Darko podcast podcast 10 hi-fi myth with Peter Comeau

[kristoffer]

I rather enjoyed this discussion.

Podcast: 10 hi-fi myths busted! w/ Peter Comeau
https://darko.audio/2023/10/podcast-10-hi-fi-myths-busted-w-peter-comeau/

 

[unit]

Loved it too. So nice to hear opinions formed by years of research and experience.

 

[ssimon]

Was it really 2 hours, but worth it. You can listen as background but Commeau divulges much of the process of designing Hi Fi, especially his field which is loudspeakers. Unfortunatly near the end. He says he struggles to measure the artifacts (faults) he hears because they are in the time domain and are microseconds. The Mission 770 speakers took 174 prototypes before he was satisfied with one. There are many nuggets of good information, whereas salesmen will latch on to some unimportant detail such as high frequency response which is sometimes wrong anyway.

PS My prejudice was only hinted at being that electrostatic are the best speakers.

 

[jamesd]

Great episode. The Darko episodes with Commeau are always great and I’m glad they take such a deep dive.

 

[herb]

Big fan of Comeau here - very sensible. I have used his HBS1 flat pack speaker stands for 30 years

 

[luxury_scruff]

An ex colleague of mine, when he and Comeau were together at Mission, was chatting, and he called him 'Pete'.

Comeau arched his eyebrow and said "Do I look like a 'Pete', it's Peter..."

 

[Ian M]

Yes I found it very interesting. Towards the end he mentioned an electronics designer, was he referring to our friend JW?

 

[wow&flutter]

Yes I found it very interesting. Towards the end he mentioned an electronics designer, was he referring to our friend JW?

I thought of that when Peter mentioned the Audiolab CD player. I wonder if Peter gave him money for lunch everyday but never received any grub

 

[13th Duke of Wymbourne]

Overall a worthwhile listen, I wasn't giving it full attention so I will listen again another time but here are my impressions. I struggle a little, though, every time Darko chuckles when interviewees say things he agrees with. I heard the previous podcasts with Peter Comeau and he is certainly knows how to produce well regarded speakers. But, I think he was out of his comfort zone a bit here and it is clear that he is not a technical maven across the board, and that's OK as speakers are his thing and are probably the most empirical of audio components (IMHO). It seems he came into audio through sales, reviewing and DIY not from being technically adept. I thought he rambled a bit talking about digital, I don't recall anything to disagree with but nothing insightful. Similarly about vinyl - his point is that vinyl mastering is different from digital mastering but, again, a bit ramble-y and there was no need to bring up RIAA pre/de-emphasis at all to make that argument. And I am pretty sure Steven Wilson wasn't an engineer on the original recording of Close to The Edge (l doubt he was even born then )!
When it came to amplifiers I thought he did more myth re-inforcing than myth busting. His view is that high levels of harmonic distortion are not objectionable/audible - and this is likely very true - but he later trotted out the old Hiraga thing about having steadily falling levels of harmonics as a good thing even though he said harmonic distortion doesn't matter. And, he seemed to take swipes at the use of high feedback to produce very low distortion - he talked about a test that IAG engineers do to feed a signal into the output of an amplifier. His description of that test impled he doesn't understand how negative feedback works. He seperated harmoncally related distortion form non-harmonically related and that would have been interesting to pursue but he didn't and neither did Darko - we may have got some insight there, or not.

 

[LPSpinner]

Overall a worthwhile listen, I wasn't giving it full attention so ...

Yes, like you, I had to take a second listen to actually digest the content of the discussion.
Most of the myths listed were busted a long time ago but still seem to be tightly held on to by a few diehard audiophiles. I do like the comment abouts Super tweeters and magically hearing above 20Hz when what you are actually hearing is "Sub" harmonic content from HF distortion. I also like what he said about marketing B.S. Marketing departments have no regard for correct engineering terminology and will often completely misrepresent basic engineering principals in order to make a product look desirable. This situation is already prevalent in audio as HiFi marketing material often makes claims about audio product that seem to operate outside the laws of physics.

I also agree with the comment about mastering being the critical mechanism that is causing the differences when considering the Analogue Vs Digital debate. In my own experience it's a 50/50 split, when I do comparisons between albums I have duplicated on LP and CD, sometimes the LP is better, sometimes the CD is better. The most critical component is the original mastering, not the delivery format.

I do like what is discussed about speaker cables, the opening argument is that they are an avenue for tweakery rather than having any real merit in most situations. In most cases the effect is greatly overstated. It does make sense what is said about needing thicker cables today because of modern speaker impedances becoming lower where 4 ohm is the new normal rather than a more traditional 8 ohm. The main metric is about increasing the cross-sectional area, not using exotic materials, on this I can only agree. I also agree with him on exceedingly high capacitance speaker cables. Hi capacitance cables don't actually improve detail; they introduce a brightness to the sound by driving the amplifier into instability and "pre"-oscillation, this situation can be demonstrated on many different amplifiers, not just Naim.

I was interested in his closing comments about speakers, the BBC dip which is a deliberate trough in the midrange region to counter near field monitoring aberrations and Darko's comments on the reluctance of audiophiles to fully embrace active studio monitors for accurate sound reproduction. To my mind he mostly corroborated what I had already felt to be about right, although he did get a bit "flowery" in some topics, I tend to turn off when engineers start talking too subjectively.

I actually like a lot of Darko's content and have been following him for a while, he doesn't do silly voodoo (except on April fool's day) and admits that he uses AudioQuest cables because they one of his sponsors. He doesn't openly push cables or even review cables. He also says in relation to accessories, that you need to make your own decisions based on your own needs and budget.

LPSpinner.