Leaving amplifier on and effect on speakers

[STHLS5]

Self says, "It is often stated in hi-fi magazines that semiconductor amplifiers sound better after hours or days of warm-up. If this is true (which it certainly is not in most cases) it represents truly spectacular design incompetence."

{Moderator's comment: *a world authority on amplifier design}

What can I say? Looks like every known Amplifier manufacturers and some of them do supply their audio system to competent engineering based companies such as Bentley, Lexus and RR saying the opposite. And does it matter if I could actually hear a slight difference after a few minutes of warm up. But then you too said it requires a couple of minutes to warm up.

BTw, Douglas Self was the same who said distortion in caps drop significantly with use.

What is the answer to that question?

This was about STHLS5's question about why might you turn the volume up after about 30 minutes of listening. I think he was implying that this is because the amplifier is settling down during this warm up period. I have to strongly disagree.

It is a very well-known scientific fact that if humans are around loud continuous sounds like music, that our hearing system starts to close down to protect itself gradually. This changes our perceived frequency balance perception too. So if you play loud music with copious bass output, after a short while your hearing will start to close-down progressively and you will think the music seems quieter and the bass lighter. So what do you do? Turn the volume up to compensate! That's your answer, no HiFi mumbo jumbo to investigate here.
.

The bulb can not apply to this because the frequency of on/off of the bulb is seriously much, very much higher than what you will do on amp.

As for the heat issue,.....like long hour baking/frozening, various of temp in 1x, 2x, 3x, 4x reflow in specified hrs etc before finalised. .

And I was thinking it could be due the heating of the voice coil, increase in the resistant to the current and something to do with power compression....

Philips bulb promised a 15000 hr lifespan. My office bulbs are turned on only once just like my amplifier for about 8 hours 5 days a week. Roughly about 250 days a year. The math says it should last me 7.5 years. Any of you have bulbs last that long? OTOH, my Sharp mini compo which was bought in 1994 is still working (except for the CD). It is always left on in standby mode.

When I used the bulb as an example, I wanted to draw an analogy why it is better to leave equipment in standby mode (if you have them) rather than shutting them off. As far as I know, no one bakes an amplifier after assembling them. If you know how to measure the bias current, you will notice the difference at various temperature.


ST

[A.S.]

This was about STHLS5's question about why might you turn the volume up after about 30 minutes of listening. I think he was implying that this is because the amplifier is settling down during this warm up period. I have to strongly disagree...

No, surely STHLS5 could not have meant that he was adjusting his amplifier volume after half an hour of listening to correct some drift in the amp's performance could he? Please tell me that he's solely commenting on a characteristic of the human ear, not the amplifier, regarding perceived loudness after being exposed to sound for a while.

[A.S.]

What can I say? Looks like every known Amplifier manufacturers and some of them do supply their audio system to competent engineering based companies such as Bentley, Lexus and RR saying the opposite. And does it matter if I could actually hear a slight difference after a few minutes of warm up. But then you too said it requires a couple of minutes to warm up.

BTW, Douglas Self was the same who said distortion in caps drop significantly with use....

So what? Who cares? You've answered a technical statement with a marketing observation and quoted three of the world's best marketeers. Of course brilliant marketeers will say brilliantly appealing things that are in-step with current fashions. That's how business works! Swim with the tide! We've covered that here.

As for reduction in distortion in a capacitor. Believable? Absolutely. As I've gone to inordinate length to explain, electrolytic capacitors - they're the components that age and fail in amplifiers - use WET chemistry. They are fundamentally in an unstable condition between freshness and dried out. The insides are moist. They dry out with time and use. Guess what - heat accelerates that drying-out. That is, in one sentence, all you need to know about them to appreciate why they fail and have a limited life. Why are they used? "They are a very cost effective solution to high value capacity".

Allow me to decode that marketing speak into engineering fact ... 'The alternative solution to PSU capacitors formed from high quality DRY film components would be about the size of a shoe box, and you'd need two per amplifiers. That would make the amplifier unacceptably large, and increase the cost of the casework and hugely increase the component cost. We hope that we can get away with using electrolytics because consumer research has shown that the typical amp is only powered for 9% of its life and that is just a little less than the statistical failure to be expected for those vulnerable components and long outside the warranty. In short, we have struck an acceptable balance for the consumer between product longevity and initial cost and size/styling. Research has shown that one product in 82,000 will statistically fail in such a way that it catches fire and that inevitability is of course covered under the consumer's home insurance policy. Our Terms of Trade clearly negate any liability on our part.'.

What you didn't mention perhaps is that under lab conditions with state-of-the-art test equipment and rather to much time on your hands you probably can measure the distortion of a capacitor dropping from 0.0002% to 0.00001%. Totally and utterly geek-talk. For goodness sake let's get a grip on this: good speakers generate at least 20% bass distortion, a few percent in the middle frequencies. Can we hear it? No. Our own ears generate - yes generate - distortion, probably a percent or more. Read here. Is there a human alive who can reliably distinguish, say, less than 0.1% distortion.

No.

I despair. More on mind manipulation here.

[STHLS5]

No, surely STHLS5 could not have meant that he was adjusting his amplifier volume after half an hour of listening to correct some drift in the amp's performance could he? Please tell me that he's solely commenting on a characteristic of the human ear, not the amplifier, regarding perceived loudness after being exposed to sound for a while.

Actually, what I observed is very interesting. If I were to listen in a a very moderate level in relax or semi sleepy mood I find the volume to be increasing after some time. At other times, when I play them loud say around 75 to 85 dB, I notice that I have the habit of pushing the volume higher after about 20 or 30 minutes. I initially thought it could be due our internal mechanism in the ears attenuating the loudness but now there also could be another factor.

ST

[STHLS5]

KINDLY RESUBMIT

--—--------------------------------------------------

Added after my original post was censored heavily.

Selective quote and censoring the rest of the post and yet responding to the censored part? I am disappointed. I rather be banned from this forum then being thrashed this way.

ST
================================================== ===================================
AS COMMENTS >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
You weren't censored. I pressed the wrong freaking button. OK? If I didn't have to deal with this stuff when I'm busy I could actually get a day's work done.


P.s. the DC Offset measuremnt is 0 plus minus 1mV. I am sure you know what a bias current is.

[A.S.]

You weren't censored I pressed the wrong freaking button. OK? We very, very rarely censor posts, just a few times a year for legal reasons.

KINDLY RESUBMIT

Let's get back to the basics.

1) my quiescient bias current is 19mV in the right channel and 21 mV In the left channel. Will it make any difference to the sound such as channel in balance?

2) after about 10 minutes both left and right channel are now at 22mV and remained stable after that. Will this make any difference? ST"

Marketing/BS/audiophile/forum answer to both ....

See how easy it is to breed discontentment? I bet this will play on your mind now because you don't know if I am being serious or not. You don't know if this bias current/voltage imbalance really matters sonically even though it is measurable electrically. You don't know if it is one thousand times too small to be a concern or if it is a concern. I haven't given you a hard answer and I'd expect you to be even more confused. I have not given you one single fact in the above, although on the face of it it may look like facts.

This is how marketing works. Next we'll de construct that piece sentence by sentence to analyse what's going on in our mind.

"Yes, ST. Clearly you are a dedicated audiophile as you are using Harbeth speakers (they must have cost you a pretty penny? Are they any good?). But, frankly, that's a worrying difference between channels. I mean, 21/19 = that an 11% percent difference. Is it really so bad? Have you thought about taking the amp back to your dealer to complain. Or swap over? I would. It's outrageous! 11% difference in the idling current when the amp isn't even playing music. It must sound dreadful when it plays music. How can you put up with such an imbalance? And as much as 22 millivolts standing DC at the output terminals when no music playing. Do you realise what that means? Do you? It means that there is as big a voltage at the coax plug from your VHF/UHF aerial going into your TV/tuner as your amplifier is outputting when idling! Shocking isn't it. Your amp is acting like a TV aerial. Get rid of it. You seriously need to upgrade. You will not enjoy another moment's music with such a heap of junk .... do yourself a favour and just give it away and get some real gear.
You say the bias current is only about 20mA. Are you sure? That's terribly low. And you know what that means ... crossover distortion, the audiophile's curse. Yes, you could unwittingly be listening to 20% harmonic distortion and god knows that'll rob you of all musicality not to mention rhythm and pace. The timings are obviously going to be way off beat. I'm surprised you couldn't hear that yourself. If you had vinyl I'm certain you would. Did you say you listened at a low level? Oh, that's really bad news. I wish you hadn't said that. I'd say it was almost certain that you're running into chronic low level transient smearing due to crossover distortion due to bias current limitations and imbalance. Haven't you noticed the highs are a bit rough? Think about it. Bet they are. And how about the presence: a tad recessed? This really isn't looking good. You could even give yourself tinnitus struggling to resolve low level detail from that amp. It must be a living hell for you dear chap. You need to move it on. You need to start again. Wait - let's think this through coolly and calmly: you could try cables. No that would be step 2. First you should invest in a power conditioner. That'll stabilise your mains and as the quiescent current is related to the PSU and hence the mains supply that could partially solve your problem. Maybe that 11% could be reduced to 8% or so? That'll make a big difference. Night and day. Be cheaper than turning-over the amp. Many swear by it. That'll give you an overall, I don't know, 20-25% improvement in fidelity? Sure fire certainty. Then I'd definitely invest in some new speaker cables but only after the conditioner. It's obvious: speakers are the load so the more stable the load the more stable the current? Go for those SuperStableLoad ones with the triple balanced, anti-gravity, directional, foil wound cores. Your basic problem me old mucker is surely electrical interference. Do you perchance live near a taxi office? You do. Well that's it then! You've got flutter on your bottom due to RF pickup on your speaker cables, that's modulating your power supply and hay presto! the 11% variation! So obvious! No, come to think of it, don't dump the amp yet. You have viable options 1) power conditioner 2) cables (definitely essential) and 3) interconnects. I say interconnects because it's a well known fact that there's a lot of mobile phone breakthrough these days into audio systems. Especially audiophile ones when every last molecule of sound is important to you - right? I though so. Yes, but it's not just the speaker cables: have you thought about the connectors? They're absolutely vital. They must grip the sockets so not one drop of music leaks out. The best ones are the rare earth ones: far more effective at shielding all that satellite signal that we're all awash with now. And then, when you're back enjoying music again you'll obviously hit the resolution limit of that amp because the power conditioner and cables will have revealed what a heap of crap it really is but just to get you going, I strongly recommend that power conditioner. And the balanced interconnects. Am I repeating myself? Oh, sorry. It's absolutely vital to attend to every aspect of your system in the correct sequence otherwise the music will actually stop. That's right: remember the bias weights on tone arms and how the stylus skipped if it was out and the music ceased? Same with isolation platform between your CD player and the table. That's one of the most - perhaps the most crucial components in the entire chain. Get a good isolator and the music will definitely flow as it should. Consider this: if the CD player has even one billionth of a second of mechanical jitter, your entire musical life will be robbed of pleasure. You'll become depressed, listless; you wife may even leave you, *** will become impossible through anxiety. You'll be one of those audiophiles-in-denial who turn to booze. Or worse. It's just not worth it is it when the solution is readily at hand! Yes, I told you the power conditioner is the answer. It'll get you back on the straight and narrow for now. What have I forgotten? Oh yes: speaker cable jacks to keep the cables off the floor ......."

Disturbingly I could write in this style for hours. In fact, I can't stop returning to this and adding more. It's got a grip on me in waves like an audiophile's hot flush. Seriously if you'd sponsor me for charity I'm fairly sure I spew out that bollocks for a straight 24 hours without repeating myself.

Engineer's answer: "FFS get a life".

Musician's answer: Sorry, could you repeat the question?

See how easy it is to breed discontentment? I bet this will play on your mind now because you don't know if I am being serious or not. You don't know if this bias current/voltage imbalance really matters sonically even though it is measurable electrically. You don't know if it is one thousand times too small to be a concern or if it is a concern. I haven't given you a hard answer and I'd expect you to be even more confused. I have not given you one single fact in the above, although on the face of it it may look like facts. This is how marketing works.

Let's de-construct some marketing BS and get to the real truth - here.

[GregD]

Indeed, let's get back to the basics.



"Yes, ST. Clearly you are a dedicated audiophile as you are using Harbeth speakers (they must have cost you a pretty penny? Are they any good?). But, frankly, that's a worrying difference between channels. I mean, 21/19 = that an 11% percent difference. Is it really so bad? Have you thought about taking the amp back to your dealer to complain. Or swap over? I would. It's outrageous! 11% difference in the idling current when the amp isn't even playing music. It must sound dreadful when it plays music. How can you put up with such an imbalance? And as much as 22 millivolts standing DC at the output terminals when no music playing. Do you realise what that means? Do you? It means that there is as big a voltage at the coax plug from your VHF/UHF aerial going into your TV/tuner as your amplifier is outputting when idling! Shocking isn't it. Your amp is acting like a TV aerial. Get rid of it. You seriously need to upgrade. You will not enjoy another moment's music with such a heap of junk .... do yourself a favour and just give it away and get some real gear.
You say the bias current is only about 20mA. Are you sure? That's terribly low. And you know what that means ... crossover distortion, the audiophile's curse. Yes, you could unwittingly be listening to 20% harmonic distortion and god knows that'll rob you of all musicality not to mention rhythm and pace. The timings are obviously going to be way off beat. I'm surprised you couldn't hear that yourself. If you had vinyl I'm certain you would. Did you say you listened at a low level? Oh, that's really bad news. I wish you hadn't said that. I'd say it was almost certain that you're running into chronic low level transient smearing due to crossover distortion due to bias current limitations and imbalance. Haven't you noticed the highs are a bit rough? Think about it. Bet they are. And how about the presence: a tad recessed? This really isn't looking good. You could even give yourself tinnitus struggling to resolve low level detail from that amp. It must be a living hell for you dear chap. You need to move it on. You need to start again. Wait - let's think this through coolly and calmly: you could try cables. No that would be step 2. First you should invest in a power conditioner. That'll stabilise your mains and as the quiescent current is related to the PSU and hence the mains supply that could partially solve your problem. Maybe that 11% could be reduced to 8% or so? That'll make a big difference. Night and day. Be cheaper than turning-over the amp. Many swear by it. That'll give you an overall, I don't know, 20-25% improvement in fidelity? Sure fire certainty. Then I'd definitely invest in some new speaker cables but only after the conditioner. It's obvious: speakers are the load so the more stable the load the more stable the current? Go for those SuperStableLoad ones with the triple balanced, anti-gravity, directional, foil wound cores. Your basic problem me old mucker is surely electrical interference. Do you perchance live near a taxi office? You do. Well that's it then! You've got flutter on your bottom due to RF pickup on your speaker cables, that's modulating your power supply and hay presto! the 11% variation! So obvious! No, come to think of it, don't dump the amp yet. You have viable options 1) power conditioner 2) cables (definitely essential) and 3) interconnects. I say interconnects because it's a well known fact that there's a lot of mobile phone breakthrough these days into audio systems. Especially audiophile ones when every last molecule of sound is important to you - right? I though so. Yes, but it's not just the speaker cables: have you thought about the connectors? They're absolutely vital. They must grip the sockets so not one drop of music leaks out. The best ones are the rare earth ones: far more effective at shielding all that satellite signal that we're all awash with now. And then, when you're back enjoying music again you'll obviously hit the resolution limit of that amp because the power conditioner and cables will have revealed what a heap of crap it really is but just to get you going, I strongly recommend that power conditioner. And the balanced interconnects. Am I repeating myself? Oh, sorry. It's absolutely vital to attend to every aspect of your system in the correct sequence otherwise the music will actually stop. That's right: remember the bias weights on tone arms and how the stylus skipped if it was out and the music ceased? Same with isolation platform between your CD player and the table. That's one of the most - perhaps the most crucial components in the entire chain. Get a good isolator and the music will definitely flow as it should. Consider this: if the CD player has even one billionth of a second of mechanical jitter, your entire musical life will be robbed of pleasure. You'll become depressed, listless; you wife may even leave you, *** will become impossible through anxiety. You'll be one of those audiophiles-in-denial who turn to booze. Or worse. It's just not worth it is it when the solution is readily at hand! Yes, I told you the power conditioner is the answer. It'll get you back on the straight and narrow for now. What have I forgotten? Oh yes: speaker cable jacks to keep the cables off the floor ......."

Disturbingly I could write in this style for hours. In fact, I can't stop returning to this and adding more. It's got a grip on me in waves like an audiophile's hot flush. Seriously if you'd sponsor me for charity I'm fairly sure I spew out that bollocks for a straight 24 hours without repeating myself!

Engineer's answer: "FFS get a life".

Musician's answer: Sorry, could you repeat the question?

See how easy it is to breed discontentment? I bet this will play on your mind now because you don't know if I am being serious or not. You don't know if this bias current/voltage imbalance really matters sonically even though it is measurable electrically. You don't know if it is one thousand times too small to be a concern or if it is a concern. I haven't given you a hard answer and I'd expect you to be even more confused. I have not given you one single fact in the above, although on the face of it it may look like facts. This is how marketing works.

Let's de-construct some marketing BS and get to the real truth - here.

http://www.harbeth.co.uk/usergroup/s...9238#post19238.

Personally, thanks to the HUG I'm just not bothered any more about technical talk about amplifiers - it really is a boring subject with no pay-off at the end except the possibility of developing angst about electronics. My system has never really sounded dreadful regardless of which amplifier I use and I'm not interested in little technical anomalies which are essentially meaningless when it comes down to sitting and listening to music for pleasure. Where does this get anyone except broke and anxious?

[STHLS5]

You weren't censored I pressed the wrong button. We very, very rarely censor posts, just a few times a year for legal reasons.

KINDLY RESUBMIT

Ok, will try to recall what I wrote earlier but now I am so distracted with your sarcasm that I cant resist to use the available free time to reply to this first.

There is nothing wrong with the Quiescent Bias Current. Yes, normal amplifiers do have them in 30s but for some strange reasons David Reich ( unknown amplifier designer for Classe, Theta Dreadnaught and a few others) used a rather low figure of 22mV. But you did cost me a sleepless night when you said “And as much as 22 millivolts standing DC at the output terminals when no music playing” because I have no idea why Quiescent Bias Current should come out at the output terminal. According to Classe that value should be 0 and that’s known as DC OFFSET.

Referring to Pluto’s Douglas Self statement I still think Self was referring to Amplifiers made based on his designs or other normal amplifiers. In our discussion we are talking about the so called High End amplifiers which are known for non compliance with the accepted engineering standards.

Re-reading the whole paragraph confirms that time is needed to reach stable temperature. I quote the full paragraph “ It is often stated in hi-fi magazines that semiconductor amplifiers sound better after few hours or days of warm-up. If this is true (which it certainty is not in most cases) it represents truly spectacular design incompetence. This sort of accusation is applied with particular venom to Class-A designs,because it is obvious that the large heatsinks required take time to reach final temperature, so I thought it important to state that in Class-A this design stabilises its electrical operating conditions in less than a second, giving the full intended performance. No warm up time beyond this is required, obviously the heatsinks take time to reach thermal equilibrium, but as described above, measures have been taken to ensure that component temperature has no significant effect on operating conditions or performance.”

Self is actually referring to ideal amplifier design and in this case to his Trimodal Amplifier. As a consumer and as a HUG member, I am exercising caution not to accept every word of Douglas Self to be the gospel truth. The very fact that his design employs Global NFB where else some high End amplifiers such as the Theta’s Dreadnaught do not employ any feedback at all suggests that not all amplifiers are designed alike. If the Amplifier designer chose to follow Self’s design then it is most likely that some do not require any warm up time at all. As I mentioned in the accidently censored post that I do not hear any difference in smaller and less hot running amplifiers. I do not need warm up time for my Marantz or the Denon amp.

With due respect to Douglas Self, I cannot overlook his humble admission that he is not the master of amplifiers and there are many things yet to be discovered in Amplifiers design. Here I quote his book again,

“Although solid-state amplifiers have been around for some 40 years, it would be a great mistake to assume that everything possible is known about them. In the course of my investigations, I discovered several matters which, not appearing in the literatures appear to be noble, at least in their combined application.”

AND on another page Cary Amplifiers would have failed his QC test. And yet Cary Amps are one of the well regarded Amps in audiophile world. There very same audiophile world that believe Harbeth is one of the best speakers.

Kittykat, actually I do feel my LCD TV colour improves after a few minutes and my previous old tube Sony TV lasted me a good 18 or 19 years and was still working when I discarded them. There was about three repairs with replacement parts costing about $3. It was left on in Stand by mode all those years.

ST

{Moderator's comment: are you sure that you are not confusing bias current with DC offset voltage? They can and will co-exist. CRT tv tubes obviously had huge thermal mass and needed time to warm up during which time the image obviously stabilised: no surprise there.}

[A.S.]

I can't stop. AAAAAAAAAAAAggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhh ..... help me. Years of absorbing this BS has burst the mental banks ....

(Continued ...) A week later ....

"How's the system now? More resolution? Performers more vivid? Told you! The power conditioner really cleaned up the details, lets the music do what its supposed to. Congratulations! Did you upgrade the speaker cables? And the interconnects? Excellent. You must be really purring along now. Bet your wife even notices the difference. She does? See, this isn't a selfish, introverted geeky hobby at all! I'm providing a social service FOC! Some say I'm as good as a relationship councillor. No, seriously. I had a chap in here a few weeks ago. He was in tears with joy. He gripped my hand and profusely thanked me for saving his marriage. Truly. Been married for 30 years, wife just couldn't get the whole pursuit of audio perfection thing and had banished him to a tiny broom cupboard (where as you can imagine, the acoustics were terrible) and he was at his wits end. You know what the solution was? Tuning crystals. Surely you've heard of them: everyone's using them now. After the power conditioner, speaker cables, interconnects, CD platform, speaker cable elevators they are the new must-have. They arrived in the store, I called around my customers - guys were literally cancelling business appointments to rush over here to hear them. One told me he'd walked out of a million dollar deal he was negotiating just to be one of the first to experience the crystal magic! This is serious stuff. Does it really work? Oh come on ... I've been in this business for 32 years and I've seen some crackpot gizmo's. Remember the green CD pen? Now that really was nuts. But no, these crystals really work. How? Don't know, and frankly don't care. Sounds like magic? No. Look, surely you'll agree that mankind doesn't understand everything about the world do we. I mean, have you ever had that deja vu experience? Spooky isn't it. Something going on for sure. We can't explain it can we. But it's real. Same with these sonic crystals. They work, but we can't explain it. Physics can't explain everything can it. Anyway, as I was saying, my customer bought a set of these crystals; the stronger purple ones actually; and it completely solved the acoustics in his 1m x 2m listening room. I told him, 'if I were you I'd not over do it. Don't buy the jumbo pack, you're not ready for the full concert hall experience. Start small, with the nightcub pack, and if they work add the town hall upgrade, and only if they really sort-out the flutter echo go for the full blown concert pack'. It was amazing. He completely disregarded my advice and went for the full max. concert hall, pack! I was really worried for him. He could have seriously impacted the timing of his system. I've been in this business for 35 years (did I mention that?) and I know what I'm talking about. He was that desperate he went the whole hog, jumped right in. Proved me wrong. By the time he'd shaken my hand off in gratitude even I was touched. Kept on saying that his marriage was worth the $3000 he's invested in the crystals, best investment he'd ever made and so on. So there you have it. Straight from the horse's mouth. Before he left I just had to introduce him to these new speaker pucks. Boy! Do they clean up the bass! That's the one thing the crystals can't improve. They're all about mid and top rectification. But now that's sorted, it's exposed a bit of flabbiness in the lower middle. That's where the pucks come in. They're really optimised for making the bass more visceral, tighter, more real, know what I mean. More felt rather than heard. Do you know, what's really, really important for fidelity is what's going on in the 3-10Hz region. Yes, the textbooks talk of 20Hz to 20kHz, but what do they know? Those scientists don't understand music. They spend too much time with their measuring sticks and no time listening. I listen. I mean, I can hear a bird fart at 100m. No, only kidding, but I can hear things that the average audiophile can't. That's because I've been in this business really listening for 38 years. Started when I was a kid and I could hear the tinkle of my dad's cash register from a quarter of a mile off. Good training. Anyway, where were we ... oh yes, the speaker pucks. Wow! What a winner that is. They actually provide a rock solid foundation for the speakers. Think of it like this ... you know when they build a skyscraper they have to dig out the foundations really deep? Same concept. The speaker is like a skyscraper but with no foundations 'cos it's just sitting on your carpet. Crazy. Totally unstable. No wonder the bass is so flabby. The speaker should be grounded - I mean anchored to the floor. That's where the pucks come in .... but as I said, they're only part of the solution. You have to improve the system incrementally. And in exactly the right order..... the pucks must come AFTER the crystals. To do it the other way round would be a disaster. The sound could actually get worse ....."

Help me.

{Moderator's comment: Would you let the author anywhere near a real aircraft? There are clearly issues.}

[Macjager]

Alan
A wee dram of Single Malt, a splash of spring water, and time in the anechoic chamber...and no noise...

Slàinte don Bhànrigh!

g

[fred40]

No...That is one of the great benefits of Harbeth (and Naim I guess) I never feel the need to fiddel with the volume control. Unlike the many other hifi gear I owned in the past 35 years. It"s something to do with no listening fatigue I guess?

[STHLS5]

"Yes, ST. Clearly you are a dedicated audiophile as you are using Harbeth speakers (they must have cost you a pretty penny? Are they any good?). But, frankly, that's a worrying difference between channels. I mean, 21/19 = that an 11% percent difference. Is it really so bad? Have you thought about taking the amp back to your dealer to complain. Or swap over? I would....

Ok...it took a good 24 hours for your message to sink in. Bad example.

ST

P.S. No it wouldn't make any difference.

[EricW]

Somebody here needs help, either Alan or the other guy.

[STHLS5]

Somebody here needs help, either Alan or the other guy.

Who would that be? You?

ST

[jair44]

<

I can't stop. AAAAAAAAAAAAggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhh ..... help me. Years of absorbing this BS has burst the mental banks ....

(Continued ...) A week later ....

"How's the system now? More resolution? Performers more vivid? Told you! The power conditioner really cleaned up the details, lets the music do what its supposed to. Congratulations! Did you upgrade the speaker cables? And the interconnects? Excellent. You must be really purring along now. Bet your wife even notices the difference. She does? See, this isn't a selfish, introverted geeky hobby at all! I'm providing a social service FOC! Some say I'm as good as a relationship councillor. No, seriously. I had a chap in here a few weeks ago. He was in tears with joy. ...... the pucks must come AFTER the crystals. To do it the other way round would be a disaster. The sound could actually get worse ....."

Fantastic! Alan has obviously missed his vocation and should have gone into selling fantasies of the hi-fi kind instead of high quality loudspeakers. Easier life and no shortage of gullible souls who are vainly pursuing audio nirvana. That's the problem with Capitalism where everyone is encouraged to become either a unit of consumption or production whilst labouring under the idea that we are becoming more civilized. Free thinking and rationality are not endorsed, and intellectuals are mistrusted.

However, in this seemingly meaningless universe, science may still prove to be the most reliable belief system.