Sacred cows will get you nowhere
Let's try to shoot some holes in a few favorite topics of hi-fi reviewing. One of my pet hates is soundstaging. For some people, this seems to be very important. For me, it isn't. When asked if the hardware he sells images well, Colin Hammerton---an expatriate Brit working as British amp manufacturer Exposure's importer in Germany---says, "I don't want to hear where the musicians are on stage. I want to hear why they are on stage." I couldn't agree more. Please don't get the impression that I'm against soundstaging---it's nice to have. It just doesn't…
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THX has drawn our attention to the fact that room size influences perceived tonal balance. Listening rooms tend to be much smaller than the halls or studios in which music is recorded (this is even more true in Europe than in the US). Thus, if a recording is true to the original event but is reproduced in a smaller room, it will sound too bright---which, again, seems to indicate that a truly flat system will sound bright (footnote 10).
These factors have long been known to audio designers. Having spoken to a number of manufacturers of drive-units, I know that it's relatively easy to make…
In my estimation, the writing style that prevails in current hi-fi journalism is an attempt to describe the sonic presentation as an abstraction from the listening experience, in an attempt to produce results that do not depend on a certain kind of music, but can be related to the perceived requirements of a given style of music. If a review states that a speaker has abrasive highs, it matters little if this observation was made while listening to massed violins or to a rock guitar. The assumption is that the reader then translates this observation to his own listening experience and decides…
"The essence of an interpretation lies in working on the infinitely small---be it an attack on a note held back for a fraction of a second (perceptible if the preceding note is reproduced neither too short nor too long), or be it a note that develops in itself; or, on a larger level, a crescendo or diminuendo encompassing several notes---all of which gives music a sense of direction, its palpable dynamics, its quivering life, and all of which, in the end, lies in the nuances.
"Which explains, by the way, why certain old loudspeakers with a very high sensitivity and thus a very high…
I think that this factor, tonal balance, is another key aspect in which old gear has an advantage over much modern equipment, and is as important as the low-level dynamics Jean-Marie Piel was talking about. Jean Hiraga, a French journalist whose writings appear mostly in the Nouvelle Revue du Son, has often cited the "Law of 400,000": The product of a loudspeaker's -3dB points should always be 400,000. If a speaker is down 3dB at 20Hz, it should be down 3dB at 20,000Hz; if a speaker is down 3dB at 40Hz, it should be down 3dB at 10,000Hz; and so on. This law is simplistic, because it is…
Letters in response appeared in the March, April, and May 2000 issues:
Epiphanies
Editor: I just finished reading Markus Sauer's article in the January issue. This is the kind of writing that generates those life-changing moments of clarity that are so rare in my life. My highest praise to Stereophile for printing it.
The nature of my epiphany is of my very perception of music. Until this day I had assumed that only the most accurate reproduction, the truest to the original, could be the answer to my quest. But my listening is almost all for pleasure, and not necessarily for…
The closest approach...
Editor: I read Markus Sauer's "God is in the Nuances" articles with great interest. I've believed for several years that listeners' emotional reactions to differences in reproduced sound (as opposed to their perceptions of sound quality) could and should be investigated experimentally, just as are other psychological phenomena.
Editor: I read Markus Sauer's "God is in the Nuances" articles with great interest. I've believed for several years that listeners' emotional reactions to differences in reproduced sound (as opposed to their perceptions of sound quality) could and should be investigated experimentally, just as are other psychological phenomena.
Jürgen Ackermann's experiment seems to be a successful example of this. While no doubt many will argue with them, his findings---that listeners responded more positively emotionally to tube and analog components than to transistor and…
Unconstructive stereotypes?
Editor: I read with great interest Markus Sauer's insightful and thought-provoking two-part essay ("God is in the Nuances," January and February, 2000) on music and high-end sound. Although I agree with much of what Sauer wrote, there is a disturbing undercurrent throughout the article best summarized by this excerpt from Sauer's first installment: "It seems that much of the high-end sound experience is just that: an experience of sound, not of music-generated emotion, and that many expensive high-end systems are not one iota better at generating a musical…
Editor: I read with great interest Markus Sauer's insightful and thought-provoking two-part essay ("God is in the Nuances," January and February, 2000) on music and high-end sound. Although I agree with much of what Sauer wrote, there is a disturbing undercurrent throughout the article best summarized by this excerpt from Sauer's first installment: "It seems that much of the high-end sound experience is just that: an experience of sound, not of music-generated emotion, and that many expensive high-end systems are not one iota better at generating a musical…
Markus Sauer responds:
Editor: I was glad to see a number of reader's letters regarding my "Nuances" articles. My initial reaction was not to respond; I've had my say, now let the readers have theirs. However, there are two letters which make me wonder if I expressed my views as clearly as I should have.
Mr. Alter, whose letters I have read with great interest and respect over the years, accuses me of being untrue to Stereophile's original ethos of high fidelity reproduction. And Mr. Barringer accuses me of the abandonment of accuracy in sound reproduction equipment.
Not…
Single-ended triode (SET) amplifiers are typically paired with horn loudspeakers, for good reason: most SETs produce very low power, so to get acceptable loudness you need a highly sensitive speaker, which means horns. Similarly, horn owners are often advised that the best amplifier for their speakers is a SET. Certainly, the horn-SET combination can be magical, but, in my experience, SETs are not the only type of amplifier that can sound good with horns.
Mike Sanders of Quicksilver Audio agrees. He's a fan of horns, but his preferred amplifier design is push-pull rather than single-…