How much to pay for speaker cables?

by sflam Sat Aug 22, 2009 4:45 pm

last week, three audiophiles had a chat with a well-known speaker manufacturer's marketing man from uk over lunch hosted by a top dealer in town.
we ended up chatting about good-sounding systems. the marketing man said the best system he has ever heard is in malaysia.
it turned out that the speakers in the system cost less than the cables. Two of the audiophiles found that unbelievable, but the third chap was all for speaker cables regardless of price.
in the system we were talking about, the speakers cost RM70,000 a pair while the speaker cables cost RM100,000.
Years ago, we were advised that we should set aside around 10%
of the total cost of the system for the interconnects and speaker cables. Is this still valid?
i am starting this thread to get your views on what is the right amount to pay for speaker cables.

by fizi Sat Aug 22, 2009 5:01 pm

For me keep it simple..

Just 5%-10% to allocate for a cable from total of our equipment value consist of source+amp+speaker

For instant total equipment is RM20k just buy well known product cable not more then Rm2k is enough..(speaker+interconect+power cord) will not spend Rm2k just for speaker cable Very Happy

Dont really thrust the cable can make big different.. What a Face

Just imagine our system cost only Rm10k what can the cable cost Rm100k do to upgrade the sound quality...can it makes the Rm10k system sound same par as Rm100k system Shocked

by bimmerman Sat Aug 22, 2009 5:46 pm

Well, it depends on your equiptment. There are always exceptions to any rules. The key to unleashing the best from your equptment is always finding a good match regardless of price. Can be RM10 Diy or Rm100,000 and beyond. You can pair a Rm100,000 speaker with home made cat5 network cable and if it works, it works. Tried it on my Minima Amator and it did not work out. I need RM2,000 speaker cables for my Minima Amator. A friend of mine uses lamp cord from Ace hardware as speaker cable for his vintage Quad and Harbeth combo and it sounds great!!!

So, how much do you need to pay for speaker cables? It really depends on your gear.

by **bassraptor** Sat Aug 22, 2009 5:46 pm

To clarify sflam's post: The cost of the cables were for a bi-wired run, as i later found out. Still ...

by bimmerman Sat Aug 22, 2009 6:03 pm

Lam, What speakers were those and what speaker cables if you don't mind. Thanks.

by **Hi-Fi 4 Sale** Sat Aug 22, 2009 6:15 pm

There is no right or wrong with respect to the budget allocation for speaker cables.

Think of it this way:
Scenario 1 - If you are starting out in hi-fi and/or have a limited budget, you may not want to spend more on cables because of prioritisation on the 'key' components such as the CD player/source, amp & speakers. Maybe you may not consider cables, including speaker cables as 'key' here.
Scenario 2 - As you move up the chain in terms of equipment budget, some may think that cables slowly become 'key' i.e. they become part of system optimisation, just like room acoustics, power and resonance control. Perhaps you focusing a bit more here gets you to your destination. % spent on cables could increase.
Scenario 3 - When all else doesn't matter, life has treated you well and you are a big gun, hey, why settle for mediocrity when you can have the creme de la creme? You will buy a better one simply because it is, well, better, even if it costs much more! The normal logic of the Joneses does not count a single iota...

Of course, only you yourself can determine the scenarios that fit you at present. Very Happy

by sflam Sat Aug 22, 2009 7:54 pm

the speakers were proac response 4s and the speaker cables were top-of-range siltechs. amplification - top range naim pre/power. source? we didn't ask...

by sflam Sat Aug 22, 2009 8:06 pm

bimmerman and hifi4sale,

it's just that i cannot understand the logic of spending that kind of money on speaker cables. if i had RM170,000 to blow (which sadly i don't) wouldn't it be more logical to spend, say, RM150,000 on the speakers and RM20,000 on the cables?

by cmboy Sat Aug 22, 2009 9:34 pm

Ok..here's my PERSONAL take on splashing $$ on speaker cables. Doesn't matter how much or I don't give a hoot how others spend their money. I'll make do with a DECENT set of cables, most importantly the terminals are secure at both ends and they're OFC cables that contribute to a fair lifespan. Doesn't matter if they're VDH's AUdioquest, Wireworld, doesn't matter.
What I do, since I have a highly tweakable PP tube amp of decent output sufficient to drive my rather inefficient speakers (not budget price ones of course) is to match the frequency curve of my speakers. No speaker is dead flat frequency response at audible frequencies from 20 to 20khz. There's could be some emphasis at the mid to high frequencies. I'll tweak my amp circuitry and compensate by rolling off further by some degree so that the resultant response at the speaker end is as flat as possible. Its much like phono RIAA equalization. By no means there's great accuracy in this kind of tweak and easier to apply with tube amps. I have to use an oscilloscope to see the results especially above 4khz to 12khz. A long audition with various test cd's will confirm what results I'm hearing.
As long as I get near flat, thats good enough as there's other limitations that if your costs RM3k, it WILL sound more or less a RM3k amp, ok..perhaps a percentage more...thats it.
I believe my method will have more significant gain than spending loads of money replacing cables to get the sound you want. My personal tweak (of course I damn well know my amp circuitry) with the use of an oscilloscope and signal generator have benefitted me and saved me from the rigmarole of interconnects and speaker cables. Besides, the components I replace in this tweak costs peanuts.

by ryder Sat Aug 22, 2009 10:07 pm

sflam wrote:in the system we were talking about, the speakers cost RM70,000 a pair while the speaker cables cost RM100,000.

Just do a double-blind test between the speaker cable that cost RM100k and couple ones that cost RM5k or less. I wager most will screw up on picking which one is which.

I used to own speaker cables costing about 30% the speaker's value. Now my speaker cables cost about 10% the speaker's value. The reasonable figure would be around 5-15%. The allocation of a larger bulk of money on better speakers would be a much reasonable idea than splurging on cables.

by CN Yee Sat Aug 22, 2009 11:19 pm

Lets put it this way.
- Amplifier total harmonic distortion is usually less than 0.001%, Transient Intermodulation distortion less than 0.01%. Lets say the total distortion is 0.01%
- Speaker distortion say around 2%. It actually varies greatly across the frequency range, in the lowest base region the distortion can be well over 10%.

Now how much distortion does a RM100K cable introduce versus a RM50 cable? Lets make a exaggerated guess that is wildly in favor of the super expensive cable - 0.00001% vs 0.01%.

Now connect the whole setup together:

Setup A: 0.01% + 2% + 0.00001% = 2.01001%
Setup B: 0.01% + 2% + 0.01% = 2.02%

Are we able to hear the difference between 2.01% vs 2.02% distortion?

Put it in other words - the weakest link is the speakers, and it introduced distortions that is 1000 times more than other components. It simply overwhelms everything else.

A double blind experiment is the only way to produce a conclusive proof. I have not seen one being done. Does it makes you wonders why?

Audiophiles became one of the most bizarre cults of the previous century. Claiming to be gifted with golden ears, audiophiles can hear electrons traveling in wires, and have the ability to channel thought into crystals to ward off evil harmonics. Cloaking themselves in mystical terms unrelated to music and physics, they can be heard chanting model numbers and superlatives. This delusional mix of paranoia and marketing hype, where descriptions attain to greater meaning than the described, exists in all areas of society. Lenard Audio Institute

by chenht Sun Aug 23, 2009 12:22 am

If you put a set of the most expensive Pirelli tyres on a 1975 Datsun 120Y, do you expect it to go as fast as a BMW with 4 Silverstone tyres??

by mugenfoo Sun Aug 23, 2009 1:50 am

CN Yee wrote:Lets put it this way.
- Amplifier total harmonic distortion is usually less than 0.001%, Transient Intermodulation distortion less than 0.01%. Lets say the total distortion is 0.01%
- Speaker distortion say around 2%. It actually varies greatly across the frequency range, in the lowest base region the distortion can be well over 10%.

Now how much distortion does a RM100K cable introduce versus a RM50 cable? Lets make a exaggerated guess that is wildly in favor of the super expensive cable - 0.00001% vs 0.01%.

Now connect the whole setup together:

Setup A: 0.01% + 2% + 0.00001% = 2.01001%
Setup B: 0.01% + 2% + 0.01% = 2.02%

Are we able to hear the difference between 2.01% vs 2.02% distortion?

Put it in other words - the weakest link is the speakers, and it introduced distortions that is 1000 times more than other components. It simply overwhelms everything else.

A double blind experiment is the only way to produce a conclusive proof. I have not seen one being done. Does it makes you wonders why?

Audiophiles became one of the most bizarre cults of the previous century. Claiming to be gifted with golden ears, audiophiles can hear electrons traveling in wires, and have the ability to channel thought into crystals to ward off evil harmonics. Cloaking themselves in mystical terms unrelated to music and physics, they can be heard chanting model numbers and superlatives. This delusional mix of paranoia and marketing hype, where descriptions attain to greater meaning than the described, exists in all areas of society. Lenard Audio Institute

.... and your point being ?

by CN Yee Sun Aug 23, 2009 9:12 am

mugenfoo wrote:.... and your point being ?

My point is - don't be a sucker for marketing hype and snake oil sellers. Demand for proof.

Take a look at the following article about the setup for labs by Dolby and DTS.

http://www.hemagazine.com/node/Dolby_TrueHD_DTS-MA_versus_Uncompressed_PCM?page=0%2C0

Don't trust any claims that is not backed up by a rigorous objective test similar to the Dolby labs. And don't trust your ears.

by fizi Sun Aug 23, 2009 10:48 am

CN Yee wrote:
mugenfoo wrote:.... and your point being ?

My point is - don't be a sucker for marketing hype and snake oil sellers. Demand for proof.

Take a look at the following article about the setup for labs by Dolby and DTS.

http://www.hemagazine.com/node/Dolby_TrueHD_DTS-MA_versus_Uncompressed_PCM?page=0%2C0

Don't
trust any claims that is not backed up by a rigorous objective test
similar to the Dolby labs. And don't trust your ears.

CN Yee....yes u are truelly right dont too thrust on expensive
cable...for the DOLBY and DTS set up my comment is simple,a lot of kaki
dont know about dvd and blu ray disc...actualy blu ray disc is more on
picture quality not the sound its only tactics to make people keep on
changing to latest gadgets...will discus on this in other threat maybe
DVD vs BLURAY

by mugenfoo Sun Aug 23, 2009 10:58 am

CN Yee wrote:
mugenfoo wrote:.... and your point being ?

My point is - don't be a sucker for marketing hype and snake oil sellers. Demand for proof.

Take a look at the following article about the setup for labs by Dolby and DTS.

http://www.hemagazine.com/node/Dolby_TrueHD_DTS-MA_versus_Uncompressed_PCM?page=0%2C0

Don't trust any claims that is not backed up by a rigorous objective test similar to the Dolby labs. And don't trust your ears.

"Technical proof" can be the most powerful snake oil validator when presented insidiously.
So you put your trust in numbers like THD % and "+" some here and "-" some there huh? Razz

"There are 3 types of lies in this world: Lies; Damned lies; And statistics." -someone famous.

In hi-fi, the final proof is in the listening and NOT just in the TECHNICAL Specs.
If you can't trust your own ears, what CAN you trust? "Technical numbers" ?

LoL !!

Suggest you better give up hi-fi if you've already started, or don't start hi-fi if you are about to start. But from your postings, my best guess is that you're probably not even in the hi-fi game to begin with....

Don't worry, no long and windy continuations for me this time. It would be like trying to explain colours to a person who is born blind.

by tycham Sun Aug 23, 2009 12:00 pm

bimmerman wrote:Well, it depends on your equiptment. There are always exceptions to any rules. The key to unleashing the best from your equptment is always finding a good match regardless of price.

This I'll have to agree. An excellent cable job is to reveal what your equipment is capable of - it should not lent weight to nor take away anything from it.
http://www.chord.co.uk/chordweb/chord_signature_speaker_cable_costs.htm

bimmerman wrote:
Can be RM10 Diy or Rm100,000 and beyond. You can pair a Rm100,000 speaker with home made cat5 network cable and if it works, it works. Tried it on my Minima Amator and it did not work out. I need RM2,000 speaker cables for my Minima Amator. A friend of mine uses lamp cord from Ace hardware as speaker cable for his vintage Quad and Harbeth combo and it sounds great!!!

So, how much do you need to pay for speaker cables? It really depends on your gear.

Quad and Harbeth are not fussy about cables. I had used very cheap Belden ICs and the RM5 Kadas speaker cable from Pasar Road for this combo and they work alright. But to bring out the best from this combo you would have to look higher.

A word of caution here! At the higher end of the cable chain, it will also reveal hum and noise and whatever shortcomings inherent in your system.

by CN Yee Sun Aug 23, 2009 12:10 pm

Well - you are right mugenfoo, I love music, I love good sound, but I will not get involve in the audiophile business. I got some sound equipments that I enjoyed, but as you said, I was never into audiophile. I refused to pay exorbitant amount of money for a sound system. Some are very willing to pay. It's simply buyer's democracy.

BTW, the Dolby/DTS labs have nothing to do with technical specifications nor statistics. It is there to determine whether the participants can really tell the differences exist between two sounds stream. The systems are constructed in such a way to make it impossible for one's to cheat or delude oneself.

Below is a quote from a well known speakers designer:

* Did you know that the ear actually produces sound?
No? It generates so much random noise that it has been discovered that
a small microphone in or near the ear canal can clearly hear all these
horrible distortions. Otoacoustic emission testing allows the testing
of the ears of infants, mentally disabled or incapacitated people, or
those in a coma who cannot respond to test tones. Here.

So once again, can we, should we, put blind faith in our ears when the ear actually produces lots of random sounds and harmonic products which can be heard outside the ear? Of course not.

Imperfect hearing and imperfect sound system never impedes ones enjoyment of good music. Beethoven was already completely deaf when he composed his famous 5th symphony.

by ryder Sun Aug 23, 2009 1:30 pm

Mugenfoo,

Most of your posts here in the forum to other forummers have exhibited a hint of sarcasm due to contradictory viewpoints. My presumption in CNYee's comment on not trusting the ears is on the subtle sonic differences(at best) between speaker cables that has led to the technical explanation which can be useful information to other folks. After all, technical parameters and specifications are basis to all engineering applications, audio included. That was where suggestions of double-blind test in a more controlled environment have come by to negate the "don't trust your ears" notion in describing on the sonic differences between cables.

It is quite distasteful to suggest to someone who is a passionate music lover just starting out to give up hifi or not being in the "hifi game" just because of a simple comment of not trusting the ears that may have been misinterpreted.

by tycham Sun Aug 23, 2009 1:55 pm

bassraptor wrote:To clarify sflam's post: The cost of the cables were for a bi-wired run, as i later found out. Still ...

Is it two pairs as bi-wired run or internally bi-wired?

by mugenfoo Sun Aug 23, 2009 4:46 pm

ryder wrote:Mugenfoo,
It is quite distasteful to suggest to someone who is a passionate music lover just starting out to give up hifi or not being in the "hifi game" just because of a simple comment of not trusting the ears that may have been misinterpreted.

distasteful or not, you could also misinterpret the suggestion to not get involve with the hifi game. Do let me clarify: don't get into hifi does not mean giving up listening to music. Some suggestions if i may: stick to AV gear for convenient all-in-1 equipment, or headphones, or PC speakers, or those USB powered ones if u like ... whatever tickles your fancy dude.

Looks like its your (mis)interpretation of my statement thats "distasteful". Think about it.

But any disparagement of hi-fi gear with less than half-baked figures like THD % and a lack of trust in one's own ears is another thing.

If someone doesnt trust his/hers own ears thats fine. But don't blanket that across the board. Thats the point i'm making.

If you don't believe in hi-fi, and think thats its all a big scam to pay top $$ dollar for XXX equipment, fine .. thats your right to believe & choose. But this forum IS about hi-fi (correct me if i'm wrong here) and if anyone wants to pooh-pooh hifi, had better be prepared to receive some heavy responses. This is after all a forum isn't it ?

Now this is really getting colourful!

i'm sure u can "see the colours" here right ? Razz

by mugenfoo Sun Aug 23, 2009 4:55 pm

Sooooo ... back to the topic ....

Does "anyone" here have any experiences to share whether they CAN or CANNOT hear the sonic differences between different speaker cables? Razz

by tycham Sun Aug 23, 2009 5:52 pm

mugenfoo wrote:Sooooo ... back to the topic ....

Does "anyone" here have any experiences to share whether they CAN or CANNOT hear the sonic differences between different speaker cables?

Yes! Sonic characteristic of thick speaker cable: "Swooosh"
Thinner cable: "Swissh" Very Happy

by car o scope Sun Aug 23, 2009 6:28 pm

mugenfoo wrote:Sooooo ... back to the topic ....

Does "anyone" here have any experiences to share whether they CAN or CANNOT hear the sonic differences between different speaker cables?

Speaker cables within the same price range - Not so.
Sometimes, I feel that they are almost identical sounding.
If do blind test and ask me to identify the cables, I will surely fail lor.. Razz

by CN Yee Sun Aug 23, 2009 11:50 pm

Below are some food for thoughts:

http://bruce.coppola.name/audio/Amp_Sound.pdf
or http://webpages.charter.net/fryguy/Amp_Sound.pdf

----------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.axiomaudio.com/distortion.html
Put another way, our ability to hear the test frequency “noise”
tones at frequencies of 40 Hz and below is extremely crude. Indeed, the
results show we are virtually deaf to these distortions at those
frequencies. Even in the mid-bass at 280 Hz and lower, the “noise” can
be around -14 dB (20% distortion), about half as loud as the music
itself, before we hear it.

---------------------------------------------------

Below is an anecdote about BBC's Dudley Harwood, the founder of Harbeth:

"He [Dudley Harwood] pointed out that, in his personal experience having spent his working life in audio evaluation, the human ear was notoriously unreliable.
He added that to get the best from its know non-linearity, limited
frequency response and very limited distortion resolution,
susceptibility to illness and age (and the self-distortion which the
ear produces itself*) that comparative tests were the only proper way
to draw conclusions about audio. Such tests had to be carefully
constructed. If, he added, I could train myself to keep and open mind
and be wary of the ear, then I just may be able, as an interested
amateur, to design something worthwhile."

-----------------------------------------------------

My point is - I am not against Hi-fi. In fact I am very much interested in the science and technology of Hi-Fi. For example I completely admired the speaker that I owned now, the Harbeth C7ES3. I am also very interested in psychoacoustic, i.e. how our brain-mind mechanism perceives and processes sounds.

But rightly or wrongly - I perceived that there is also a lot of non-science and nonsense in the world of audiophile. I will bring up the good and the bad (right or wrong) as points of discussions from time to time.

by **WongKN** Sun Aug 23, 2009 11:58 pm

Yes, I have often heard differences between speaker cables, different brands, different price range, sometimes more expensive doesn't necessarily mean better sounding.....

But the most convincing 'demonstration' I have experienced on the difference speaker cables makes was totally unplanned but yet totally undisputable.

Many years ago, I lugged back a pair of Symo speaker cable for my Apogees. Was then using van-den-hul SCS-12. So reach home, powered up the system, put on a record and played a track, just to refresh my mind the 'original sound' of the system. LP was James Tayler Greatest Hits.

Now, switch off the power amp but leaving the rest of the system still on, and ESPECIALLY the volume control setting at its original position. Swapped the Symo into the system, powered up the power amp. When I played the same track again, panic ! There is a 'zzzz, zzzzz' vibration sound coming from the system ! Shit, something might be wrong. Switched off the power amp and put back the vdh and played the same track but the sound was gone. Put the Symo back in and the zzzz siund came back.

Then, after some careful observation, found out that it comes out whenever the bass is played, i.e. it follows the bass line. Went to listen up close to each speaker and found out it comes out from somewhere in the vinicity of the right speaker. Then found out that the spikes for that speaker wasn't set properly. The speaker rests on 4 spikes threaded into the base and locked in place. They in turn sits on metal footers. So all the 4 spikes needs to be threaded in correctly so that the speaker is level and all 4 sits on the footers properly. It turns out -one- of the spikes was threaded in just slightly too deep and the speaker was actually rocking about - the 'zzzz' sound produced when the two opposing spikes hit their metal footers.

So it was clear to me that the vdh scs-12 had rolled-off lows and the bass was not so strong. With the Symo, the bass was much stronger with the result the speaker itself started rocking about. Once the spike was properly reseated, the 'zzzz' vibration dissapeared.

This single incident, more than anything else, totally convinced me that cables -DO- make a difference. The proof is not some debatable listening test but a REAL PHYSICAL difference ! It wasn't even a double-blind listening test. I suppose it can even be called a 'blind' test - the system was not 100% set-up but I didn't know (and hence was 'blind' to the fact) and the improvement in the bass from the Symo cables vs the VDH was big enough that it caused the problem to show up !

by **WongKN** Mon Aug 24, 2009 12:04 am

CN Yee, 'technical facts' from articles such as those you quoted can only be carried that far. If you follow them to the letter, then you will find that you will dismiss everything about hifi. For e.g. the human ear, even at peak condition cannot hear beyond around 20kHz. So the CD standard is supposed to be beyond the ability of the human ear's sensitivity. People have actually took this arguement too far and started dismissing oversampling and bitstream DACs. There's no difference between CD standard and SACD, or 24bit/96KHz sampling, because the human ear cannot hear anything beyond the CD standard. If one follows this sort of argument to the limit, then the obvious conclusion might well become why play hifi when a good minicombo is already good enough to challenge the physical limitation of the human ear.... Very Happy

by sting Mon Aug 24, 2009 12:09 am

Im using LAT International SS1000MK2, prior to this it was VdH The wind, Anti-cable. Each and every cables does show their differences and the most significant is from LAT. Somehow it can produce the sense of "Venue", ambience & depth very well...

by mugenfoo Mon Aug 24, 2009 12:38 am

... and there is a perfectly valid science behind why different speaker cables will sound different and cause "zzzz" vibrations to happen et al.

If one were to really delve into the true technicalities behind the science in hi-fi, it is exposed that all components are always built among a set of compromises. Lets take the C7ES3 for example, yes its a wonderfully crafted speaker. Rich in tonal balance and warmth sonic presentation. Very Good design principles from one of the best speaker makers in the industry.

However it is compromised by the fact that given its physical size and dimensions, there are physical limits in its ability to properly "re-create" to a great degree of presense or accuracy of "almost" being in front of an Aerosmith Concert or the premium row seats at the Royal Albert Hall or Carnegie Hall.

Don't misunderstand here coz I'm not disparaging the C7ES3 in any way, but the laws of physics cannot be denied.
Just as an example here.

Even a million dollar McIntosh/Krell/FM/etc system is built along a set of compromises and limitations. There is no denying this.

Same goes for speaker cables (or any other part of the hi-fi chain).
The art & science behind what makes a great cable different from a good cable to the downright nasty ones cannot be listed in one forum. Doctoral theses could be centred entirely on cable design alone (for whatever its intended application).

Amazon.com has plenty books in their catalog on no-nonsense cable technologies and design & its uses and applications. I would strongly suggest for the interested and curious knowledge seeker to better reference such books & more authoritative sources instead of taking opinions and critiques from certain websites as factual or the gospel truth.

If one wants to reaffirm or disprove some notion based on technical jargon, they had also better really well versed in the subject matter.

Here's a quick example. THD: the percentage figures given by manufacturers are but a poor basis to draw judgement or conclusion on the equipment's fidelity abilities. To really delve deeper & get true lab specs, you got to literally put that equipment to the bench and see which order harmonics are the ones acting up, then relate back to the real world as to how the human ear perceives such distortions as being negligible, irritating, or perhaps pleasing to be heard.

If one does not begin to comprehend what a Fourier Series and/or a Fourier Transform is, then talking about THD is akin to falling into the trap of the age old phrase where "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing".

So... Fourier-Transforms anyone?

by mugenfoo Mon Aug 24, 2009 12:43 am

WongKN wrote:CN Yee, 'technical facts' from articles such as those you quoted can only be carried that far. If you follow them to the letter, then you will find that you will dismiss everything about hifi. For e.g. the human ear, even at peak condition cannot hear beyond around 20kHz. So the CD standard is supposed to be beyond the ability of the human ear's sensitivity. People have actually took this arguement too far and started dismissing oversampling and bitstream DACs. There's no difference between CD standard and SACD, or 24bit/96KHz sampling, because the human ear cannot hear anything beyond the CD standard. If one follows this sort of argument to the limit, then the obvious conclusion might well become why play hifi when a good minicombo is already good enough to challenge the physical limitation of the human ear....

exactly... The world is an unforgiving place such that the "good" will survive and
even flourish while the "bad" will eventually be exposed for the frauds
they are and shunned (eventually, once the novelty wears off).

It should be darn obvious by now that CDs in all their digital greatness, is indeed a FLAWED medium to store and re-produce music (but not bad enough to die off completely in time either, unlike the nasty "Tape Cartridge" medium that gets entangled up more often than playing properly in the player... if anyone still remembers them).

This is the reason why vinyl has survived till today.

Also the reason why things like SACD are gaining market acceptance specifically to address the shortcomings of the CD Redbook format.

by CN Yee Mon Aug 24, 2009 11:29 pm

Actually I was trying to stay away from technicalities as far as possible. The labs/experiments were to determine whether the participants can hear the differences between two sound streams - it is not even asking which sound stream is 'better'. As can be seen - most 'expert' listeners cannot even reliably tell the sounds apart.

I only quoted one set of distortion figures. The purpose is to show the huge amount of distortions introduced by the speaker as compared to the rest of the sound system.

I have seem graphs posted on the Harbeth website of the frequency response of one of the speakers. The graphs are not straight at all. There are all sorts of humps and ridges, much like an off road mud track. I will post the graphs when I can locate them again.

These are graphs from top notch speakers known for their balanced and clean sounds with incredible amount details. It just shows how our ear can listen through all these irregularities.

To give an analogy - the speaker cables are like the spoilers we fix on the car to improve the aerodynamics of the car. A professional driver driving on a F1 circuit in high speed will appreciate the improved aerodynamics.

But put the same car on a off road mud track - the most expensive spoilers will be rendered useless. This is how bad the speakers is compared to the rest of the system.

Furthermore - most ordinary driver WILL not be able to tell the difference the spoilers made even while driving on F1 circuit. Most people will not push the car fast enough for it to make a difference.

I am very intrigue for WongKN experience about the rattling speakers. The cables obviously caused the speakers box to resonate differently. But the question remains whether it will translate to a difference that the human ear can discern. The human ear is almost deaf to distortions at low frequencies! Then there is the question whether the change is for the better or worst.

The quotations I quoted are from well know speakers designers - Lenard Burnett (a legendary speakers maker in Australia), Dudley Harwood (founder of Harbeth), and Alan Shaw (Harbeth current owner). They share the same distrust of the human ears. These are people who dedicated their who life to sound reproduction!

by joeling Tue Aug 25, 2009 9:25 am

Hmm,

Personally I think that a speaker with totally flat response will sound not right. I don't know much but I've always been intrigued by the so called equal loudness contours of the human hearing / ear response

Something like this :

How much to pay for speaker cables? EqualLoudnessContour

How much to pay for speaker cables? EqualLoudnessContour

How much to pay for speaker cables? Equal_loudness

What this shows is that human perception on equal loudness of sound (i think in this case the above graphs used a test tone) is different across frequency & sound pressure levels. I think for speakers to sound equal loud across all frequency range, their response should be the inverse of the graphs above. Nothing close to flat at all.

Any thoughts ?

Regards,
Joe Ling

by mugenfoo Tue Aug 25, 2009 11:34 am

CN Yee wrote:Actually I was trying to stay away from technicalities as far as possible. The labs/experiments were to determine whether the participants can hear the differences between two sound streams - it is not even asking which sound stream is 'better'. As can be seen - most 'expert' listeners cannot even reliably tell the sounds apart.

Who r those "expert listeners" ? One should not be so trusting of them expert listeners as god gave you a pair of ears just as good as any other person's, unless you have served some time with the Army artillery unit or partied one too many times in your teenage years at 130dB rave/dance parties (or Rock/Hetal concerts coz Rave hasn't been invented yet in your time ) ... u get the idea.

Lab experiments are done under what they call "controlled environments" and are not necessarily reflective of real-world situations. No single lab experiment can perfectly replicate real world situations. That's why in F1, although they have all the super lab and R&D facilities , the teams still need to do shakedown tests at REAL WORLD circuits time and time again before the races. One must remember, the lab only aims to SIMULATE the real world. It is NEVER a REPLACEMENT for REAL WORLD situations. The results and findings it present are only for a SIMULATED Environment and should never ever be taken as the final word or the gospel truth. It should however, be taken with a healthy serving of salt at all times.

I only quoted one set of distortion figures. The purpose is to show the huge amount of distortions introduced by the speaker as compared to the rest of the sound system.

Quoting THD figures in terms of % is an extremely poor way to present them and in all fairness to the manufacturers, they only do it such as to give it a vague figure of comprehension to the lay-people in the consumer world. Distortion figures are actually more meaningfully quoted in -xx dB ( thats minus something decibels) and one needs to understand the math and science stuff like linear-time-invariant (LTI) systems, the transformations from a amplitude-time domain to a frequency-time domain aka Fourier transforms and more fundamentally what a Fourier series is. If you're game to talk on these points, we can have a healthy discussion on the real art & science behind hi-fi systems. Otherwise, it would be like the saying of an old cantonese saying: " like giving a piano performance to an audience comprised of cows (or whichever animal you like)".

I have seem graphs posted on the Harbeth website of the frequency response of one of the speakers. The graphs are not straight at all. There are all sorts of humps and ridges, much like an off road mud track. I will post the graphs when I can locate them again.

And this goes to show that the best of any hi-fi piece of equipment is NEVER build perfect. But its the imperfections that give it their own sonic signatures.
BTW, the realm of hi-fi is about listening to the sound as produced. Not looking at some fancypants graph and then determining what works and what doesn't.

I used to be like you in my early hifi days, very hung up on technical specs. And naturally, went for Japanese maintream hi-fi gear like amps and stuff with all their wonderfully low THD (0.005%) and super fancy high wattage ratings... (100W rms in 8 ohms !!). The sound always seemed "just never quite right". Then i realised that the pursuit of manufacturer's specs and graphs is but a folly and started my REAL hi-fi journey with an Exposure XX amp. No fancy bass/treble controls, not even a balance knob. Rated conservatively at 25Wrms/ch. It plays louder than the Japanese tin can of an amp, and sings more melodiously as well.

Till today, the Exposure is still serving we well.

These are graphs from top notch speakers known for their balanced and clean sounds with incredible amount details. It just shows how our ear can listen through all these irregularities.

same as above... ^^^^^^^^

To give an analogy - the speaker cables are like the spoilers we fix on the car to improve the aerodynamics of the car. A professional driver driving on a F1 circuit in high speed will appreciate the improved aerodynamics.

But put the same car on a off road mud track - the most expensive spoilers will be rendered useless. This is how bad the speakers is compared to the rest of the system.

Not true. The fancy spoilers and bodykit on a present day Civic Type-R (FD2-R, K20A engine 225HP) are not just to make the car look more aggresive. Hitting in excess of 130km/h and the aerodynamics of these fancy wings and front lower lips will ensure you stick to the ground more instead of bobbing around on the road. Has anyone ever driven a Perodua MyVI above 120km/h ?? The car will start to "float" and there's this feeling of unsettleness . Steering response starts to be less responsive whilst requiring more steering input to keep the car tracking straight. Of course, if you have NEVER driven a higher performance car on a daily basis and the MyVI is all you've ever known in your driving experience... you won't complain. Otherwise, you don't need to be an F1 driver blazing at speeds of 200+km/h to appreciate how aerodynamics keeps you alive on the track.

Did you know, the small "curve up" or ridge at the end of the boot of a Mercedes E-class W210 and W211 was actually done to enhance high speed stability (and the Germans have something called the Autobahn remember?) of this "everyday saloon car" ?. And also the reason why the newer Mercs are much more fuel efficient is because beginning with the W210 era, Merc's have been designing road cars with a CD (Coefficient of Drag) of less than 0.3 (W210's CD is 0.27) and this means more stability at highway speeds and better fuel mileage.

All these are borne from thousands of hours in lab tests (wind tunnel testings) in order to bring REAL WORLD benefits.

Yes you are right that the best design spoilers will be rendered useless in say, a stock standard Kancil or MyVI. In fact, it would just add useless weight and add more air resistance and kill the overall package further.

So, same goes for hi-fi , why bother putting Monster cables or more exotic vdH Silver cables on crappy systems like a RM400 mini-compo player ? But if you got something like a NAD 3020 or better with some purpose-built bookshelf speakers, thats already going towards the "higher" performance range in the hi-fi world already.

BTW, cars can work without spoilers. Your hi-fi system CANNOT work without any speaker cables! (no matter how bad or cheap they are). By your very own analogy , speaker cables are actually way way more crucial than the spoilers on a car !

Furthermore - most ordinary driver WILL not be able to tell the difference the spoilers made even while driving on F1 circuit. Most people will not push the car fast enough for it to make a difference.

Well, if you have never been exposed to the better sounding stuff... i don't blame you; Purely from an objective point of view (Same example: Back to the MyVI driver who has never driven anything better in his/her life).

I am very intrigue for WongKN experience about the rattling speakers. The cables obviously caused the speakers box to resonate differently. But the question remains whether it will translate to a difference that the human ear can discern. The human ear is almost deaf to distortions at low frequencies! Then there is the question whether the change is for the better or worst.

DUH !!!! Rattling sound = audible (aka means CAN BE HEARD !) ? Hello ?? Earth calling CNYee, Earth calling CNYee

The quotations I quoted are from well know speakers designers - Lenard Burnett (a legendary speakers maker in Australia), Dudley Harwood (founder of Harbeth), and Alan Shaw (Harbeth current owner). They share the same distrust of the human ears. These are people who dedicated their who life to sound reproduction!

Thats so ironic to say the least. If so, they would be the world's biggest hypocrites and you would be the world's biggest SUCKER to buy their products.
They base their livelihood on designing loudspeakers that actually gives better sonic performances than the rest on one hand. Then on the other hand SAY that the human ear is unreliable blah blah blah ... so why bother making such good quality speakers then ? If this was REALLY the case .. then anyone who has bought speakers from Alan Shaw , would have also been given the final insult by having him tell you that your ears are actually lousy and unable to hear jack from crap, and you just bought a pair of Harbeths to richen dear Alan's bank account. Now is this REALLY the case ???? I sincerely hope not.

So those are articles which would have been misintrepreted then. And the other school of thought would be more on HOW they design their loudspeakers. They (Alan Shaw for example) would rather concentrate efforts into designing a loudspeaker in areas WHERE they think it matters more than others. Maybe they go into making better Crossovers, making better cone drivers, etc etc.... But the end goal is the same" To build a damn good sounding loudspeaker FOR the HUMAN EAR (and to be bought by human listeners, not lab technicians who will throw a myriad of tests on it to determine whether this is a good or bad loudspeaker).
FACT.

by tycham Tue Aug 25, 2009 2:51 pm

joeling wrote:Hmm,

Personally I think that a speaker with totally flat response will sound not right. I don't know much but I've always been intrigued by the so called equal loudness contours of the human hearing / ear response

What this shows is that human perception on equal loudness of sound (i think in this case the above graphs used a test tone) is different across frequency & sound pressure levels. I think for speakers to sound equal loud across all frequency range, their response should be the inverse of the graphs above. Nothing close to flat at all.

Any thoughts ?

Regards,
Joe Ling

Hi Joe

If you look at the graphs it shows steeper slope for the low frequencies as the human ears are less sensitive to lows - the discrmination against the lows are more pronounce as the sound become softer. Looking at the 80 phons curve you would see that the ears discrimination against low frequencies are less pronounce than at softer sound level.

Moving up the loudness scale you would notice that the slope are getting flatter, and at 120 phons the hearing response is more nearly flat. So no problem here when you are blasting your system away at high volume.

To resolve the problem when playing at low volume, you would have to use the bass and treble control knobs to control a realistic balance of the high and low frequencies in the music.

by joeling Tue Aug 25, 2009 4:28 pm

tycham, good point there.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that the speaker response should not be totally flat. It should look something like the inverse of the graphs shown in the pics for the human ear to perceive it as having a flat response across the freq range.

Regards,
Joe Ling

by bimmerman Tue Aug 25, 2009 4:34 pm

Man, are all of you sound engineers and measurebators done debating curves, graphs and charts yet? Could someone please remind Mugenfoo he needs to go skim his discs already.

by mugenfoo Tue Aug 25, 2009 5:36 pm

bimmerman wrote:Man, are all of you sound engineers and measurebators done debating curves, graphs and charts yet? Could someone please remind Mugenfoo he needs to go skim his discs already.

hahahaha, those discs are long gone, thrown, re-melted, recycled and reincarnated into something else already. Those are from a couple of years back; had some fun times with some friends (and also the fellow forummer "whom i shall not name" who also happens to be a petrol-head) in one of our Sepang track-day sessions. After approx 20+ hot laps, this is what the discs became.

by **WongKN** Tue Aug 25, 2009 7:40 pm

The objective of a hifi system is not to reproduce flat frequency response to the ears but to reproduce the captured sound. Whatever comes out of the original instruments being played (ambience influence and all) is captured in an as accurate manner as possible by the recording engineer. This means as flat a frequency response as possible. Then when it is played on a really neutral system, it will come out as original as possible. This then is what the ears want to hear - the original sound. If you go amd make the speaker with the inverse of the ear's frequency sensitivity, then it will modify that sound and what you hear will no longer be the original (or a close copy) sound of the instrument/music.

I have purposely held back explaining this fact because I want to illustrate how simply taking some scientific fact at face value, without really analyzing or thinking hard about its implications, can take us nowhere, or into a totally wrong direction.

by CN Yee Wed Aug 26, 2009 8:42 am

Joe - interesting graphs. Where did you get them from?

No - the speakers (and the whole sound reproduction system) should reproduce sound as it was recorded. The performing artists and the recording engineers would have catered for the peculiarities of the human hearing.

Alan Shaw, the maker of Harbeth was very clear about it. He was striving for a perfectly level response curve, and that was enormously complicated. He wrote about the great pains it took to approach that goal.

First there is the cross over region, with the woofer meeting the tweeter, both rolling off at a different rate. And there is the resonances of the cone, the coil, the speaker box etc causing peaks and dips in the curves. Then the low frequency sound waves radiating out via the front panel - only to be abruptly truncated by the edge.

It was an enormously complicated matter. Alan Shaw posted a series of graphs in the Harbeth users forum demonstrating the distortions caused by the various factors- and how the cross-over circuit has to compensate for all of them. In all he was able to achieved a reasonably level response curve across the whole frequency range. But at the micro level you can see all sorts of humps, ravines, grooves and whatnots. It is like a mud track with pot-holes all over the place.

There is phase incoherence across the frequency range as well. The woofer takes longer to start and stop than the tweeter, the inductances and capacitances in the voice coil cause varying amount of phase shifts across the frequency range. But fortunately the human ear is quite deaf with regard to intra-channel phase distortions.

The silky smooth sounds we hear from the Harbeth speakers is not smooth at all!

by mugenfoo Wed Aug 26, 2009 9:56 am

...so are you actually listening to your system or examining your system's specs under a microscope ?

by car o scope Wed Aug 26, 2009 10:43 am

Are the graphs valid for our own listening rooms, systems and environment?

by tycham Wed Aug 26, 2009 12:54 pm

car o scope wrote:Are the graphs valid for our own listening rooms, systems and environment?

That's the human hearing response graph you are seeing. Not applicable if you are underwater. Very Happy

by car o scope Wed Aug 26, 2009 1:22 pm

So, in short, not applicable, right? Shocked

by tycham Wed Aug 26, 2009 2:36 pm

car o scope wrote:So, in short, not applicable, right?

Alamak! I need to go on video conferencing to explain it to you lah.

Anyway. the keywords are: CONTOUR and EQUAL LOUDNESS - how your ears perceive the sound level at different loudness and frequencies. Maybe something like that.

by CN Yee Wed Aug 26, 2009 3:08 pm

How much to pay for speaker cables? A03_spl_graph

80 - 100dB SPL loud to VERY LOUD

60 - 80dB SPL loud sound needing to speak loudly to be heard.

40 - 60dB SPL average noise level of the world we live and work in.

20 - 40dB SPL quiet ambient background, will allow 60dB dynamic range.

0 - 20dB SPL threshold of hearing, dependent on frequency.

Now take a look at the above graph. Just by varying the volume somewhat we can get a different hearing experience!

I always thought that DTS sound better than Dolby Digital - better high freq resolution, fuller sound etc, until I discovered that DTS is recorded some 5dB louder than Dolby D. So I started adjusting the volume when I switch between DD and DTS - and I stopped hearing any difference!

The point is - this thread of discussion is about critical appraise of our hearing capability. Yes, human hearing is highly irregular, non-linear, and quite deaf to distortions. It has got nothing to do with any manufacturer quoted specifications.

Before I go out to buy a highly expensive equipment - I would ask - can my ear really hear the differences? Otherwise I ended up a sucker for marketing hype.

by car o scope Wed Aug 26, 2009 3:33 pm

tycham,
Thanks for the info. No need video conferencing lah..

Yes. True.
If I cant hear the difference, it is better I keep the cash in my wallet.

by tycham Wed Aug 26, 2009 4:57 pm

CN Yee wrote:

80 - 100dB SPL loud to VERY LOUD

60 - 80dB SPL loud sound needing to speak loudly to be heard.

40 - 60dB SPL average noise level of the world we live and work in.

20 - 40dB SPL quiet ambient background, will allow 60dB dynamic range.

0 - 20dB SPL threshold of hearing, dependent on frequency.

Now take a look at the above graph. Just by varying the volume somewhat we can get a different hearing experience!

I always thought that DTS sound better than Dolby Digital - better high freq resolution, fuller sound etc, until I discovered that DTS is recorded some 5dB louder than Dolby D. So I started adjusting the volume when I switch between DD and DTS - and I stopped hearing any difference!

The point is - this thread of discussion is about critical appraise of our hearing capability. Yes, human hearing is highly irregular, non-linear, and quite deaf to distortions. It has got nothing to do with any manufacturer quoted specifications.

Before I go out to buy a highly expensive equipment - I would ask - can my ear really hear the differences? Otherwise I ended up a sucker for marketing hype.

We only used all of these graphs for acoustic design purposes and research only. I had never look at any technical details when buying speakers or any other components. I only listen and decide whether I like the sound or not.

If we have to go into so much of these technical details, we would even have to refer to the musical score to determine the dynamic shifts(mp-->p-->fff or vice versa) or the dynamic contrast or the transient in a piece of music, to see if it is being faithfully reproduced.

If you had watched the videos on how Harbeth speakers are designed, you would notice that the final decision on acceptance for the prototype is through a long and ardous period of listening tests(Tsai Chin songs included) and adjustment of the cross over until the designer is satisfied with what he had heard in a normal room.

In this respect, the test equipment used is the human ears; and the environment is just any normal room.

by joeling Wed Aug 26, 2009 10:52 pm

CN Yee wrote:Joe - interesting graphs. Where did you get them from?

My first encounter is from the book named "Audio Reality" by Bruce Rozenblit of Transcendent Sound. A very practical man of audio who has strong views & no-nonsense attitude. The ones attached are from web search on 'equal loudness curve' of something like that.

My hunch of which I am in no hurry to analyse or investigate is that speakers that measures flat across the frequency range may not sound nice. Instead, it may sound bright. I have a TACT audio digital room correction system that is not in the chain anymore. Years ago, I used to make measurement on room - speaker interaction to gather input data for room correction. I was surprised to see a big deep in the higher frequencies. Yet, I perceive no loss of the highs.

Anyway, I like Harbeth speakers & in fact went all the way to Tropical audio to have a listen years ago while the fever was high. The lady that did the demo for me left quite an impression on me. She was real loud & talked as fast as a machine gun rattling off the rounds.

Regards,
Joe Ling

by tycham Wed Aug 26, 2009 11:08 pm

joeling wrote:
Anyway, I like Harbeth speakers & in fact went all the way to Tropical audio to have a listen years ago while the fever was high. The lady that did the demo for me left quite an impression on me. She was real loud & talked as fast as a machine gun rattling off the rounds.

Regards,
Joe Ling

Ah! That must be Ah Ying. Very Happy

Myabe you can start a new thread on speakers frequencies response.

by CN Yee Thu Aug 27, 2009 11:17 am

This is what Alan Shaw said about amplifier clipping:

I have a research document from Dudley Harwood in which he describes
clipping tests on the power amplifiers in the BBC LS5/8 speaker. A
special circuit was designed to deliberately introduce clipping into
the tweeter's signal, and this was monitored with a 'scope at the
tweeter to view the clipped waveform. When the clipping was in the high
frequency band, four trained observers 'found that the programme could
be clipped by 12dB before distortion was just audible'. * Clipping
distortion was most obvious on which musical instrument do you think?

In other words, the ear has a poor ability to detect even severe
distortion at high frequencies (12dB clipping implies severe
distortion). I suspect that much hi-fi listening is undertaken during
or very close to conditions of clipping, especially with tiny
amplifiers, but it just isn't audible. Many modern CDs are severely
clipped.

And as Harwood said to me many-a-time, 'if an acoustic issue is not audible, it's not audible - full stop'.

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