High end audio is an aweful lot of things to an aweful lot of people. Some people think its about class A single ended triode based monoblock amps, 00 gauge interconnects worth as much as a house and other nonsense. Myself, I have more practical requirements. After having done pro audio both as a hobby as professionally over the last 25 years, I have found a few must haves for any audio system that would be considered good... Firstly, a low noise floor. This isnt negotiable. Nothing is more distracting than listening to (insert your favorite color) noise during quiet passages. Reasonable low end extension. This of course depends on the source material but let me tell ya, there are sounds in modern source material damn near down to DC depending on the content. Enough power and driver surface area that you can listen to anything at any volume (up to and including the volume levels found at an actual rock concert) and never clip or run out of headroom. If you dont literally fear the system, there isnt even close to enough power there. When required, it should be capable of delivering an experience like being flicked by a finger of god. Phase, frequency and impulse response thats smooth as can be in the range of human speech. The reason for this is because our human ears are most sensitive to noticing poor reproduction most accurately in the range of human speech. What this really boils down to is good quality drivers, good quality crossovers and never having a crossover point in the range of human speech. Drivers in the 2 to 4 size range for ~400 to ~4K range tend to be excellent for this. Also, they dont display beaming if used in this passband. And lastly, a good sound room and proper setup (setup especially). Even the best hardware on the planet isnt worth a hill of beans if the knob behind the knobs sends the lows to the compression drivers and the highs to the bins! Also of note is the fine art of appreciation. Both in appreciating the astounding equipment available to us in this day and age as well as all the hard working musicians that make all that wonder sound that we all love to much! As for the BS that any high end audio store would try and sell us, its almost all nonsense. Below are some of the worst offenders. Gold plated connectors do not have better conductivity than copper. The only benefit is that gold is highly corrosion resistant. Poor connections due to metal oxides on connectors/plugs is far less likely if gold plated hardware is used. When it comes to cabling for signal level, the only real requirements are that appropriate wiring be used. It doesnt need to be any special kind of copper/silver/gold or any other specialty metal for that matter. Plain old copper is the order of the day here. For unbalanced lines, a good co-axial cable with 100% shielding coverage is good. The type with a third foil conductor either in contact with the outer braid or with an insulator between is even better. The gauge and RF impedance dont really matter so long as the gauge is at least sufficient to be physically robust enough to not break due to handling. The RF impedance doesnt really matter either because at audio frequencies, the impedance between conductors is essentially infinite and most importantly, at audio frequencies, there are no reflections due to impedance mismatch. Input and output impedances for audio hardware can range from a low range of a few K up to a range of 10K to 20K. At these ranges, even if you had a cable with a few ohms worth of resistance/impedance, it would be minor in comparison. As for the topic of balanced lines, the thing to look for is sufficient twist rate and sufficient gauge and overall build quality to suit the purpose. The twist rate is what affects noise rejection so this is why it is the spec to investigate. The wiring from amplifier to speaker will depend on how long the run is between them. For short runs under 5 feet(10 feet electrically, the resistance of the two conductors is added), even something like 14 gauge lamp cord is sufficient for most applications. In fact, some quick back of the napkin work reveals that for a 5 foot chunk of cable, even 22 gauge wire is only 2% of the resistance of an 8 ohm impedance loudspeaker. A piece of 14 gauge zip cord is 0.3% of the loudspeakers impedance at 5 feet. This changes for long runs however. For a speaker that is 50 feet away from its amplifier, a hunk of 22 gauge wire has an impedance that is 20% of an 8 ohm load. The same scenario with a 14 gauge cord means that the wiring is now 3% of the speakers impedance. Even with this small set of examples, it is obvious that a rule of thumb such as Keep cabling between amp and speaker as short as possible is meaningful. Overall, 12 to 14 gauge cabling is good for most low to medium power setups as long as the cabling run itself is reasonable. As run length increases, cabling size should be increased to match. Also obvious at this point, or at least should be, is that these gigantic cables with the gigantic price tags (The company name that is the worst offender has the initials MC) that stores try and sell for hundreds of dollars each, are no better than a hunk of lamp cord. Literally. In some cases, worse because the stiff outer jacket on some of these heavy cables can end up putting mechanical stress on in/out jacks to the point of yanking pins off the circuit board or worse. The last topic of interest (or disinterest, depending on how you look at it!) is the outright snake oil associated with high end audio. Stuff like magick plastic pucks to space your speaker cables off the floor, magick legs to rest components on, etc. These types of devices serve no purpose at all whatsoever other than lining the pockets of the people selling them. Anyone who insists on you buying these kinds of things is either outright incompetent or, worse, lacks any morals at all when it comes to lying and trying to steal from others. Really, as with anything, much of it comes down to a few simple things. Good planning and good implementation. /end verbal diarrhea. :) -CGF
Posted on: Wed, 06 Aug 2014 23:24:37 +0000