The Great Debate: Amir vs Arny

The Great Debate, Part 1110250, at AVSForum

The Great Debate, Part 1110251, at What is Best Forum (where Amir is a moderator).  Amir starts it by saying this thread was inspired by a thread at AVSForum, although he didn't link to it.*  The previous thread seemed to be the one…but I'm not sure because there were many others!  And, note that the threads I have linked are a hundred pages or more.  Are audiophiles obsessed with their arguments or what?  We are (yes me included) apparently argumentophiles also.

(*Sadly, typical of how Amir argues, without linking back to demonstrations of crucial points.  In contrast Arny's arguments are almost always backed up with a plethora of links, though not always of the highest quality and many are now dead, including his sadly long gone website pcabx.  For the service he has rendered to society, yes simply by being a gadfly and contrarian to the mainstream high end audio industry, I think Arny should have the resources of a titan of industry himself, but I fear it's not like that at all...)

Technically these debates are about whether the potential improvements from "high resolution digital audio" (meaning it has greater than 16 bit resolution and/or greater sampling rate than 44.1kHz).  But it's also a debate about methods, results, and personalities in all aspects of The Great Debate between White Hats and Black Hats (the terms coined by Peter Aczel, a self declared White Hat who believes that most decent amplifiers sound the same, the classic White Hat position going back to the 1970's).  We've apparently even superseded the always shaky term "Audio Objectivist" (having nothing to do with, say, Ayn Rand) and "Audio Subjectivist" with Amir calling himself the Objectivist--so where does that put Arny?  The object/subject difference hardly gets at it either, since Black Hats (and especially Grey Hats, like John Atkinson--I respect him and his self identification, and myself) may be quite into certain kinds of measurements, or at least technical phenomena, real things happening, that just don't happen to tickle the White Hat sense of importance.  And a hidden argument which is never even touched is absolutely fundamental--must everything pass DBT immediately, and what if not?  Should technical criteria (say, Jitter) be ignored simply because there is no current DBT proof of their importance?  I strongly think not, however any person not an Amir or higher titan of industry has to prioritize, and I've been shaming myself for spending several years now far more on digital issues even at the fringe of the Grey Hat regime, when I sort of intended to have been working on room acoustic issues instead.  So Jitter should not be ignored, and let's have John Atkinson's and even better jitter tests developed.  But generally, we should probably move on to more important things.  We should be skeptical of all existing Black Hat claims, but not necessarily at the existence of to-be-found issues discovered by Black Hats, even as White Hats do, though the White Hats always often end up with the more minimal explanation.  So the world needs everyone, even as it needs everyone's mind to evolve.

Amir Majidimehr (principal of Madrona, formerly VP of Windows Digital Media at Microsoft) and Arny Kruger have been frequently sparring about what equipment differences are actually audible.  And this goes way back.  Though I'm not sure how long Amir has been involved in these debates, Arny has been involved since at least 1976, and he has recounted a history of the development of the ABX test method around that time and the ABX comparator in 1982.  He was one of the principles of the ABX company.  The very creation of the ABX test method over 30 years ago was precisely to answer the question of what equipment differences are audible.  Way back in the mid 1970's as an audio society member Arny was involved in these debates, and he's still at it now on a multitude of websites.

Reading Arny (who I've never met in person) I am very impressed with his arguments and generally the ways he makes them.  I'm also very impressed with his patience and dedication.  I think I take his side, mostly.

Reading Amir, it is clear he is very smart and is a very technically qualified professional audio designer.  I believe he is honest and not a shill.  However I think he makes poor and sometimes ugly arguments (often to authority, and sometimes to his own authority, and often discrediting the authority of others) far more often than Arny does.  He also seems to me much more to be a tireless bully.  Nevertheless, Amir may be right about some things.

Sadly, in these arguments, there isn't really a suitable technical qualification.  Certainly being an electrical engineer, as such, doesn't necessarily make you an audio scientist, and The Great Debate is not engineering it is Science.  Within Science "Audio Science" is too small to be particularly tractable.

The Audio Engineering Society (AES) is really an engineering organization, not a scientific one, but it does strive mightily (and perhaps too mightily) to retain respectability.  Therefore it is not surprising it cleaves tightly to Double Blind Testing results in its papers which are often written by academic scientists and not engineers.  Meanwhile, many audio engineers don't bother with DBT's.  Many have never done DBT's and never will, but nevertheless often are believed to speak with authority about such matters.

The truth is, right now, there is no authority.  And it is difficult to establish one given all the possible economic conflicts of interest, not to mention egos, etc.

Amir starts the second thread with a post showing a DBT result which confirms his ability to hear the benefit of high resolution.  At the beginning, Arny was not posting (and in fact Amir said that Arny had permanently retired from posting after Amir had posted some brilliant refutation--another unfortunate Amirism).  I have been unable to confirm that Arny ever quit posting anywhere, and in fact Arny posted to this exact thread some time later, as well as continuing to post at AVSForum and HydrogenAudio).

It happens I have seen at least one of Arny's argument which has has often made with regards to some DBT results.  He has argued that high frequency nonlinearity in amplifiers, speakers, or headphones can produce differences at audible frequencies, and that is what people are hearing.

As it turns out, at least in the first page or so of the second thread, Amir did not reveal the particular equipment he had gotten his positive test results with.  I had read up to the first point and which that question was asked an an answer still was not provided.

Now quite often subjectivist reviewers are quite clear about what equipment they have used to perform some test, and when they do so they go into great detail about every last cable involved, because of course they believe it is all of importance.

So it is more than a bit suspicious actually that Amir left out this detail.

I have not read all of either thread, though it looks somewhat worthwhile for someone like me who remains very interested in The Debate, despite going on for hundreds of pages.

One of the high points of the second thread is where Amir presents a very respectable paper published by AES (Convention Paper 9174 presented at the 137th convention of AES in 2014, by Helen Jackson, Michael Capp, and J. Robert Stuart) recently proving the audible differences of different kinds of digital filters.  That result does cleave very much away from the "all digital sounds perfect" position of the White Hats, including Arny.

(Similar experiments in the past with positive results have been shot down on the basis of sampling artifacts caused by equipment configuration.  In a earlier blog discussing that, Arny nails the best way of preparing test material.  It should start from the High Res material then be down sampled to the lower rate.  THEN it should be up sampled to the high rate again so as to avoid playback differences caused by switching sampling rates.)

Now one wouldn't think J. Robert Stuart (a Fellow of the Audio Engineering Society) would make such mistakes.  But it seems he may have padded this test in various ways, according to Arny and others at Hyrdogen audio.  It's clear from information available that Stuart used defective Rectangular Dither in this test.  He tries to justify this on the basis that "it is often used."  He knows it is not the best because he makes products that use the better method (some kind of triangular).  The question being addressed is not Rectangular dither.  The correct approach is to use the best reasonably available technology except for the item being tested.  So, sadly, this positive looking result is not acceptable and the Convention Paper now looks more like slanted advertising for Meridian.  AJ at Hydrogen Audio writes:

The BS test is a complete farce and fabrication of results in a desperate attempt to justify $$$ales of "Hi Rez" which of course nosed dived once people realized the scam, confirmed by M&Ms AES peer reviewed tests of actual audiophools, their hardware and purported "Hi Rez" media, the EXACT conditions they and the scam industry claimed to be able to "hear" differences.
The scam industry does not require the audiophool be "trained", the "Hi Rez" equipment/system to be certified, the room to have a specific noise floor, or the music content be cherry picked and doctored as in the BS test.

And he goes on…  But I believe he meant to say "the music content must be NOT be cherry picked and doctored."  That may be required for some official standards.  But if we are talking about the limits of audibility, cherry picking sample music that best illustrates the differences between system is fine, and even doctoring that music is fine (so long as this is described).  To say that we must prove limits of audible differences only on average hifi systems with average music is ludicrous.  I am fine with parts of the Meridian test methodology.  But the whole experiment sucks because it seems the control condition uses outdated technology that was not supposed to be under test.  It is that particular part that blew it.

I will say emphatically that a person's achievements in audio engineering do not necessarily qualify that person or any person to make an authoritative statement about The Great Debate.  Even very qualified, experienced, and successful audio engineers are not necessarily up to speed on this.  It requires a skeptical stance toward many things, which is not engendered in our society, and a broad view rather than a focused specialist one.  Such skepticism is not about making money, and these days the incentive exists to show that everything is audible, because that sells more stuff.  Nor is it about "proving" anything except to the fickle and superstitious marketplace.  Successful audio engineers can therefore not be expected to have explored finding The Truth very deeply as part of being successful.  They only have their personal truths, which work for their game.

So even what some experienced engineer says is not evidence.  The only admissible evidence is from actual double blind testing done to the highest standard, and every aspect of that testing is open to deep criticism.  Will progress be made?  Who knows!  Heat death of the Sun or the collapse of human civilization may well occur first.

My position remains that the audible differences that Black Hats obsess about and White Hats dismiss are likely very small, if they exist at all.  That idea is tangentially supported by a very sophisticated exploration of the meaning of p values in testing I have been reading:

Getting a big p-value is not, by itself, very informative; even getting a small p-value has uncomfortable ambiguity. My advice would be to always supplement a p-value with a confidence set, which would help you tell apart "I can measure this parameter very precisely, and if it's not exactly 0 then it's at least very small" from "I have no idea what this parameter might be".

OK, this doesn't appear to apply to the Great Debate at all, because it's concerning the situation even when you have small P values, whereas the problem with most DBT's in The Great Debate is the continuing lack of small P values generally.  But turn it around, and you see even if we were getting small P values consistently it still wouldn be The Proof many people want.  The fact that p values are related to effect size and sample size means it's not easy to tease these things apart.  The safest thing to assume when an effect that is expected isn't verified in DBT is that the effect is small, not that it does not exist.

But this is never what the blackest of Black Hats say.  They always trumpet their unproven differences as very important, because otherwise why would anyone spend the megabucks necessary for Black Hat tweaks such as cryogenically treated cables?

We cannot trust the most successful audio designers or retailers any more than we can the most successful lawyers.   We can have much more trust in the White Hats who have gained little and have nothing to sell.  Things are not proven until they agree also.  The whole history of high end audio is full of flimflam, lies, and half-truths.  Progress has been made, but more slowly because of that.

James's Charlie and SAE

The low serial Sumo Charlie with rack handles (indicating final alignment by James Bongiorno) is a remarkably nice sounding tuner.  As with the non-handled Charlie, there is reduction of ambience, but not nearly as much.  The quieting is just as good or better.  It is able to hold the weakest of my favorite stations, KSYM, in wide stereo.  That was just the trick, I thought.  Then I brought back the other Charlie and unlike the week before, it was now holding KSYM in wide stereo also.  Shows the need for quick A/B switching when testing tuners.  Even if you can remember the sound or reception objectively, it can differ from time to time.

If Charlie can't hold KSYM in wide, it has to be switched to the inferior narrow.  Actually I had no need to use the Narrow IF in my one day testing of the handled Charlie, and I forgot to do so, but it would be interesting to see if it sounded better too.

The handled Charlie has the punchy bass and clear highs that I associate with the Marantz 20B, which I think Bongiorno may have worked with when he was at Marantz in the mid 1960's.  I suspect that is where he learned the best way to align an IF, or at least the Marantz 10 and 20 way, and he carried this knowledge with him to SAE and Sumo.

And speaking of the Bongiorno sound, I unpacked the SAE MkVIII to check it out, and it had, fuzzily, a similar sound.  This was the first tuner whose design could be more or less fully credited to Bongiorno.  He had been hired to save the MkVI tuners, but he had to work with what SAE had already done.  On the MkVIII, he was given a free hand to make a cost-reduced tuner nearly as good (and it could actually be better).

Despite my belief that air capacitor front ends are better, I actually though the Charlie to have better sound than the SAE MkVIII.  The SAE was slightly noisier, though, and the punchy bass and clear highs were a tad less punchy and clear, respectively.  Perhaps it needs a front end alignment, which would be possible I think, or a refurb.  An IF alignment isn't possible because it uses potted IF modules.

Both these tuners have issues not revealed by the eBay sellers.  The Charlie has the thing I fear the most.  It has a serious smell problem, like the Marantz 2130 I now have in storage because I couldn't bear the smell inside my house.  A previous owner must have been a heavy cigarette smoker.  In all the equipment I've bought on eBay, I've only seen this problem with 2 different FM tuners.  I will not be able to keep this Charlie permanently in my house, though it seems OK now in the garage room which has the best ventilation.  But it sounds so good, I can't just return it or toss it either.  I have to continue with my Investigation of the Bongiorno-sound tuners!  My ultimate goal would be not just to determine how they differ among themselves and compared with other tuners, but why.  Just how exactly was the Charlie aligned by Bongiorno, and how did that differ from what Sumo did after Bongiorno left?  What did Bongiorno know about the IF alignment of the Marantz 10/20 and are they different fundamentally from other tuners?

The SAE has a problem with its numeric readout.  Not just the broken segment claimed by the seller, but an additional and far more bothersome problem right now.  It doesn't show the station frequencies accurately at all.  It is way, way, way off.  When tuned to 90.1 it shows 80.5, which isn't even a valid FM frequency.  When tuned to 88.3 it shows a number in the 70's.  But then once and awhile the number displayed will briefly snap to the correct number, and then back.

The numeric display on the SAE is utterly unlike that on the Charlie.  The SAE only shows the correct number (or whatever it shows) when you are actually tuned in to a station.  Until you are actually tuned into a new station, it shows the number of the station last tuned in.  So it's not as helpful as you might think.

Sadly the motorized Kenwood KT-413 isn't very good at all, and just as FMTunerInfo says.  But I'll add more.  The motor is very fast, even when switched to the "slow" position, and I think that is part of the problem.  Sometimes it actually skips over stations going one way, but finds it in the other.  One wonders how accurate the tuning is.  Anyway, the sound is noisy and wimpy and utterly unlike the Charlie.

DAC output level measurements

Since this blog is my notebook, here are the measurements of my various DACs, with 10M DMM loading (sorry didn't bother with different), at about -26dB (whatever level, it was consistent):

Denon DVD-5000:
L: 41.6 mV
R: 41.5 mV

Onkyo RDV-1:
L: 48.8 mV
R: 48.0 mV

Audio GD DAC 19
L: 63.0 mV
R: 63.3 mV

The Onkyo does show the most inter channel difference at 0.14dB, which is just above the usual 0.1dB matching requirement.  The Denon is the most tightly matched at 0.02dB.

I suspect the Denon has comparatively low output because it is saving output range (which may actually peak above 3V) for HDCD boost, but this is just a guess.

This shocked me to calculate, but the Audio GD is 2.2dB (left) and 2.4dB (right) louder than the Onkyo.  I would expect the measurements with actual amplifier loading (22k ohms) to be 0.2dB or less different at most and probably below 0.1dB different.

While ABX testing sets a condition at 0.1dB matching, typical matching isn't that good.  Some preamps with steps won't let you set balance closer than 1dB, though 0.5dB is common on digitally controlled preamps.  Old fashioned potentiometer volume controls might have +/-3dB inter channel mismatching (a 6dB total range)--so you really needed to use the companion balance control.  (I was glad to dump those in my then-main bedroom system in 2005 or so with a Classe CDP-35 preamp with digital volume control in no small part for the sake of being rid of potentiometer balance variation, which I barely remember but when I do it is with great dread.  Even my Aragon 28k preamp had considerable channel variation at the very low position I had to use on it.

Audio Nirvana Speakers…Slam!

I listened to these at a friend's house, Audio Nirvana speakers (12 or 15) in large and tall cabinets, with the speakers just above ear level IIRC.

It was in many ways very impressive sound, dynamic, full of slam, powerful and deep bass, clear midrange and highs, excellent left to right imaging, stable but not too much pinpoint.  He said he was unimpressed by other speakers he had heard, often very expensive, in audiophile's homes.  I sympathized with that, and in some parameters (dynamics and slam, especially) I have only heard megabuck systems at audiophile shows, like the largest MBL demonstration, that actually bettered what he could do.  Even with all my complicated and intentially overwideband system, I actually can't quite do slam as well, maybe, except perhaps if you are sitting in a corner instead of the sweet spot...

But I wouldn't say it was the least colored sound, it had clear colorations, a slightly exaggerated mid bass, elevated mid highs, obviously absent highest highs.  They always say things like "most people can't hear above 15,000 Hz anyway" but it seems to me, if it's missing, I can sense that somehow.  Though I couldn't name any instrument or anything that was obviously missing except for possibly noise anyway.  The other colorations seemed apparent but not particularly annoying either.  Possibly the worst aspects of this speaker could be fixed with digital EQ, making it truly reference, save for the supra 15 kHz…And there, supra 15kHz super tweeters might do the trick, without much messing the actual imaging.  Though once we get into all these further approximations of the needed changes, we would likely end up with…less slam.  The apparent missing high frequencies could also probably be adjusted with speaker aiming (beam that center right at the ears) and replacing damping used in the room with dispersion.  Much of what I was hearing as missing highs might not have actually been the speaker limitations.

Distortion, I don't know, he was playing pretty loudly in a small room, and there didn't appear to be anything like rising distortion near clipping.

But there was not much depth, and I think that was the ultimate sign of a cone speaker distortion type*…which should be expected!  The dynamic speaker is driven from the near center, and the propagation of sound through the speaker cone is dependent on frequency.  And the propagation through the speaker cone creates delayed radiation of that frequency for as long as it takes to travel through the speaker cone to it's ultimate point.  It's very fast in a relatively stiff cone (compared to air, say) but not instantaneous.  So there is an irreducible amount of time-smearing, and there may be some distortion from traveling through the cone also.

(*other explanations are possible, say related to room acoustics and speaker placement.)

There is one single cone (or mostly single cone) speaker which gets around these issues, and that's the Walsh driver, where the contour of the cone exactly matches the delay for time alignment.  And it also does it with omnidirectionality.

Actually, a relatively flat and stiff but still contoured cone like the Audio Nirvana may already do that same sort of thing to a considerable extent.  If we want to understand just this angle, we have to do the kinds of measurements few people bother to publish.  The sound suggests good but not quite perfect.

Anyway, electrostatics have their limitations too, which may be more bothersome to many who like slam.  These can be overcome in a reference system, like the one I'm still working on, with additional time aligned drivers for deep base, super highs, and so on.  Without those complicated fixes, whether one prefers electrostatics or single cone Audio Nirvana is a matter of choice, neither is perfect really.

So the Audio Nirvana approach makes a truly excellent Value system (by Audiophile standards of Value…non-audiophiles would think you were already spending enough for Reference).  But it may not offer as much potential for improvement as a system based on electrostatic panels plus additional drivers like mine.  I imagine that Electrostat loving friends of mine might be horrified at the idea their speakers are lacking anything, but I think it's a mainstream perception anyway that you get maximum slam with a dynamic loudspeaker system.  People like me try to get the best of both, by mixing both.

It's kind of a miracle that they've made single dynamic drivers these good now.  Most people would not think it possible.  I didn't.

Updating the SACD player

In sorting out my junk for sale, I also retested my Sony DVP-NS500V dvd player.  This was in the second generation of SACD playing products (after the SCD-1/777ES), and it was the lowest priced single disc SACD player.  It was also a DVD player of pretty low credentials now.

It was a cult player, and favorite of modifiers because you could buy this player new for as little as $149 and then fill it up with $1000 or more of mods, and people would say it challenged the big dogs.  My audio-nut brother-in-law liked it pure stock as the best sounding SACD player, I think for the few days that he even considered SACD's worth listening to.  He had suggested that the second generation of SACD decoders from Sony was better than the first.

In scientifically useless sighted testing I preferred it in some ways to the Denon 5900, my living room player.  It had a more dynamic and expressive sound on SACD's.  The Denon sounded quieter, cleaner, as though it wasn't taking any chances.   On CD's I preferred the Denon 5900 and even the Denon 2900.

Now I don't take SACD or the equivalent (and I stress equivalent) digital file format DSD as the ultimate of anything other than hype.  In no way are these formats superior to PCM formats using the same amount of data, and my personal feeling remains that SACD's or PCM files are even inferior to Redbook CD….although it may be fooling at times since the SACD does have better midrange dynamic range.

So I don't obsess about SACD's or pure DSD signal paths.  But I feel it's worth having the best SACD playback, at least, as I can, for music that is only or best available that way.

I couldn't have pure DSD anyway because  the backbone of my system, from selection to level control and crossover and EQ are all done in PCM, and cannot be done in anything like DSD anyway.  I read SACD's by resampling them to 24/96 digital using a Lavry AD10.

I strongly reject the concept that DSD files have the potential to sound better than optical disc transports.  Highly tuned optical disc transports have the possibility of not only having the lowest jitter, but of having a particular kind of forward-motion timing much like idler wheel turntables.  Lack of motion is not a possible state, given the rotational inertia and forward drive force.  Whatever variation exists is forward running and not fed back into itself.  This is going to sound free as in freedom.  Meanwhile, most asynchronous digital systems like USB and Sonos operate on the principles of handshaking and full duplex communication.  This is going to have a different kind of time signature, one of deliberate action, give and take, action and reaction.  I know this sounds like magical thinking, and may be, but it seems to me that at the very finest of levels, these correlations (or something similar to what I'm describing) are what actually exists…whether we can detect them or not.  Clocks are never exactly perfect, etc., and furthermore in real systems all the imperfections have ample force to be correlated through sharing space, grounding, and connections.  When you have multiple stages of time varying devices which are intended to reject the incoming time variations, they can never do it perfectly.  Basically, everything is awash in tiny variations, with relationships that produce actual if not statistically verifiable correlations.  The mere fact that you have "buffering" or whatever doesn't mean the problem is completely solved…at least at the level of the tiniest actual particles and wavelengths, variations continue to go on at the tiniest of levels, and everything within an electromagnetic sphere of influence has some contribution to the proceedings.  Best is to make everything, at every level and every way, as stable, simple, uncorrelated (free), forward running, and close to the next amplifier as possible (distance is loss too), that's the best linear system for music.  That's what you get with a very high end packaged SACD player, as compared with a network of interacting devices which ultimately decodes DSD files.  And timing is more critical to DSD.

(Audibility?  There is no reason to believe such effects would be remotely audible (DSD 1x files vs SACD players).  Jitter becomes audible many orders of magnitude better than the worst but correctly performing digital equipment, according to published research.  But remember, proven audibility is not what I am concerned about.  What I am concerned about is not the verifiable, but the potential for difference, a difference that ultimately might make a difference within the infinite possibilities of the future.  Anyway nobody who claims an audible difference can back that up with scientifically respectable research at this point.  It's all just hand waving.  So if I can point to what actually has better potential, not just someone's current opinion based on biases, I win.)

So I believe it's worth having an SACD optical player, and maybe even play CD's this way too, by resampling them to digital rather than using the digital output or digital files.  I am thinking now that this  works precisely because both the player and the ultimate digital signal are decoupled in time.  Digital sampling is measurably so close to perfect as to be as good as any analog preamp, so there is no penalty for using it in this way, and anything can be resampled to anything else with nearly perfect dithering.

And now I find out that generally the first generation DAC chips Sony used in its statement SACD players, the SCD-1 and SCD-777es and also the cheaper DVP-9000ES, the "V24" series, is considered superior to the second generation chipset in my NS500V player…which was intended for AV products and not audiophile products.

I'd always lusted over the cool looking SCD-1 with a top loading drive with weight, which I think in general is a superior configuration (though the specific unit in the SCD-1 may not be as good as transports in other units such as Esoteric and Accuphase which are conventional drawer loading--or even possibly the transport in the DVP-9000ES).  Now I find out I can get almost the same thing in the 777ES, but all the players after that, including the current 5400ES, look cheaply built in comparison, lacking the heavy build and heavy transport.

(When a CD plays in a cheap front loading player, it may be vibrating like hell.  You wonder how the system works, but it works just up to a breaking point.  But this is further time variation at the beginning of the whole process, messing everything up downstream, no matter how much buffering, etc., there is a chain of causality and correlation is created.  And with higher speed media such as SACD, it's 10 times worse, or maybe 20 times worse, on top of the timing itself being 64x more critical.  Now the vibration may not always be so bad, I'm talking worst case here.  But you simply can't imagine this happening with a SACD clamped or weighted down onto a heavy metal platform.  So this is why I like the idea of a top loading player, because it makes sure you are going to have a flat spinning disc without too much vibration.)

So the kind of thing I'd like to get would be SCD-1, SCD-777ES, DVP-9000ES.  Also it looks like the Marantz units are especially good, and may honor the SACD/DSD signal better than Denon.  Something like an SA11.  I'm not sure whether the Esoteric DV-50, now available not too far out of my price range, would honor SACD as well but it could be far better with CD's, and looks to have a transport that may be among the best among these alternatives.

I actually don't see any reason why having the laser fixed as in the SCD-1 is a good idea.  The usual method of fixing the spindle sounds much easier, and possibly better.  Might as well have the rotating element fixed--it's certainly the harder thing to move.  A simpler top loading drive would be a good idea, for reasons I have explained, but neither Sony nor Esoteric nor Accuphase nor Marantz offer that. I do have the feeling now that of the mechanisms available, the top of the line Esoteric is the best.  But that's not something I can imagine affording soon.  At this point I can only imagine the DV50 and that is really way beyond my need for SACD, and I think it might not be the better choice for SACD among these options anyway, though it could make up for any inferiorities with a better mechanism too perhaps.

Timing is very very important for one bit formats.  In a way, all of the information is just timing.  So an especially good transport is a must.  Sadly many of the old classics like the CEC belt drive transport were made for CD not SACD.

Rethinking the Sumo Charlie Tuner

The Sumo Charlie tuner produces good sounds: very quiet, and yet also very dynamic and tuneful, even on weak college radio stations.  In comparison, a Yamaha T-80 (the penultimate model just below the famed super tuner T-85) has more noticeable noise on just-above-stereo-threshold signals, and even without the high filter (which I cannot bear at all because of how dull it makes everything) seems slightly dull and tuneless but has more real 3D ambience if you listen for it.  The Charlie seems to bring the musicians into my living room, stripped of their original ambient environment, but close up so you see them better, as part of achieving the low noise yet dynamic (passionate!) sound.  It isn't really what I want, I want to be transported in my imagination to the musical venue, but it's an interesting trick, since not much else seems to be lost.  In particular the Charlie does not sound "filtered" (as in held back) in any way, indeed the dynamic sound seems exactly the opposite, full of life, moxie, and musicality.  It is not especially lacking highs, though the bass does seem a bit bumped up and loose from everything else, and you might wonder if the highs aren't slightly reduced, but there's no pervasive dullness.  I like the Yang sound more than Yin sounding tuners like the T-80 (the T-85 is a Yang sounding tuner like the Charlie, actually not quite as much as the Charlie, but not an ambience minimizer).  You only notice the missing ambience if you have previous experience with good hifi and good tuners, as I do.  (Interestingly, just as this tuner was being made James Bongiorno left the hifi business and started talking about how he enjoyed his own grand piano better.)

I noticed this lack of ambience in the Charlie output, and then noticed that others have made the exact same observations at FMtunerinfo, that the Charlie sound falls down from lack of ambience and depth.  It is said to sound "flat" (meaning lack of depth and 3D).  It is said to have bumped up sounding bass (which actually measures flat).

It's also doing extremely well for a 35 year old tuner that has never had any kind of refurb.

I do not observe a general lack of sensitivity and weak stations come in remarkably quietly (if not the actual quietest).   However the muting is very fussy about actual quieting and will mute even the strongest of stations if there is an interfering signal nearby.  The best solution is to enable the narrow IF when this happens. Unfortunately the narrow IF does have a negative effect on the sound, but many stations require the narrow IF anyway.  If instead you disable the muting, then you get the problem of stereo intermittently dropping out, and there is a temporary muting when stereo goes in and out, which is annoying.  Furthermore, neither the muting nor stereo thresholds are adjustable externally.

Many Yamahas and many other Japanese tuners would automatically engage the Narrow IF in situations like this, or at least have an "auto" mode which would.  Bongiorno leaves all controls fully manual, and not even retained in the station memory, so you have to remember which stations need Narrow and which work even better in Wide, and you must manually engage the correct IF even when using the 5 presets.

This might not have turned out exactly the way Bongiorno wanted.  Full manual and presets would have been OK if the stereo could come in and out without much effect.

I think the muting may have been less fussy when I first bought this tuner in 2000.  But maybe I was also less observant and more inclined to just use Narrow (which I didn't hear any difference from then, either).

I'm now thinking the fussy IF and the in-your-room sound are two sides of the same coin (design).

The development of this tuner was a life's work for Bongiorno, given his history of working as an assistant on legendary tuners including the Marantz 10B, the SAE MkIV, and as a primary designer of the SAE Mk VIII (aka 8000).  He joked about the Charlie tuner when I first met him at the first GAS company in 1976, and a GAS prototype was built, but it was not until the Sumo stint that Bongiorno finally got to do things the way he wanted…or maybe not quite (and perhaps it's no coincidence that Bongiorno's association with Sumo ended just before the last batch of Charlie's could be personally adjusted by Bongiorno himself).

I know Bongiorno was interested in tuner IF stages because…he got me interested in them!  In one of the most memorable experiences in my life, Bongiorno was the presenter at a San Diego Audio Society meeting (sometime before I became President of SDAS) around 1981.  He talked about tuners and different kinds of IF's, and I'm sure I asked him a question or two that suggested to him a deep ability to misunderstand what he said.

I don't even necessarily remember him pushing The Charlie.  At that meeting he praised recent Kenwood tuners as much as Marantz, etc., and singled out the L-01t and L-02t.  Well he was always a windbag and mostly a self-promoter, but he nailed that one, way back then, as it took me years to discover.

I imagine the development of The Charlie to have been a battle between Bongiorno and the manufacturer, and even the very thing that led him to leaving the company and the hifi business.  It is not a fully successful realization of what Bongiorno had imagined it could be.  And I chalk this off to the lack of awareness at the time (and even through the marketing of the designs Bongiorno had previously been associated with) of the importance of tuner front ends and the pervasive weaknesses of varactor based front ends.

So it's not the most wonderful tuner ever.  But it is relatively unique in the singularity toward which the IF was designed.  It uniquely suppresses hiss despite the weak front end.  Unlike the Pioneer F-93 and similar tuners which used very complex processing to achieve a similar effect, and I should also mention Carver who long did similar things, Bongirno was able to achieve similar effects merely by the way he tuned the IF.

As people have said regarding the F-93, though it has weaknesses, there may be stations it renders more listenable and enjoyable than other tuners, despite limitations.

Though right now it seems I enjoy the presentation of other tuners, especially my F-26 and L-1000t better, on the stations I actually listen to.

One of the things that blew my mind regarding Frequency Modulation a few years ago was learning that FM produces not just 200 kHz of modulations…but an infinite spectrum of modulation.  To really decode FM properly would require unlimited wideband…with open airwaves at all other frequencies.

With a fully continuous signal, such as a 880 kHz sine wave, all these sidebands are going to basically contain the same information.  But with a constantly changing signal, they are going to represent small differences in time.

So having a very high Q filter in the IF, which restricts these sidebands severely, the effect is going to be that things that are more changing are going to be discarded.  That nicely suppresses noise, but it simultaneously suppresses correlations only seen in the very wide IF--the ambience!

My mysticism tells me the Charlie should not have needed that 280 Mhz ceramic, which is messing the whole can.  But that would suggest I have the Q thing backward, or perhaps if you're going high Q you have to high Q all the way.

But perhaps it had to have the 280 Mhz ceramic because of the weak front end.  A nice air capacitor front end could have done wonders.

*****

It lacks remote, which I need in my setup.  But it looks cool, the 100 kHz steps are cool in some ways (you don't feel a need to mess with fine tuning--since you can't anyway), it is far simpler (and easier to deal with) than the Kenwood KT-6040 I'm now using as my remote tuner  With the Charlie, I tune in the station and press Narrow if needed…done.  On the Kenwood there are scads of different combinations of settings including off tuning that may be helpful, and for some reason I off tune every station now.

It does seem that Bongiorno didn't just buy off-the-shelf front end…he got them to do particular things. And it does seem that it's been quite stable, over time, to work as well as it does now, 34 years or so after having been made.  Bongiorno was a stickler for lack-of-drift in the frequency domain.

I was just about to sell mine, but after listening to it's unique presentation I've decided to keep it for now in my tuner Collection Museum and even get a Bongiorno Tuned unit if I can.  I sometimes joke that I could use it, in a closed FM circuit, as a special effect processor--ambient stripper.  But IF I maintain a collection of 10 or so tuners, which I'm thinking is ok (though many of the ones I have now should go).  The the real angle is the same as the F-93 one.  There might someday be a station it gets better than other tuners in it's unique way.

Regarding the off tuning of the Narrow IF…I think this was a deliberate if partly unsuccessful attempt to utilize the effect of closely tuned--but not exactly tuned--serial filters in making a super filter.  This is rarely attempted.  It has failed to reach objectives I fear, and especially in its sonics.  One can hear a similar effect with off tuned crystals…though the crystals are more inherently effective.

As it turned out, the lousy sounding Narrow IF is worth avoiding if you can, and I can avoid it most stations but not the college radio stations I now use the Kenwood KT-6040 for.  So it can replace neither the F-26 nor the KT-6040 in my setup, but if I had a dozen tuners online it would be an interesting one, especially if I could add remote to it.

**** Update 9 PM

I have won a second Charlie, one with the handles which means it was given the final alignment by Bongiorno himself.  It has an amazingly low serial number too.  Actually my unhanded unit has a serial number in the 1400's…which makes me wonder about production estimates I've seen that put the number of handled units over 2000.

I don't know why it didn't occur to me back when I was blogging daily at the FMTuners group, back when Bongiorno himself was participating, and I complained about not having a handled unit (he made me an offer for tuning AND upgrade which I never followed through on) having the magic adjustment, why I didn't just get a second unit?  Well back then the handled units did command a considerably higher price, and the unhanded ones too, and I had read all the complaints about the tuner and how it's performance was substandard (some of which may be explained by not setting the Narrow switch when needed). And, I didn't believe a Charlie would solve the strange whistle I had been hearing in KPAC, which had been my motivation for trying so many tuners.  I had hoped that a fully (or at least nearly fully) LC type IF would eliminate the problem, and it clearly didn't, or the unhanded Charlie would do it too.

(Many tuners later, and a big experiment, I determined the problem was with the station transmission system.  The Charlie, which attenuates the gaussian, wouldn't help.  The Sony XDR-F1 eliminated it entirely…but falsely, which is the problem of open ended noise elimination systems, they always reduce real information along with the noise.)

Now I'd like to know, among other things, what is the difference?  Is the Narrow tuned to sound better, for example???

Vintage vs Pre-Owned

As it has turned out for many reasons, I purchased relatively few of my audio components brand new through an audio dealer.  I often buy used components precisely because I can (often) get exactly what I want at reasonable prices.  The real high end components I have lusted after, such as the Krell FPB 300 I have now, were just too expensive at their original prices for me to have even contemplated buying (or so I thought) and I had even less spare cash way back through the 70's, 80's, and 90's.  It's really only been during the past 5 or so years I've had the kind of money to imagine buying such things, and since then I've been more preoccupied with making my house into a more livable castle…so I still haven't had the money for truly high end gee gaws (though, through a series of steps last year I ended up spending about $3500 on 6 turntables of which all except for one are still in "project" or "spare" status…and I coulda gotten one pretty nice one for that much cash, much nicer than the actual working one I got and am now using--though still not the kinds of ones I lusted after and what my project-phase tables will represent when and if they are finished or at least brought to a good plateau…the plan is ultimately to have a hot rod Technics in the bedroom and a hot rod Lenco in the living room, and backup tables for each one).

I ok with this general approach, and actually I very much like getting super fancy pre-owned stuff from much richer people who have already taken off the biggest chunk of the original price for me.  I like good sounding stuff but I'm also a sucker for features and and the right kinds of fanciness.  I get no thrill out of finding the $19 portable CD player that blows away all the heavyweights from Wadia, Theta, and Krell.  My brother-in-law goes about things more that way, and I followed him for several iterations of that search.  By his lights at any given time, I wouldn't have to search, he had already Found the one that blew away every expensive DAC he had ever heard.  But by the time I actually bought the each of the $19 players he was bragging about, he had already moved on to the next one, preamp-of-the-month style.  Not only were his judgements not the ultimate judgements claimed, I myself couldn't really be sure any one was better or not than anything else I had.  Meanwhile, I was stuck with a growing pile of flimsy cheap looking, cheap feeling, and often cheap sounding and marginally reliable stuff* I really didn't care for that much.

And I still lusted after the brushed or anodized metal heavyweights.  I very much like the High End audio magazines (Stereophile, The Absolute Sound) and endless webzines covering the mega expensive equipment few people, including me, can afford.  Because I'm just reading about the stuff I could be buying in 10 years with a zero or two lopped off the price.  Or I can think about how I am achieving the same or better things with my stuff, or perhaps could with a tiny bit of adjustment.  And anyway, it's escapism, the higher the prices the more we can simply ignore any feeling that we MUST buy this, and instead appreciate the vicarious experience, often saying to ourselves we have better for much less.

(*To be clear, often the anodized heavyweights that look like you could drive a truck over them fall ill at the first chill and must be sent back for repair.  In fact things are all too often precisely this way, the heavyweight equipment is designed for Performance first and reliability isn't something that necessarily comes from overbuilding and most often doesn't, but from having a well tuned design and production process--often making the same boring stuff year after year--which values reliability more than novelty.)

I believe now a person could easily convince themselves quite easily that a $19 CD player is "the best sounding" even when it isn't true.  In fact, I go much farther, and say that almost all of the "listening tests" and comparisons audiophiles do and have done are utterly useless or worse, and that generally speaking, except for speakers or phono cartridge it isn't necessary to do listening tests at all…since good amplifiers, CD players, and the like are likely audibly indistinguishable in DBT, and such differences as there may be between two pieces of equipment (other than speakers and phono systems) can be much more reliably be ascertained with measurements.  So then what do all your listening tests mean?  They are most likely just random events of perceptual self-fooling but tend to lead to false belief and superstition.

But I simultaneously reject the idea that I therefore must buy the cheapest unit that DBT cannot find to be any worse than the best.  Though there is a nagging voice, though, that does tell me I shouldn't be contributing to the general level of bullshit even by playing along with Audiophilia and even creating my own strain of Endless Philosophizing or something like that.  At least other people may believe they are performing useful experimentation, though sighted and not level matched and limited to one or a small number of trials.

Anyway, I maintain that in the long run, a slightly better device whose difference can't easily be discerned in systematic comparisons might (and this is a lack of impossibility) lead to an epiphany that the other doesn't.

Since we can't really be sure which devices is better through either sloppy or even very careful listening tests--the thing to do is use reasoning first, and then measurement to confirm.

One way another, my ultimate standard is Harry Pearson's "The Absolute Sound."  I am seeking perfect recreation of the experience.  But I know I can't really advance much even by exhausting listening tests.  So I do what I do, some of which you can read in these pages.

I'm not interested in going back to a smoother, silkier, rounder, less aggressive, etc., sound simply because it is pleasing.  However it turns out that The Absolute Sound is almost entirely non-irritating anyway, so irritation is not correct.

Some audiophiles, perhaps having also given up on the technical (logical, measurable) aspects of performance to explain their preferences, sometime seek an actual "Vintage" sound, the recreating of earlier sonic performance, through carefully restored Vintage Equipment.  This is not what I do, though it does turn out I don't see that much value in newfangled equipment and especially at the newfangled prices.  I own speakers from the 80's, and amp from the 90's, etc.  But this is a judgement that I can get what I want often better as well as affordable from a slightly earlier era.

One of the most curious of these Vintage obsessions of all to me is the fondness for Japanese made Marantz equipment from about 1970 to 1980.  I myself bought one of these first in 1973, a Marantz 2270, the original Japanese series (insiders called it the "B" line, often as derogatory).  I was not very proud of myself for doing so…in fact I immediately regretted not spending the extra bucks to get the Model 19, which I truly lusted after.

Then I thought the switches noisy, I got a one month non-repair from the dealer but they ultimately fixed themselves through usage.  Then I missed the deeper bass of my Dynaco SCA-35, though I ultimately considered that to be a defect on the part of the Dynaco (which I couldn't stand anymore, the frying noise on that unit was just not getting fixed).  By about the 6th month I had gotten over my regrets, and felt I had the best thing in the dorm, and for a few more months anyway had that uber feeling.

It didn't last more than months, once again I was regretting not having separates, not having a direct drive turntable instead of a Dual 1209 small changer--which several years later I found definitively inferior to the library's Lenco.

So most of the time I was actually using my 2270 in college, and shortly thereafter, I had very mixed feelings about it.  When I started working as an audio technician, it wasn't long before I was measuring it, and ultimately seriously (and with no thought to aesthetics) modifying it beyond repair.

That process began in September 1977 when I joined Audio Directions.  By 1980 I had the Marantz upside down mostly, with the preamp board having been replaced by a simple board of my own construction which let me substitute different op amps.  I hated the original preamp because it couldn't be set flat without measurements.  The detents were fake and the controls really did not track all that well.  The worst of it was that this affected the midrange too because there was a midrange control.  So great flexibility had become a liability.  I cursed myself for not having bought the 2275 model, which I could have at the time for an extra $100 or whatever.  The 2275 had a tone defeat switch.  I had often felt inferior during my college days for not having that feature, but the though was academic.  I never realized that I was listening to significantly non-flat response, with almost 1dB (actually I can't remember how much it was, it could have been as little as 0.1dB)  of variation in the midrange, due to lack of a tone defeat switch.

I never really got around to doing anything about the rest of the 2270, in fact I pretty much thought the rest of it was fine, except for lacking a whole bunch of new things: fully complementary circuitry (as in GAS products), audiophile caps, Class A operation, and more.  But as I didn't expect to be able to have those things, I didn't think they were that important, and it didn't worry me much, I had replaced the capacitors in the line stage anyway (in fact, I may not have been using capacitors, relying on the capacitors in the power amp input).  Except that I gutted the front panel for some reason, filling the tuning dial in with damping material, and used my Kenwood KT-7500 instead.

Anyway, perhaps very sadly I dumped that 2270 around 1992 because I simply had too much stuff and I hated carrying it around because I sometimes cut myself on the exposed chassis edges.  I was making a move at the time.  Though I might have left it at the curb, and maybe somebody got it.  Anyway I had purchased a second 2270 around 1991 just so I could have a nice looking one in my collection (I didn't really plan to use it), and that's the one I still have today.  I don't use it much, but I did use the phono preamp when I was first testing the Lenco last year simply because I didn't have anything else.  It worked fine.  I've sometimes used the amp in a pinch, but never on the Acoustat speakers.  I do find it hard to part with stuff, the 2270 is nicely made if not perfect and if your not too fussy, and it features several usefully separable parts.  But perhaps I shoulda gotten the 2275 if not the Model 19….

Anyway, knowing it's imperfections I wouldn't use it (and I can't anyway) in my main system.  And yet this is what you see on eBay, endless 2270's I think I've seen them as high as $999, more than I paid new in 1973 ($499 if I remember correctly…they were being closed out and replaced with 2275's).

Though in some sense, generally, I don't see much wrong with using vintage equipment from the 1970's.  In fact it was an era, and perhaps the first, when the largely Japanese manufacturers got it right, and were making good (and better and better) and reliable audio equipment, equipment…that is still being used today (and in some cases, without ever having been refurbed, though that is likely necessary for something in actual continuous usage).

And according to DBT produced understand of what is audible and what is not…in many cases you would not be able to tell the difference between a good piece of gear produced in 1975, say, and one produced now.  So if it's not going to make any audible difference, or even much audible difference, why worry, just enjoy that retro feeling, the looks or whatever.

Even wrt my original 2270, even if it's measurable error say at 1kHz were as much as 1dB, how greatly in the negative (if not the positive) is that going to affect my experiences anyway?  Even 3dB might not make much difference to my pleasure.

Well, OK, but I simply try to have the most actually transparent.  I don't care if the difference has been proven to be audible or not, the ultimate traits I am looking for can be determined by other means.  And I don't necessarily enjoy retro, I just get what I can if it does the job and is the most transparent within affordability.


*****

Meanwhile, subjectivist audiophiles and audio magazines at least put on a good show regarding the march of progress brought about through their unsound methods.  They create, exemplify, and harshly criticize those who don't follow the fashions they are promoting, which are ultimately shaped if not intended toward Selling More Expensive Stuff.

So it is by these standards that that the concept that old people are seeking something more of everlasting value through recycled stuff is going to be portrayed as going off the rails, at least slightly.

I tend to see things the other way, that what's basically good doesn't change much, and there hasn't really been much audible advance in amplification electronics since 1970 (despite all the techno wizardry and puffery).

But I get as much as I can from what little advance as their has been by catching the stream a little back from the present in pre-owned equipment.