PS Audio HCA-2
digital -- Tue, 10/17/2006 - 23:41
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PS Audio HCA-2
Just purchased a PS Audio HCA-2 and am seeking a matching PCA-2 preamplifier. I really dig the concept of an electrically efficient amplification system: one that both looks great & transparently amplifies signals.
Picked up the amplifier so that I could run some double-blind high-end fuse auditions, as my Roksan doesn’t sport any replaceable fuses. I really like the PS Audio series in black however and it may replace the Roksan.
Andrew D.
www.cdnav.com
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digital wrote:.
PS Audio HCA-2
I really dig the concept of an electrically efficient amplification system: .
digital-
I really dig the concept of choosing amplification based on how well it reproduces pitches, rhythms, and dynamics, but then again I can't be sure as I've not found a way to double-blind test myself on that assertion.
Good luck with the fuse test - be safe. As I am quite confident of what you will find for our benefit, perhaps you will keep them on your website and leave us here to our own delusions.
regards,
Scott
digital wrote:Picked up the amplifier so that I could run some double-blind high-end fuse auditions, as my Roksan doesn’t sport any replaceable fuses. I really like the PS Audio series in black however and it may replace the Roksan.You bought an amp in order to test fuses. That's dedication! But to what? :wink:
Just pulling your leg Andrew. Anyway, sorry to go off topic but I followed your CAV link (cool, both sides of the coin should be present) and had my eye caught by your post about ATS acoustics. They sure are inexpensive and decent to look at. Celebrating those two things is fine, but do they work or are they just inexpensive and decent to look at? I'd hope you no-nonsense CAV dudes would have them tested against competitors and not just recommend due to a low price based, faith.
Cheers,
Mike :)
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Mike,
Why Mike, dedication to getting to the truth of course! I have assembled a really solid kit now with Magneplanar 1.6QRs, a quality listening room, clean amplification (PSA), CD front-end (Pioneer Elite SACD with external Musical Fidelity DAC), and assorted double-shielded cables.
Some audiophiles like to swap cables, some components. Me, I dig the music and challenging unproven belief systems by way of controlled blind evaluations. A 30+year audiophile, I simply dig the truth more than hope and faith. I've conducted some really enlightening blind evaluations over the years, one of which is published here:
...with a humorous prologue here
They are both a good read. More to come - living with one's head in the sand is no way to go through life! The next evaluation will in fact be based around fuses from IsoClean - using their own SACD evaluation DC and a number of musicians - keeping myself completely out of it - segregated in a separate room - with only a system of lighted shapes to communicate with the participants.
Andrew D.
www.cdnav.com
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digital wrote:segregated in a separate room - with only a system of lighted shapes to communicateSeems like you've found the right place for yourself in life. Good luck on your epic journey for truth, justice, etc, etc.
Mike,
Ah, but you miss the point my friend: I simply despise dishonesty in a hobby I enjoy. My particular "epic journey" resides in the trails (on my bike), in the ocean (in a kayak) and in the mountains (on my board).
As a member of several A/V forums, I see that the hobby is split about 50/50 – (‘believers’ in tweaks etc.). I’m simply doing my part to give the tweaks a fair shake at showing themselves (anthropomorphizing, I know…), to be ‘real’ or pompous marketing.
Andrew D.
Cdnav.com
digital wrote:As a member of several A/V forums, I see that the hobby is split about 50/50 – (‘believers’ in tweaks etc.). I’m simply doing my part to give the tweaks a fair shake at showing themselves (anthropomorphizing, I know…), to be ‘real’ or pompous marketing.Yes I've noticed you're making the rounds. I think pretty much everyone is already aware of the various positions and have chosen what they are comfortable with, even if the ground is scientifically shakey in spots (it's only audio, not medicine!).
You are in favour of choice for free citizens? If I chose to believe that the earth is flat you wouldn't make an ass of yourself trying to make me look like an ass would you?
When you're done, maybe you should do something worthwhile with your crusading energies, join Amnesty International, Greenpeace, etc. Be a benefit to someone.
Mike,
You must be a mind-reader! I am in fact a member of both Greenpeace and the David Suzuki Foundation, as well as a financial supporter of Doctors without Borders, Foster Parents PLAN Canada and the World Wildlife Foundation 8) (no, I'm not messing with ya' man, its true)
I'm also a volunteer in my community and the driving force behind the creation of a mountain bike park in our local community. You see therefor, I am in fact 'a benefit to someone', as well as a constant crusader for truth in the hobby we call audio (because it sorely lacks said component).
Andrew D.
cdnav.com
I followed your postings on ABX tests you conducted, and the Secrets of Hometheater discussion of cables and the test protocols.
As a research engineer by training and experience, I am stunned by the scientific irrelevance of the tests conducted by audio engineers and amateurs to test distinguishable differences between audiophile equipment. The errors are most concentrated in the “woodies” camp of “scientific” testing.
The tests are routinely structured to not allow identification of differences, then analyzed with jaundiced eyes, setting up arbitrary statistical criteria and treating consistent mis-identification as insignificant and their own observations of differences as “imagined”.
The first group of errors comes from an ignorance of psychoacoustics and cognitive psychology. Most significant is the idea of ABX tests having the capacity to accomplish the desired task; to determine whether the items sound different to the listeners in their normal systems playing their normal music selections by doing a test in an unfamiliar environment playing unknown music not of their preference, and in unfamiliar systems. Then confusing them with changing labels.
Our listening is structured and attuned to filter audible information from noise, particularly to pick out familiar voices and acoustic signatures of events from sounds surrounding them and to locate them. The key issue is that the picking out is of cognitively labeled particular signatures or patterns. The signatures are learned, as are the patterns of components of “noise” so that they are filtered along with the indistinguishable noises which are not yet provided with cognitive labels. Each cognitive unit has a potential to have endless characteristics including “tone”, volume range, transient characteristics (attack and decay patterns) etc.. These are learned and refined over time as we learn what characteristics are those of the item, and which are those of irrelevant items associated with them in time or circumstance.
This cognitive issue of labels is significant because the patterns we are required to identify must be “learned” before they can be identified. Furthermore, the learning must be facilitated with a chance to isolate the characteristics of the item being “learned”. The chance to isolate characteristics of the particular item being “learned” means that the same item being learned be used in DIFFERENT but FAMILIAR settings.
Labels must be consistent and clear during learning to allow the listener to assign characteristics to a particular label. Without this, the psychoacoustic process will be sidetracked into creating unconscious labels for each occurrence or group of them rather than refine one’s characterization of the one signature we labeled.
The results in the RCA cable test digital ran were significant in detecting differences because despite having no opportunity to have a good learning experience to identify the sound signature with particular labels, the participants had been able to distinguish between the signatures, though they were confused by labels being exchanged, so consistently chose the wrong labels. Thus the results of 20% right and 80% right are identical in their significance in capacity to distinguish sound characteristics. Confusion arose as to which label belongs to which sound pattern.
The second set of errors comes from the tester’s preconceived notions of what makes an audible difference, such as steel couplings for cables, using unresolving cables and unresolving components. One test designer had demonstrated his ignorance of audiophile sensibilities with a speaker design where he used multiple electrostatic panels aimed at and away from the listening seat at some 30 degrees or so in order to “increase dispersion”. After spending two evenings and most of a weekend reading his tests and their discussion, I dropped him and will not take seriously anything he and his discussion group have to say about audio.
To summarize. There are deficiencies in ABX testing that come from the expectation of their designers that humans have the characteristics of test equipment. Ignore the learning process and scramble cognitively necessary labels, and then misinterpret their stats and ignore their own experiences.
As an amateur musician and having come from a family of musicians, I can say that musicians have the exact opposite of “golden ears”. They can distinguish between two violins played by the same violinist on the same piece of music from behind a thick curtain while the rest of the orchestra is playing and while standing under the HVAC intake. They are so used to picking out the patterns of musical instruments, musical pieces and their players under the most difficult situations that the differences between widely varying equipment such as a handheld transistor radio and a full blown super tweaked audiophile system are of no significance as their listening processes are unaltered and both sound “like” the music playing inside their head out of memory. Furthermore, they tend to listen in their mind rather than listening with their ears. They imagine the missing notes and instruments as they do when reading a musical score. Some may distinguish between what they hear and what they imagine from reading music (or remembering the notes) but this has to be learned separately by listening to their own recordings and they still need to go through the exercise periodically in order not to revert to hearing internally.
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Mods' - Please move this discussion to the "None of the above" thread area. Tnx...
schussor
Nicely written post! Your missive however fails to take into account at least three facts:
1) Audiophiles consistently provide ecstatic euphemisms to describe the differences that they readily attribute to this device or that, all in a moment's notice, without any special circumstances in place (I can provide many references). However, if that same audiophile, in the same circumstance, is disallowed the privilege of actually viewing the component in question - they inevitably fail to pick out whatever attributable 'sound' they heard in moments previous. Why is it that you feel that folks can pick out massive differences at the drop of the hat when they have no special setups in place, but if I ask the same individual to do the same thing without the function of vision, they inevitably state that untoward effects are in play that denigrate the evaluation?
This makes absolutely no sense nor follows any logic.
I come from a forum that features, among other things, a sub-group of audiophiles that get together and attend listening sessions at each other's homes on a frequent basis. One of the many things they audition are cables, be it power, speaker, RCA - whatever. Consider this:
1) The music may or may not be theirs
2) They are listening to someone else's system
3) They are listening in someone else's room
4) Groups are constantly changing, thus, folks might be a bit nervous
5) But if you ask them, they'll tell ya' that they hear differences between all manner of audio kit
According to generally accepted audiophile lore, which states that we need to be in our own rooms, with our own gear, with music that we are intimately familiar with - without any kind of 'stress": this phenomenon should not be possible, due to the aforementioned situations.
I don't know if you read the entire text of the unsighted RCA cable evaluation that I conducted. Check out this last bit:
After the rigid / organized part of the auditions were over, myself and the two remaining participants (David & Jakub), were playing around with CDs off-the-record. In the SACD player we had an SACD recording of a Jazz Trio that Jakub was intimately familiar with. It was a DDD, Telarc – decent recording / mastering to say the least. We had listened to a few tracks of it back and forth with the PBJ and Luscombe Silvers, David and Jakub were exchanging seats and I, the gracious host, was in the second bedroom swapping cables. None of us were writing anything down at this point and we were not keeping any secrets about which cable was in use.
Jakub asked me to do a direct comparison PJB vs. Luscombe, quick as possible so as to negate any memory loss of the ‘sound’ between them.
I played the Jazz SACD through the PBJs and then quickly as possible, swapped in a… [[cough]]] $2.50 set of insanely bog-standard Radio Shack ultimate el-crappo cables! I was biting my cheeks as I allowed them to bathe in beauty of the recording. Afterward, I listened as they gushed over the sweetness of the Luscombe Silvers - secure in the knowledge that they had just auditioned the obviously superior, silver RCA cable.
I have never told them to this day what I did; it was for my own education and enlightenment to be quite honest.
Now get this; here are two well educated, highly keen audiophiles - both into uber-expensive cables and equipment, one a member of the symphony orchestra and owner of the SACD in question. I think its safe to assume he has a decent ear for music.
Both have just completed a well designed blind audition where score was kept, and they were plainly able to see that their dismal scores reflected the fact that they had absolutely no idea which cables were which. Yet, despite this obvious fact, when they were given a chance to physically see (up to the point of my deception), which cables were which; they were still convinced that they could hear a plain and obvious difference between cables!
Its just human nature, it has nothing to do with copper, silver or whatever, humans - especially audiophiles (!!!) are just stubborn and easily deceived. These cats were heaping lavish accolades upon a set of throw-away RCA cables the likes of which ship with a $49 Wal-Mart DVD player, simply because they thought I had plugged in the +$400.00 Luscomb Silvers.
The point is: I sat there and listened to these fellows gush on in detail about how they were filled with audio-wonderlust at the 'sound' of the (they thought), Luscombe Silvers - after they had just plainly shown in an unsighted evaluation that they had no idea which was which.
We are a pig-headed group ~ full of ego and lack of common sense! I offer to conduct the exact same unsighted evaluation over again, with (any) audio hardware of anyone's choosing - with any RCA / power / speaker cable you wish. I can absolutely guarantee the same results - unless the cables are damaged or feature mechanical amplifiers / attenuators.
I don't know where you are from man, but you are welcome to my home anytime, I'll put you up and show you around the town, pay your way to every cool attraction in the area and generally show you the Okanagan good life - if you'll be the fellow who sits in the listener's chair for an unsighted evaluation.
2) You mentioned that participants were not familiar with the music played: however, the article I posted online some time ago:
http://www.canuckaudiomart.com/node/
...states that I supplied all participants well in advance with copies of the music to be used for audition. The 'after-official-test' music employed for casual listening was provided by one of the participants (he was involved in it's production in some way as well I believe).
3) You state that you feel that the equipment employed was 'of insufficient resolution'. However, I host a list of over 50 forums:
http://cdnav.com/cdnav/viewforum.php?f=38
...many of which feature pro-cable (or whatever tweak) comments from individuals who employ systems significantly inferior to mine or that of others who host unsighted evaluations. One of many instances that baffle me - if seen in the light of audiophile's "not enough resolution" logic - would be a moderator on CAM who owns a middle-of-the-road A/V receiver - yet swears vehemently that he can easily detect significant differences in RCA and power cables interfaces. Folks in the "I hear cables" camp would split a gut if an ABX adherent were to employ a mass-market receiver in an evaluation, but when one of the "I hear it" crowd takes such a stance... their peers have no problem accepting it. How does that work?
Andrew D.
cdnav.com
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As suggested by the Mod, I posted comments in the "none of the above" forum