The best audio system on earth?

[onlyconnect]

But let's develop some big chunky mains leads, eh?

There is an economic force behind this. In the Eighties the best way to get good sound at home, for most people, was to go into a shop on Tottenham Court Road or go up a level to Sound Organisation or whatever (OK London based but you get the idea) and buy a decent separates system. That approach became less and less mainstream over the years as a combination of convenience and technology improvements got us streaming, soundbars, Bluetooth speakers, iPods and then iPhones, wireless earbuds, etc. Leaving the audio specialists with a shrinking market. Selling high-end cables with big markups becomes almost a necessity if you can get away with it, and clearly you can.

 

[adamdea]

That you should settle down and go find yourself some manners.

No need to rush to the exit, people. That sound is not the fire alarm, it's the irony meter; I don't think it was designed for this level and seems to have completely blown.

 

[Tony L]

What I'm saying though is that streaming is a computer led bit of progress. "Play XYZ" is also computer driven.

The number of audio companies capable of getting deep into the weeds of bespoke chip design or real computer architecture is minuscule. I can bring to mind Chord, dCS and Meridian, and I may be stretching that definition a little even here.

The overwhelming majority of this is taking an off-the-shelf DAC chipset and controlling it with an embedded ARM chipset computer. I‘m sure most is pretty much off the shelf IOT technology flung in an absurdly massive CNC box with some impressive looking audiophile analogue circuitry and a flashy custom display. It’s a Pi, a DAC, and a display FFS! It needn’t cost the price of a house!

I think the other end of the market, say the Chord Mojo/Poly, is very innovative (if a bit buggy). That is serving up some great audiophile technology at a very reasonable price and represents a good bridge between home and mobile listening. A great entry to high quality sound for younger folk. Perfect for headphone listening, great for home listening plugged into a pair of active speakers. I’d like to see shows focus far more on this sector than parading room after room of Veblen goods for billionaires. If the industry is to retain any relevance this it is essential IMHO.

 

[stevec67]

The number of audio companies capable of getting deep into the weeds of chip fabrication or real computer architecture is minuscule. I can bring to mind Chord, dCS and Meridian, and I may be stretching that definition a little even here.

Absolutely, the point is though that they don't need to any more than Ford or BMW do. Ford go to computer specialists to manufacture ECUs, so do BMW. Auto engineering has always worked like this. Do Ford have an upholstery shop making seats? Not these days. The seats are made by people like Lear (yes, like the jets) and shipped in. That's modern engineering.

The overwhelming majority of this is taking an off-the-shelf DAC chipset and controlling it with an embedded ARM chipset computer. I‘m sure most is pretty much off the shelf IOT technology flung in an absurdly massive CNC box with some impressive looking audiophile analogue circuitry and a flashy custom display. It’s a Pi, a DAC, and a display FFS! It needn’t cost the price of a house!

Exactly so. Just like a car seat from Ford. It has an impressive amount of technology in it and safety features, but if I need to I can buy a new one in a Ford dealer for a few hundred pounds.

I think the other end of the market, say the Chord Mojo/Poly, is very innovative (if a bit buggy). That is serving up some great audiophile technology at a very reasonable price and represents a good bridge between home and mobile listening. A great entry to high quality sound for younger folk. Perfect for headphone listening, great for home listening plugged into a pair of active speakers. I’d like to see shows focus far more on this sector

Absolutely dead right, it's the future.

than parading room after room of Veblen goods for billionaires. If the industry is to retain any relevance this it is essential IMHO.

Yes indeed. Look at me, I've got a $10,000 mains lead with a big connector rated at 500A that screws down with non ferrous fasteners. Great. You carry on.

 

[Rockmeister]

Well I learned one thing
(though I already know someone was several years ahead of this thought)
Start an ultra slick online magazine called HiFi for (insert word that billionaires will love to be called), and charge a hefty subscription for a fortnightly edition, and you may, once it's running, get to hear some of this stuff for real, and, make enough to buy one, maybe two of these cables?

 

[Rockmeister]

Meanwhile the Curve of diminishing returns lengthens out so far that the 1% change in SQ between 'truly excellent' at say 30000 quid for a system and 'the best' at nearing a million is about a mile away. The graphs height is 20cm.


Untitled by John Dutfield, on Flickr

 

[Iain Docherty]

Why do you care what others do with their own money?

Sorry, but this is becoming increasingly absurd. Universal population sampling is essentially impossible for any question of real world scale. Also, why are you ascribing normative views on what people should and shouldn’t do with their money to me? I come from the position that, in a democratic society at least, once people have paid the taxes that society collectively decides appropriate, people should be free to do with their money what they want.

You seem to have missed what I wrote earlier as above. For somebody arguing obsessively about understanding every individual to inordinate lengths, you seem very keen to make assertions about what individuals in this discussion are saying to you despite them actually making clear what they do think.

 

[S-Man]

FWIW here’s the room in question:

(10 minutes in if my direct link doesn’t work)

PS As many here know I’ve pretty much lost all interest in modern audio. Certainly this sort of stuff. The best audio of the golden age was all about finding new and innovative ways to bring high quality home audio to the majority of listeners. Quad, Klipsch, Leak, Garrard, Thorens, AR, Rega, Naim etc were never cheap, but they were all attainable. Far too much modern audio is the exact reverse to my eyes; the selling of very old technology to a super-wealthy elite just by adding increased mass, bling and pseudoscience. I watched the whole show walk around above and as usual found it hugely depressing. A once innovative and vibrant industry reduced year by year to recursively selling the same stuff encrusted in ever more bling to ever richer people. A quick look inside Trump Tower before the bailiffs arrive.

I couldn’t cope with anything other than a brief scan through the vid, but of the bits I heard I would vote the Dali system (about 34 mins in) as the hiest-end sound of the show. Although it could be expectation bias based on the extreme plinky-plonkness of the music.

 

[Iain Docherty]

I know what you mean. I noticed that a previous instance of the show was on but I refused to go on the assumption I would see stuff that was so far over-the-top that I would not enjoy the day out. I find no attraction in promotional headlines such as "million pound systems" because over decades of listening it's clear to me that any correlation between price and quality disappears way before you get there. However, if people have priorities other than mine, OK. IMHO there's no need for strong apologists.

However, I relented this time and enjoyed the show. It was just the right size to spend a day listening, on my terms, while ignoring irrelevances.

On the Boyer room system, as demonstrated and to my ears according to my definition of "best", it was not the best audio system on earth. It sounded good but was not even the best audio system at the show. Maybe third or even fourth. And yes, many demonstrators at shows give their systems far too easy a ride making it impossible to hear how well they cope (or don't cope) when the going gets tough. Your examples are exactly right as part of my arsenal to test whether a system works properly or not.

IMHO the best sound I heard at the show was in the Symmetry Systems room. With material played by ensembles I have heard often enough in the concert hall to have a good reference against which to judge (for my ears, anyway). But then, on returning home and playing similar material through my own system I find that it's a draw. So I have no temptation from that PoV. Temptation only came from the splendid AV system in the Karma room. It made me wonder if I ought to look at sub-woofers to see if I can get more of that visceral feel you get from being close to someone playing the piano.

What AV set up was Karma using?

 

[Tony L]

Meanwhile the Curve of diminishing returns lengthens out so far that the 1% change in SQ between 'truly excellent' at say 30000 quid for a system and 'the best' at nearing a million is about a mile away. The graphs height is 20cm.

I’m far from convinced a lot of this stuff is even any good, let alone the best. I suspect I’m ultra critical and hear crossover/time/phase artefacts etc others miss, but I genuinely can’t stand the typical modern high-end speaker format of very tall column speakers with four or more drivers spread over a very tall baffle in a ultra-high-mass cabinet. They just give me a headache as they sound so wrong. I honestly think that is a terrible way to design a loudspeaker, yet it seems to be almost a consensus now. I can’t see any of this stuff coming close to say a pair of ESLs, Tannoys or MEGs for me. Give me a point-source. All this throwing stuff all over the place sounds like crap to my ears.

 

[paulfromcamden]

I couldn’t cope with anything other than a brief scan through the vid, but of the bits I heard I would vote the Dali system (about 34 mins in) as the hiest-end sound of the show. Although it could be expectation bias based on the extreme plinky-plonkness of the music.

I'm not sure you can really draw any firm conclusions by listening to audio recorded by someone wandering around with a phone camera.

 

[Rockmeister]

I’m far from convinced a lot of this stuff is even any good, let alone the best. I suspect I’m ultra critical and hear crossover/time/phase artefacts etc others miss, but I genuinely can’t stand the typical modern high-end speaker format of very tall column speakers with four or more drivers spread over a very tall baffle in a ultra-high-mass cabinet. They just give me a headache as they sound so wrong. I honestly think that is a terrible way to design a loudspeaker, yet it seems to be almost a consensus now. I can’t see any of this stuff coming close to say a pair of ESLs, Tannoys or MEGs for me. Give me a point-source. All this throwing stuff all over the place sounds like crap to my ears.

I've added a graph!
And I agree, especially in the listener has any interesat in Fidelity. The engineers were certainly NOT using any system that resembles the above. What is heard is fairy dust. Innacurate certainly. but fun. if you already have the yacht and Lambo.

 

[Filian]

Why do you care what others do with their own money?

In a way that's the salient question, right in there with why do audio at all. If you heard everything at that show and if you have what we hope is a keen ear, then you may be doing all this to get somewhere. To make improvements or to find categorical sonic personalities or pick up key bits of information and the like.

Forums, on the other hand, exist for their own reason, and sound not really being easily describable, in them any rubbish will appear from time to time. It has here. It has before. Audio is only the ostensible topic.

So audio exists for various reasons. The smart move is to establish that right off. One way is to probe for those foundations and when you've found what looks like one that runs contrary to genuine, meaningful progress upward, interrogate it.

If it returns dead air or diversion or outright denial, well then you know what you're dealing with.

Sound reason, integrity, and the joy of outstanding sound produce the high points. And I reckon what happens to them is why many of us spend most of our time going right back to lurking hifi threads when we're not pursuing great sound itself.

 

[epo1]

I think this thread has got bogged down and some sets of individuals ought to take it to PMs or just ignore each other. The behaviour of a couple of people here makes me think they are trolls and just being provocative by lawyering the statements of others and self-righteously wanting the last word. So I would remind everyone not to feed trolls.

For everyone else looking at the thread title there is Betteridge's Law of Headlines: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."

 

[John Phillips]

What AV set up was Karma using?

Audio was courtesy of too many Perlisten 'speakers to list but included a pair of R7t towers L/R and a bevy of 15" subwoofers, driven by a lot of premium Primare electronics. The displacement of the subwoofer drivers on video soundtracks was visually very impressive.

I was impressed by the Perlisten R7t towers at the last Cranage show when let loose on music rather than a video soundtrack.

 

[Yank]

I guess the perfect hi-fi system, being neutral, would do both with equal realism.

That should depend on what's on the recording.

 

[Iain Docherty]

Audio was courtesy of too many Perlisten 'speakers to list but included a pair of R7t towers L/R and a bevy of 15" subwoofers, driven by a lot of premium Primare electronics. The displacement of the subwoofer drivers on video soundtracks was visually very impressive.

I was impressed by the Perlisten R7t towers at the last Cranage show when let loose on music rather than a video soundtrack.

Thanks. A Primare AV receiver is definitely on my wish list. Those Perlistens are very reminiscent of upper Dynaudios...

 

[Alex S]

a milk float alongside a Tesla

Milk float every time please.

 

[paulfromcamden]

Milk float every time please.

So long at the milk float firm isn't run by a far-right weirdo with a messiah complex.

 

[stevec67]

So long at the milk float firm isn't run by a far-right weirdo with a messiah complex.

Well, there was the milk float in Father Ted. God was involved there, especially as Dougal was struggling to keep the speed above 4mph.