Please Read and express your feelings and opinions....

I don't understand why some people are allergic to numbers and measurements. You can't construct much of anything without taking some measurements somewhere. This allergy to measurements is about as anti-intellectual and counterproductive as you can get.

+1

If it doesn't measure well, I keep working on the circuit.

I've been able to measure effects of fuses and power cords, which has often put me at odds with some that make apocryphal claims about them, but also those that I usually regard as 'objectivists' that won't take anything seriously without good measurements. In the latter case, they don't seem to want to cause their hand to move and make the measurements, instead proclaiming that a fuse or power cord can't make a difference. Without the measurements, their proclamations seem to me as bad (and for the same reason) as those that make the apocryphal claims.

Similarly, others see the pops and ticks, rapid wear, uneven high frequency performance, limited dynamic range, increased distortion, wow, and flutter associated with ancient vinyl technology as "more authentic".

Pops and ticks are often a sign of an unstable phono stage with poor overload margins and in that regard, price has nothing to do with it. People often confuse ticks and pops with the media. But when an LP is produced, the producer has to sign off on the test pressing, and one of the things they sign off on is the noise floor of the LP including ticks and pops. I have plenty of LPs at home that play the entire side without a problem- and I played some of those at the recent AXPONA show as a demo of how important phono preamp stability is. Speed variation is really a thing of the past- no machine made today or anytime in the last 30 years has audible wow and flutter unless malfunctioning.

I run a studio and an LP mastering facility; LPs are usually uncompressed with regard to the digital release files (this is because the industry expects the latter to be played in cars). We usually have to request the files in a form untreated by DSP other than normalization. Our cutter head is indeed ancient, being a Westerex 3D; the 1700 mastering amplifiers are cut off at 42KHz, which is the practical upper FR of almost any LP- not that there is anything up there, but most people don't realize that the LP has that sort of bandwidth (and has since the late 1950s). As far as distortion goes- that mostly occurs in playback, not record and in that regard is highly variable according to the ability of the arm to actually track the cartridge correctly, and how stable the phono section actually is. That distortion is often much lower than cited by those with a myopic digital viewpoint.

It should be telling that Technics has chosen to jump back into the LP market with 3 'table entries- all of which were seen at the recent AXPONA. LP titles are far easier to find now and sales are still on the rise; the market seems to like them despite their being somehow 'inferior'. Usually when a succeeding art replaces the prior art, the latter is usually consigned to the dust bins of history and the occasional collector. But the LP isn't doing that- all the pressing houses in the US are busy and often backed up 6 months. 1992, 26 years ago, was the year of least vinyl production.

My opinion on the "failings" of yester-decade's gear is if those characteristics were desirable, why isn't anybody listening to wax cylinders on hand cranked phonographs? After all, the motorized, tube amplified, voice coil driven sound of the 30's was an evolution of that.

While that is true, its a simple fact that no-one is listening to 30's technology around here. The list of improvements is much to long to list here- and I'm sure you are aware of them.

...The hardest thing I've had to do is learn to listen for what distortion is. That has brought me into strong agreement with the belief that dynamics are closely associated with distortion.

+1

IMO/IME, about 95% of the time when audiophiles use the word 'dynamics' they are really talking about distortion and that word can be safely substituted into the conversation without changing its meaning.

The reason this is so is because the ear uses the higher ordered harmonics to sense sound pressure (GE demonstrated this in the 1960s but little was done with that research). This is probably due to the fact that pure sine wave tones don't exist in nature.

Its right at this point that our philosophies about how to get good sound probably differ; I am of the opinion that since our ears are so sensitive to these harmonics that its not a good idea to do anything design-wise to generate them and so specifically avoid doing that in our designs. This means that I don't use feedback because feedback, while suppressing distortion, also adds some of its own, and all of higher ordered harmonics which can be easily heard.  So if I can do a design that does not make those harmonics, it will be smoother and not sound 'loud'.

I've been accused of using 'antiquated' technology in this regard and that is true, but SITs were a short-lived technology in the 1970s and there were no small signal and driver devices that were SITs- only outputs. Regular transistors just don't have the linearity **and** soft clipping to do the job. That is why tubes are still around BTW; if really inferior (and not just antiquated) they would have been gone long ago.

"Each 2150 uses global feedback (proudly: its manufacturer suggests that manufacturers who don't use feedback simply don't know how to do so properly)" About the Boulder 2150 from Stereophile. Different strokes for different folks.

That isn't quite true- but it is true that many who **do** use it aren't administering it correctly. The problem (known since the 1950s- see Norman Crowhurst) is that feedback makes distortion of its own thru bifurcation of the signal- and so adds higher ordered harmonics and intermodulations interpreted by the ear as brightness and harshness. And no-one has sorted out yet how to get an amplifier to clip graciously while using it. Here is an excellent article regarding the application of feedback and its pitfalls, several of which don't get addressed in many modern designs (and its not an 'anti-feedback' article):

http://www.normankoren.com/Audio/FeedbackFidelity.html

I recommend reading all parts.

I've got a SIT amplifier right now (and not just a Sony VFET either). It is one of the best solid state amps I've heard. Its too bad this technology got binned before it really was understood.

I’ve tried no feedback amps and am dissatisfied with their sound (they were also Class A type).

A lot depends on the load impedance and how the speaker is set up. To really get by without using feedback, the speaker has to be in on the idea. If not, tonal aberrations will occur. For more info:
http://www.atma-sphere.com/Resources/Paradigms_in_Amplifier_Design.php

Hey Koss, measuring and counting is only for the doubters and haters like this guy -

http://www.pspatialaudio.com/LP_performance.htm

Why measure and count when you can simply BELIEVE.

Unfortunately, the article linked is a source of misinformation. The reason is the article lacks a listing of the equipment used. The most we get is a photo of a 70s machine, which maybe might be the same as the 'first class deck' mentioned (one wonders why this obvious omission was made- was he embarrassed by his playback apparatus?); no mention whatsoever of the phono equalizer(!), all of which have an enormous effect on the results, yet the results are construed to seem as if they apply to all LPs and LP reproducers when such obviously can't be the case.

Wouldn't you want to know what is possible, rather than the results of 1960s tech? Here is an example of what I mean:

The standardised groove geometry on an LP record is of a 2 thou* groove on a 5 thou spacing (the latter being based on 200 grooves per inch). As the diagram right illustrates, the absolute maximum modulation of a groove is ±1.5 thou which is equivalent to 76μm pk-pk modulation.

The above statement is false- LP reproduction has advanced since the early 60s when this statement was more truthful.  Cartridges of the period were horrific and variable groove spacing only arrived in the 1970s (and of course, without variable groove spacing you could simply set the lathe for less than 200 grooves per inch... sheesh!). We use 2 mil modulation as 0VU reference as we are conservative- our 'antiquated' 1980s Technics SL1200 equipped with a lowly Grado Gold (which we use to make sure that a cut we are working on will be playable by the garden variety machine) can manage 3db more than that without complaint; the upper limit is obviously higher than described in the above quote and that's with cheaper gear. Newer arms without engineering bugs like the Techincs arm can do even better.

On the flip side (if you will pardon the expression) it turns out that much of the noise floor in LPs has to do with the pressings, not the lacquers, of which the latter have noise floors that are easily in the high -80s or low -90s (since the phono reproducer itself is actually the noise floor if the cutter head and stylus temperature are optimally set). At least one pressing house (QRP, associated with Acoustic Sounds in Salinas, KS) has found that by eliminating vibration in their pressing machines during cooling, the noise floor of the LP surface is dramatically reduced, approaching that of the lacquer. None of the test recordings for this article were made on such pressing machines, as QRP has only had them working in the last 5 years or so.

I think that getting good measurements is great, but this article is an example of Bad Science- IOW fake news.

@cj1965
Its pretty obvious here who's doing the hand waving. You can't back up your statements with either measurements or math. You committed some pretty obvious errors in your math on another thread in this section; maybe you might consider owning up to that- it would improve your credibility if you could admit your mistakes.

You see, sir, that's how science works - full disclosure of the details.

Hm. Something that article certainly lacked! Based on what you say here, you don't think a little disclosure would have been a good idea? That certainly **seems** what you are saying; if anything, this should have been an objection that you raised about this article rather than stand behind it. Why the contradiction? Are you needing to make others wrong so much that you are willing to contradict yourself?  This slight on your part is a bit of hand waving.

As for your other claims regarding what I've posted elsewhere, they don't even merit a response.

Hm. You made the claim that when you cut the voltage applied to a speaker in half, its a 3db reduction. Here's the math:

2.83 volts is 1 watt into 8 ohms. I hope we can agree on that...

So 1/2 of 2.83 volts is 1.415 volts. Using Ohm's Law, to calculate current we divide 1.415 with 8 ohms and we get 0.178975amps.

Power is equal to amps x current, now we know the current so:

0.178975amps x 1.415volts = 0.25 watts. That's a 6 db reduction, not 3 db.

Do you still think it does not merit a response, like- 'oh, I meant 'power' not voltage'? You were being pretty specific about voltage on that thread; perhaps you could clear that up.

You’re using the wrong formula - equating electrical power to sound power. The db formula for sound power is :

I was using the right formula as I was referring to amplifier power, not sound pressure and was pretty clear about that.

When you halve the force and double the area, you wind up with roughly the same sound power that you began with. But improved acoustical coupling with increased area improves net efficiency (electrical power in versus sound power out).

Again, halving the **voltage** reduces the force to 1/4th.

Really? Are you serious? What do you think voltage is, my friend? Voltage is "electro motive FORCE". Halving the voltage does not reduce the force to 1/4. It reduces power to 1/4 since the formula for power expressed simply with voltage and resistance is:

The problem here is that voltage does not exist without current. The two together are power. Even though we refer to speakers as 'voltage driven' that is a bit of a charged term (referring to the fact that many amplifiers are designed to act as 'voltage sources' and many speakers are designed to expect a voltage source to be driving it); but in fact power is actually making the speaker move. If you can somehow make a speaker move with voltage but *without* current, you will have a new branch of physics :)

A 3db reduction is halving amplifier power, which is what drives a loudspeaker. Its the 'force' that makes a speaker move and because of that if you reduce the voltage by half, the power to move the speaker is reduced to 1/4 of previous.