What annoys me today in marketing and media that too often today then talking on hi-fi, science is replaced by bizarre belief structures and marketing fluff, leading to a decades-long stagnation of the audiophile domain. Science makes progress, pseudo-science doesn’t. Hi-fi world is filled by pseudoscience, dogma and fruitloopery to the extent that it resembles a fundamentalist religion. Loudspeaker performance hasn’t tangibly improved in forty years and vast sums are spent addressing the wrong problems.
Business for Engineers: Marketers Lie article points tout that marketing tells lies — falsehoods — things that serve to convey a false impression. Marketing’s purpose is to determining how the product will be branded, positioned, and sold. It seems that there too many snake oil rubbish products marketed in the name of hifi. It is irritating to watch the stupid people in the world be fooled.
In EEVblog #29 – Audiophile Audiophoolery video David L. Jones (from EEVBlog) cuts loose on the Golden Ear Audiophiles and all their Audiophoolery snake oil rubbish. The information presented in Dave’s unique non-scripted overly enthusiastic style! He’s an enthusiastic chap, but couldn’t agree more with many of the opinions he expressed: Directional cables, thousand dollar IEC power cables, and all that rubbish. Monster Cable gets mostered. Note what he says right at the end: “If you pay ridiculous money for these cable you will hear a difference, but don’t expect your friends to”. If you want to believe, you will.
My points on hifi-nonsense:
One of the tenets of audiophile systems is that they are assembled from components, allegedly so that the user can “choose” the best combination. This is pretty largely a myth. The main advantage of component systems is that the dealer can sell ridiculously expensive cables, hand-knitted by Peruvian virgins and soaked in snake oil, to connect it all up. Say goodbye to the noughties: Yesterday’s hi-fi biz is BUSTED, bro article asks are the days of floorstanders and separates numbered? If traditional two-channel audio does have a future, then it could be as the preserve of high resolution audio. Sony has taken the industry lead in High-Res Audio.
HIFI Cable Humbug and Snake oil etc. blog posting rightly points out that there is too much emphasis placed on spending huge sums of money on HIFI cables. Most of what is written about this subject is complete tripe. HIFI magazines promote myths about the benefits of all sorts of equipment. I am as amazed as the writer that that so called audiophiles and HIFI journalists can be fooled into thinking that very expensive speaker cables etc. improve performance. I generally agree – most of this expensive interconnect cable stuff is just plain overpriced.
I can agree that in analogue interconnect cables there are few cases where better cables can really result in cleaner sound, but usually getting any noticeable difference needs that the one you compare with was very bad yo start with (clearly too thin speaker wires with resistance, interconnect that picks interference etc..) or the equipment in the systems are so that they are overly-sensitive to cable characteristics (generally bad equipment designs can make for example cable capacitance affect 100 times or more than it should). Definitely too much snake oil. Good solid engineering is all that is required (like keep LCR low, Teflon or other good insulation, shielding if required, proper gauge for application and the distance traveled). Geometry is a factor but not in the same sense these yahoos preach and deceive.
In digital interconnect cables story is different than on those analogue interconnect cables. Generally in digital interconnect cables the communication either works, does not work or sometimes work unreliably. The digital cable either gets the bits to the other end or not, it does not magically alter the sound that goes through the cable. You need to have active electronics like digital signal processor to change the tone of the audio signal traveling on the digital cable, cable will just not do that.
But this digital interconnect cables characteristics has not stopped hifi marketers to make very expensive cable products that are marketed with unbelievable claims. Ethernet has come to audio world, so there are hifi Ethernet cables. How about 500 dollar Ethernet cable? That’s ridiculous. And it’s only 1.5 meters. Then how about $10,000 audiophile ethernet cable? Bias your dielectrics with the Dielectric-Bias ethernet cable from AudioQuest: “When insulation is unbiased, it slows down parts of the signal differently, a big problem for very time-sensitive multi-octave audio.” I see this as complete marketing crap speak. It seems that they’re made for gullible idiots. No professional would EVER waste money on those cables. Audioquest even produces iPhone sync cables in similar price ranges.
HIFI Cable insulators/supports (expensive blocks that keep cables few centimeters off the floor) are a product category I don’t get. They typically claim to offer incredible performance as well as appealing appearance. Conventional cable isolation theory holds that optimal cable performance can be achieved by elevating cables from the floor in an attempt to control vibrations and manage static fields. Typical cable elevators are made from electrically insulating materials such as wood, glass, plastic or ceramics. Most of these products claim superior performance based upon the materials or methods of elevation. I don’t get those claims.
Along with green magic markers on CDs and audio bricks is another item called the wire conditioner. The claim is that unused wires do not sound the same as wires that have been used for a period of time. I don’t get this product category. And I don’t believe claims in the line like “Natural Quartz crystals along with proprietary materials cause a molecular restructuring of the media, which reduces stress, and significantly improves its mechanical, acoustic, electric, and optical characteristics.” All sounds like just pure marketing with no real benefits.
CD no evil, hear no evil. But the key thing about the CD was that it represented an obvious leap from earlier recording media that simply weren’t good enough for delivery of post-produced material to the consumer to one that was. Once you have made that leap, there is no requirement to go further. The 16 bits of CD were effectively extended to 18 bits by the development of noise shaping, which allows over 100dB signal to noise ratio. That falls a bit short of the 140dB maximum range of human hearing, but that has never been a real goal. If you improve the digital media, the sound quality limiting problem became the transducers; the headphones and the speakers.
We need to talk about SPEAKERS: Soz, ‘audiophiles’, only IT will break the sound barrier article says that today’s loudspeakers are nowhere near as good as they could be, due in no small measure to the presence of “traditional” audiophile products. that today’s loudspeakers are nowhere near as good as they could be, due in no small measure to the presence of “traditional” audiophile products. I can agree with this. Loudspeaker performance hasn’t tangibly improved in forty years and vast sums are spent addressing the wrong problems.
We need to talk about SPEAKERS: Soz, ‘audiophiles’, only IT will break the sound barrier article makes good points on design, DSPs and the debunking of traditional hi-fi. Science makes progress, pseudo-science doesn’t. Legacy loudspeakers are omni-directional at low frequencies, but as frequency rises, the radiation becomes more directional until at the highest frequencies the sound only emerges directly forwards. Thus to enjoy the full frequency range, the listener has to sit in the so-called sweet spot. As a result legacy loudspeakers with sweet spots need extensive room treatment to soak up the deficient off-axis sound. New tools that can change speaker system designs in the future are omni-directional speakers and DSP-based room correction. It’s a scenario ripe for “disruption”.
Computers have become an integrated part of many audio setups. Back in the day integrated audio solutions in PCs had trouble earning respect. Ode To Sound Blaster: Are Discrete Audio Cards Still Worth the Investment? posting tells that it’s been 25 years since the first Sound Blaster card was introduced (a pretty remarkable feat considering the diminished reliance on discrete audio in PCs) and many enthusiasts still consider a sound card an essential piece to the PC building puzzle. It seems that in general onboard sound is finally “Good Enough”, and has been “Good Enough” for a long time now. For most users it is hard to justify the high price of special sound card on PC anymore. There are still some PCs with bad sound hardware on motherboard and buttload of cheap USB adapters with very poor performance. However, what if you want the best sound possible, the lowest noise possible, and don’t really game or use the various audio enhancements? You just want a plain-vanilla sound card, but with the highest quality audio (products typically made for music makers). You can find some really good USB solutions that will blow on-board audio out of the water for about $100 or so.
Although solid-state technology overwhelmingly dominates today’s world of electronics, vacuum tubes are holding out in two small but vibrant areas. Some people like the sound of tubes. The Cool Sound of Tubes article says that a commercially viable number of people find that they prefer the sound produced by tubed equipment in three areas: musical-instrument (MI) amplifiers (mainly guitar amps), some processing devices used in recording studios, and a small but growing percentage of high-fidelity equipment at the high end of the audiophile market. Keep those filaments lit, Design your own Vacuum Tube Audio Equipment article claims that vacuum tubes do sound better than transistors (before you hate in the comments check out this scholarly article on the topic). The difficulty is cost; tube gear is very expensive because it uses lots of copper, iron, often point-to-point wired by hand, and requires a heavy metal chassis to support all of these parts. With this high cost and relative simplicity of circuitry (compared to modern electronics) comes good justification for building your own gear. Maybe this is one of the last frontiers of do-it-yourself that is actually worth doing.
1,267 Comments
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.lessloss.com/cmarc-rca-interconnect-cable-p-221.html?fbclid=IwAR2C9vrV6yCVDlk-KueSv-jr_tJFFFx70BywmLkF0TN2kMIjVEa-VHfvQ9k
Tomi Engdahl says:
Many of the big and boutique hi-fi cable manufacturers (e.g. QED, Van den Hul) shield their cables at one end only, and some (like Kimber) have no shield at all. This article looks at shielding at both ends and one end and concludes that it isn’t always better to connect at both ends.
I’m posting this as I have seen many I insisting that the shields have to be connected at both ends, (or it creates an antennae) but in my experience I have found that this semi balanced construction works better with audio equipment with RCAs. (Not XLRs though).
https://incompliancemag.com/article/things-you-may-not-have-heard-about-shielding/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.musicapristina.com/media/audio-component-grounding-and-interconnection.pdf?fbclid=IwAR3omd-inQWA0bUyCFSP5M2W5UGEFl_sqTDhe6zHGQyW1mEk3RISofjr-TM_aem_AXQrB3BHtzCtobX36U4FGpHeQp-dmMcyPYdkb4vKdYjt_nN6fwOYw3QO7Vu7tvzPNWY
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/DIYAudio/permalink/7175281569204294/
Has anybody ever seen these capacitors? What’s the brand of them? Are they audio grade, or at least high-quality ones?
Siemens industrial standard box film capacitors. 49 out of 50 swappers gonna sound worse or identical. The other 2 percent are gold foil and hemp oil and will sound better because you paid 100 bucks
Siemens Cap is bougt by Epcos later in 2009 ? TDK bought them . Siemens today only have Powercapacitor this are produced by Skeleton. So if you want exactly the same search for TDK products or just use Wima with same specifications.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Digital signals. Does it work or it doesnt. There is nothing in between. You are sending 1 and 0 bits. There is no 0.32 or 0.045 values. Its only either 1 or 0. If you hear difference, its in your head. Or the cable is limiting the signal data-rate. But this can be seen. There is no difference in optical cables as long they can transmit the nessesary speed.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Coax spec says 75ohm, and it has galvanic conection so any problems with earth affects and any deviation from 75ohm may affects.
Tomi Engdahl says:
“Some say that proper glass sounds better than acrylic ‘glass’.”
It was new info that there actually were toslink cables made of glass in market, all I have used have been made of plastic. In optical fiber world the thick cables for short distance (like 1 mm diameter used with toslink and several other applications) are made of plastic material. The thin fiber optic (125 µm) for long distance are made of glass. Glass is not very suitable material for making 1 mm diameter fiber because you can’t bending it much because it breaks.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Yhe difference in this application is not signal speed – used bit rate is the same and signal propagation speed is practically the same (varies somewhat on both coax and fiber depending on cable materials used).
Tomi Engdahl says:
“I do know, however, that USB cables can sound different.”
Can you give more details on sound difference?
USB cables transport data digitally, and do not change data content, so should not be able to change the sound if signal is fed to a good DAC. USB cables make typically galvanic connection between PC and DAC electronics, and there are routes for noise to get from PC to DAC circuit. The cable can slightly affect the amount of noise that can get through to DAC end, and different DACs cab vary greatly how much of the incoming noise can get through to audio output.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Another noteworthy point is that digital seldom barely misses, so any degradation in signal is likely to be severe. As in a minor change in data is just as likely to be a most significant bit as a least significant bit. So expecting a bunch of minor changes and no major changes resulting a slight loss of fidelity instead of major pops is statistically impossible.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The speed of light in vacuum is 2.998 × 108 m/s. The propagation speed of the signal is around 200 000 km/s in optical fiber. Typical coaxial cables are around the same range. More data
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velocity_factor
Tomi Engdahl says:
I’d be curious to see some measurements of those differences.
I am pretty sure they come from one of two things :
– one is faulty, generate errors that the DAC somehow manage to deal with
– The installation has a wiring problem and some noise inter the DAC through the coax cable
Tomi Engdahl says:
short summary:
* Coax cables have different levels of shielding and couples the source/destination grounds. Coupled grounds are _not_ good in digital applications. Electric interference can absolutely be heard in sufficiently high quality DAC (ex high quality cable of exact length vs. monster cable of 2m running all around behind your stack).
* TOSlink cables are ideal from electric interference and decoupling perspective, but the ultimate quality will depend on the quality of your transceivers. Some manufacturers cheap out on those (as in – light level changes, when exactly it’s a one or a zero). Bonus point – you can safely run it around your room without risk of anything blowing up.
* Ultimately the only good DAC is one with internal reclocker or upsampler (assuming it is actually good implementation). Relying on source timing in DAC applications is just too much magic to get it to work reliably.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Coaxial cables predominantly affect sound because of different RF radiation properties and ground looping. Square wave that is multiple of sample rate is quite a challenge and often audible because of leakage to analog part of DAC.
Optical cable is free of those problems, but slew rate and apperture jitter is inferior in case of Toslink and sometimes the clock recovery PLL causes DAC to miss bits.
For the “digital is ones and zeros, there is no difference in medium”, please remember that SPDIF has no error recovery whatsoever. Also, DAC has an analog part in it that is heavily affected by digital noise and its characteristics.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The advantage of optical cable is that there is no electrical connection between your unit. So theoretically that could be better in the case, for example, of ground issues between your unit. There is only one rule : try and keep the one you prefer. Personally I think there are difference between digital cable, but more related to the shield of the cable, and very small difference
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hello, a basic question again… Can I use ie a 2 W resistor instead of 1/4 W (not the opposite) ? In this case for a preamp. Thank you
You should have no problems using a resistor rated for greater power than the circuit requires. It’s just wasting money, though.
The short answer is “perhaps”. If the resistor is part of the RIAA network, then it does need to be accurate in this value and other characteristics are also important in this particular position. A 2 watt resistor is likely to be wire wound, rather than metal film, so might be inductive and adversely affect the RIAA network. In other positions, the wattage and type of resistor might not be nearly so important. Generally, it is wise to simply replace like with like, particularly in a pre amplifier.
Source https://www.facebook.com/groups/DIYAudio/permalink/7203574856374965/
Tomi Engdahl says:
I Gave Money to Criminals – feat. Dankpods
https://m.youtube.com/watch?si=TZV4aGG0O9irBrP4&fbclid=IwAR0V83A4kf76jifPBCPJkO8Lq-wIoEHc0VkGOJ27JyGrtsu1IoCwhXIIpjg&v=JMAu_mCxoII&feature=youtu.be
Just watching Dan’s reactions to these bullshit products fills me with joy.
Tomi Engdahl says:
USB Anti-interference Filter Board USB Filter Noise Eliminator 1000UF For Power Amplifier PC USB Power
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005790961343.html?spm=a2g0n.detail.1000014.1.77272f32yzwyzo&gps-id=platformRecommendH5&scm=1007.40000.326746.0&scm_id=1007.40000.326746.0&scm-url=1007.40000.326746.0&pvid=8435f462-b004-4c2f-af8c-1e8c24439532&_t=gps-id:platformRecommendH5,scm-url:1007.40000.326746.0,pvid:8435f462-b004-4c2f-af8c-1e8c24439532,tpp_buckets:668%232846%238111%23453&pdp_npi=4%40dis%21EUR%217.99%214.0%21%21%2161.01%21%21%402103010f17031894223611124e3e9a%2112000034365961203%21rec%21FI%212528467667%21
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.reddit.com/r/audiophile/comments/2vfg7s/cleaning_up_usb_power/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Clean Power and USB Decrappifiers
ALL OUR REVIEWS (headphones, earphones, dacs/amps, daps, bluetooth, clean power & USB, microphones, cables/adapters, eartips, earpads, noise insulation)
https://www.audioreviews.org/power-usb/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Poorly made cables can be microphonic. True.
Cables too small for the job can have several issues, but microphonics is not issue related to cable size as such.
“or cables that have an impedance mismatch somewhere in the circuit” does not make cable microphonic. HiFI audio systems analog cabling is normally not an impedance matched system where source, destination and cable impedance would match each other.
Microphonics is related to cable physical construction, cable materials and in some cases can be affected by DC potential inside cable.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Many cables are microphonic to some degree due to the triboelectric effect. Cables made for sensor and microphone applications can be made with special plastics that are much less microphonic.
So cable holders it’s something like 99.7% bullshit.
Tomi Engdahl says:
yes but on the output to speakers, digital cables, power cables, it’s all total BS. Maybe if you’re picking up microvolts from a sensor, otherwise it’s BS.
Tomi Engdahl says:
the only triboelectric in audio is microphones with phantom supplies and even then you need to handle the wire to induce. It’s an issue in medical with ultra low signal levels and patients who move. Put a 2K load on any cable (worst case source/load impedance in audio) and put it 6″ in front of a speaker. See if you are even able to detect triboelectric effect.
Tomi Engdahl says:
A decent AWG cable that’s properly wired and shielded/insulated isn’t going to be microphonic on its own. Most of these scammer audiophool companies are at least capable of building a functioning cable.
The only cables I ever come across these days with inherent microphonic issues are the cheap unbalanced cables that come with import electric guitars.
Tomi Engdahl says:
“one should not use a shielded cable to send speaker signal as it is A/C signal.”
I have to somewhat disagree with thus view. The signal from microphone is also AC signal (just weaker).
Shielded cables can be used as speaker cable as long as that they are cables that they have enough thick copper and good enough insulation to handle the speaker signal levels.
Typical microphone cables often have so thin copper that it will have lots of resistance which will affect speaker response and heat up cable considerably if you try to push high power speaker signal through it. Also some not so well designed amplifiers might not like the extra cable capacitance on long runs.
I have used shielded cables for my speaker wiring. It helped in solving some RFI problems.
“Using a shielded cable may work but will drastically affect the quality of the signal to the speaker.”
When using a microphone cable with thin wires yes it will affect. When you use a thick enough shielded mains cable, then you find out that the shielding is not the issue to worry about (except with some bad amplifiers).
“You would be better off using power zip cord for lamps than a balanced shielded cable.”
Zip cord for lamps works well for speaker cable in many applications.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Generally, the speed of sound in steel ranges from about 5,900 to 6,500 meters per second (19,300 to 21,300 feet per second).
References:
https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-speed-of-sound-in-steel
https://byjus.com/physics/speed-of-sound-propagation/
Tomi Engdahl says:
He spent his life building a $1 million stereo. The real cost was unfathomable.
Ken Fritz turned his home into an audiophile’s dream — the world’s greatest hi-fi. What would it mean in the end?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/interactive/2024/ken-fritz-greatest-stereo-auction-cost/
Ken Fritz worked for decades to perfect his stereo system at his home in Richmond’s North Chesterfield neighborhood. His obsession built a system that was widely acknowledged by audiophiles but also led to strain in his family.
Ken Fritz was years into his quest to build the world’s greatest stereo when he realized it would take more than just gear.
It would take more than the Krell amplifiers and the Ampex reel-to-reel. More than the trio of 10-foot speakers he envisioned crafting by hand.
And it would take more than what would come to be the crown jewel of his entire system: the $50,000 custom record player, his “Frankentable,” nestled in a 1,500-pound base designed to thwart any needle-jarring vibrations and equipped with three different tone arms, each calibrated to coax a different sound from the same slab of vinyl.
“If I play jazz, maybe that cartridge might bloom a little more than the other two,” Fritz explained to me. “On classical, maybe this one.”
No, building the world’s greatest stereo would mean transforming the very space that surrounded it — and the lives of the people who dwelt there.
The faded photos tell the story of how the Fritz family helped him turn the living room of their modest split-level ranch
He later estimated he spent $1 million on his mission, a number that did not begin to reflect the wear and tear on the household, the hidden costs of his children’s unpaid labor.
“My dad had a workshop,” is how Rosemary, the youngest girl, now 56, puts it. “We were forever building, rebuilding.”
But for the final flourish of his epic engineering project, in 2020, Fritz would go it alone.
He was a boy at the dawn of the hi-fi revolution. This was 70 years ago, long before holograms and virtual realities tried to fool our brains into seeing something that’s not there, when stereo first sold us an auditory experience like no other.
The trick, pioneered in the early 1930s by engineers working at Bell Labs in New York and Abbey Road Studios in London, was in the two channels of sound. Recorded from separate microphones and played back through separate speakers, they could simulate the swirling warmth and depth of life.
By the 1950s, the first bulky hi-fis were marketed for home use, blowing open the closed feel of the old phonographs — and offering a newly affluent nation a sophisticated new field of connoisseurship to conquer.
One day, Fritz’s teacher at his Milwaukee grade school set up a turntable and speakers in the classroom. He was stunned by the beauty of the classical music. But he was especially thrilled by the sense of being on the cutting edge of a new technology.
Within a couple of years, teenage Fritz had bought his own recording machine and started capturing the music of live bands. He started the Hi-Fi Club at Bay View High School and took a part-time job in an appliance store that sold audio gear. With his earnings, he picked up a Heathkit, one of the hot, new build-it-yourself amplifiers, for $49.
Like a lot of kids born to the children of the Depression, Fritz absorbed his DIY ethos from the previous generation.
At an audio show in 1957, Ken Jr. met Saul Marantz
“I told him I wanted to buy his amplifier. He knew I didn’t have the money.”
Fritz persuaded his boss at an audio shop to set Marantz up as a dealer. That earned him a discount, though he still had to work Saturdays to make up the rest.
In the 1980s, Fritz launched his project by blowing up the living room into a listening room, a 1,650-square-foot bump-out based on the same shoe box ratio, just under 2 to 1, that worked magic in concert halls from the Musikverein in Vienna to the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. The idea was that the acoustic waves would similarly roll off Fritz’s long, cement-filled walls and 17-foot-high, wood-paneled ceiling to bathe the listener in music.
To minimize hum and potential electrical interference, Fritz outfitted the room with its own 200-amp electrical system and HVAC system, independent from the rest of the house.
He crafted by hand the three 10-foot speakers that loomed like alien monoliths at the head of the room
He bought only a few of the components ready-made from a retailer. Fritz and his audiophile friends believed it was idiotic to invest in the kind of top-shelf equipment that gleamed from the glossy pages of High Fidelity magazine. Only a home-crafted system could achieve the audio you desired.
“You’re going to spend $250,000 for the name brand on the rack so everybody comes in and will be impressed,” scoffed Mark Mieckowski, a retired electrician who had helped Fritz fine-tune his system over the years. “DIY, there’s no name tags, nobody knows nothing. And I guarantee you those will probably sound a million times better.”
“Nobody wanted to come to our house, because he wanted to put them to work,”
The big blowup with Kurt came in 2018, about two years after Fritz had declared that, at last, the world’s greatest stereo and listening room was complete.
A friend in Texas mailed Fritz a hard drive packed with thousands of songs, from Motown to Mozart. Now he could play music with his iPad. It might not have had the analog warmth of a Shaded Dog vinyl pressing of Arthur Rubinstein playing Beethoven, but on the Fritz system, through those mighty speakers, it wasn’t half-bad.
In 2018, he and a filmmaker friend, Jeremy Bircher, drove to Virginia to make a documentary: “One Man’s Dream.”
Some audio professionals found it unbearable.
“You’re mining the lunatic fringe,”
But Steve Guttenberg, host of the popular Audiophiliac YouTube channel, shared the documentary with his 240,000 subscribers, calling Fritz “one of a kind.” It has now been viewed more than 1.9 million times on YouTube.
“This room/house must be listed in UNESCO World Heritage List. So much passion, soul and heart!” wrote one of the thousands of commenters.
“This is truly something that needs to be conserved,” wrote another, “as a memory to this inspiring man.”
“It was almost like the orchestra was in the room,” Breakall said. “That’s impossible if the room isn’t this size. Very scary and very realistic.”
I was rooting for a man who had devoted his life to this system. I wanted it to sound better than any other. Even if I really couldn’t tell.
Was it truly “wow?” Or merely loud?
I noticed Mieckowski shake his head, involuntarily and almost imperceptibly, as soon as the music kicked in. He remained politely appreciative in front of his friend. But later, I followed him out to his car, where he confessed that, no, it sounded off that day.
He speculated that the Fritzes had probably been watching a DVD in the listening room and accidentally left the speakers on movie mode. A common mistake. But the fact that Fritz could no longer detect an imperfection in a system he had spent years honing to his impossibly high standards was a heartbreaking reminder of his friend’s physical decline.
“He can’t remember half the time what he’s listening to and what he’s left on,” Mieckowski said, referring to the system’s smorgasbord of settings.
“I’d hate like heck to see this room parted out,” he had said. “That’s just like breaking up a dream.”
His dream had been woven into the actual structure of his home. They were virtually inseparable.
And who would want to buy a stereo that cost more than the house?
“Anybody that’s got that kind of money,” Mieckowski said, “doesn’t want to live here.”
Ken Fritz was turning 80.
On April 21, 2022, Fritz died.
And then it fell to Betsy to try to fulfill her father’s last, greatest wish.
For a time, it looked like an old audiophile pal of her father’s would buy both the house and the system. But he and his wife changed their minds.
Betsy talked to dealers about looking for other potential buyers. They were not enthusiastic.
“Hi-fi is extremely subjective,” Wexler told me later. “So this guy built something that sounded good to him. How many people out there are going to say, ‘These are the speakers for me’ — and go through the hassle of acquiring these gigantic speakers that probably wouldn’t fit in most people’s homes, even if you could get them to their homes?”
Late last summer, Betsy realized she had to let go. Another couple wanted to buy the house — but not the stereo.
They knew marketing.
“We euphemistically refer to it as the ‘million-dollar, monumental, magical, musical masterpiece,’” said David Staples, the owner of eBid Local. “It may be the best, most elaborate and exquisite private residential audiophile system in the country, perhaps even in the world.”
Many of the records her father had spent a lifetime collecting had already been sold — and Betsy understood that the system itself would almost certainly be parceled out to multiple buyers as well.
So what, ultimately, would be the value of the world’s greatest stereo?
The Frankentable? There were 44 bids, the top at a mere $19,750.
The 10-foot-tall speakers? After 18 bids, an Indiana man named Carlton Bale snagged all three for $10,100. Less than you’d pay for a pair of Yamaha NS-5000 bookshelf speakers.
A fan of Fritz’s YouTube documentary, Bale had set out a couple of years ago to build what he imagined would be “the second-best loudspeaker in the world” — until he heard about the Fritz auction.
“I thought, ‘Do I really have the time to build the speakers I want that probably aren’t going to sound as good as the ones Ken built?’”
The total take for the million-dollar stereo system, including the speakers, the turntable, the dozens of other components from detached cones to the reel-to-reel decks? $156,800.
But perhaps that was always going to be its fate.
The value, the auctioneer said, was whatever somebody else was willing to pay for it.
Tomi Engdahl says:
What Happened To “The World’s Best Stereo System?”
Ken Fritz spent 27 years making a gargantuan sound system. After he died, where did the world’s best stereo system go?
https://aftermath.site/the-worlds-best-stereo-system-what-happened-ken-fritz
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/ken-fritz-diy-audiophile-dreams-do-come-true-rip-plus-2024-wapo-story-on-page-2.950268/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://forum.polkaudio.com/discussion/194945/one-mans-dream-ken-fritz-documentary-about-the-worlds-best-stereo-system
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://pinkfishmedia.net/forum/threads/obsession-to-the-nth-degree.287987/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.avsforum.com/threads/cautionally-tale-hifi-gears-are-not-an-investment.3292684/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Most of these crazy “audiophile” cables are nothing but ordinary wiring hidden under heatshrink and overbraid.
oh, no, you don’t understand….there’s a sincere amount of bullshit marketing as well as idiotic assumptions on how conductors work to increase the value….it’s just a fairy wonderland!
Tomi Engdahl says:
class D is used in nearly every piece of pro sound equipment these days, other than guitar amplifiers. if you want to argue about hearing the difference between class A and class AB tube amps, sure.
it’s used in guitar amps
The anti Class-D crowd is akin to the people who howled when halogen headlights came and then again when HID headlights came. Class-D isn’t even close to new honestly but for a long time it was sub-par apart from energy density and efficiency.
This is no longer the case. Go look at Purifi Eigentakt and tell me those specs suck.
The distortion in a class-D amp depends a lot on the components used in the output filter. Done correctly, you can achieve astonishingly good performance. TI has some good app. notes on this, IIRC. Also, there is an article from IEEE Spectrum magazine about options for professional-quality audio on the cheap using class-D: https://spectrum.ieee.org/diy-amplifier-class-d
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Hi-Fi industry has, over time, evolved into an entity more enamoured with specifications than the essence of music. Now a troubling parallel emerges in the professional audio world, hinting at a similar trajectory. This piece explores the worrying trend of pro audio’s gradual drift from its foundational ethos – the art of sound – towards a fixation on technical specifications and gear.
Pro Audio Is Going The Way Of Hi-Fi – Can We Stop It?
https://www.production-expert.com/production-expert-1/pro-audio-is-going-the-way-of-hi-fi-can-we-stop-it?fbclid=IwAR1POmqOULZoUpdlqEWikPaMgKEuo0zW7ZeYxx-KQ6kLpGmdM8nFxMCEjCo
The birth of the Hi-Fi industry was marked by a noble pursuit: to reproduce sound as faithfully to the original recording as possible. This ethos championed the listener’s experience, making the emotional connection with music paramount. However, as decades passed, this pursuit subtly transformed.
The Hi-Fi world became a bastion of technical one-upmanship, where the quality of sound was often gauged more by the specifications sheet than by the soul-stirring experience it could offer. This shift has been both gradual and profound, redirecting the industry’s focus from the soul of music to a cold, spec-driven narrative.
Symptoms in the Pro Audio World
The professional audio industry, traditionally the bastion of creativity and sound artistry, now shows alarming signs of treading a similar path. Visit any forum, Facebook group, or YouTube, and you’ll find ad-nauseum arguments on gear. Just now I visited one such forum which had 13 pages (Some run into the hundreds) of discussion around a plugin, many of the points were, in the final analysis, pointless, they had little to do with if the music would ever move anyone.
Furthermore, the home studio market, fuelled by affordable technology, has unwittingly contributed to this trend. The emphasis on having ‘professional-grade’ equipment at home often eclipses the focus on honing one’s craft or understanding the nuances of sound. Many new to music production overestimate the importance of the gear and underestimate the role of the song, performance, and technique.
Impact on Music Production
This shift has palpable effects on music production. On one hand, there’s an abundance of technically immaculate recordings – clean, precise, and often, clinically perfect. On the other, there’s a growing sentiment that some of these productions lack the ineffable quality that makes music resonate on a deeper, more emotional level. The art of imperfection, a key component in creating soulful music, is at risk of being lost in the noise of technological perfectionism. On watching one of the Equalizer movies the other day, Denzil Wasington’s character said; “progress not perfection.” I like that philosophy.
Tomi Engdahl says:
When you run out of ideas for your next snake oil product and have to ask the guys at the local muffler shop to design something:
“With your system fully Omega-fettled, there’s a profound change to the sound of your system. There are no spotlights or highlights, lumps, bumps, or impediments” OMG
It’s the bit they quoted from their review at hi-fi+
https://shunyata.com/products/audio-cables/omega-series-audio-cables/omega-speaker-cable/
They have also XLR cables
https://shunyata.com/products/audio-cables/omega-series-audio-cables/omega-xlr/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/average-back-emf-induced-in-coil-in-loudspeaker.592228/
Tomi Engdahl says:
http://www.teoaudio.com/products/liquid-audio-cables/?fbclid=IwAR3OqcCnvtE3ubVAvZ1NKwx-UUWwGNNxsrDAKo_C-HtGMvQaTAT0LzKldBA
https://6moons.com/audioreviews/teoaudio2/liquid.html?fbclid=IwAR3oNF98nvtjSWQYk9BxlyKEn23sUyeFb7dUIvYecM6F1O_zG43BgcfLVXQ
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://shunyata.com/products/audio-cables/omega-series-audio-cables/omega-speaker-cable/?fbclid=IwAR0cBW1gXqqzzk8lhLPPt47U9pBAAoRMeeHhyWlqUBhhMWRNSWldbyz7bZc
Tomi Engdahl says:
He spent his life building a $1 million stereo. The real cost was unfathomable.
Ken Fritz turned his home into an audiophile’s dream — the world’s greatest hi-fi. What would it mean in the end?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/interactive/2024/ken-fritz-greatest-stereo-auction-cost/
Tomi Engdahl says:
“You can polish a turd, but in the end, all you’ll have is a polished turd.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.reddit.com/r/starterpacks/comments/114d3dm/audiophile_starterpack/
https://imgflip.com/i/58f7ze
Tomi Engdahl says:
Coupled with advanced fund depletion technology.
Tomi Engdahl says:
If you can measure THD+N on a pc sound card, set very low, verify current w no audio across the emitter resistor. Increase bias a little, measure THD. You likely will find a point of diminishing returns. For example, going from 100mA to 200mA decreased THD from 0.1% to 0.08%, then a value of around 100ma to 120mA would be good. Too much bias current causes waste heat and reduces peak power output assuming finite power supply.
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://boingboing.net/2012/02/10/alan-parsons-on-audiophiles.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
AUDIOPHILE GROUNDING BOX
https://m.youtube.com/watch?si=P712vx_1Hb-FAvA7&fbclid=IwAR2mDxpP6vJq8b-aQkAWJAbxOrVQuKI5qfsCvdi8w95dmnVCn_x6UWAMSY0&v=NOVfFLTXB3k&feature=youtu.be
Tomi Engdahl says:
So, as much as I am all about real engineering and science in audio, I’m going to be a bit contrarian here.
Numerous Rotels (and others of course) use speaker protection fuses, and these can in fact be a source of significant distortion. This isn’t conjecture; I’ve measured this on multiple occasions. Replace the 30 year old fuses, and things clean right up.
No doubt this is just a case of either filament connection deterioration or contact oxidation, but the important thing to note is that the failure mode isn’t binary!
There’s therefore arguably a case to be made for fuses that are designed/manufactured with a certain degree of mechanical robustness, whether that’s filament vibration fatigue resistance or corrosion resistance
Tom Neudorfl I can understand that in the speaker path as it may be an intermittent connection or a fuse that has gone high resistance due to being worked close to blowing. But these audiophool fuses are used on the mains power and would just blow rather than have this odd failure mode.
Don’t let the audiophools know there are light bulbs used inside a lot of speakers/crossovers as tweeter protection. They will soon find a market for audiophool light bulbs.
Dale Robins oh, totally agree
Source: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/CZBFndpsnwPESkdn/
Tomi Engdahl says:
audio cable’s capacitance has a direct correlation to the amount of high-frequency content it can carry effectively. The signal source characteristics (impedance) determines how much capacitance difference affects high frequencies. For line level interconnections the cables perform identically in the lows, and the mids never drop relative to the highs and lows. In other words, claims about a cable having “deeper, stronger bass”, “scooped mids”, or “polite low mids” are all completely false.
More: https://www.ovnilab.com/articles/cables.shtml
Tomi Engdahl says:
The charlatans do not have a market in the pro audio world because generally speaking, most of them see right through the bullshit. This also goes for manufacturing and science. You’d think that, for example, a research facility investigating acoustics would spare no expense in something like fancy “audiophile” cables for their high end microphones and speakers, but nope….