[bpape]

Edited....  No sense in stirring the pot


Anyway....  I personally think MP3 is fine for portable use and horrid for anything where 'fidelity' matters - including a car.  When you're listening on a $4 set of ear buds - not much difference and the extra storage is great.  Now, if someone could figure out an algorithm to give you the performance of FLAC with the size of moderated MP3 compression, we'd be all set to go.

Bryan

[darrenyeats]

When you're listening on a $4 set of ear buds - not much difference and the extra storage is great.

I use Sennheiser PX-100s on the move, rather than earbuds. I would say that background noise is the issue.

Of course, in time as data storage and battery charge will become a non-issue so will mp3 vs FLAC. Some time to go before you get can 100s of gigs on a phone tho'.
Darren

[opaqueice]

Back in the 50's, Western Electric built 300B amplifiers with a THD of 0.2% or less, which is well over an order of magnitude better than the vast majority of current designs and comparable with solidstate.  Some are starting to figure out how to do this once again.

Interesting.  But don't you think that would defeat the purpose?  If you simply want low distortion and high power and good reliability, transistors are far superior.  It seems to me that the whole point of tubes (these days) is as a kind of tone control - to add some coloration to the sound (and to look pretty).  Don't get me wrong - I like that (I've owned tube pres in the past, and will probably add a new one to my system soon).  But figuring out how to lower their distortion might be the wrong way to go...

As for speakers, I agree the technology is a bit stagnant.  It's surprising that after so many years no one has come up with a really convincing replacement for conventional drivers.  Then again, we're still using internal combustion engines...

[dB Cooper]

.....which brings us full circle. And the original poster has left the building.

WEEZ

I'm here, just haven't had a lot of spare time the past few days.

[darrenyeats]

As for speakers, I agree the technology is a bit stagnant.  It's surprising that after so many years no one has come up with a really convincing replacement for conventional drivers.  Then again, we're still using internal combustion engines...

PMC, ATC and Meridian have sold actives for many years (at a price) but not to the mainstream. However, Linkwitz Orion and Beolab 5 are high end active designs with some other innovations too - and I feel they point the way to future technical avenues which could trickle down. Also Blue Sky and other brands are selling actives into small studios and even as PC speakers now, so it's a pincer attack on regular hi-fi.

Our closed little hi-fi industry has made a lot of money selling and up-selling stereo amps and twin monos, up to the monster scale, flogging a technically inferior architecture - amp + passives - because of historic accident and commercial gain. I speak as a Krell owner (not for much longer).

Anyway...

Personally, I look forward to the hi-fi of the future. It will perform much better technically, almost certainly will sound better, and (I fervently hope) will be accessible to everyone due to improvements in design and manufacturing! If we don't blow the planet up first
Darren

[doug s.]

my deqx pdc2.6 is supposed to arrive next week - i can't wait!  i can go active and choose my own drivers and amps!  and do active speaker & room correction!  audio life is good!   

doug s.

[dB Cooper]

This thread started with the premise that hi-fi is dying due to the proliferation of low-fi formats.  The idea was that since many people are deliberately choosing to listen to music with degraded fidelity, they apparently don't care about sound quality and therefore the hi-fi world is coming to an end.  (Personally I think that's clearly a silly idea - if more people listen to more music there's no way that's bad for hifi - but back on topic.)

A slight misinterpretation IMO. The key stat that caught my eye was that, to repeat, one third of the music released last year was not even released on CD, only in lo-res, lo-bit-rate, downloadable formats. A third is a significant proportion!!! If it's two thirds five years from now- what then? My premise is that if there is little or no good quality source material, or if people are never exposed to it, it's "game over"- then there is little or no incentive for better quality (I hate the term 'high end' and think it is off-putting to the general public) sound reproduction gear to exist. Like I said in my original post, Joe Consumer is not going to start cruising the vinyl swap meets to replace his CDs (or MP3s) with LPs- and contrary to some assertions earlier, vinyl is not coming back. The fact that there are niche-within-a-niche-within-a-niche releases you can buy online proves little in this regard. In the music business, they are not even on the last page of the spreadsheets.

As one poster noted, storage per GB is coming down and maybe that will help- but online sources are unlikely to change, they still want to keep their bandwidth costs town- they too have bills to pay. Perhaps the iTunes model where you can download higher bit rate music for an extra fee will catch on and support awareness of the idea that not all music, or playback gear, is the same- I hope so.

[BobRex]

If you simply want low distortion and high power and good reliability, transistors are far superior.  It seems to me that the whole point of tubes (these days) is as a kind of tone control - to add some coloration to the sound (and to look pretty).  Don't get me wrong - I like that (I've owned tube pres in the past, and will probably add a new one to my system soon).  But figuring out how to lower their distortion might be the wrong way to go...

As for speakers, I agree the technology is a bit stagnant.  It's surprising that after so many years no one has come up with a really convincing replacement for conventional drivers.  Then again, we're still using internal combustion engines...

Transistors are superior only on the measurements that favor transistors.  Scott Frankland once measured different output topologies under dynamic conditions and came to conclusions that were completely divergent from what the typical static measurements described.  I seem to remember that the best behaved was an SE 300B.  Now since I don't listen to sine waves, I'm much more interested in dynamic behavior.  And tubes appear to be better there. 

As far as reliability, spend a couple of years working in an audio service center and then get back to me - tube equipment can take more abuse than solid state, and it's easier to fix, too.

Perhaps the "coloration" that tubes impart is more "accurate" and transistors strip that away.  Is that possible?  If so, then transistors are actually the more colored devices.  Funny thing, most freq. response measurements taken by Sphile don't show any differences in linearity between topologies for low level devices, yet they somehow sound different.  So which really is the colored device?

[WGH]

A slight misinterpretation IMO. The key stat that caught my eye was that, to repeat, one third of the music released last year was not even released on CD, only in lo-res, lo-bit-rate, downloadable formats. A third is a significant proportion!!! If it's two thirds five years from now- what then? My premise is that if there is little or no good quality source material...

The only reason people are listening to MP3's is bandwidth and storage, which will change. I have been following another media that requires high bandwidth and storage - movies. Downloading movies that will play nicely with high definition screens are another cash cow waiting in the wings. A lot of twists and turns in the road too, the new Flash player that can play the H.264 codec is interesting. The most interesting is a potential Google/Apple mashup. Robert X. Cringely has his ideas on this development: http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070914_002928.html

Once Apple has the bandwidth why wouldn't they release their entire catalog in a lossless format? Music is converted to a MP3 not recorded that way, so Apple has a huge catalog of .wav or .flac files just waiting for bandwidth and storage to catch up, then they get to sell it all over again with $0 invested in media costs.

[opaqueice]

PMC, ATC and Meridian have sold actives for many years (at a price) but not to the mainstream. However, Linkwitz Orion and Beolab 5 are high end active designs with some other innovations too - and I feel they point the way to future technical avenues which could trickle down. Also Blue Sky and other brands are selling actives into small studios and even as PC speakers now, so it's a pincer attack on regular hi-fi.

I was discussing the drivers themselves more than speaker systems.  But I fully agree with you - I've recently auditioned both the Beolab 5 and two sets of Orions.  I wasn't impressed with the Beolab, but the Orions are the best speakers I've ever heard, bar none.  In about a week I'll have a set of them in my living room .

Transistors are superior only on the measurements that favor transistors.  Scott Frankland once measured different output topologies under dynamic conditions and came to conclusions that were completely divergent from what the typical static measurements described.  I seem to remember that the best behaved was an SE 300B.  Now since I don't listen to sine waves, I'm much more interested in dynamic behavior.  And tubes appear to be better there. 

As far as reliability, spend a couple of years working in an audio service center and then get back to me - tube equipment can take more abuse than solid state, and it's easier to fix, too.

Perhaps the "coloration" that tubes impart is more "accurate" and transistors strip that away.  Is that possible?  If so, then transistors are actually the more colored devices.  Funny thing, most freq. response measurements taken by Sphile don't show any differences in linearity between topologies for low level devices, yet they somehow sound different.  So which really is the colored device?

Well, I don't really want to get into this argument, but I disagree.  There's no difference between "dynamics" and "static measurements" for a linear amplifier - and one of the things you measure is the deviation from linearity (and it's small).  Given that, harmonic analysis is enough. 

But if you don't follow the technical stuff, just ask yourself why just about every piece of high-quality electronics on the planet (other than audiophile gear), including amplifiers, uses transistors.  Or why they're regarded as one of the greatest technological advances of the 20th century (there's a reason for that!).  The only serious applications I know of where tubes are still used are military (because tubes are resistant to the EMP from a nuclear attack) and space applications (because of cosmic rays).  So unless you're planning on taking your stereo into orbit and/or want it for company during a nuclear winter, that's a good case of the exception that proves the rule.

But who cares?  I want to listen to music, not the most linear possible amplifier, and if I like tube sound or tube looks (and I do) I don't see any problem.

[miklorsmith]

Transistors are more accurate, yet tubes make music sound more like music.  Hmmm . . .

[Daygloworange]

According to a statistic cited by Steve Jobs at today's Apple media event, a third of all prerecorded music sold in the last year wasn't even released in CD format, but only in lo-res formats used to conserve download bandwidth and hard drive space. A third of prerecorded music.

db,

I'm interested in finding out specifically what "third" of music last year was available only in lo-res formats.

Can you provide a link to that?

Cheers

[aerius]

But if you don't follow the technical stuff, just ask yourself why just about every piece of high-quality electronics on the planet (other than audiophile gear), including amplifiers, uses transistors.  Or why they're regarded as one of the greatest technological advances of the 20th century (there's a reason for that!).  The only serious applications I know of where tubes are still used are military (because tubes are resistant to the EMP from a nuclear attack) and space applications (because of cosmic rays).

Radio broadcast stations.  Almost every one of them uses transmitter tubes, though the ceramic 20kW water cooled tubes they use aren't exactly like the dinky little tubes we use in hifi.

I'd say another big reason is cost, transistors are literally a dollar a pop or even a dime a dozen in some cases.  For the cost of a single decent tube, you could build an entire amplifier and still have parts left over with solidstate.

[BobRex]

But if you don't follow the technical stuff, just ask yourself why just about every piece of high-quality electronics on the planet (other than audiophile gear), including amplifiers, uses transistors.  Or why they're regarded as one of the greatest technological advances of the 20th century (there's a reason for that!).  The only serious applications I know of where tubes are still used are military (because tubes are resistant to the EMP from a nuclear attack) and space applications (because of cosmic rays).  So unless you're planning on taking your stereo into orbit and/or want it for company during a nuclear winter, that's a good case of the exception that proves the rule.

But who cares?  I want to listen to music, not the most linear possible amplifier, and if I like tube sound or tube looks (and I do) I don't see any problem.

Let's see, space, heat, power requirements, cost, density,...  All good reasons to celebrate the transistor.  But audio fidelity?  I doubt that was one of the critera!  Transistor designs were responsible for high global feedback, the distortion wars, and a couple of other ills.  Was that an advancement?

BTW - I used to work for Bell Labs (you may have heard of them - they invented the ummmm... transistor) where I did CAD design of ICs.  You can get technical if you want to.

[Russell Dawkins]

BobRex,

how extremely refreshing to have your informed input on this and other matters!

Seriously.

P.S. One of my favorite Bell Labs "rules" is the rule of 400,000, where the frequency response characteristics of an electro-acoustic transducer (headphone or speaker) are such that the product of the high and low -3 dB points should be 400,000, e.g., 20 - 20,000 Hz, 40 - 10,000 Hz or 60 - 6,666 Hz.

[Steve Eddy]

Transistor designs were responsible for high global feedback, the distortion wars, and a couple of other ills.

It was people responsible for all of that.

se

[Bob in St. Louis]

It was people responsible for all of that.

Guns don't kill people, People kill people.

[Steve Eddy]

Guns don't kill people, People kill people.

No no, projectiles kill people.

se

[darrenyeats]

This conversation is killing people

Really, I don't see the problem with opaqueice's comments. He said he likes the tube sound. What do you guys want?

Arguing that valves are more accurate than transistors is like...arguing a classic painting is more accurate than a hi-rez photograph. It is just a fact that the photograph is a more accurate reproduction of a scene. Does a painting look more attractive, move your soul more, give you a better feeling or "take you there" more. Yes certainly it can!!!! Accuracy is another argument.
Darren

[Russell Dawkins]

Sorry, not to be contrary, but I must say that the most accurate rendering not only of perspective but also colour that I have ever seen was in a life-size painting by some unknown-to-me French painter from around 1875.

It depicted two young girls, one putting a crown of daisies on the head of the other. I had to come back to the gallery again the next day to see just this painting (from the collection of some gallery in Montreal).

I have never seen the colour of flesh rendered as well by film or digital, and the perspective was so perfect I could easily tell that I would have to be standing in a hole about 10 inches deep to have that particular angle of view - that is the picture was hung about 10 inches too low on the wall.

I have never had this experience with any photograph.