The long and winding road

There are stereo system salespersons with “flawed hearing” who pass themselves off as audio experts. Most of them would like you to believe that the more expensive the system, the better it is. 

In our last column, we discussed how a good sound system must have the capability to produce “low-level musical information.” This means that the listener must be able to hear from it all available reproduced frequencies even at the softest volume. Likewise, a good system must have “immediacy;” it must be able to recreate live performances inside a music room.

“Low-level musical information” and “immediacy” are two basic sonic priorities an audiophile usually seeks. Because some dealers are so focused on branded electronics, it becomes harder for them to distinguish good music from bad.

The evolution of an Audiophile

Many sound enthusiasts take a long and winding, yet interesting and irreversible road to find out what they want in music. The first step is their craving for more bass. Next is developing a taste for finer mid-range and high frequencies, with enough “bass and power.”  This is where sound enthusiasts reach a crossroad. While most of them move on to the next stage, having honed “educated ears,” others stop developing, unwilling to shed off their main focus from “bass and power.”

At this stage, however, the essentials of music reproduction should have also been met, with the sound system already capable of reproducing music faithful to how it was recorded. Thereafter, focus on “bass and power” will be supplanted by the desire for mid-range spontaneity and low-level musical information. The mid-range is undoubtedly where the preponderance of musical information thrives, and where analog software and vacuum tube electronics excel. This is also the stage where some music lovers finally give up on digital in favor of an analog system.

What happens to sound enthusiasts who have become reliant on misguided dealers? They are naturally forced to make radical and extreme moves to change their sound equipment, to the point of squeezing the most out of their hard-earned savings.

The noise-floor

Here are some useful guiding posts on shortening your journey to audio nirvana:

All active electronic components of a sound system emit “traditional noise.” These are quantifiable noises (hum, thermal hiss, buzzes, etc.) that come out of electronic equipment such as amps, pre-amps, cooling fans and the like. Passive components such as loudspeakers do not have traditional noise. But whether passive or active, all audio components — including tapes, vinyl and CDs — have a “noise-floor.”

“Noise-floor” is actually the audio equipment’s “lowest limit” in reproducing softer sound. Thus, any sound that is lower or softer than the “noise-floor” is inaudible. Sound systems having an elevated “noise-floor” will naturally hinder or mask large chunk of audible sounds (music), while those with a lower “noise-floor” will reveal almost all that is musical.  It is not surprising therefore that some dealers advise their clients to play their system at elevated sound levels. Doing so would enable these clients’ brains to subconsciously figure out the frequencies that their systems failed to reproduce.

Digital recordings and sources are believed to be higher in “noise-floor” than a well-thought-out analog system. This is why audiophiles who are used to hearing ‘analog sound’ could suffer listening fatigue when they listen to music from digital sources, even if the latter offers cool and modern sonic advantages.

Vacuum tube systems have a lower “noise-floor” than solid states even if tubes’ “traditional noise” (humming and hissing) measures higher than their transistor equivalent. The simplicity of most tube circuits (especially single-ended-triode designs) has a lot to do with it. Experts believe that actual amplifications happen in a vacuum. This is not the case with silicon, which is the raw material of transistors. And that is the long and the short of it.

* * *

For comments or questions, please e-mail me at audioglow@yahoo.com. You can also visit www.wiredstate.com for quick answers to your audio concerns.