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Old 17th May 2020, 4:42 pm   #1504
Ted Kendall
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Join Date: Jul 2008
Location: Kington, Herefordshire, UK.
Posts: 3,658
Default Re: The Audiophoolery Thread.

Granted, Self hasn't always been right - he's in good company there - but he does document his mistakes as part of the explanation of something better. I have to admit I smiled on seeing in the 6th edition that he had measured a specifically "audio" capacitor as doing a better job than a cooking example when coupling an amplifier output to the load, the midband distortion being substantially reduced. Said capacitor (Cerafine) is physically larger than the general run of devices of that value and voltage rating, so presumably something in the construction is more generously proportioned.

I think much of audiophoolery stems from two main causes. Firstly, the confusion between a hi fi system and an electronic instrument. One you play and produce a sound, the other you want ideally to listen through to somebody else's performance. In one case, anything goes whch changes the sound to your liking; in the other, preservation of what is already there is paramount.

The second cause is the demise of the LP, or near-demise. When pickups were the key to hi fi (must be a book in there...) there were so many variables involved that evaluation had a large and unavoidable subjective element. This sold newsprint, undoubtedly, and whilst "pure perfect sound forever" was a simplistic over-statement, undeniably CD both raised the bar for performance and narrowed the differences between products. Simple evaluation of features and measured performance did not require gurus, so they set about inventing differences they could argue about.

It is interesting to note that John Crabbe, who, as editor of Hi Fi News for fifteen years, was in the vanguard of the quest for better pickups, abandoned LP without regret as soon as the music he wanted was avaolable on CD.

Last edited by Ted Kendall; 17th May 2020 at 5:06 pm.
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