Maturity, most people will tell you, comes in your twenties (physically), your thirties (emotionally), or your forties (intellectually). Few people think of maturity arriving during the golden years of a normal lifespan. Yet the music world - and in particular the classical music world - is not short of examples of composers and conductors who have produced their best work in their seventies and eighties. Music produces such a complex and conflicting span of emotional responses that, perhaps, it is not unreasonable for them to continue to come together over the long course of a lifetime. For composers and conductors, perhaps, if their mental acuity and physical stamina is able to keep up, maybe it is not so surprising that their later decades can be when it all finally comes together.
For the rest of us, it is mostly our appreciation of other people's music that has the ongoing capacity to mature. I noticed this most clearly in my own appreciation of song lyrics. When my son grew up, it was naturally very satisfying to find that he - for the most part - enjoyed listening to the same music as me. Including what people annoyingly refer to as the 'Classic Rock' genre that you can excuse his generation for being inclined to turn their noses up at. However, it became clear to me that, while he enjoyed listening to a "broad church" of musical repertoire, he was getting something quite different from it than I was. In particular, he was always quick to point out when the lyrics were especially expressive, powerful, observant, or poignant.
I guess, if I ever had a view on the matter, lyrics for me were no more and no less than the words the singer had to sing. To the extent that they had any meaning, or provided any room for interpretation, for me they were of little more import than the headlines in a newspaper. I could quote them only to the extent that they were easy to remember and were conflated with, and inseparable from, the music. As long ago as the sixties, I recall my mother asking me if I knew what "Michelle, ma belle - sont les mots qui vont tres bien ensemble" actually meant. It baffled me that she would ask that, because even then, to me, they were just the words in the Beatles song. It mattered not a jot to me that I didn't know what they meant. It mattered even less to me when I learned French and found out!
There are, I suppose, two ways to write a song. You either start with the words and add the tune, or you start with the tune and add the words. I guess you can also meet somewhere in between, but you get my point. Examples of the former include virtually all of the great songwriters that come to our minds. Examples of the latter include - for example - Paul McCartney. Even in my younger days, I was well aware that McCartney's lyrics were shallow and syrupy, yet sprang almost organically from the music. And this made some kind of sense to me. Which was why, when I tried writing songs back in the '70's for a band I played in, I couldn't do it.
Many years ago I first heard The Tragically Hip's "Bobcaygeon". I thought that was hilarious! I mean, the word Bobcaygeon (actually a small town in Ontario) does not spring organically from any line of music I can think of. And yet The Hip wrote a song about it. So for the longest time I thought of it as some sort of musical parody because of the bumbling juxtaposition of that awkward word within an almost schmaltzy rock ballad. I'm sure Mr. Bean could have made a great skit out of it.
I think the transformation of the Internet into a tool that most everyone now has permanently at their fingertips has, amongst many other things, meant that song lyrics are now readily accessible. You want to sing along with a song? Click - here are the lyrics. Ever wondered what the heck AC/DC are screaming? Click - here are the lyrics. Why on earth are The Police singing "We're upstairs, in the material world"? Click - ahh… right. Lyrics are now - in its literal sense - accessible in a way that they never were before. Little things like that have the power to change the world. Little by little, bit by bit.
Back to the maturity thing. A short few years back I watched a Tragically Hip concert on DVD. And suddenly, in those two short hours, I finally got it! Gord Downie somehow managed to open to his audience a glimpse of the deep meaning behind his powerful lyrics. Downie is an extraordinary performer and communicator. He immerses both himself and you, the audience, fully and completely into his music. And not just the notes, melodies, harmonies, cadences and rhythms. He immerses you in his poetry. He is a spellbinding performer. But maybe it was just my time. Maybe that was the instant in my life when all of a sudden the sum total of my life's experiences came together in such a way that at last I could appreciate simple lyrics.
Truly, it was like that. From that moment on, lyrics of songs I knew by heart for decades were possessed of layer, nuance, and meaning. I continue to listen to old songs anew, regularly gleaning insights I never knew I had. At the same time, I totally fail to see why these same things were not blindingly obvious to me beforehand. But they weren't. And now they are. Go figure. (That maybe reads as being subliminally religious, something which I assure you was not intended)
And that song "Bobcaygeon"? It turned out to contain some of the most beautiful lyrics I have ever heard. Or not heard, you could say:
"It was in Bobcaygeon that I saw the constellations reveal themselves, one star at a time".
I hope that one day the insights of the finest lyricists of our times choose to reveal themselves to you, one line at a time.
Monday, 29 July 2013
Wednesday, 10 July 2013
Value-for-Money and Cables
Just about any topic is capable of arousing inflamed passions if you
care to express an opinion on it - any opinion - in an audio forum. But
the biggest enchilada of them all is surely cables. Try saying nice
things about a set of $20,000 cables and you will be flamed until
Christmas.
Here at BitPerfect we have been making our own balanced interconnect cables and power cords for a year or two. It is hardly a business - we make them only to special order. They are quite good, but there are better ones out there, albeit at a higher price point. I have recently replaced my own BitPerfect cables with a collection of Transparent Audio Reference MM2 cables, comprising loudspeaker cable, balanced interconnects, power cords, and USB cable. Available via your nice local Transparent Audio dealer for about $20,000 the set. But this post is not concerned with saying nice things about $20,000 cables - I know I will get flamed for that. Even though I have plenty of very, very nice things to say about them.
It is pretty clear that the reason cables - in particular high-end cables - incite such strong reactions, is that they tend to offend most people's assumed, unspoken, sense of value-for-money. Since the dawn of the electronic age, anything electronic you bought which needed a cable to function would include a free cable in the box. Shipping a product without a power cord - like shipping a printer without a USB cable - really irks customers who expect these things to be included in the package. Consumers therefore have grown to to ascribe negligible value to them. What value do you attach to the power cord that came with your $5,000 amplifier? Not much, I imagine. After all, a power cord doesn't actually DO anything, does it? So how can an after-market power cord be worth $300? Or $1,000? Or even $10,000 (yes, there ARE such things). It is so easy just to dismiss it all as snake oil. And indeed, sad to say, there is some snake oil to be found in among the many fine products.
Lets look at a nice, new, shiny, $20,000 power amplifier. Say something nice about it in a high-end audio forum, and very few people will be offended by the very existence of such a product at such a price point. So I guess we have come to accept that the notion of value-for-money does indeed extend to the $20,000 amplifier. OK, so you go to your nice local dealer and cough up $20,000 for a nice shiny new amplifier. The dealer in turn buys the amplifier from the local distributor for about $12,000. The distributor in turn buys the amplifier from the manufacturer for about $7,000. The manufacturer buys all the parts he needs to make that amplifier for less than $2,000, and spends the same again in labor to assemble and test it. Of that $2,000 in parts, perhaps less than $500 is accounted for by resistors, capacitors, transistors, ICs, circuit boards, and the like. The rest goes into the (surprisingly expensive) chassis, the power supply, and a box to ship it in. Yes, indeed, if you knew what you were doing, you could build your own $20,000 amplifier in an ugly box for less than $1,000.
Lets look at cables. A cable comprises some wire with a connector at each end. Doesn't sound like much, does it? If I want to make a better-sounding cable, I start off by designing a better-sounding wire. Lets assume that is an easy thing to do (but it most assuredly is not). I need to get someone to manufacture my nice new wire, because, like designing my own transistor, that's not something I can easily knock together in my basement. I need to go to a specialist cable-manufacturing company, and there are a few out there. These companies do not exist to serve the audio industry. Indeed, most of them will have no clue that there is an audio industry out there that wants fancy cables, because the truth is the specialty audio market is just too small to pique their interest. Suppose that, instead of designing my own special wire, I just grab one of their catalogs and select an existing wire design whose specs are close to my own. For BitPerfect's Balanced Interconnect design, such stock wire is priced at about $10 a foot, and I need four runs of wire per set of interconnects. A one-meter pair of interconnects will therefore consume about $150 worth of wire. Four modestly high quality Neutrik XLR connectors are another $10 each. When you add up everything else that goes into them, one set of one-meter cables costs me well over $200 just in parts. These must sell direct for at least $500 if I am going to make any profit on them. That price will double if I am to sell them in a High Street store. Yet I get accused of selling snake oil by individuals who have never even been in the same building as the product. This why we dropped our line of cable products.
So if I have a point to make at all here, it is this. The people who make after-market cable accessories are not all snake-oil salesmen. They are for the most part highly dedicated individuals and organizations. They make these products because, goddammit, they DO sound better. So much so that a $5,000 Amplifier with a $1,000 power cord will almost always sound notably better than a $6,000 Amplifier with a stock power cord (all else being equal). A power cord, interconnect cable, loudspeaker cable, or USB cable which is offered for sale at a four-figure - or even a five-figure - price point, may well represent just as good of a deal in value-for-money terms as an equivalent-priced amplifier or loudspeaker.
Here at BitPerfect we have been making our own balanced interconnect cables and power cords for a year or two. It is hardly a business - we make them only to special order. They are quite good, but there are better ones out there, albeit at a higher price point. I have recently replaced my own BitPerfect cables with a collection of Transparent Audio Reference MM2 cables, comprising loudspeaker cable, balanced interconnects, power cords, and USB cable. Available via your nice local Transparent Audio dealer for about $20,000 the set. But this post is not concerned with saying nice things about $20,000 cables - I know I will get flamed for that. Even though I have plenty of very, very nice things to say about them.
It is pretty clear that the reason cables - in particular high-end cables - incite such strong reactions, is that they tend to offend most people's assumed, unspoken, sense of value-for-money. Since the dawn of the electronic age, anything electronic you bought which needed a cable to function would include a free cable in the box. Shipping a product without a power cord - like shipping a printer without a USB cable - really irks customers who expect these things to be included in the package. Consumers therefore have grown to to ascribe negligible value to them. What value do you attach to the power cord that came with your $5,000 amplifier? Not much, I imagine. After all, a power cord doesn't actually DO anything, does it? So how can an after-market power cord be worth $300? Or $1,000? Or even $10,000 (yes, there ARE such things). It is so easy just to dismiss it all as snake oil. And indeed, sad to say, there is some snake oil to be found in among the many fine products.
Lets look at a nice, new, shiny, $20,000 power amplifier. Say something nice about it in a high-end audio forum, and very few people will be offended by the very existence of such a product at such a price point. So I guess we have come to accept that the notion of value-for-money does indeed extend to the $20,000 amplifier. OK, so you go to your nice local dealer and cough up $20,000 for a nice shiny new amplifier. The dealer in turn buys the amplifier from the local distributor for about $12,000. The distributor in turn buys the amplifier from the manufacturer for about $7,000. The manufacturer buys all the parts he needs to make that amplifier for less than $2,000, and spends the same again in labor to assemble and test it. Of that $2,000 in parts, perhaps less than $500 is accounted for by resistors, capacitors, transistors, ICs, circuit boards, and the like. The rest goes into the (surprisingly expensive) chassis, the power supply, and a box to ship it in. Yes, indeed, if you knew what you were doing, you could build your own $20,000 amplifier in an ugly box for less than $1,000.
Lets look at cables. A cable comprises some wire with a connector at each end. Doesn't sound like much, does it? If I want to make a better-sounding cable, I start off by designing a better-sounding wire. Lets assume that is an easy thing to do (but it most assuredly is not). I need to get someone to manufacture my nice new wire, because, like designing my own transistor, that's not something I can easily knock together in my basement. I need to go to a specialist cable-manufacturing company, and there are a few out there. These companies do not exist to serve the audio industry. Indeed, most of them will have no clue that there is an audio industry out there that wants fancy cables, because the truth is the specialty audio market is just too small to pique their interest. Suppose that, instead of designing my own special wire, I just grab one of their catalogs and select an existing wire design whose specs are close to my own. For BitPerfect's Balanced Interconnect design, such stock wire is priced at about $10 a foot, and I need four runs of wire per set of interconnects. A one-meter pair of interconnects will therefore consume about $150 worth of wire. Four modestly high quality Neutrik XLR connectors are another $10 each. When you add up everything else that goes into them, one set of one-meter cables costs me well over $200 just in parts. These must sell direct for at least $500 if I am going to make any profit on them. That price will double if I am to sell them in a High Street store. Yet I get accused of selling snake oil by individuals who have never even been in the same building as the product. This why we dropped our line of cable products.
So if I have a point to make at all here, it is this. The people who make after-market cable accessories are not all snake-oil salesmen. They are for the most part highly dedicated individuals and organizations. They make these products because, goddammit, they DO sound better. So much so that a $5,000 Amplifier with a $1,000 power cord will almost always sound notably better than a $6,000 Amplifier with a stock power cord (all else being equal). A power cord, interconnect cable, loudspeaker cable, or USB cable which is offered for sale at a four-figure - or even a five-figure - price point, may well represent just as good of a deal in value-for-money terms as an equivalent-priced amplifier or loudspeaker.
Thursday, 27 June 2013
Two Reasons Why Audio Comparisons Are Contentious
How often is it you hear claims made that A sounds better than B, or conversely that C sounds indistinguishable from D. And no sooner is the claim made than somebody steps in to vehemently assert the opposite position. Opinions on high-end audio-related issues are often held with what amounts to a religious fervour, and very seldom do they resolve into anything better than a broad consensus. On some issues, even a consensus fails to emerge. Either way, blood-pressure-raising emotions can be counted on to rule the day. Why is this? What is so difficult about high-end audio? Here are a couple of discussion points that attempt to shed some light on this.
1. Apples and Oranges
Paul McGowan, President of PS Audio, recently took some heat for a post which promulgated the notion that a good digital rip of a vinyl LP should be indistinguishable from the original. Many objections to this were raised, of which the most important (in my view) was that Paul's analog playback system was not of the same sonic quality as his digital playback system. To be fair, Paul accepted the validity of this argument, but he still sticks by his position. It is a great illustration of the Apples vs Oranges aspects which can be validly raised in regard to pretty much any comparative exercise in the high-end audio domain. While it may be that a perfectly valid conclusion was reached in Paul's listening room, using the equipment Paul had available, and the source material Paul used, it would be a mistake to suggest that his experiment - taken in isolation - properly supported the conclusions Paul attributed to it. The point is that Paul's viewpoint may ultimately turn out to have been right or wrong, but either way his experiment does not on its own prove anything. In order to prove that A is indeed different to B, every single aspect of the comparison which is not inherently part of either A or B in the totality of their manifestations must be identical (or separately proven to be effectively identical). In Paul's case, he was unable to eliminate the separate contributions of the analog and digital playback hardware. Sometimes complete separation can never be achieved. For example, there is a great deal of contemporary interest in DSD and a consensus is emerging that DSD sounds better than PCM. However, when making an assertion on this issue either way, it is impossible as things stand to eliminate the separate aspect of any given DAC's design and fitness for purpose from the inherent qualities of the format. Any comparison may simply favour the better-designed DAC.
2. Is Something Inaudible if I Can't Hear It?
The supposedly gold standard of audio testing is the double-blind test with a panel of listeners, although many criticisms are directed towards what its proponents claim as the "only indisputable scientifically based" methodology. But how can one be assured that the listeners will end up noticing any differences that in reality do exist? When it comes to the ultra high-end, there are very few truly "golden-eared" listeners. If a listener repeatedly and reproducibly cannot hear any difference between A and B under controlled conditions, must we conclude that there are no differences? I think not, and I want to illustrate this with an episode from my own recent past. I have never been able to hear differences in absolute phase. Try as I might, I have never been able to reliably detect anything. Recently, Peter McGrath, a highly respected recording engineer who also serves as Sales Director for Wilson Audio Specialties (which designs and manufactures loudspeakers that most people's retirement funds couldn't buy), was setting up a demonstration for me using some of his own recordings. The last thing he did was to establish if the absolute phase was correct. After swapping the phase a couple of times he pronounced himself satisfied. I was floored. At each stage of the setup process I could follow what he was doing, and heard everything he was listening for. But I heard no differences as he switched between absolute phases. I won't go through it all, but Peter was kind enough to show me the things to listen for (and why he chooses a particular recording to listen for it), and to train me to pick up on them. Within ten minutes I could clearly identify when the absolute phase was correct, on those recordings where it makes a difference (and not all do). Self-evidently I was "hearing" nothing that I wasn't hearing ten minutes before, but I had clearly become "aware of" things, of which I previously was not. That is but one small example of the fact that when a random panel of listeners unanimously report that they cannot hear something, that cannot be taken as proof that there was nothing there to be heard in the first place. Admission to the panel of listeners needs to be based on validated listening skills.
1. Apples and Oranges
Paul McGowan, President of PS Audio, recently took some heat for a post which promulgated the notion that a good digital rip of a vinyl LP should be indistinguishable from the original. Many objections to this were raised, of which the most important (in my view) was that Paul's analog playback system was not of the same sonic quality as his digital playback system. To be fair, Paul accepted the validity of this argument, but he still sticks by his position. It is a great illustration of the Apples vs Oranges aspects which can be validly raised in regard to pretty much any comparative exercise in the high-end audio domain. While it may be that a perfectly valid conclusion was reached in Paul's listening room, using the equipment Paul had available, and the source material Paul used, it would be a mistake to suggest that his experiment - taken in isolation - properly supported the conclusions Paul attributed to it. The point is that Paul's viewpoint may ultimately turn out to have been right or wrong, but either way his experiment does not on its own prove anything. In order to prove that A is indeed different to B, every single aspect of the comparison which is not inherently part of either A or B in the totality of their manifestations must be identical (or separately proven to be effectively identical). In Paul's case, he was unable to eliminate the separate contributions of the analog and digital playback hardware. Sometimes complete separation can never be achieved. For example, there is a great deal of contemporary interest in DSD and a consensus is emerging that DSD sounds better than PCM. However, when making an assertion on this issue either way, it is impossible as things stand to eliminate the separate aspect of any given DAC's design and fitness for purpose from the inherent qualities of the format. Any comparison may simply favour the better-designed DAC.
2. Is Something Inaudible if I Can't Hear It?
The supposedly gold standard of audio testing is the double-blind test with a panel of listeners, although many criticisms are directed towards what its proponents claim as the "only indisputable scientifically based" methodology. But how can one be assured that the listeners will end up noticing any differences that in reality do exist? When it comes to the ultra high-end, there are very few truly "golden-eared" listeners. If a listener repeatedly and reproducibly cannot hear any difference between A and B under controlled conditions, must we conclude that there are no differences? I think not, and I want to illustrate this with an episode from my own recent past. I have never been able to hear differences in absolute phase. Try as I might, I have never been able to reliably detect anything. Recently, Peter McGrath, a highly respected recording engineer who also serves as Sales Director for Wilson Audio Specialties (which designs and manufactures loudspeakers that most people's retirement funds couldn't buy), was setting up a demonstration for me using some of his own recordings. The last thing he did was to establish if the absolute phase was correct. After swapping the phase a couple of times he pronounced himself satisfied. I was floored. At each stage of the setup process I could follow what he was doing, and heard everything he was listening for. But I heard no differences as he switched between absolute phases. I won't go through it all, but Peter was kind enough to show me the things to listen for (and why he chooses a particular recording to listen for it), and to train me to pick up on them. Within ten minutes I could clearly identify when the absolute phase was correct, on those recordings where it makes a difference (and not all do). Self-evidently I was "hearing" nothing that I wasn't hearing ten minutes before, but I had clearly become "aware of" things, of which I previously was not. That is but one small example of the fact that when a random panel of listeners unanimously report that they cannot hear something, that cannot be taken as proof that there was nothing there to be heard in the first place. Admission to the panel of listeners needs to be based on validated listening skills.
Wednesday, 5 June 2013
iTunes 11.0.4 working fine !!
We have been using iTunes 11.0.4 all day now and have encountered no problems. It looks like it should present no major problems for BitPerfect users.
OS/X 10.8.4 working fine !!
We have been using OS/X 10.8.4 all day now (and all last night) and have encountered no problems. It looks like it should present no major problems for BitPerfect users.
iTunes 11.0.4 !!
Wow. iTunes 11.0.4 is now being pushed out. I hope they have not "fixed" the problem with 11.0.3 that caused us to push out BitPerfect 1.0.7! If so, 1.0.7 will stop working. Please do NOT download this latest version of iTunes until we have checked it out...
Tuesday, 4 June 2013
OS/X 10.8.4 Update
OS/X 10.8.4 has just been released. I will spend tomorrow checking it out for any incompatibility issues and will report here in due course.
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