http://www.theaudiocritic.com/downloads/article_1.pdf

This was the article that opened my eyes to the truth of ABX and the lies of cable burn-in, hope it helps you too!

Good article, rather old, probably discussed here before. Audiophiles absolutely despise Peter Aczel in general, unfortunately. His writing style is a bit brusque.

If you can afford a fancy power conditioner you can also afford a well-designed amplifier, in which case you don’t need the fancy
power conditioner.

This one's my absolute favourite ... .... how right can a man be?

Nice article - haven't seen it before.

My perception of high-end audio was forever changed when I failed my first LAME ABX. The immediate thought was "if I can't tell the difference after the violent process of the MP3 codec, then cables et al can't be nearly that important." Heck, you can measure the violence that MP3 does to a signal and [often] can't hear it. With cables you can't even measure anything.

I still wonder why a real problem that has a huge affect on sound like room acoustics doesn't get nearly the attention that placebo problems like cables gets....must be all about the easy $.

I like your illustration of encoding... " ... violent process ... " really descriptive

Actually, there are also psychologic factors at work with rooms acoustics, but in the opposite direction. We tend not to hear the tremendous amount of distortion caused by the room.
There is a very interesting experiment to do. Find a good microphone and a decent mic input. Then play a track on your hifi, and record it with the microphone at your usual listening position. Then get the microphone closer to the speaker, until it's around 20 centimeters away.

Then play back your recording into the hifi or headphones. The first time I did this, I could not believe what I heard !

At the listening position, the sound was awful. Barely better than a telephone conversation. Then, with the micro near the speaker, the sound was really good. I could not believe that the coloration heard with the microphone away was indeed caused by the room ! I was just accusing the micro of being barely better than a telephone micro... but it was not the case, because with the micro near the speakers, the sound was ok.

To sell you marvelous cables requires only the skills of the carnival pitchman. To sell you effective room treatment, since virtually every room is different and thus needs custom treatment, requires the skills of an acoustical engineer.

What kind of microphone did you use? Many microphones are designed to be used close up, and will filter out any other sound (take for example http://www.earthworksaudio.com/graphics/4Charts.jpg)

Right so the Maple Stream configuration is going to be worth any good . There was actually a post like that a few years back I almost fell over in my chair I couldn't stop laughing. I said is this even possible from an engineering perspective?

A pair of Senheiser whose reference I don't know.
A microphone records the sound that hits it. It doesn't care about how long it travelled before reaching it.
The graphs you link shows the sensitivity versus the direction, not versus the distance.

But the frequency response of the microphone could combine with the frequency response of the room to in a way that the frequency response of our ears doesn't (a lot of frequency responses there!)

I think that it should be noted that the human hearing also appears to filter out much of the room interference when it has two stereo channels available. Anecdotally, I tried similar experiments(but with headphones), using a sound source in a normal room. I used a mono feed microphone over the headphones compared to a spaced stereo pair of headphones, and the mono microphone had a much worse noticeable room effect. Therefor, your experiment may have been slightly exaggerated if you used only a mono microphone.

On another note, the room effects are actually a good thing concerning sound reproduction of normal commercial recordings, if the room is properly controlled acoustics and speakers that interact with such optimally. An anechoic chamber would make for a horrible listening environment[at least to most listeners]. The ambient effects and some first reflection delays add to a pleasurable experience[when properly controlled].

-Chris

Indeed

What always gets me, someone will spend $500 on a special mains cable for their hi-fi (after a mag gives it a review with a punchier base, or some rubbish), so they plug this mains cable into the socket that covers the 1 meter from mains plug to hifi, but they do not realise there is about 50 meters of cheapest mains cable to the fuse box (in a ring wiring no less) and then some to the supply. What difference 1 meter makes I do not know...

Well, the mains supply can be filtered before it gets to the hi-fi, I guess this special cable could connect the hi-fi to the filter. That's not to say it makes a difference (or that it doesn't; I haven't tried!) but it could logically have an effect.

Don't forget that REAL audiophilism doesn't stop at the wall outlet. You need to have 500$/m caple up to the transformer, use only real fuses for electrical protection (electronic protection gives a flat distorted sound) and - of course - polish the fuses once a month to avoid sound degradation.

Thats not what the chart says. Rather it's measuring the directionality of the microphone's response. Unless he has a directional microphone pointed away from the source, I don't think that would be a problem. It would actually sound better I think since it would reject more of the echo.



Provided the microphone is of decient quality, this should not occur.