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In the last few weeks, I’ve gotten back into the world of hi-fi audio.

AudioEngine 2 Powered Speakers:

I was browsing online for NHT speakers and came to the owners blog (http://nowhearthisblog.blogspot.com/) and found a link to the Audiophiliac (http://news.cnet.com/audiophiliac/) who raved about these set of diminuitive speakers. I decided on a whim, and heavily based on the low cost of $199/pr to get these for the girlfriend’s upcoming birthday present. About the size of a multi-set DVD box, they had great midrange — which I consider a must in any loudspeaker or headphone, and surprisingly deep base extension and output for such small enclosure volume. Compared to my NHT SuperZero’s which have a 4 inch driver (the AudioEngine has 2.75″ bass drivers) and probably 50% more enclosure volume (but lacks any porting), the differences in the bass were night and day. What a great bargain I think these are. And since they’re powered, you just plug in the power, your analog source, and bam, you got a really decent sound setup. No extra cables, or amplifier/receiver boxes. Highly recommended to anyone who’s still stuck with crappy computer speakers or is using a TV’s built-in speakers. They’re magnetically shielded so you don’t have to worry about it distorting CRT electron or erasing iPod hard drives.

As a side note, Kevlar is the same woofer material used in B&W 800 series speakers. Except theirs is yellow, and those speakers start at about $2500/pr, up to over $10K/pr. Of course this does not necessarily determine sonic fidelity. Just thought it might be interesting that kevlar can’t possibly be that expensive.

Benchmark DAC1/USB/Pre digital to analog converter/pre-amp:

It’s good to read about professional audio equipment. They actually want to hear the truth in audio, vs blackhat magic which give you mumbo jumbo. The DAC1 arguably has the best measuring DAC on the market right now. Combine that with a well designed headphone amplifier circuit and a USB input that has the ability to retrieve bit-perfect output from the computer. Add an analog input and you have the DAC1Pre, which I think is a little over-priced at $1575, but the DAC1 at $975 is still a good value when compared to $10,000 “audiophile-grade” DAC’s that have worse measurements. A lot of the price went into the innovative engineering and clever designs.

Grado SR-125 open back headphones:

I’ve always thought that Grado’s were well reviewed. But my ears have now told my eyes they were deceived. Very bright mid-range, way too forward. The bass on these headphones suck. At first I thought it was due to the low (32ohm) input impedance, and my iPhone’s relatively high output impedence not being able to properly dampen and drive the low frequencies, but after getting the RSA amp (next item on the list) which has a Stereophile measure output impedance of <1 ohm, they still sucked. I played a variety of music and also used Stereophile’s Test CD to play a chromatic sweep of the bass frequencies. They rolled off very quickly. Perhaps it’s the shape of my ears, but I’m very unimpressed. I thought I was going to get better sound then my trusty old Koss Portapros, but boy was I wrong. The bass in the PortaPro’s is a bit generous, but even compared to my sony MDR-EX71 in-ear headphones and the AudioEngine 2’s, the balance and output of the bass was just wrong. I feel like these headphone would be very fatiguing because of the overly bright mid-range and physically very uncomfortable foam earpieces. I returned them the very next day.

Ray Samuel Adams portable headphone amplifier:

For $375, I thought I’d be getting something more substantial. Unfortunately that’s not the case. I think I would’ve kept this amplifier had it been $150, but it’s nothing more than a large 15,000uf capacitor and some (in relative terms) in-expensive opamps and other electronic components. It doesn’t matter if the circuit board is mil-spec and contains high ratios of copper if it’s only a 1/2″ by 1/2″ board, it’s still not gonna cost that much to manufacture. So in terms of parts cost, I think this item is highly over-priced. Now of course, there is a lot of time spent in engineering and designing an amplifier. But in this case, it’s just an op-amp and a 9V rechargeable battery as a power supply. I doubt there was that much time spend in designing the circuit. The wall-wart charger is off the shelf and made in china (as far as I can tell from the “made in china” sticker). Now I’m not trying to bad-mouth RSA. It’s a clean sounding amp - which I attribute to good design and good test measurements. I’m merely pointing out that like much of hi-end audio, many products are way overpriced and easily overhyped by print magazines, and online forums that spread the hype like wildfire.

The Audio Critic:

Now when I saw this site, it was like a breath of fresh air. A site that calls out publications like Stereophile for their ridiculous praise of $20k and $30K electronics and speakers that measure far worse than well designed $1k-$3k products. I think he may go a little too far in the bashing of Stereophile, which still have some good qualities, such as their measurement sections. Few other publications will actually measure the equipment they are reviewing.

Sigfried Linkwitz:

His site was linked to me from the Audio Critic for the Orion dipole speakers with active electronic crossovers. Now I was happy to see someone with a strong engineering background design a new speaker setup. This guy was already well praised for his role in Audio Artistry’s speaker line. But unfortunately, I was disappointed when he said the Sony MDR-EX71’s were some of the flattest response measuring and most accurate sounding earphones. (http://www.linkwitzlab.com/reference_earphones.htm) In my subjective opinion, because I don’t have access to test equipment nor knowledge to test it, I really don’t think they are very good headphones. The bass is somewhat muddy and the mid-range sounds colored to me. But I will add that this was right after listening to the Grado SR-125’s. I will go back again today to listen to them. Perhaps I will have a different opinion. I guess we audiophiles really want to buy into a “perfect” or “next-greatest” product that will blow all others out of the water.

HD-Radio, Satellite radio:

Is a farce. Current bitrates stand at 96kbps. A joke of a bitrate. On par with the joke of sound from satellite radio. XM and Sirius both have similar bitrates. You can hear how bad the compression artifacts are after a short listen. It’s most easily discerned in complex passages and when you hear cymbals or other metal percussion instruments. All these “new” technologies have sound quality lower than a strong analog FM signal, which already has rolled off bass below 35Hz and above 15kHz. What does give it a silver lining is that HD-Radio can have up to 300kbps if there are no analog simulcasts and no side channels. But we all know that won’t be the case. Stations and promoters would rather have more channels than one good sounding channel. Thumbs down.

Discovery:

I’m now more a believer of measurements over perceived improvements. As one poster on head-fi.com said, “this is a tunnel where I just don’t see the light at the end of.” There’s so much noise and subjective opinion out there without proper A/B comparisons. Our brains are highly adaptable and easily succumbs to psychological coercion. Just because a reviewer said he could hear the difference between 99.999 and 99.9999% pure copper wire doesn’t mean it’s the truth.

Findings:

I now look at consumer hi-fi equipment with way more scrutiny and weariness. In my opinion:

- Amplifiers should measure as such:
high input impedance <20Kohm
very low output impedance <0.01 ohm
flat frequency response
low distortion at rated output <1%
low crosstalk > 50db channel separation

If it meets these criteria, I don’t think people really can hear the difference in a level matched double blind A/B test.

- Speakers
have the greatest impact in how things sound. they are the devices that turn electrical signals into mechanical movement that translate into audible sound
therefore, they:

should have a relatively flat measurement as well, with no upward or downward trends in their frequency response.
low distortion.

Hi-end audio is just like any other male hobby. Which unfortunately means that it’s more about the equipment and discussion of said equipment’s virtues rather than enjoying the hobby. Hi-fi is supposed to be about musical enjoyment. In reality, it’s about nit-picking perceived minute audio differences and deficiencies. Just like my camera forums which nit-pick about sharpness, contrast and bokeh instead of taking a step back, looking at the printed output and enjoying the overall picture. Or my knife forums which nit-pick the sharpness or edge holding ability of one alloy over another while forgetting about the actual ergonomics and daily use factors of the knife as a whole.

For now, I’m going to stick to my iphone and portapros. Maybe in the future when my FLAC collection is bigger, I’ll get a DAC1Pre, and a set of Sennheiser HD-600 or 650’s. Hopefully those won’t disappoint.

Bonus:

Sendstation has a product called the PocketDock. It’s a dock connector that has a 3.5mm line level output and a USB Type B connector so you can output higher quality audio into a stereo or easily charge/sync your iphone/ipod. I will be using it mostly for the line-out connector.

(This post was originally written on 2008.08.14.)