[stanandjan]

Originally Posted by Chris Frost

because if you're simply asking "why so much?" about anything really good, be it hi-fi, food, clothes, cameras, vehicles etc, then you're not yet ready to have the discussion. .

We spent £3000 on our Plasma TV about 8 years ago and yet we enjoy by choice over many decades.. the cheapeat TESCO Tomato Soup and TESCO Marrowfat Peas..and Rice Pudding too for that matter..Often the cheaper versions have the least fat and preservatives..as an added benefit.
The last National Food poisoning problem RECALLs showed identical substances in Tins with Cheap to Pricey labels on..
Afew years ago the lowest price sweet White Wine that Tesco sells won a Silver award in a National Expert 'Blind' Taste..I would mention that the last Chateau Yquem I tasted was about £600 a bottle..as it was a fav drink of Royalty that year..Di's wedding etc..A pleasant quaff ..
Hence i also ask 'Why so much' often and am ready for any discussion with chapter and verse..
However I do pay over the average rate for panasonic Upscalers in TVs.. as to me they are self evidently as good as they come for the Non professional footballer Market..

[1saintly]

Of course it would still sound rubbish without some decent cables

http://www.amazon.com/AudioQuest-K2-.../dp/B000J36XR2

[Nigel Goodwin]

Originally Posted by webbie

There's still more to a power supply cap than just its capacity. I'm no expert but there's its esr, and ripple current rating at least that has to be taken into account.

The most important is ESR - it's that you need to check in order to test if an electrolytic is faulty - the capacitance normally is within specification. The common failure mode is going high ESR, and has been for a number of decades now - the sub-standard CapXon ones Thomson fitted were only good for about 12 months according to the manufacturers data-sheet at the average working temperature in the boxes.

The exact same capacitors failed in all previous Thomson and Grundig boxes, but not as quickly as their running temperature was lower.

[Orbitalzone]

Originally Posted by 1saintly

Of course it would still sound rubbish without some decent cables

http://www.amazon.com/AudioQuest-K2-.../dp/B000J36XR2

some quality reviews there

[stanandjan]

i Chuckled over this one.. From Sad Couple..

"Don't make the same mistake we did! Use the powers of the K2 as birth control (it says on the packaging it is an effective replacement for an IUD)"

[Chris Frost]

Originally Posted by ffawkes

Far from it, I have always bought my audio stuff based on how it sounds and I have a good ear that's able to distinguish between the sound offered by different bits of kit. And it is generally true that you get what you pay for (I have heard some exceptions, one being the now discontinued Audiolab 8000a integrated which at 500 quid soundd fantastic and even had a phono stage built in)

nevertheless I was (and still am) unsure what can justify thousands for a preamp that is esentially a volume control although jjne reckons it is more than that.

Thanks for putting your original question in some sort of context.

So, the questions back to you then.... If you have good ears what have you found when auditioning various preamps? Do you hear a difference in performance? Do you feel the benefits of a pre power are justified over a similarly priced integrated. What's your point of comparison? What did you notice most when changing from a basic preamp to something better; and what gear have you actually listened to?

[Chris Frost]

Originally Posted by 1saintly

Of course it would still sound rubbish without some decent cables

http://www.amazon.com/AudioQuest-K2-.../dp/B000J36XR2

And once again another debate about Hi-Fi gets derailed. Ho hum

[Nigel Goodwin]

Originally Posted by Chris Frost

Thanks for putting your original question in some sort of context.

So, the questions back to you then.... If you have good ears what have you found when auditioning various preamps? Do you hear a difference in performance? Do you feel the benefits of a pre power are justified over a similarly priced integrated. What's your point of comparison? What did you notice most when changing from a basic preamp to something better; and what gear have you actually listened to?

It's all fairly pointless unless he can accurately spot the differences in double-blind tests, which I'm absolutely sure he wouldn't be able to. A pre-amp makes very, very little difference at all, it's trivial to make a preamp that sounds totally transparent - it's at line level so noise isn't a problem, it's low gain so bandwidth isn't a problem, and any decent opamp for audio has lusicrously low distortion figures.

Where you obviously can tell the difference is with valve preamps, where the lower quality and changes from the original signal are pretty obvious - but some people like to listen to the valves, and not to the music

[Chris Frost]

Originally Posted by stanandjan

We spent £3000 on our Plasma TV about 8 years ago and yet we enjoy by choice over many decades.. the cheapeat TESCO Tomato Soup and TESCO Marrowfat Peas..and Rice Pudding too for that matter..Often the cheaper versions have the least fat and preservatives..as an added benefit.
The last National Food poisoning problem RECALLs showed identical substances in Tins with Cheap to Pricey labels on..
Afew years ago the lowest price sweet White Wine that Tesco sells won a Silver award in a National Expert 'Blind' Taste..I would mention that the last Chateau Yquem I tasted was about £600 a bottle..as it was a fav drink of Royalty that year..Di's wedding etc..A pleasant quaff ..
Hence i also ask 'Why so much' often and am ready for any discussion with chapter and verse..
However I do pay over the average rate for panasonic Upscalers in TVs.. as to me they are self evidently as good as they come for the Non professional footballer Market..

I'll counter your tomato soup, marrow fat peas, and rice pudding with cheap mince, cheap sausages, and cheap fish fingers. These are often found to be made from poorer cuts and contain higher levels of unhealthy additives. The point being that with almost every example there's a counter argument.

Returning the discussion to Hi-Fi, there are certainly products out there with questionable performance for their price point when reviewed. What's new?! There have always been products like that and there always will. Equally there are products that I would consider to be giant killers, but that's more a subjective assessment based on them doing certain things musically rather than simply comparing Watts/£, or cabinet volume, or number of inputs or any of the other pointless purely objective metrics.

Coming back to your food and drink examples, would the average person in the street consider Chateau Yquem anything more a "pleasant quaff"? Probably not; and they'd be horrified at the cost per glass if you told them. But does their inexperience suddenly change the value of the product? The objectivists would have us accept that it's just grapes and yeast, and on that basis all wines should be priced equally. So I wonder, what would happen if ffawkes turned up at the gates of Chateau D'Yquem in Sauternes with a few truck loads of grapes and a DIY wine making manual. It might be drinkable, but would the result be as good as that produced by the vintner with their own stock, or even the vintner using these 3rd party supplies?

Before we get too carried away navel gazing it's perhaps useful to remember that most of what we have now as a Hi-Fi industry stems from individuals thinking "I can do that, and better". Whether from an engineering background or simply fuelled by passion and possessing the intelligence to learn about design, all the people behind the origins of successful brands have striven to improve and innovate. That's part of the cost justification behind the products.

[jjne]

From personal experience, the parts that make a difference on a hifi setup are:

CD Transport -- no difference whatsoever. And why should it -- jitter is corrected/reclocked on modern DACs. Cheap CD player or PC sound card is absolutely fine as long as it doesn't modify the bitstream in any way.
DAC -- the single most important part of a digital setup IMO. The wrong DAC can ruin the sound quality -- but there is no reason why this should be expensive. The newer Wolfson DACs (WM874x series) cost peanuts and give excellent sound quality.
Pre-amp -- as Nigel says these make little difference -- just about all solid-state pre-amps are variations on a theme anyway. I do think valves have their place -- I have a small, self-built (4-component) valve-based buffer that I can switch in and out, which smooths out the sound on some rough recordings. Generally it has a deleterious effect though. I do think that all the voodoo surrounding valves is BS though -- the setup I put together cost a fiver -- and the valve itself is a cheap Russian jobbie. I borrowed a couple of these "sooper-dooper" uber-expensive NOS valves and could make out no difference at all.
Power amplifier -- makes quite a difference, but again doesn't need to be expensive. Tripath TK2050 running in bridged/bi-amp mode is cheap and very transparent.
Speakers -- after the DAC, the most important part. I have a soft spot for the old Rogers BBC monitors, and have a pair of LS55s on my main stereo (the only 'expensive' bit left now).

I have most of the above in a small metal box. It's a bit of a monster inside but sounds sweet. Only cost me about £100+the cheap Technics CD player and speakers which I bought for £100 new when Rogers went bust (original price £550).

Oh -- and the cables are a mixture of £2 OFC interconnects, and mains cable for the speakers.

[ffawkes]

Originally Posted by Chris Frost

Thanks for putting your original question in some sort of context.

So, the questions back to you then.... If you have good ears what have you found when auditioning various preamps?

I have never auditioned various preamps. I have only auditioned pre/power combinations and integrated amplifiers.

Edited to add:

I tell a lie. I just thought, in 1980something I went witha mate of mine to listen to what was then a new Naim preamp, the NAC32.5 i think it was, versus his existing NAC 42.5 preamp, both using his NAP250 power amp. I now remember it well! With the new preamp there was more detail and space between the instruments. However despite that it did not necessarily sound better to me as some of the warmth had gone out of the music. So yes, I heard a differnce between preamps.

[Glawster2002]

With a "traditional" integrated amplifier, usually one power supply feeds both the pre amp and power amp sections, so if the volume is increased the increase in demand from the power amp could have a detrimental effect on the pre amp.

The idea with a separate pre amp/power amp combination that by separating the two an increase in power required by the power amplifier(s) is isolated and has no effect on the pre amp

As for price, pretty much all products today have a retail price based on their perceived value, this has nothing to do with what the product costs to make it is basically the price the manufacturer believes people are prepared to pay. That is true of clothes, Hi-fI, mobile phones, and just about anything else you care to mention.

Personally I have a Cyrus system and the reason I ended up with Cyrus is by spending an afternoon with a load of CDs in a Hi-fi shop listening room, with as budget and an open mind, trying out different hardware. I think the Naim kit looks great but personally I didn't like the sound, the same with Arcam.

Everyone's taste is different and if someone has a £100 system they are happy with that is great, I certainly wouldn't look down on them as a Hi-fi "snob" because my system cost more, to me how much someone paid for their hardware is irrelevant as long as they are happy with what they have for the price they paid and it delivers everything they want.

[jjne]

Originally Posted by Glawster2002

With a "traditional" integrated amplifier, usually one power supply feeds both the pre amp and power amp sections, so if the volume is increased the increase in demand from the power amp could have a detrimental effect on the pre amp.

The idea with a separate pre amp/power amp combination that by separating the two an increase in power required by the power amplifier(s) is isolated and has no effect on the pre amp

Absolutely true, but there is no reason why this has to be the case.

On the system I built, each section has its own transformer (well actually the pre and the buffer share the same line, but as they're both class-A this isn't really a problem and they both have their own regulator), and the power amp is linked to a switching supply. Effectively meaning that the system is a pre/power, it just happens to all be in the same box.

[Nigel Goodwin]

Originally Posted by ffawkes

I now remember it well! With the new preamp there was more detail and space between the instruments. However despite that it did not necessarily sound better to me as some of the warmth had gone out of the music. So yes, I heard a differnce between preamps.

I would VERY strongly suggest it was purely your imagination - unless tests are double-blind they are completely meaningless.

Using 'imaginary' terms like "more detail", "space between instruments" and "warmth" doesn't help your claim - typical meaningless rubbish as used by useless magazine reviewers

[ffawkes]

Originally Posted by Nigel Goodwin

I would VERY strongly suggest it was purely your imagination -

Feel free to!

By detail I mean separation of sounds, a sort of aural equivalent of realism vs impressionism in art. Same goes for the space between instruments.

I became aware of this for the first time when I auditioned my first preamp/power amp combination. It was at the Sound Organisation who had naim and exposure pre/power combinations on demo. the exposure was very detailed and clean sounding, the naim was more blurred in a way (less able to separate out the individual instruments) but much more lively and I went for the naim.

I really do know what I mean when I use terms like detail and separation but I appreciate that you are sceptical.

[2Bdecided]

Originally Posted by Chris Frost

Coming back to your food and drink examples, would the average person in the street consider Chateau Yquem anything more a "pleasant quaff"? Probably not; and they'd be horrified at the cost per glass if you told them. But does their inexperience suddenly change the value of the product?

But with this expensive wine, presumably there's at least someone somewhere who can at least detect a difference between it and a similar but much cheaper bottle of plonk in a double blind test?

There are whole swathes of the audiophile industry where there's not one person on earth who can hear a difference between all the properly designed stuff. If no person on earth can hear the benefit of a £6k cable over a £30 one.

We're not talking about ignorance or inexperience. We're talking about claimed improvements that no human ear has ever detected (and, in many cases, that no measurement equipment can detect, either).

Sighted tests don't count.

Single blind tests don't count.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clever_Hans

You need double blind tests to remove expectation bias.
http://home.provide.net/~djcarlst/abx_plac.htm

Cheers,
David.

[jjne]

Originally Posted by ffawkes

Feel free to!

By detail I mean separation of sounds, a sort of aural equivalent of realism vs impressionism in art. Same goes for the space between instruments.

I became aware of this for the first time when I auditioned my first preamp/power amp combination. It was at the Sound Organisation who had naim and exposure pre/power combinations on demo. the exposure was very detailed and clean sounding, the naim was more blurred in a way (less able to separate out the individual instruments) but much more lively and I went for the naim.

I really do know what I mean when I use terms like detail and separation but I appreciate that you are sceptical.

Some systems respond more effectively to transient sounds than others, which is why you hear the leading-edge of percussive sounds more clearly on some systems.

It's mostly a function of reserve power from the supply, along with how good the speakers are. An op-amp based pre-amp is quite capable of dealing with this, a power-amp less so.

I don't think anyone is saying that there is no difference between kit, more that there is no clear correlation between price and performance above a certain point.

In my DAC example above, I can point to the fact that the SNR is a good 20dB higher than the norm on the Wolfson DAC cited, and THD around 10dB lower. Not massively better, but better.

[Nigel Goodwin]

If you can't measure it, and can't reliably spot the difference in double-blind tests, then it doesn't exist

[Dan Sette]

Interesting debate.

I can't believe that a £25 amp is the equal of a £250 amp or a £2,500 amp. Though the law of diminishing returns comes into the equation and one isn't going to be 10 or 1000 times better.

I was lucky. I used to work in an audio shop and made very good friends in the industry before I changed career.

Consequently, when I had a one off oportunity to buy a "once in a lifetime" system I auditioned equipment totally blind, at various prices in different combinations, courtesy of those friends who were happy to indulge my "no point in paying for anything I can't hear" attitude.

Interestingly there were differences, which I consistently heard, coming back to the same combinations of equipment which I showed a preference for, and although I REALLY wanted a specific valve amp I rejected it every time in the blind listening tests, and it was a hard head over heart moment when I found out and had to decided that I couldn't buy it as it was "inferior" to the amp I prefered.

I actually didn't end up with some of the stratospherically proced equipment - but still could tell the difference up to "mid range" euqipment and spent, what would be considered a still relatively large amount of money on a system.

Meridian, Project, Audio Research, Bowers and Wilkins for those interested.

Considering all equpiment sounds the same it is still interesting to watch peoples jaws drop open when the system is played, with the comment "I've never heard that before."

I ought to qualify that the only item that wasn't listened to at random and blind were the speakers - due to the physical size.

And probably I was lead by the fact I always wanted the same monitoring system used at Abbey Road.

And I did prefer them over the KEF - honest.

You pays your money ......................

[ffawkes]

Originally Posted by Nigel Goodwin

If you can't measure it, and can't reliably spot the difference in double-blind tests, then it doesn't exist

What's a double blind test and how will it affect what one hears?

[jjne]

Originally Posted by Nigel Goodwin

If you can't measure it, and can't reliably spot the difference in double-blind tests, then it doesn't exist

The handling of transients detailed above can be easily measured with a 'scope

[Deacon1972]

Originally Posted by Nigel Goodwin

I would VERY strongly suggest it was purely your imagination - unless tests are double-blind they are completely meaningless.

Using 'imaginary' terms like "more detail", "space between instruments" and "warmth" doesn't help your claim - typical meaningless rubbish as used by useless magazine reviewers

Why are these terms imaginary and meaningless?

I could show you two systems where one would be more detailed than the other, two more systems where one has better channel separation/placement of special fx than the other, and a further two systems where one has a warm rich sound, the other being overly bright.

Terms like warmth and bright basically refer to bass/treble, a system that reproduces too much treble can be referred to as a bright system. A system where the mid range comes through can be referred to as a warm sounding system.

[Nigel Goodwin]

Originally Posted by Dan Sette

Interesting debate.

I can't believe that a £25 amp is the equal of a £250 amp or a £2,500 amp. Though the law of diminishing returns comes into the equation and one isn't going to be 10 or 1000 times better.

I would 100% agree with that regarding an 'amp' - but a simple preamp is a different matter - and a multi-thousand pound preamp will only have a few pounds worth of components in it.

Meridian, Project, Audio Research, Bowers and Wilkins for those interested.

I've always like B&W speakers, Celestion made some great ones as well - is Audio Research the same as Acoustic Research?, they made some nice speakers as well. You mentioned KEF, they made nice speakers - with a number of top speaker manufacturers using KEF drive units (as did many home made designs).

[Nigel Goodwin]

Originally Posted by Deacon1972

Why are these terms imaginary and meaningless?

I could show you two systems where one would be more detailed than the other, two more systems where one has better channel separation/placement of special fx than the other, and a further two systems where one has a warm rich sound, the other being overly bright.

Terms like warmth and bright basically refer to bass/treble, a system that reproduces too much treble can be referred to as a bright system. A system where the mid range comes through can be referred to as a warm sounding system.

Then why not refer to it as a poorly designed frequency response? - any preamp which isn't flat over more than the audio range would be a pretty poor design.

[Deacon1972]

Originally Posted by Nigel Goodwin

Then why not refer to it as a poorly designed frequency response? - any preamp which isn't flat over more than the audio range would be a pretty poor design.

I suppose it's because these terms are self explanatory, they are to me - describing a system that has a poorly designed frequency response doesn't really explain how the system sounds, just that it may not have the 20hz - 20KHz response that most systems are advertised as having.

It's not the frequency response of the system as such, it may well be able to reproduce frequencies from 20Hz - 20KHz, but it's how it produces them, you want the soundtrack to be as close to the original, you don't want the percussion drowning out the clarinets.