Let's Call The Whole Thing Off!
For the last six months I’ve been listening to the best solid-state amplifiers I’ve yet heard in my home: the Soulution 710 stereo and 700 monoblock. This gear (coupled with Soulution’s superb 720 full-function preamp or 721 linestage or MBL’s superb 6010 D preamp, for that matter) produces a level of transparency to sources unparalleled in my experience of hi-fi. As I’ve said, repeatedly, on line and in print, I am now able to hear “into” recordings to an unprecedented degree—to hear the way the recording and mastering engineers recorded and mixed the mastertapes, as if I were peering over their shoulders when they did their jobs. The whole chain of preamplification and amplification is—forgive me for the cliché but it actually applies—as clear as glass, increasing the amount of some kinds of information by an order of magnitude.
Although I don’t know this for a fact, I’d bet (on the basis of what I’ve heard and read) that Soulution has achieved this extraordinary window-pane-like neutrality and consequent transparency by lowering distortion. (The head technician at a German audio magazine which rigorously tests equipment under review actually hung the test results of the Soulution 710 in a gold frame above his desk—they were that exemplary.) The Soulution also boasts extraordinary bandwidth, channel separation, peak power and current. In other words, these Swiss amps are technological marvels (as they ought to be for the money asked). I cannot recommend them highly enough to those with the wherewithal to afford such amazing things. BUT….
You can’t hear it, but I just heaved a sigh. Three weeks ago I took the Soulution gear out of my system (the preamp and CD player are being updated) and put in my old standbys and references, the Audio Research Reference 3 preamp and 610T power amps. Everything else—speakers (Magico M5s), sources (Walker Black Diamond record player with Da Vinci Reference Grandezza cartridge), cabling (Tara Labs Omega and Zero Gold)—stayed the same.
Audio Research is one of the few tube-gear companies that doesn’t look askance at solid-state. Indeed, from go some forty years ago, William Zane Johnson took solid-state’s lower distortion, higher speed, greater clarity, and more extended bandwidth as goals, and since then ARC gear has slowly but clearly been amalgamating the virtues of transistors and the virtues of tubes. This said, the 610Ts are audibly higher in distortion (you can hear some tube grain that you can’t hear through the Soulution amps), lower in transparency (details of mastering and mixing don’t jump out at you quite as vividly as they do through the Soulution amps), and lower in bandwidth (they don’t have the “grip” that the Soulutions have in the low bass or the midbass). And yet…and yet…I’ll be damned if the ARC gear doesn’t sound at least as much (if not more) like live music—at least to my ear and the ears of most of my informal listening panel—as the two wunderkinds from Switzerland.
How is this possible?
Well, as long-time readers of The Absolute Sound know full well, the official line is that we don’t believe measurements add up to a complete or adequate picture of a device under test. But the unofficial one, at least for me, is: “I don’t know.”
Somehow tubes are still resolving certain kinds of information about textures and colors and dimensions that solid-state, for all its glories, misses—and vice versa. It’s as if both gain strategies were colorblind, except one can’t see red and the other can’t see green.
Lord knows I’ve read countless explanations of why tubes—the more continuous, less-discrete-by-nature amplification devices—sound the way they do, and why transistors—the faster, less-restricted-in-bandwidth, lower-in-certain-kinds-of measurable-distortions amplification devices—sound the way they do. And while I do believe that both gain strategies have moved closer together sonically, they still sound enough different that you wouldn’t mistake one for the other (or at least, you wouldn’t for long).
To put the difference I hear in a nutshell, ARC tubes make music “breathe” in a way that the Soulution amps (and, for that matter, other solid-state and tube amps) don’t (or don’t quite). Voices, instruments are projected in the way they are in life. It’s as if ARC doesn’t just capture a beam of frontal radiation but the glow of musical energy around and behind a voice or instrument as well. I know folks who would chalk this up—perhaps rightly—to harmonic or TIM distortion. Nonetheless, it is a very lifelike effect—this bloom and air and light. ARC gear also has a delicacy of tone and texture that the Soulution amps also have but, since they don’t express it with the same breathy bloom and air, don’t have in quite the same way.
On the other hand, the Soulution amps will tell you exactly how (and how well) a recording was recorded; they will change the presentation of tone color and instrumental texture and soundstage shape and size chameleon-like with each recording, where the ARC gear tends to make records sound more alike (though I don’t want to oversell this point because the ARC gear IS transparent to sources, too, but noisier, less exacting, less precise).
Here is the conundrum: Both the Soulution and the ARC gear sound extraordinarily realistic, in spite of the fact that their presentations are clearly different. If one is “right” and the other is “wrong,” how is that possible?
I know there are those who would argue in favor of the Soulutions' utter transparency. They would say, and I would largely agree, that an amp should be a documentarian not an artist. It should give you the thing itself and not an impression of the thing. But what “thing”? They would point you to the sound of “live mic feeds” or mastertapes and say: “THIS thing. Which amp is more faithful to THIS?”
And yet a live mic feed is still the sound of the mic, a chain of electronics, speakers or cans, and cabling. A mastertape, even auditioned off the tapehead in a recording studio, is still the sound of the mic, a chain of electronics, tape and tape heads, and speakers or cans. If we’re faithful to that processed sound, then what about the absolute sound? The sound of actual instruments in a real space, unmediated by electronics? Have we been kidding ourselves all along about its primacy? Should we have called this magazine The Recorded Sound?
I used to think I knew the answer to this—and would’ve come down on the side of life versus recording. But the Soulutions confused me—and confused the issue--more than ever before. They are so transparent and so lifelike at the same time (with the right recordings). And yet, taking them out and putting in the ARC and hearing an entirely different order of lifelike musical information confused me again.
Which is right and which is wrong? Like I said, I don’t know anymore. Tomato, tomata, potato, potata…let’s call the whole thing off, or at least call it a draw and leave it up to the individual listener.
Comments
Well, this is going to be a lively comment thread! Nothing like a good old tubes vs. transistors argument to bring out the inner fanatic in an audiophile ...
For me, the choice is not so complicated, because tubes present some practical challenges in my environment - specifically, the heat generation, and the need to be used by members of my family not so educated about warmup requirements, tube life, etc. But I have to say, I'm afraid to even listen to tubes in my system, for fear I'd buy them anyway!
I am pushing the envelop by using the balanced variable tube output (4 x 6922) of my Raysonic 228 into my balanced active XO then into my Wyred4Sound MC 250/500 amp. Several of my audio buddies are tube-o-holics, one owns Tubeman.com and they love the sound. Speakers are Magnepan 3.5Rs, bass provided by a powered SVS sub.
Musical realism is ethereal, and not a simple function of the properties (transparency, noise floor, tonal accuracy, etc.) that constitute 99.99% of what is covered in reviews. It is as true for speakers as it is for amplifiers.
Larry
"Digital finishes what the transistor began" James Boyk
When we hit this crossroads, I believe we're really lacking language (or, perhaps, sufficient definitions).
"Accuracy" is a moon landing onto which many have planted a flag, and few have defined universally.
From the bench we're given a definition that tells us something about waveforms, harmonic distortion, signal-to noise ratios, phase distortions, hysteresis, & cetera. The white coats tell us that what goes in must come out unchanged in order for the "accurate" badge to be justifiably applied.
From the easel we're given an assessment that "music" has no strict definition, that it is a form of communication that has no strict grammatical structure onto which it must adhere. Defining Music is largely an ontological matter beyond the reach of strict reason or scientific method. Therefore accuracy is a matter of the clarity of the communication itself, not necessarily the deconstructed parts used to carry the communication.
So the question really needs to be: What is it you're hoping to get out of all of this?
The Signal Collection, LLC
North American Distributors
of Connoisseur-Grade Hi-Fi
Jon, I have been a fan of your writing abilities for a long time, but the above treatise is, I think, just about the best article you've written.
Let me go even further.......it's the best article on this subject that I've read since the halcyon days of HP at his best?
Without myself having heard the Soulution amps or the Magicos or even the AR 610Ts, I can 'hear' the sounds from your elegant descriptions and I can also 'hear' the predicament that you hear.
I have the Halcro DM10 Preamp and the Halcro DM58 Monoblocks and I know that it is fashionable for many in the States to downplay these electronics and call them 'cool' and 'clinical', but I don't know anyone who agrees with that assessment after listening in their own rooms? In other words, all the negative comments I have ever read on the Halcros have come from assessments made mainly at Hi Fi Shows or Dealerships.......and we all know the dangers of those. Even your assessment of the MBL speakers were largely negative until you received them chez Valin?
My speakers are impossible to describe as they are custom made and sound like no others I have ever heard. They sound as effortless and un-restrained as live music without any hint of sound emanating from 'boxes'. They sound virtually like the original Martin Logan CLS but with real bass and far wider dispersion of 'the sweet spot'. They are full-range 3 way speakers but in fact work like a 2 way design with the 12" paper cone woofers connected directly to the speaker terminals and run 'full range'. The only cross-over elements are 1 Duelund capacitor for the 51/2" Scanspeak Revelator Mid/Woofer and 1 Duelund capacitor for the 1" silk dome Scanspeak Revelator tweeter.
Driven by my Raven AC-3 with Copperhead/DV1s and DaVinci 12" Grandezza/ZYX Universe, the sound I hear is precisely as you describe it with the Soulution amps. The total lack of distortion and sense of 'being' at the recording/mixing console hearing the Mastertapes is, as you rightly express.....uncanny.
And yet.......I know exactly what you mean about the sound of tubes. Having lived with a Kebschull valve preamp for 20 of my 30 years in Hi-Fi, there is an ineffable 'soul' and 'depth' and 'colour' to tubes which I can still taste and which I currently live without, whilst all the while listening in utter admiration at the 'purity', the 'detail', the 'discovery' afforded by the Halcro gear which I suspect is similar sounding to the Soulution.
So your question hangs in the air?.........which is truer?
But I suspect that at the level we are now able to reach in audio reproduction (you in particular), does it really matter?
If both can be equally enjoyed albeit at slightly different intellectual and emotional levels, they are both equally valid and not mutually exclusive?
Thank you, Halcro.
Excellent discussion, Jonathan. I think your observations serve up the meta-issue of the reference. We seem, as an industry/hobby to have reached levels of resolution barely imaginabl;e even a dozen years ago. Vanishing noise floors, clean extension at both ends of the frequency spectrum, startling transparency of micro dynamics that enable subtle but profound music cues, and on and on. We must, in my opinion, confront the issue of multiple audio engineering approaches that all seem to get us closer to the truth, albeit from different angles and perspectives. I confronted this in trying to understand why, for instance, the dCS Scarlatti sounds to my ears as close an approximation of the real thing as the best turntables/cartridges. At the same time it does not sound like vinyl at all. How can both be true to the music. Similarly, amplification components now blur the traditional lines between tubes and solid state, separates and integrateds, mono blocks and stereo amps? Since we all hear differently and are each tuned to different musical cues to achieve the state of suspension of disbelief, is this the end of the journey? Perhaps we need a deeper reflection on what this means in the search for the "absolute sound." What do we treat as a reference now to differentiate between amazing components presenting a parspectives akin to "blind men offering perspectives on the proverbial elephant".
As I think more about this topic, I find connections to a couple of recent, related discussions. The first is a lecture/discussion with Bob Stuart, the founder and CTO of Meridian, linked as a (badly recorded) MP3 at this address:
http://www.aes.org/sections/uk/meetings/a0812.html
The whole thing is fascinating, but the part I think most relevant to this discussion comes near the end, when Stuart comments on the subject of A/B testing. Trained as both an audio engineer and pyschoacoustian, Stuart makes the point that listening is both a sensory and cognitive process. The ear takes in sound, but the brain objectifies it, based on memory and learning. For example, where an untrained listener hears a pleasantly woody sound in the middle of the orchestra, the trained ear might hear an English Horn, playing D flat, near the back of the stage, directly behind the first Cello. The more we listen, the more we objectify the sound we hear in these ways.
This perception/cognition duality to listening has profound consequences. One of them has to do with A/B/X testing: since our ear/brain mechanism learns as it goes on, it is actually hard to "unhear" something we just heard seconds before. Ears are not oscilliscopes, designed to analyze identical inputs identically from day to day, or minute to minute.
Another consequence bears directly on this discussion: the more live music we hear, the more we catalog the characteristics of live sound, and the more likely we are to respond when a particular component or system highlights some of those characteristics. To sound "real", a component must engage those characteristics we've individually identified most with live sound. Notice: that preceding sentence implies that there is a distinction between the absolute sound, and the illusion of absolute reality. Perfect fidelity to the input waveform will not necessarily highlight those characteristics we most identify with. Further, what constitutes the illusion of absolute reality will change as we listen and learn - there's a whole high-end audio industry built on that notion.
The second related discussion was kicked off by Robert Harley, in his recent editorial commenting that the very best high resolution (24/176+) digital recording systems are now of sufficient quality to be transparent to the microphone feed, at least in the context of all the other colorations in the recording/monitoring chain. This implies that recordings such as the Reference Recordings HRx series, played back through a DAC engineered to the same level as the output section of these recorders, like the Berkeley AlphaDAC, are essentially the equivalent of plugging the live microphone feed from the recording session directly into your system. As I can personally attest, the illusion of reality thus produced is astonishing.
Beyond the sonic results, though, this notion of being able to hear the live microphone feed should have significant consequences for how we think about the whole chain involved in capturing and reproducing the absolute sound, by highlighting the technology and engineering involved in recording itself. I'd wager most audiophiles, me included, are far more literate of the differences between electrostatics, cones, tubes, transistors, near field vs. far field, etc, than we are about omni vs. cardoid, Blumlien vs. spaced, etc. If the colorations imposed by our equipment are indeed becoming smaller and smaller, the colorations imposed by recording engineers are necessarily becoming a larger part of the total equation (and they always were quite important, anyway). The scope of our focus on the "absolute sound" has to become larger, if indeed that is to remain our goal.
What I think makes this an exciting prospect is the availability, finally, of a recording distribution mechanism that is not constrained by the standards of mass market consumer electronics (as even the beloved LP was), nor so prohibitively expensive as to exclude the possibility of distributing multiple versions of the same recording. I speak, of course, of the Internet. We're seeing just the tip of the high-res iceberg right now, at sites like HDTracks, MusicGiants, and 2L. But it is easy to envision the day when we can download several versions of a track, each captured with a different recording technique, and gain a much greater understanding of the true front end of the absolute sound.
Is it possible to obtain much of the best by each with a tube preamp and a solid state power amp?
John,
Speaking from my experience with a valve preamp and SS power amp for 20 years, I believe it may be possible to marry the best of both worlds.
There are many tubeophiles who will disagree.
JV, excellent discussion article. I have Audio Research REF gear and believe that you described the affect wonderfully well:
"To put the difference I hear in a nutshell, ARC tubes make music “breathe” in a way that the Soulution amps (and, for that matter, other solid-state and tube amps) don’t (or don’t quite). Voices, instruments are projected in the way they are in life. It’s as if ARC doesn’t just capture a beam of frontal radiation but the glow of musical energy around and behind a voice or instrument as well. I know folks who would chalk this up—perhaps rightly—to harmonic or TIM distortion. Nonetheless, it is a very lifelike effect—this bloom and air and light. ARC gear also has a delicacy of tone and texture that the Soulution amps also have but, since they don’t express it with the same breathy bloom and air, don’t have in quite the same way."
YES!! This is what I've heard but could not describe as you have here.
As far as the comment concerning the title of your magazine, should the name have been "The Recorded Sound"? No, maybe "The Absolute Recorded Sound". As many of us have done, go sit in one of the better concert halls in the world; for me it's the Myerson in Dallas. I was in row 8, right center, about a year ago for an evening that included Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini. When the first notes of the piano were struck (the piece opens quite aggressively), it about knocked my head back four rows! The power, scale, beauty of the piano and orchestra were "The Absolute Sound". Of course, no system I've ever heard comes close. No mic feeds that night.
Without myself having heard the Soulution amps or the Magicos or even the AR 610Ts, I can 'hear' the sounds from your elegant descriptions and I can also 'hear' the predicament that you hear.
OH REALLY!!!!! What a sack of crap!!!!
You can dismss whatever you choose and praise others based on what Jon writes and your experince with old gear.
Please Sir teach me your methods so I may learn from your greatness.
Everyone please bow your head in the presence of wonder.
Is there some internet school of this knowledge that we may pay 29.95 for?
BTW Jon,
Really excellent posting keep up the wonderful insights!
well done!!! great piece! i'm sitting here in my home listening room with the new top of line loiminchays and going back and forth between my electrocompaniet nemos, and my music reference rm-200. the music reference is winning even with its much lower power reserves and i'm sure, greater distortion and smaller bandwidth.
one makes me happy when i come home from work, the other puts me back in the endless pursuit of perfection.
perhaps we seek ourselves in what we hear. why c37 laquer is popular because it puts carbon on equipment to replicate the vibrational tone of bones and flesh. we want to see ourselves and feel ourselves as humanity and to ERR IS HUMAN. so... perhaps we prefer the error. the error of vinyl, the error of tubes. i'm baffled too.
is your review of a piece of stereo equipment or a fine wine?
is your review of a piece of stereo equipment or a fine wine?
Which system can you listen to longer?
The tubes or the solid state?
This works for me.
I do and I do not see your dilema. First, as an old timer who has been at this myself for a long time, I firmy believe that components should be passing on what they received, no more no less. It's the straight wire with gain concept. If the signal we get is flawed, by the mikes, say, then let's fix the mikes. Let's not have an amp or some other component adding back "musicality" (whatever that means) or some other "nice" property to give us a more pleasing sound.
The advantage of this approach is that as some components improve, all other components do not have to be revoiced and reevaluated to accomodate them. Of course, as a practical matter, all components and rooms have flaws, major or minor, but still flaws. So, our evaluation of whether such and such is really more perfect is done through an imperfect chain of components in an imperfect room. How can we really tell if a component is truly more accurate to the source? With due deference to the famous Walter Heisenberg , we are faced with the "Audio-berg" Uncertainty Principle, about a given component, even if we listen to a ton of live performances and use master recordings for our evaluation.
On the other hand, I can understand how audiophiles can be seduced by a sound that they like more, that they think (underscore think) sounds more like the real thing live, or maybe they do not even care about comparisons to live sound. This is their right undeniably.
Getting back to the question of the two amps, we will never know exactly which is more "accurate". We could perhaps know which is more accurate in a given room with a given system to a particular reviewer. That's about it. So, at the end of the day, just get the damn amp you like more, whatever your criteria. By the way, is there a price or a power spec or anything more tangible about this new Souloution amp? It's fine to pooh-pooh measurements and all that, but sometimes they are useful.
Jon, et al:
I've done a fair bit of live recording of symphonies, brass ensembles, spanish classical guitar quartets, solo and duo pianos, chamber string ensembles, etc. My first semi-pro recording was done with the Moscow Symphony Orchestra in the winter of 1996 (December) in Moscow. Rehearsals were held at MosFilm Studios, and the concert was held at the Grand Hall of the Moscow Conservatory.
While at MosFilm rehearsing and recording, I had a Nagra-D rolling with a soundfield mic in M-S mode. With a pair of Etymotic earphones plugged into the Nagra, standing behind the conductor I could plug the earphones in and out of my ears - listen to live, then listen to mic feed. And that was a crestfallen day for me as I came to realize that the microphones - indeed the whole recording chain - was the first and most drastic filter the music had to be pumped through. It sounded nothing like live music - I could unplug my etymotics to verify.
At the Grand Hall, we switched to a simpler setup: An XY pair of Neumann M-149 mics via custom power supplies standing above and just behind the conductor. A very intimate picture, a better approximation of the sound of the orchestra, but still - the mic feed sounded nothing, absolutely nothing like the live music being played. On many occasions between 1996 and 2002 I had the opportunity to reaffirm this with various types of music in different venues using a few different mic'ing techniques and hardware.
So my question is simply: Is the Absolute Sound the sound of live music or is it the sound of the live mic feed?
If it is the sound of live music, then it seems to me that a system which most cleanly and accurately transfers and transduces the recorded signal is not going to deliver the sound of live music. At best it will deliver the sound of a live mic feed. We are not "photographing" sound so much as painting it. It's the art of the recordist, essentially - edited and altered in some cases by producers, mastering engineers, etc. - the choices they make in terms of microphones, mic placements, gear, filters and EQ, etc - all play a part in creating an interpretation of an event.
So how do we achieve The Absolute Sound? Harry Pearson defined it as the sound of unamplified live music. My experience in recording suggests that the process of recording, even at its purest (live to 2-track), doesn't approximate the sound of live music. Yet we tend to dismiss products often times for "poor measurements" and herald products that adhere to an almost Euclidean strictness of standard based upon an industrial definition of "accuracy."
How do we get from here (accuracy) to there (the sound of unamplified live music)? Is there an unimpeachable standard?
Chris
The Signal Collection, LLC
North American Distributors
of Connoisseur-Grade Hi-Fi
Indeed, how do we get the mic feed to sound more like the real thing? A frequent poster on this site, recording engineer Barry Diament, has some thoughts on his site:
http://www.barrydiamentaudio.com/articles.htm
The articles entitled Recording In Stereo (parts 1 and 2) are a pretty good education on basic recording technique, as well as a documentation of one engineer's solution to recording more of the absolute sound.
Having been around this for a bit over 40 years, I recall some "demonstrations" done by Acoustic Research with a string quartet (I believe) recorded and then A/B'd outdoours in a "public" setting. As this was to serve as a vehicle for increasing sales of speakers (mostly) and amplifiers to a lesser degree, there was certainly a monetary incentive to the whole process. Given that we are backing up 40 some years of technology (speakers, amps, turntables, etc), the expectations of the target audiences must be adjusted regarding the state of the 60's art, but the idea of going live vs recorded, and outdoors, at that, does remove a lot of the "mikes and processing" from the loop. I think AR sold a lot of gear based on these reports, and their willingness to document their achieved performance in their own papers and in the technical press of the day. (You might google Villichur, Allison, Hoffman and those guys who were involved in these efforts all those years ago. It was a fun time and provided some great sonics.)
Given that distortion figures for amplifiers of that era were considered to be notably accurate at 0.5% distortion, the improvements of today's gear should have laid large portions of this discussion to rest long ago. That has not happened. Both McIntosh and Marantz had travelling analysts who would test equipment brought in to selected high-end (for the day) stereo shops while you waited and watched, and graph the results of these tests. It is my recollection that they would provide a copy to the owner, the shop and keep one for their own records. The gear on the shelves (would be tested as a demonstration of excellence / performance) and used by the shop for showing potential coustomers the benefits of the high end products. Beyond that, they had an impressive case of tubes which they would exchange on the spot / on the bench to restore the (McIntosh) owners' products to factory specifications before it went back out the door. This they did for free. You brought your stuff in the door, stood in line, watched them test it, got your chart (before and after) and went home with a smile (sometimes), but all for free. I took in my AR amp and it performed as advertised: .5% at 20 and 20K, and a dip to .1% at 1K, 50 w per channel RMS, both channels driven. Sounded good to me. That was my criteria in '69-'70, and it still is.
I'd love to be in a position to upgrade to the stratosphere of audio equipment, but within the limitations of my room, my ears and my budget, I'm a happy camper.
Music is supposed to evoke or influence a person's mood. Be it excitement, sadness, elation, euphoria, or whatever. I think that many of us have forgotten how to allow ourselves to be transported to nirvana by a simple melody or drum beat without thinking about how our systems are performing .
I was riding in my car a while back, listening to a radio talk show when the program was interrupted by a commercial which began and ended with some classic rock and roll song. (I listen to talk radio in my car because my home audio system has spoiled my ears to the point that music in a moving car is so fraught with flaws as to be unlistenable for me.) However, on that day as I was awaiting the return of 'our host' I found myself tapping my foot and actually singing along. I realized, "It's the music!" I wasn't looking for the Nth degree of detail. Bloom didn't even occur to me. I just allowed my subconcious to enjoy the moment. I realized that instead of focusing on the 'sound' of the equipment, I was focusing on the music. Allowing it's melody and rhythm to move me.
When I returned home that day I sat in my favorite chair, flipped on the stereo and spent the next hour in blissful ignorance of the lack of bloom in my solid state amp and the 'digital' sound of the CD. I didn't wonder if changing speaker cables might give me a little more resolution. I just went with the music. I've relearned the magic of music. I discovered, or rediscovered that you can't dance in the sweet spot but it sounds good just the same.
Yes I still sit down with a classical selection and really tune in to the space, and air and all that critical listening stuff, but not nearly as often as before. More often than not I'm enjoying the mood.
So what sounds better? Tubes? Solid State? The real question is, "Are you tapping your foot?" If you are, then whatever you're listening to is good enough for what the music was intended.
Chris,
You state the conundrum of "the absolute sound" versus the versimilitude of the mic feed with the authority of the recording engineer better than I have read before. The problem with trying to convert the sound of the microphone into something that approaches the sound of unamplified music, say, as heard from the 10th row center, is that it introduces errors stemming from the recording engineer's personal taste or the painter's personal view of reality. Ultimately, this approach obscures what is wrong with the current state of the art and inhibits investigations into how to improve electrical/recording engineering imperfections. Practical commercial realities dictate producing the "most saleable" recording possible. As long as we recognize the imperfections of current recording practices and try to invent ways of improving them, then we can hold out hope for improvements while temporarily putting up with what are now less than ideal choices. Suppose then, that we have two pieces of equipment, one accurate to the mic feed (a perfect electrical transducer) and one that tries to convince the listener that he is listening to live music, 10th row center (instead of being 20 ft above the performers) and with built-in timbral EQ to sweeten the upper midrange. The first piece of equipment might be poorly reviewed and the manufacturer might not survive long enough to prove his product's superiority when real advancements in recording quality catch up to what he has already achieved. The argument finally devolves into one of immediate gratification versus progress. Being an optimist, I have always voted for progress without regret. With optimal system setup and the most neutral equipment, personally, I have consistently found that this approach produces the most accurate sound and the greatest emotional pleasure. Let's look at this in a different way. Over a 10 year period of time, few would argue that we have not witnessed obvious sonic advances in cartridge or compact disc devices that have also been accompanied by measureable technical improvements. Most manufacturers would agree that such advancements can only be achieved by elimination of various distortions and hence more closely approaching the ideal of the perfect transducer. So in the end, if you can only afford to buy for the long haul, my opinion is to buy accuracy (maximim information transfer) and eschew pretty sounding equipment that isn't true to the mic feed.
Hi Chuck, thanks for you considered answer. I appreciate your position, but my point is simply that the recording arts are arts ... that, regardless of advances in technology, the habits of recording engineers, mastering engineers, and producers will not change.
But let's say you're correct, and technology advances to the point that the mic feed is indistinguishable from the sound of the live music. The selection of mic patterns, large and small diaphragms, XY vs. ORTF vs. Spaced Omni vs. M-S vs Decca Tree vs. Tonmeister (referring here to the DG habit of miking everything individually, and then some), mic pre's, cables/snakes - the art of crafting an aural illusion is approached differently by different engineers.
As well, while I do love to collect new records these days, my favorites are - by and large - from the past. Jazz of the 50's and 60's coupled with punk and rock from the 70's and 80's basically fill out my record collection. I suspect most people are already quite vested in their music collection by the time they are deep into this wonderful HiFi habit of ours. So while it may be that at some point in the future the recording techniques and technologies will permit more realistic recordings to take place, what should we tell the person who wants to enjoy his record collection today? Go for the equipment that measures well, or go for the equipment that sounds like music (supposing that the former and the latter are not the same)?
I agree with you - technological progress is critical, and I love it when the numbers and the sound line up and play music. But we've received fair and balanced instruction from those who have gone before us and lighted the path: Use your ears. We don't create food to be evaluated by calorimeters - we taste it, experience it, measure it with our body, mind, spirit. We create food and music as visceral, carnal pleasures to be absorbed and indulged in!
My question isn't necessarily with the technology we're developing along the way, but rather with the definition of accuracy and assumptions we are using to guide the technological development. If the mic feed doesn't sound like music, but the numbers all line up ... what are the chances that the processes that led to the development of the present recording chain are going to be appropriate going forward?
Chris
The Signal Collection, LLC
North American Distributors
of Connoisseur-Grade Hi-Fi
A recent contributing reviewer at Stereophile made this statement: "the average Joe walking down the street can immediately tell if the music coming from the window is live or memorex". I agree. I know I can. So, the real question is does it sound live or reproduced. The goal must be to reproduce the illusion of a live performance. I have been fortunate to have experienced reproduced sound, occaisionally, not consistently, on other peoples very expensive systems where I was able to transcend the reality and enjoy what sounded like to me: a live performance.
Jonathan:
Thank you for the "transparency" associated with your note above pertaining to the dependency we all have with the variables (only a few key did you actually mention) associated with the overall production philosophy/methodology, recording, engineering, mixing, pressing, etc. of the music we listen to via our two channel systems. At the "back-end" of this process, we all have room "issues" as well that so greatly impact the listening experience. When you combine the vast number of variables in these "front-end" and back-end parameters with the additionally vast number of variables associated with our playback systems in the "middle" of the process (e.g. the PS Audio, ARC, Kimber Select/Transparent, Wilson Audio components and how they operate synergistically in my main two channel system), the discussion of solid-state v. tubes fades into the deep black background very quickly. Of course, even if all of the stars are aligned with these items, it will mean nothing if we are not mentally and physically "ready" for the listening experience (i.e., another "huge" set of variables come into play).
I'm blessed to have been able to assemble components that let me truly enjoy my music - whether it's the absolute sound or not; I cannot say. What I can say is that without a doubt, the best we can all hope for is to have enough peace of mind and time to be able to "tuck away" into our listening rooms and enjoy with wonder and awe the artists and their performances that we've been able to accumulate in our listening libraries.
I hope that you'll continue down the path that you've touched on above in your equipment reviews, continuing to at least mentioning some of these other parameters that are so crucial to our overall listening experiences. Not only will it make for more interesting reading for me as a more "seasoned" audiophile, it will better help me translate your listening descriptions for my own "osmotic" evaluations.
Happy listening!
I think this is all very simple actually.
The tube vs. solid state debate boils down to the type of music you like. End of story. If you like live recordings such as classical symphonies, then you lean towards tubes. Even though tubes do not measure well they provide a filter that basically reverses the filter produced in the recording/mic chain. This provided the best aproximation of the live event in your home listening environment.
On the other hand, if your musical taste leans toward studio produced mixes, then you prefer solid state gear. The low distortion of solid state gear puts zero filter on the recorded sounds and provides the listener with an acurate representation of what the sound engineer had intended.
Spending 30 years on development and research of amplifiers, also being a conservatory degree musician, I would like to share some thoughts on this subject.
I have listened to over 10.000 permutations in my reproduction chain and investigated in many areas. I found that music reproduction and music itself is so multidimensional that the questions are the wrong ones. (be sure that all permutations sounded different)
Measurements (Yes I do have a sate of the art Audio-Precision analyzer) and simulation (I do have Micro Cap professional) are very nice tools: they are important but at the same time of limited value.
All we can do as amplifiers designers is trying to compose something from parts that are all imperfect, all have there own signature to delve in as much as we can in the indeed ethereal matter of getting something that seems to escape the material world in a sense.
As we can’t build a amplifier out of air, we have to make thousand of decisions all having bearing on the sound.
So: please make your pick of which imperfect product, whether an ARC or a solution, you get high on. Don’t ask for the amplifier that has it all: it doesn’t exist.
Asking yourself which of the two is “the truth” is nonsense: clearly you describe the virtues of both amplifiers and clearly they both seem to have their own strong points, and that is it.
My research has been mostly in trying to design transistor amplifiers with the sound of tubes as a reference (and goal in a way). I found out that many virtues of tubes are indeed virtues that are lacking in the vast majority of the solid-state amplifiers. (and measurement won’t tell you)
In a way these virtues could be described as a part of the truth.
Myself I find it most important to be sucked into the music, mesmerized, hypnotized, feeling what the musicians feel, understand what the music is about without any effort, feeling the intensity. When this happens there is no much need for thinking anyway.
The art of music reproduction goes way, way beyond measuring.
Excellent post Jon.
My two brief experiences with the Soulutions in a show environment and at a friend's had resulted with admiration and respect rather than love. When the ARCs were hooked up to my system for a home demo, it was immediate love; they weren't going back to the dealer's showroom, even though I hadn't intended buying them. Another friend, now proud owner of 610t/Ref 3, had a similar epiphany.
Having to chose one approach over the other pushes the goalpost for the absolute sound and gives genius amp designers something to strive for. In the meantime, music is essentially a sensual pleasure for me, and I'll take what is more like 'real' music, even if it has a few warts in non-essential places, any time. I prefer my intellectual stimulation to come from other medium.
Very well written review and arguably the best attempt at describing the indescribable that I have read. I know exactly what you are talking about Johnathan having wrestled with this conundrum for years. I have owned SS amplification over the years with their high levels of resolution but also high levels of fatigue. But the tube amps I auditioned never impressed me with their limited bandwidth. I have since drunk the MAC koolaid and now have an all McIntosh SS system. What I have found with McIntosh is that their amps are a great compromise between SS and tube....a high level of non-fatiquing resolution of detail and outstanding in the lowest registers. Unfortunately the MAC buyer has to pony up a lot of extra cash for the aesthetics whether he/she want it or not. I bought MAC for the sound but surprisingly, many owners are at least as committed to the appearance (those hypnotic blue meters) as they are the sound, although they would never admit it. At any rate, thanks for the thought-provoking article.
G. Hadley
So much music...so little time.
You called your piece "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off" [Tomato, To-mah-to?]
I agree with other posters who said this is one of the best things you've written. Nice job!
However, I expected your end point to be about the music rather than about the gear. After more than 30 years as a gearhead, I've seen a huge improvement in lowered noise floor and reduced distortion in all kinds of equipment, from phono cartridges to speakers. But above a certain theshold of quality, I'm not certain that I perceive an equivalent increase in musical enjoyment.
In the stratosphericly-priced equipment ranges in which you live, this may be less true, but for those of us mortals who can (only?) afford to invest $20-30,000 in gear, trickle-down improvements have not yielded so much bang for the buck. Quieter, yes. More extended, yes. Lower distortion, yes. Greater dynamic range, yes. Can transistor amps be made that produce soulful insights into music? Clearly they can.
Perhaps I've become jaded, or in my dotage and declining hearing quality, I can no longer detect the same nuances. But I get just as much musical enjoyment from the vintage gear I restore as a hobby, compared to the $30,000 state-of-the-art system in my listening room. Literally JUST AS MUCH. I was listening to an LP of Pablo Casals conducting the Marlboro Festival Symphony Orchestra, playing Bach. The music was thrilling! Pablo Casals really "gets" Bach. And the system was this crappy little Eico EL84 tube amp from 1959, playing on some PSB alpha speakers, combined with the old Thorens turntable, all together worth maybe $600.
Do I get the same thrills with my big system? Sure... it's about the music. I certainly hear a lot more stuff, and get a lot more dynamics AND nuance. I love it. Do I love it MORE? Um, maybe. Or maybe I am deluding myself. It certainly cost me enough over the years, as I swapped gear in and out, and built up to a sound I think is fantastic. But what I really love is the music. Anything that gets me to the music is enough. It certaintly leaves me questioning the real value of the contributions that today's technology has brought. I am equally easily seduced by the music (so, I'm a cheap date) regardless of the technology employed. It is all an illusion anyway. As long as you are sucked into the illusion, does it matter if one illusion is more "correct" than another?
It leaves me thinking "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off!"
DFH
Spot on!
I think many, including TAS, are looking in the wrong places for major improvement in making recordings played in our homes sound more like the real thing live. Intensive searches by objectivists to lower distortion and subjectivists seeking the killer component or playback medium that will bring it all to life have not done it, although objective or subjective improvements are welcome. Implicit in these approaches is the notion that it can be done at all in stereo. But, I have come, in my own case, to a belief that we are rapidly approaching a limiting asymptote of performance improvements toward the sound of the real thing live with only 2 channels and a component -by-component purist approach.
First, multichannel music played from hi rez sources impresses me much more than any stereo as a closer approach to the absolute sound. I believe stereo distorts natural space and ambience because stereo mikes pick up side/rear hall reflections and redirect them at you from the front. Whatever is not redirected is just truncated. The rear/side reflections also distort the front sound stage to a greater or lesser degree, depending on how much they were mixed into the front channels. Also, as we have learned ever since Dynaquad in the '70's, out of phase information can actually improve tonality, particularly in the bass. Stereo just cancels this out. There is additional information all those additional drivers in Mch can impart to our ears. Those who go to concerts should try at their next opportunity to listen to the sound, filtering out as much as possible the direct sound. There is quite a bit of energy emerging from all around you. But, there is no way that stereo can impart this to you, and the human ear has a fairly well documented sensitivity to sound directivity, even from the rear.
Second, reviewers and audiophiles for years have just paid lip service to the effect of our rooms on playback. Little has actually been done until recently, other than to suggest room treatments, ideally by a professional who knows what he is doing. Now there is a complementary alternative in the form of DSP-based EQ transparently applied to overcome many room-induced, speaker and system-induced frequency and time domain aberations. To me, the effect is magical and worth many times its price in system component upgrades that still will not provide as flat and time-coherent a sound to your ears in your room. Well conceived treatments are good, but even the best can be further improved by the the application of DSP "room EQ". I completely agree with Robert E. Greene's excellent article in TAS several months ago, that once heard, room EQ becomes essential to appreciating better sound.
I recently heard Wilson Alexandria 3's driven by top-of-the line Krell components with Cast in a well treated room. The stereo demo was personally supervised by Dave Wilson and Dan D'Agostino, who both conducted it. It was outstandingly good. My own Mch system with Audyssey EQ was quite costly, but worth a fraction of these components. Would I trade my system for theirs if I had to live with stereo and no EQ? Quite simply, no way. Mine just sounds much more true to live performance than any stereo I have ever heard.
Great discussion!
There are so many limitations to contend with in our playback systems, including in no particular order: price, physical space, personal preference, etc.
For many of us the quest is for better always better sound, with the current system being satisfactory for only a limited time.
Then we read a review, hear a piece of equipment, experiment on our own and it's off down the rabbit hole...
My own preferences in music are mainly recorded in multi-track studios using all the modern tools hence playback is not ever going to sound 'live'; the best that can be hoped for is to replicate...what, the sound in the control room? The sound in the producer's head?
The live shows I've been to have for the most part been LOUD. I will never have a playback system that can approach those visceral volume levels, and frankly I'm not sure I would want to even if I could.
I guess the point I'm trying to make is that there is no 'right' answer for me that will suit you.
The value of reviewers and commentators is that they give us a frame of reference within which to evaluate equipment for ourselves and a vocabulary with which to discuss our evaluations with others.
Peace.
IMHO, both tube and SS designs are both equally valid "means" to get to the desired "end", that being the "absolute". But even at the highet levels of design and quality, tube designs always seem to be more enjoyable to "listen to", while SS designs always seem to be better at allowing the listener to "listen through".
I believe that neither tube nor SS is universally superior to the other. Both have strenghts and weakness that will make one or the other more enjoyable to a particular listener. But what is most amazing to me is that we have come to point in the evolution of both SS and tube designs where their respective strenghts now far outweight their weakness.
Hi Jon
You mentioned you have sent back the 720 and 740 for "updating" Is there a new software for the pre-amp as well.
Thanks
Stargaze,
No. I shouldn't have used the word "update" in re the preamp. The earliest samples of the 740 CD player (and I had one of the first--straight from CES) did require a software update, though current production models do not. I should note that Art Manzano of Axiss Audio, the U.S. importer of Soulution, and Soulution itself are exceptionally fast and professional when it comes to update and/or repair, as they should be given how much this gear costs.
Jon
For me it is not possible to make an absolute judgement about which sound is 'correct/authentic' if the basis of that judgement is different for the two parties making that decision.
After years in the industry I have come to a conclusion - and it is quite simple. There are those who judge Hifi gear by its faithfulness to the recording (solid state), and those who judge it by its faithfulness to live music (tube). Both are right!
What surprises me is how few people actually listen to live music with instruments such as guitar, drums, brass, and piano, without the benefit of a PA system, and therefore do not have a clear reference point. It only takes one visit to your local Steinway dealer and a couple of chords to be in awe of the texture, weight, power, harmonics, and unique character of this mighty instrument and to know in my case that only tubes can fully express this information. This is of course at a cost of absolute transparency/extension/control.
Perhaps what also differentiates us may be what we are prepared to compromise in our search for perfection (oxymoron intended), or what least annoys such as an additional noise added to a complete sound giving masking effects and some softness, or control and extension with the loss of information that makes an instument genuinely live sounding.
Ultimately, both are flawed, and we the audiophile - an odd creature - are joyously addicted to searching for that which we cannot find (for now?), but love to endlessly debate our end of the elephant in stimulating forums.
Quite simply I could have just said "Apples for apples, and bananas for bananas!".
PS. What would happen if we actually found the Holy Grail of Absolute Sound and we all agreed and it therefore became affordable............................... god forbid!
I thought Neil made a very good point. My preference for tubes is unquestionable when used in reproducing live recored music, particularly classical. However, if i am listening to vocals recorded in a studio i prefer SS. with vocal recordings, i find reproduction of tube systems to over emphisize the vocals too much (too much 'breathe') during long listening session. I guess i agree 100% with Neil and was wondering if Jon has some observations to agree or disagree with this statement during the ARC and Soulution trials.
I must say that I am delighted by the number and quality of responses to this blog. Delighted and reassured. Sometimes I wonder if people still think about what they listen to and on, and how it relates to the "absolute sound"--or whether meta-critical discussions like this one are old hat, part and parcel of a bygone age. Clearly they aren't--at least for this group of smart, thoughtful, eloquent, and experienced listeners.
To my mind, the main issue here is rather simple: Some electronics alter the signal more than others, and in different ways from others. Some people want something that leaves the signal alone as much as possible, some want it modified to sound overall more like music, in whatever sense they interpret that phrase. Chacun a son gout.
But I would suggest a few points:
1 Most of the recordings that one encounters commercially are not in fact anything like a single (or double) "live mike feed". Of course some are--WaterLily, Telarc in the three spaced omni straight to simple mixing and then to recording days. But most of them have been quite heavily electronically processed. (Just a point of information)
2 Live mike feeds do not usually sound all that much like music, either. Most recordings are made in ways that do not really even try to replicate the reality of listening to music from a sensible audience location--or indeed from anywhere at all in particular. (You might have a look at my articles about microphone technique on www.regonaudio.com to see how far away from this most recordings are).
3 In view of point 2, it may very well make sense to want to hear something that is a little different from what is actually on the recording but that sounds more natural in some sense. But trying to do this with amplifier choices seems to me remarkably inefficient and is moreover flawed in the following sense:. What is "wrong" with recordings in the sense of not representing music as it is varies from recording to recording, In rough terms it tends to be the same--they are almost all too close up. But in precise terms, the variations from natural sound are different for different recordings. If you want to "fix" recordings, it seems to me that buying a different amplifier is far too broad-brush a method to work. I would suggest rather a user-controllable signal processor. At least then you could adjust what you do to fit the situation. Buying a tube amplifier is akin to buying a tone control with only one setting--and an expensive one at that. It would make more sense to me (as it did to Mark Levinson in Cello days) to buy an adjustable EQ device.
4 People that understand amplifiers techincally(e.g. Bob Carver) actually know what tube amps do to generate their characteristic sound. It is not magic--certain shifts in frequency balance, certain types of distortion, and so on, One can duplicate it with solid state circuitry though no one is bothering any more to do this. But it is not a deep mystery, though it takes some work.
Playing with your own EQ --and if you really get into this sort of thing, your own distortion generators-- is a lot of fun, but you do not have to spend a lot of money on amplifiers to get into the "let's fix it up" game.
REG (Robert E. Greene)
That's a very interesting post Robert, and one I haven't heard put quite so simply?
Are you suggesting that now, with digital EQ devices (which hopefully don't lose information in the circuitry), it is possible with SS amplification, to 'dial-in' the sound we 'like' whilst being unconcerned with retaining the 'gestalt' of the original recording?
I did not mean to suggest that one could get the whole "tube sound" from EQ alone. When Carver, who seems to be able to do pretty much what he likes with the sound of amplifiers, wanted to duplicate the sound of a tube amp(a Conrad Johnson , as I recall) to the point where the Stereophile reviewing staff could not tell audibly the tube amp from his solid state "t mod", he had not only to alter frequency response--the tube amp was not flat into the speakers used on account of output impedance matters--but also the distortion spectrum
Jean Hiraga, who was an admirer of tubes, often wrote about how they sounded good because they had a "good" distortion spectrum and enough distortion to mask the "bad" distortions that occurred in most recordings of the modern (post tube) era. This is not as crazy as it sounds, actually, and indeed not crazy at all--such things do happen, as anyone who has ever "warmed up" a recording by adding some second harmonic distortion has found.
Still, a lot of what people like about tube amps is , I think, how the frequency response is broadly altered. And this one can do with EQ. It is surprising--as demoed by Martin Colloms years ago--how much of the "magic" of SET amps is simply the matter of their having a very high output impedance typically, something that shifts frequency balance and can be duplicated simply by smoothly EQing a neutral amp to the same response. Dan Shanefield used to do a demo years ago where he would EQ one amp to match exactly the response of another and they would then become very hard to distinguish. This whole matter was also remarked upon by Tom Holman with measurements of various amps--mostly solid state ones! -- in an early issue of TAS(around issue 25 or 26--I could look it up).
So yes, I think a lot of "tube sound"--albeit not all of it, quite--could be duplicated by DSP EQ if one did it carefully. And this would have the great advantage that one could adjust it. Buying a tube amp is like buying a tone control--but you cannot change its settings!
Incidentally, things like the Z Systems and Weiss EQ devices are very very transparent indeed. If you choose two parametric settings one pushing up and one pushing down same amount, same Q, same center frequency, the bypass of the device and the device itself sound effectively the same. (One needs a jitter suppressing DAC to make the match essentially perfect, but presumably we all have one of those by now).
It just seems to me an odd activity to spend multi-thousands of dollars (to buy a tube amp) to make a more or less arbitrary and unalterable alteration of the frequency response of a system and to add some harmonic distortion, also to a non-adjustable extent. This seems to me like a sort of "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" activity. If you asked most of the people doing it, "Do you want to reEQ your system and put some distortion into it?" probably they would say no. But perhaps not exactly knowing what the tube amp is doing , they accept what is doing as musically valid. And maybe it IS musically valid in practice. But if one knows what is happening, it is usually easier and cheaper to arrange explicitly for it to happen!
In the future, not only DSP EQ will be available(as it is now) but if enough people are interested, DSP distortion adders will also be available (as they are not now , for the general public, at least as far as I know). People will be able to dial in whatever kind of sonic alteration they want. Of course, in the analogue realm, such devices have been with us for decades. The odd thing to my mind is that people who eschew them explicitly sometimes embrace them de facto in the form of tube amps!
As always, to each his own. But personally if I were going to spend a lot of money on an EQ/distoriton generation signal processor , I would want one I could adjust!
REG
REG:
The problem with the DSP/EQ issue via-a-vis getting tube sound from a solid state amplifier: The tube-amp sound is not merely an issue of frequency response and distortion. It is a matter of how the amplifier reacts with the complex impedance of the loudspeaker at various frequencies and sound pressures. It is also a matter of damping (or lack thereof). These aren't DSP'able things. They vary from amplifier to amplifier, depending upon which batch of compromises the designer has chosen.
DSP is not and will never be a magic pill. It may be useful in some ways, in fact it already is. But I wholeheartedly doubt it will ever be able to emulate the actual electrical effects of an actual amplifier and transformer interacting with a loudspeaker's complex impedance characteristics.
I take it from your absorbing posts Robert, that you are a proponent of SS amplification over tubes?
What is your take on the advancements made in that form of amplification (ie Soulution, Halcro, Krell) compared to those of tubes (ie Lamm, ARC), and what do you surmise about Jon's somewhat vexing article?
Halcro
"It just seems to me an odd activity to spend multi-thousands of dollars (to buy a tube amp) to make a more or less arbitrary and unalterable alteration of the frequency response of a system and to add some harmonic distortion, also to a non-adjustable extent."
There are many tube amps on the market that have adjustable operating modes, tube bias and feedback settings.
BTW- Bryston recently updated their amplier line, can DSP EQ make older Bryston amps sound like the new SST2 series?
It just seems to me an odd activity to spend multi-thousands of dollars (to buy a tube amp) to make a more or less arbitrary and unalterable alteration of the frequency response of a system and to add some harmonic distortion, also to a non-adjustable extent.
This (and the post) could be interpreted as get a cheap SS amp, stick in a decent signal processor and dial in the sound you want. Surely, SS amps come with their own set of problems and you'd need to have a good enough signal to start with ... which leads you back to you a Soulution (say) + exepensive signal processor to get the sound of a much cheaper ARC :) I'm being facetious here, but I think the signal processor that can dial in whatever sound one wishes has not been invented yet and I suspect it will cost a fortune, once it will be, if it will be.
SS replication of the tubed guitar amp have been designed and refined for the past 30 years or so, yet still fall far short of the real thing.
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