, we make too much racket internally. As far as instrument go, there is a lower noise floor limit based on temperature and atomic atom vibration. Material stuff can’t be stopped and makes noise. Even test equipment is limited.
Here is an example that shows you are right, that we can indeed hear into the music better, but with FASTER slew rates (amplifiers) or quicker speakers (transient responses). My Martin Logan CLX, full range electrostatics) have an openess from being open baffel and FAST compared to my T+A CWT 1000-40 hybrid electrostatic speakers. The noise floor from my equipment is the exact same. It is the speaker’s ability to track to voltage waveform into SPL that we hear and sense as air, or the width, height and depth of the sound stage (some call that hearing into the music). It has little to do with the noise floor, though. No one will miss the audible differences between the speakes ability to hear into the music. I know you won’t as that is important to you.
This is all fun stuff, but 35 years of test and measurements can’t be ignored on my side. We know really well what we can and can’t hear that are repeatable knowns. This isn’t anything new. There are valid arguments for mechanisms that are most responsible for what we hear as differences, though. Most stuff is a superposition of attributes that color sound. It is hard to say it is “this” when all of “that” is also in play.
There are tests called DOE, design of experiments, that take all the attributes you think might be influencing an event, and determine which ones are most responsible, but nothing is entirely responsible, for an influence under test. And, we may miss one attribute in the matrix of items that is more influential and is overlooked. It happens!
That isn’t to say all the lesser items are unimportant, just less an overall influence. We as Audiophiles are interested in controlling the lesser items that help make music enjoyable. We dig deeper into the attrubute list and figure out how to manage the impacts to make stuff nicer for a select group that want that referenced sound coloration. Not all equipment is designed to sound the same.
Why deemphasize the knowns? If an unkown is all of a sudden fully explained is it’s influences all of a sudden unimportant or less effective over the rest of the unknowns? Audiophiles tend to chase and give undue credit to unknowns without the knowledge if they are even the DOE’s most critical attribute. They could be, but managing the knowns is something we can do.
Best,
Galen
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Worth keeping in mind/fundamental observation, to be sure…but we must also resist the urge to belittle the unknowns (e.g., that which cannot yet be measured). (Not apropos to this discussion or your technical approach, but THEY Know who they are. 
)
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My enjoyment of music in the past has always involved the quality and shameful amount (when the SQ really sucked for no apparent reason) of whiskey consumption.
After FR30 arrived, I only drank a couple shots of good whiskey in a week (still needed occasionally), and after Grimm arrived, I do not remember when I touched my whiskey collection.
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Hmmm. Can’t say that my whiskey consumption has lessened after getting the FR 30’s and the Grimm MU2. I think they are best enjoyed in equal measure.
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Here is the real reason I don’t drink as much; I cannot afford to drink too much and everything else tasted lousy at the same time:
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The unkown’s will be most capable and perform the best on a firm and proper foundation of the knowns. Everything must be respected if advances are to be made. Oars in the water on both sides of the boat.
Best,
Galen
I guess I can look at John Atkinsons measurements for my Gryphon gear. He has tested the Commander, Apex, and Ethos. He also tested the Grimm MU1 and MU2.
If I had to guess I would guess they test well.
My BACCH Optimal Room Correction software tests extensively. Detailed before and after graphical results are shown. Taken from microphones that are in my ear. This allows my particular ears to be adjusted for. At least the external parts. If you want to sit in my chair the option of running corrections for your ears is possible.
So, yeah, I get it.
It would be a lot of fun to demonstrate this to Galen in his home, on his system, to see what he thinks. Edgar is, at the very least, his scientific equal.
(Edgar designs the Bacch gear)
I know many audio geniuses personally. Its part of the hobby for me. It’s not the most fun part. That is handled by the gear they design.
Case in point, I read the white paper Eelco Grimm wrote describing the process of designing the DAC in his Grimm MU2. I was very excited to hear that DAC. And now that I have one listening to it is way more enjoyable than reading the white paper.
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