[Closed] Why does top end HiFi sound better?

Because you pay more for it.

Yes, but what does that extra money get.

This is not a troll - I know it sounds better but why? (Apart from better components etc). How do they actually make it sound better?

Bigger power supplies with more separate power rails is one thing.

This is not a troll - I know it sounds better but why?

After a certain point it really is just perception (for one thing "better" is a pretty vague term) and that perception is clouded by the fact that you pay more for it. It's another example of the placebo effect.

These days with design and manufacture of electronics being pretty trivial I would suggest speakers are the biggest variable. Properly designed and constructed drive units and cabinets are expensive. Of course good speakers demand good power amps to drive them which as mudshark suggests demands high quality power supplies.

Pretty sure the TL;DR is, in theory anyway; the more dedicated the circuit, components, layout and materials, the less you "change" the signal as you move through the chain.

IE - top end amplifiers - hand built and tuned, dedicated audio componants. Budget amp, off the shelf ICs and no individual adjustment etc etc.

The jokers in the pack are source quality, law of diminishing returns, and the fact that some distortion can "improve" the sound [see valves and valve-heads].

Then there's the bullshit and placebo, as above.

rjj - Member

Yes, but what does that extra money get.

This is not a troll - I know it sounds better but why? (Apart from better components etc). How do they actually make it sound better?

What do you mean? Aside from placebo, the better components, chassis, etc are why it sounds better.

Or do you mean what happens to the actual sound that makes it different? Then less (or more pleasing to the ear) distortion, more accurate (or more pleasing to the ear) EQ, improved (or more pleasing to the ear) dynamic range, you get the idea!

BTW I say 'more pleasing to the ear' as accurate sound is not always best. A flatmate used to have a set of those Yamaha studio monitors and they were not pleasant to listen to. Likewise a lot of people prefer vinyl to CD even though in most quantifiable ways it is worse, etc.

I'd also say high end speakers compared to cheapo jobbies always make the biggest difference, better construction, better tuning of the cabinets and better selection of components that work together.

Lots of factors a few of the easier ones to explain include:

Lower noise floor - less noise means there is less muddying of the reproduction. You can hear noise as background hiss.

Lower colouration - colouration is the sin of a speaker cabinet resonating and therefore adding in musical frequencies that aren't on the original recording.

Greater bandwidth - being able to reproduce much more of the frequency in particular the higher frequencies which, even though you can't hear them, have a big imapct on how the rest of the audible spectrum sounds.

Greater data retreival and accuracy - being able to get at the data and pass it through the system without it becoming corrupted

Transient resposne - when an orchestra goes from nothing to full, for example when the choir kicks in on Beethoven's Ninth or the timpany go full bore in Verdi's Requiem, that requires a huge amount of on tap current to drive the speakers. Higher calibre amps will have massive current reserves to drive that.

All this represents an engineering challenge that needs to be translated into the design of the equipment.

Retro83 - I guess it is more what actually happens to the sound. How do they get a "more pleasing" dynamic range etc?

Up to a point.. A thousand pound bike is a lot better than an £80 one.
A 3k bike is better than a 1k one, but the gap much smaller I imagine.

Deminishing returns.

With audio it's speaker design and construction, better clarity, frequency separation and frequency response, with amps, bigger more highly engineered coils, quieter power supplies, less interference..

geetee1972 - thanks that has helped a lot.

No problem. It's an interesting subject and one that polarises people (into those that have heard the difference for themselves and understand and those that just like to sit on the side lines and denigrate everyone else's opinion even though they've never heard a true high end system themselves).

If you're really interested I can recommend this book:

[url= http://www.amazon.com/The-Complete-Guide-High-End-Audio/dp/0978649311 ]The Complete Guide to High End Audio[/url]

It's particularly good at explaining precisely your question and also goes into how and why different engineering designs and approaches end up with their distinctive character, for example, why a magneplanar speaker sounds different to a conventional cabinet/moving magnet driver array.

The people who make this stuff are incredibly clever and very passionate about what they do. If it were all smoke and mirrors I imagine the very brightest and cynical engineering minds at Naim would have long since left but they haven't.

Like anything really - when it ceases to become built to a price or mass produced, less corners cut and more time spent on improving the quality of something. The quality of the components, the attention to keeping noise and distortion to the absolute minimum etc. A good quality floor-standing speaker with decent bass reproduction can make some bookshelves sound severely lacking.

Hi-Fi is a funny one because you can quite clearly hear great improvements when you spend a bit more but eventually it becomes a diminishing return exercise, and get ridiculous with some of the cables.

I love see stuff done well - so it gets my vote even though my listening habits have changed and a decent 320 MP3 is okay for casual use. It still doesn't compare to the full majesty of uncompressed/high resolution HiFi.

Was never much a vinyl freak though - this was at a time when digital audio wasn't great and the stalwarts were doing everything to malign it. It just needed time to improve.

Same thing is happening to feature film/digital now, the reality is the 4K+digital film cameras we use are better quality than than 35mm film and but the industry is doing it's best to keep film alive, to keep it exclusive and costly.

I have a soft spot for HiFi though. (Some old mastering techniques were very poor so makes mockery out of Hifi though.)

I was thinking this the other day, I understand the (very) basics of how sounds waves are formed and picked up by the ear and translated into a noise, so for instance I could get my head around a speaker making a drum noise. But how the hell do they manage to represent a full orchestra of different instruments at different ranges and tempos with vocals on top?

All been said already really...

With digital handling of sound and less crosstalk and inaccuracies there is less and less to be improved upon. Once upon a time Richer Sounds said they would only ever sell separates and no systems or TVs...

The key things now I guess are Speakers, your room layout and acoustic and your own perceptions - but the number 1 thing is source quality... So much modern non-classical music seems to be recorded with crap speakers or headphones in mind. I hate hearing music through crap speakers.

Stevet1 - Member

I was thinking this the other day, I understand the (very) basics of how sounds waves are formed and picked up by the ear and translated into a noise, so for instance I could get my head around a speaker making a drum noise. But how the hell do they manage to represent a full orchestra of different instruments at different ranges and tempos with vocals on top?

Similar to TV. It doesn't even begin to come close to representing reality (light frequencies, physical form, etc), but it's close enough to what our eyes/brain can be fooled by that it is still perceived as excellent.

Does it? Or does it just sound like top end HiFi?

If I pick up my Telecaster guitar and plug it into a 150W Fender Amp head and a cab with a couple of 12" Celestion Vintage 30s it sounds huge. Volume is limited by pain threshold but the louder it goes the better it sounds. The bass shakes the room, the mids are hot and the treble crackles and spits

If I record it with really good microphone and audio software then play it back through my HiFi it becomes a pale water colour of the original guitar sound, it becomes HiFi soft. The trebles don't so much spit as slaver, the mids are only warm and the bass won't make things fall off the shelf.

So I have an idea. Instead of selling mixed recordings, artists should sell recordings of the signals from all the microphones in the recording studio (after the pedal boards for the guitars). You then have a device to playback with mulitiple outputs, one for each signal. For the guitar signal you buy the amp head and cab you like, for the voices a PA and select your favourite effects, for the bass a bass combo etc. It would all cost a lot less than many people spend on their HiFi and sound exactly as it would in a studio once you've covered the walls with absorbent materials.

[b]stevet1[/b] Your ear is actually a reverse drum/speaker which detects and moves with sound waves which are mixed togather in a overlapping multiphased pattern. All a speaker does is the opposite, generate/reproduce those waves. In an ideal world the speaker and your ear drum would be moving in perfect sync. There is more to it than that - bass sounds have more of a feeling though your body (google Evelyn Glennie...) and less directionality

Confirmation bias. (-:

Up to a point.. A thousand pound bike is a lot better than an £80 one.
A 3k bike is better than a 1k one, but the gap much smaller I imagine.

Deminishing returns.

Absolutely spot on. I like my AV, but there definitely comes a point where you're paying a lot of extra wedge for incremental (or mythical) gains. There was a thread on here a little while back discussing an article which reviewed which [i]hard disk drive[/i] storage gave the best digital audio reproduction, FFS.

BTW I say 'more pleasing to the ear' as accurate sound is not always best. A flatmate used to have a set of those Yamaha studio monitors and they were not pleasant to listen to. Likewise a lot of people prefer vinyl to CD even though in most quantifiable ways it is worse, etc.

Transient resposne - when an orchestra goes from nothing to full, for example when the choir kicks in on Beethoven's Ninth or the timpany go full bore in Verdi's Requiem, that requires a huge amount of on tap current to drive the speakers. Higher calibre amps will have massive current reserves to drive that.

So I have an idea. Instead of selling mixed recordings, artists should sell recordings of the signals from all the microphones in the recording studio.....

So I have an idea. Instead of selling mixed recordings, artists should sell recordings of the signals from all the microphones in the recording studio (after the pedal boards for the guitars). You then have a device to playback with mulitiple outputs, one for each signal. For the guitar signal you buy the amp head and cab you like, for the voices a PA and select your favourite effects, for the bass a bass combo etc. It would all cost a lot less than many people spend on their HiFi and sound exactly as it would in a studio once you've covered the walls with absorbent materials.

I was thinking about this the other day as I was listening to my latest Naim power amp change. I think the problem is that one system is expected to replicate a wide variety of instruments and musical styles. One thing a good system does better than a cheaper one is the soundstage thing and multiple speakers won't deal with that unless you position the multiple speakers required as necessary for each recording?!

I dunno exactly but the 20yr old Rotel/Monitor Audio setup I used to own was too powerful a hit for my needs so sold it and went back to a Yammy desktop and a Bose bluetooth mini.

Miss having a real set up and the "friendly" neighbours trying to tell me to crank it down.

I don't think it's confirmation bias at all and I don't think the return does diminish quite as much as people seem to think.

Having been the the Nation Audio Show and listened to a seemingly endless number of systems in different rooms I can safely say that when I sat down in front a some Tannoy Kingdom Royals (with no knowledge of their value - £50,000, Tannoy speakers or any of the other kit) I would have been perfectly happy to auction off my Audi R8 (if I had one) to the highest bidder in the room and pass the money straight over to the Tannoy man. They were phenomenally good!!

I would be prepared to live in poverty if I owned nothing but those speakers, a room to house them, records, food and a lifetime supply of weed... (of course it wouldn't be poverty but I could do without everything else)

I think the problem is more that the room where you listen to the speakers largely determines how they will sound. Some systems, especially the very top end ones, are very fussy about positioning and, in addition to this, I think a lot of hifi enthusiasts probably don't have especially good hearing (most of them are getting on a bit after all!!). When you take these factors into account it ends up being a bit of pot luck whether or not you hear a system anywhere near its best. When I listened to the Tannoys they were operating in another dimension compared to the rest of what was on show. Stepping into that room was sort of like visiting Narnia

I don't like the PA sound. When junior plays we have the choice of miking up the cab which means we retain the sound of his speakers but with a loss of definition, or using the stereo line outs direct into the PA which means the sound becomes PA speaker sound. I prefer miking up.

Two mikes are normally enough for recording drums, one low down and one over head.

Directional power cables, nitrogen enhanced and gold hdmi connectors.

Exactly. Which is why 8 watt valve amps are a joke.

Amps and watts are different though went they? Or have I got that wrong. Either way the transient response, or the ability of the amp to respond to very sudden demands for current is determined by two things. One is the current reserve of the amp, the other is the resistance that the amp 'sees' from the speaker. If the speaker has very high impedance that will make less demands on the amp than if it has very low impedance. Similarly, how efficient that speaker is will also determine the demands placed on the amp. You can get away with an 8 watt valve amp if you have a speaker with a sensitivity of say 100dB which is why you see 8 watt valve amps paired to incredibly efficient horn loaded loudspeakers.

I don't like the PA sound. When junior plays we have the choice of miking up the cab which means we retain the sound of his speakers but with a loss of definition, or using the stereo line outs direct into the PA which means the sound becomes PA speaker sound. I prefer miking up

Two mikes are normally enough for recording drums, one low down and one over head.

Directional power cables, nitrogen enhanced and gold hdmi connectors....

...probably make either a theoretical difference that can be measured by sensitive equipment but is very hard, if not impossible to hear by humans.

Is what you wanted to say right?

I've never known a subject more likely to raise the heckles of a certain type of person on STW than high end audio.

Funnily enough I have a good friend through mountain biking, who also used to be on here and who definitely fell into that category of person (logical, empirical, cynical, judgemental etc).

He came over to my place to hear my relatively modest (in the grand scheme of things) set up and that was all it took to convince him of the virtues of high end audio.

He's now some way down the line and being a man of considerable means, he's £80k in to an active Naim set up with digital and vinyl sources.

Drum sound in the home: some big speakers. When moving a complete kit is too much hassle we've used an electronic drum kit with either a bass amp (15" driver and a tweeter) or a 400W PA amp with a pair of 12" guitar speakers. It sounds more like real drums than the drums from a HiFi which sound like the drummer is at the end of the road.

There'll be a lot of flattering the sound too, making them play down unpleasant frequencies etc, unlike reference monitors which are designed to reveal all the hidden nasties and can be tiring to listen to.

But the main thing is the more you spend the better it is, honest guv 😉

Drum sound in the home: some big speakers. When moving a complete kit is too much hassle we've used an electronic drum kit with either a bass amp (15" driver and a tweeter) or a 400W PA amp with a pair of 12" guitar speakers. It sounds more like real drums than the drums from a HiFi which sound like the drummer is at the end of the road.

Anyhow, here are a couple of possible objections to your scheme.
1. You would need the same kit that the performers used to truly reproduce the sound of (for example) an actual guitar stack. That would vary depending on the performers' choices so you would potentially need one of everything which could get a bit expensive.
2. You would need a discreet channel for each performer.

There'll be a lot of flattering the sound too, making them play down unpleasant frequencies etc, unlike reference monitors which are designed to reveal all the hidden nasties and can be tiring to listen to.

Stepping into that room was sort of like visiting Narnia

"Room" may be the operative word there. It won't just be the speakers I bet, the room will be engineered to show them off.

I've never known a subject more likely to raise the heckles of a certain type of person on STW than high end audio.

Thing is, if I (like your mate) had spunked £80k on what might or might not be snake oil, I'd be defensive of it as well.

It won't just be the speakers I bet, the room will be engineered to show them off.

Tannoy Kingdom Royals are going to sound impressive to anyone - need a big room though and suitable amplification.

Joe Morello’s Solo From Take Five is a good test of how well a system replicates drums. Need a good bit of slam to make them sound real(ish).

"Room" may be the operative word there. It won't just be the speakers I bet, the room will be engineered to show them off.

I know it sounds better but why?

How do you know?

He listened to some maybe?

It's incredibly difficult to turn recorded information back into sound energy in the air with a high level of accuracy. There are distortions and non-linearities coming at you from all angles.

Although this is now an old design, when flush mounted it's still one of the best ways of having the sound of an live rock band in your living room:

http://www.meyersound.com/product/x-10/

He listened to some maybe?

How does that prove it's better?

But on a budget, I'd go with something like this:

http://www.linkwitzlab.com/LXmini/Introduction.htm

In fact Siegfried's site is a goldmine of information if you want to develop an understanding of the complexities of audio reproduction.

Anything in audio is measurable with the right gear and expertise in using it - and understanding the results. Magazines run on selling advertising and much of what is advertised would not perform well in lab measurements, which could destroy their revenue stream - hence the same old same old instead of innovative designs which solve audio problems far better, like this very clever active speaker.

How does that prove it's better?

Its obvious to even the most argumentative fool that some music systems sound substantially better than some others. What people actually want from a music system does vary but bass slam is an easy one to notice in suitable systems.

What people actually want from a music system does vary but bass slam is an easy one to notice in suitable systems.

Thing is, if I (like your mate) had spunked £80k on what might or might not be snake oil, I'd be defensive of it as well.

Well I listened to it and I have no agenda in defending it.

I've listened to quite a few high end systems but none as expensive (or expansive) as this one. Of all the high end systems I've heard, his did things that no other system I've heard did, including making my ears bleed. BUt the immediacy of the sound was quite startling.

It wouldn't be what I spent £80k on (assuming I HAD to spend that much, which i just wouldn't) but I'd probably only change the speakers.

Much in the same way in cycling you have light, cheap, strong - pick two, there is similar with HiFi. The biggest difference is speakers and is the easiest one to explain. They have to accurately move air at upto 20,000 times a second and also recreate sound waves down to the lower limits of your hearing. Accurately recreating high frequencies isn't that difficult within speakers of mid range price, what is hard is the lower range. A 20hz sound wave is 17m long, which is much harder to recreate than 20,000hz which is only 17mm long. The accurate reproduction of lower frequencies is a large part of the quality sound.

The expensive part of recreating lower frequencies is engineering and physical limitations. If you have a large speaker with decent sound damping or well designed air porting, it's not that difficult. The expensive part is most people don't want massive speakers, so achieving the same result in a smaller speaker requires better cabinet design, heavier denser materials to resist harmonic distortion, high power speaker drivers built to better tolerances. Achieving all this also results in a physically heavy product which adds logistic costs.

A good quality high frequency speaker driver only costs £30, doesn't require any cabinet and the design is simple. A good lower frequency bass driver and cabinet is minimum £250 in materials. Once you add on the costs design and craftsmanship for the cabinet required for the lower frequencies, distribution and dealer markup, you're knocking on £2000 for a pair of speakers built to a basic level of 'HiFi' quality rather than domestic product. Over and above this, alot of the differences are down to how different designers tune the sound.

It's not that hard to build something good yourself but you'll end up with a large speaker that doesn't look very nice. This is what I've done personally.