March is slowly approaching its end, and this reminds me that I haven’t written anything on this blog for quite some time. The reason is simple: not much has been happening here, although some interesting topics have been circulating in my email exchanges with Biju and Peter recently.
I find writing to a real person safer and easier than writing to an abstract audience. Writing for the general public is like wielding a double-edged sword — you never know how the effect of your writing will reflect back on you. Email correspondence is enjoyable, but it is also a private matter, leaving little for you, dear reader.
Still, I feel inclined to brief you on some of the topics from these emails, and I hope neither Peter nor Biju will mind me sharing parts of our correspondence with you.
The legacy of audio reproduction and some of its aspects is one of the subjects I enjoy discussing with Peter. Quite naturally, the name of the American audio pioneer Paul Klipsch came up in our conversation, and I discovered that our views of him differ. I insisted that the man is a legend, while Peter maintained that he is simply a successful marketer who made a fortune but invented very little. Even his famous Klipschorn loudspeakers, it turns out, were nothing more than a refined copy of a corner horn he had previously encountered in the UK. Peter’s main objection to calling him a “legend,” however, is that the transition from AlNiCo to ferrite magnets in Klipsch speakers was presented as a major advance in sonic performance — something many of us seriously doubt.
To be objective, though, we should consider the fact that back in the 1970s not only Klipsch but all the major companies—including JBL, EV, Altec, Tannoy, and others — began switching to ferrite drivers. There were simply no other options, as the civil war in Zaire led to a complete embargo on the world’s only commercially available source of cobalt, which was essential for the production of AlNiCo magnets. We can also speculate whether Klipsch promoted the superiority of ferrite out of commercial interest or genuine belief.
My point, though, was entirely different. For me, Paul Klipsch stands out because of his insights, unconventional thinking, sense of humor, and the following words:
It remains hard to convince people, including acoustical engineers, that the midrange is where we live, and it is in the midrange that distortion is the most annoying and where amplitude response errors are most prominently evident. I have spent more man-hours of R&D time on the midrange than on the bass.
Paul Klipsch, 1971
Peter’s response was that we actually live in the full range, not the midrange, and that we need a system capable of reproducing the entire bandwidth. He simply refused to look beyond the literal meaning of Klipsch’s words. I see them as a clear reference to psychoacoustics and to the fact that our hearing is far more sensitive to loudness, amplitude, and time-related errors in the midrange — something the evolution of our species took millions of years to accomplish. The midrange is also the carrier band of verbal communication, and even in music the main communication happens in the midrange, where meaning is conveyed through melody and the human voice. The other frequency bands simply do not possess the same communicative power; they serve mostly complementary functions.
My conclusion from this whole discussion is that hi-fi often places too much emphasis on frequency bands that are not fundamentally important, and that this approach frequently compromises what truly matters.
I forgot to mention that this whole discussion about the midrange arose in the context of a technical debate about the importance of maximizing system bandwidth. According to Peter, overcoming bandwidth limitations imposed by output transformers or speaker drivers should be the highest priority. I agree that wide bandwidth is desirable, but I don’t believe its importance should be overestimated or treated as the primary criterion by which a component is judged. It is ultimately a matter of priorities. My first priority is the quality of reproduction between roughly 150 Hz and 8 kHz. Bandwidth extension has more to do with quantity than quality, which is why I consider it less critical.
In the end, I think we both have a point — it is simply two sides of the same coin. Peter has far more experience than I do, not to mention that many years ago he even had lunch with Klipsch and has owned several of his speakers. I, on the other hand, have nothing more than a few of Klipsch’s words that somehow resonate with my own understanding of audio. We should also ask ourselves what truly defines a legend. Peter believes that people like Paul G. A. H. Voigt, Donald Chave, and Oscar Heil deserve that title, but because they were not commercially successful, their contributions have largely been forgotten. I don’t want to venture into philosophical discussions here, so I will leave that question for you to consider and draw your own conclusions.
With Biju, things are much more relaxed. He lives in Dubai, owns several audio systems — both tube and solid-state — and has spent more than fifteen years chasing audio nirvana. At the moment he is trying to make a pair of Voxativ Pi speakers sing and asked me for advice on an amplifier. I don’t feel qualified to give anything beyond very general guidance drawn from my own experience. So here it is:
The best advice I can give you is to observe your body and the aftertaste of a listening session — its impact on your emotional state. This is what ultimately matters in terms of long-term listening satisfaction, which is what audiophiles are really after. Of course, not every day is suitable for listening to music, and I am far from the idea that music should be consumed routinely, like eating or sleeping. Listening to music should be a mood-enhancing medicine, a source of inspiration, and a means of transcendence. If you enjoy the music instead of listening for imperfections and the characteristics of the reproduction, if you simply find yourself immersed in the performance and later feel refreshed and cheerful, then you know the system is working. The important thing is to feel involved with what you are hearing — to be drawn to the singer’s voice, to become lost in its deep sonority. Making a strong first impression is not particularly difficult, especially if you are new to the hobby, but maintaining that enjoyment and sense of wonder over long periods is what really matters when choosing a component. Don’t be fooled by a huge soundstage, exceptional detail retrieval, or transparency. These are sonic attributes that do not necessarily correlate with musical pleasure. Listen to your body. Enjoy the feeling of well-being and involvement that naturally results from good sound reproduction.
The thing is, I simply don’t have the breadth of knowledge or experience to give definitive answers. Printed circuit boards versus hard wiring, solid state versus vacuum tubes, ferrite versus AlNiCo — we are always searching for definitive answers. Yet I think it is important to understand that generalizations are of little help. There are good and bad examples of every one of these opposing approaches, and in the end it is all about what works best in a particular case.
That’s all for now fellows, thank you for stopping by and always happy listening!
Интересно и увлекательно Димитар,спасибо