… and we will be working on that over the next few days trying to figure out what is going wrong.
Seems to work for some people and not others [thanks, Leonard].
Been awhile since this got updated in a serious way.
I keep a list of Audio blogs for Mattters, and am finally getting around to updating the Audiophile’s Guide to High-end Audio Magazines.
Putting all the new sites more or less alphabetically in the Blogs section - almost all the new sites are blogs or written on top of a blog [i.e. Wordpress].
There are quite a few. It’ll take awhile.
I’m adding the:
* good sites.
* the unethical site’s that are quite obviously ‘run an ad and we’ll write rave reviews of your equipment’ [in the hope that people will eventually become immune to these kind of review scams].
* and… I’m not sure about adding the ‘measurements reveal all - no need to listen, and people who listen are delusional and psychotic’ sites - feeling they are more about playing with test measurement gear [not that there is anything wrong with that!] than anything to do with high-end audio.
Some of the good sites get way less traffic than they should. A couple are:
According to the vocal hordes on the Asylum and AudioCircle … nobody likes the New Audiogon [right now it is down, although you still can get to the forums if you are sneaky].
Having been on the receiving end of the ire of the same vocal hordes [e.g. w/r to Spintricity Magazine] seeing this happen to Audiogon is really fascinating. And we have also seen this backlash happen to Digg and Facebook, but not Twitter [which is bizarre because the Twitter UI changes by-and-large are non-intuitive, even after repeated use… much more like Facebook now, in fact]
It is fascinating because I think it allows us to rule out the validity of this or that particular feature and instead focus on the social dynamics of the situation.
Fact #1. Only techies like websites to change in any way
Many people claim to be techies, because they own a business that has a website, or they played with HTML some [and many have gotten paid for it!] , but really are not, are confused by web technology, and hate these kinds of changes. [This behavior really confused me for a long time]
Twitter is largely techies, so they got away with it. Digg, a counter example with supposedly a large techie population, has lots of people who, seriously, just like to be nasty and whine a lot.
Most of the home audio sites are horribly designed and implemented, but audiophiles love them because they are now used to them.
Rule #1. If you make a change to a site popular with non-techies, make it look exactly other sites they are comfortable with.
Stereophile changed its site to look just like an ordinary blog. This was largely accepted by audiophiles because they are now used to blogs. [I personally think it was nuts, they gave up their claim to fame - that of being a successful print magazine - to compete at the same level as 1M other blogs. Best thing they can do now is try to implement meta features like Engadget has done - but this will take time and be expensive].
When we recently changed Audio Federation, we copied a couple of other well-known luxury brochure sites as well as several very popular luxury shopping sites.
Audiogon is, unfortunately, making their site look like eBay - which is a quite unloved, albeit successful, site
Rule #2. Try to make a big change by making lots of itty bitty changes over time.
This is often extremely hard to do [i.e. very expensive], from a programming point of view.
Assuming Audiogon’s troubles go on for awhile, and even if they do not, I wonder if there is an opportunity here for a competitor to step in and break the Audiogon monopoly?
Opinions?
[I found this on a blog that looks at a lot of business charts…, The Understatement]
The music industry is down 64% from its peak.
The music industry is actually down 45% from where it was in 1973.
The CD peak was only 13% better than the vinyl peak.
10 years ago the average American spent almost 3 times as much on recorded music products as they do today.
26 years ago they spent almost twice as much as they do today.
Kind of a ‘This Was Your Life’ chart, isn’t it? Memories…
Whoa. 10 years ago CD sales jumped off a cliff [just about the time Neli and I turned our hobbyist tendencies into business. Doh!].
Not sure why the recording industry is so dependent on ALBUM sales. Why not singles too? [see original website to see what I am talking about, if you care]
Apparently the iPod killed the CD. Presumably the smartphone will kill the iPod.
Not sure how the ultra high-end is affected, but mid-fi better support the smartphone as a source, or else.
The current trends.
[Personally I think online subscriptions will win the day, albeit apparently the current trend is flat. I think the flat trend is a damping factor provided by the iPod generation who has not yet switched to listening to music on their smart phones].
This will be a sort of overview of the most popular posts here on the blog this last year.
Another way to visualize the sonic signature of a system
More ways to make sure we are all talking about the same things when we use audiophile terminology.
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What are we hearing and what are we describing and what are we talking about - are they really the same thing? or three different things?
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Another view on magazine reviews:
Magazine Reading with Jaded Eyes
“Now, when I see a review, I think “cool, somebody is getting some positive press”. I mean, you know it is going to be positive, right? No reason to read the review. When I saw that the Edge G6 amp got reviewed in HiFi+, I thought “Good for Steven and the Edge factory, they got some positive press”. When I see the new Evolution Acoustics monitor speakers highlighted on the first page of the HiFi+ CES Show Report, I think “Good for Jonathan Tinn”. No reason to read the actual comments or reviews - they really do not matter. It is not like they are going to try and accurately place the sound of the piece under review in the context of its peers, the available associated amp [if speaker] and speaker [if amp] and with respect to the other components in its product line.
I am not sure what the next step is in my consumption of trade magazines.
But it probably ain’t gonna be pretty”
A year later, it is evolving to add some kind of respect for the talented lobbying capability of a few manufacturers/distributors. Nope, not pretty.
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Wilson Alexandria X-2 speakers
Well received positive review of the Wilson Audio Alexandria II.2 - a real contender in the $150K or so loudspeaker market.
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Audio Note CDT-5 transport and Fifth Element DAC observations
Not sure how popular this post was, actually, but this equipment had such a profound effect on my personal perspective on high-end audio I have to include it here.
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John Barnes passed away this year. He is, to a very large degree, Audio Federation’s inspiration. We will ALWAYS miss him, especially here in Denver, where he had such a large impact.
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Audio Adviser, Music Direct, Acoustic Sounds… the big time… or last gasp?
This is still an open question. The big, BIG money says CDs, DVDs, LPs, local stores, are all dead, replaced by streaming [download] media. Convenience Trumps Quality yet again.
But…
Quality of life issues. Service beyond that provided by a megacorp. The social element of listening to music with other people. All these indicate that real world high-end audio still has a life beyond this, yet another massive change to how the public listens to music.
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“I guess the whole point here is that this is really fringe behavior - where established brands are not treated any different than brand new ones, where the pedigree of the designers is not examined very closely, where products are not compared to each other so it remains this real mystery about just how good something really is.
On the other hand, of course, this is a lot of the charm of this industry too. Kind of the wild west with a lot of wild characters doing wild and crazy things. I have no problem keeping it wild, just so long as we all kind of understand and appreciate just how wild and crazy things really are.”
A rambling post but the end seems to be coherent enough and is perhaps a good perspective on how capitalism is supposed to work [albeit with perhaps a much more diligent and more passionate press] - no player is so large [and the ones that are large enough, like Harmon Intl., apparently play fair] that they can squash the smaller competition by forced takeovers, lawyer terrorism [i.e. false accusations to bankrupt the competition], selling below cost to capture the market, or massive marketing campaigns.
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There is an extremely large number of people who like both high-end audio and this site dedicated to used vinyl and the prices they went for on eBay.
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Our post on Comcast was largely misunderstood. Essentially, Comcast, with its extremely poor quality ‘Basic Service’ cable TV, which presumably 80-90% of people who watch TV use, is hastening the demise of TV. It is as if Microsoft was still pushing Vista [instead of the much better Windows 7], and was in fact continuing to make it worse, thereby speeding up the transition to tablets and phones from desktop computers. In other words, a monopoly, Comcast, is killing one of its monopolies in its hurry to make the transition and be a monopoly of THAT [streaming]. [Netflix is doing the same thing, abandoning its monopoly in DVD rentals to move completely to streaming video, wanting to focus its energies on the future, hoping to be at least a dominant player if not a monopoly - causing some amount of consternation for those who are still happy with the old way of watching movies by playing DVDs].
Fine. Cable and Broadcast TV is dead.
With Google TV, you can play any movie on the net - including YouTube, Netflix and Amazon, and music, and the spec calls for SPDIF out. IF we actually get SPDIF out then we can run sound into a audiophile-quality DAC/pre/amp/speakers. For those who, for whatever, reason, do not want to figure out what software to use and what PC card to use and to spend the several months required to burn their CDs onto a desktop hard disk, a monthly subscription to Spotify, or Pandora, etc will work just fine - IF we can get digital out
“From what we’ve seen, several major manufacturers will debut Android powered HDTVs that feature little to no Google TV 2.0 design elements. We’re not sure how much Google TV underpins these smart TVs, but the majority of what we’ve seen has been labeled as Android TV, not Google TV.
The companies debuting smart TVs at CES are seemingly determined to get the jump on Apple this time around. If Apple is in fact releasing a smart HDTV product in 2012, these companies will be ready with their own models built around Android. Ironically, since there are several such TVs coming from different manufacturers, the smart TV market might collapse prematurely under the weight of half-baked models all trying to outdo an Apple HDTV that doesn’t even exist yet.”
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CD/SACD Player Shootout: EMM Labs XDS1 versus Esoteric K-01
A recent Shootout here on the blog that was quite popular. Although the owner of the system in this shootout did prefer the XDS1 overall, he still has his K-01, and is instead spending his efforts on upgrading the cables in his system to ones similar to those used in the shootout, figuring this was the way [and we agree] to get the biggest ‘bang/improvement for the buck’.
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So, that was 2011. We also updated the look of the Blog, as well as added galleries to the main site. So, although the summer was quieter than usual, it, overall, was a very busy year here on the Hifier blog.
Maybe at the end of 2012 we will post a post similar to this - but maybe post it on 12/20/12… You know. Just in case? 
[Another news flash from the CES 2012 news deluge. I’m not an Apple guy anymore - but perhaps one of you might find this, currently free, app of use. It seems to me that if your only source in your system is an iThing, then this app would be invaluable. Also, if the iThing’s microphone is any good, then having a frequency analyzer with you at all times would be a heck of a lot of fun - especially at shows. English does not appear to be their native language, and I am somewhat confused by what their target use cases[s] are beyond possibly these two].
“TigApp is a young and dynamic company which develops applications for the iPhone, iPad and iPod.
This application is focused on testing different audio systems for home and professional use.
The application serves as a reference generator of sounds or records for the purpose of setting up, testing and burn-in speakers, headphones and Audio components.
This application comes to the AppStore December 23, 2011 and will be free for a limited time.”
From the TigApp website:
Frequency generator
generates sinusoidal frequency or swap sinusoidal signal for testing
Noise generator
generates white, pink, brown, human and silence noise
white noise - noise containing all frequencies in the range defined by the same volume
pink noise - containing all the audio frequencies with a defined volume falls off at 3dB per octave
brown noise - containing all the audio frequencies with a defined volume falls off at 6dB per octave
human noise - containing all the audio frequency range with a defined volume adjusted according to physiological properties of the human ear
silence noise - white noise with reduced volume
Adjusting of the stereo base
when right speaker is on the right side and left speaker is on the left side - it’s OK
Indication of inverted phase
control of the inverted phase (swap of the plus and minus cable on one speaker)
Records for testing
music with the full spectrum frequency range for testing
Microphone
for ambient testing
Detail information
“Analogue” indicators:
Peak indicator - red color (-75dB - 0dB)
RMS indicator - black color (-75dB - 0dB)
Peak and RMS indicators for the left and the right channel
Frequency generator
Sinusoidal signal of frequency (1/3 octave scale, Peak -12dB, RMS -15dB):
20Hz, 25 Hz, 31Hz, 40Hz, 50Hz, 63Hz, 80Hz, 100Hz, 125Hz, 160Hz, 200Hz, 250Hz, 315Hz, 400Hz, 500Hz, 630Hz, 800Hz, 1000Hz, 1250Hz, 1600Hz, 2000Hz, 2500Hz, 3150Hz, 4000Hz, 5000Hz, 6300Hz, 8000Hz, 10000Hz, 12500Hz, 16000Hz, 20000Hz
Swap sinusoidal signal: 20Hz - 20000Hz (logarithmic course, Peak -12dB, RMS -15dB)
Swap sinusoidal signal: 20Hz – 630 Hz (logarithmic course, Peak -12dB, RMS -15dB)
Swap sinusoidal signal: 630Hz – 20000Hz (logarithmic course, Peak -12dB, RMS -15dB)
Noise generator
White Noise: Peak -10dB, RMS -15dB, frequency range 20Hz – 20000Hz)
Pink Noise: Peak -2dB, RMS -15dB, frequency range 20Hz – 20000Hz)
Brown Noise: Peak -2dB, RMS -15dB, frequency range 20Hz – 20000Hz)
Human Noise: Peak -2dB, RMS -15dB, frequency range 20Hz – 20000Hz)
Silence Noise: Peak -55dB, RMS -96dB, frequency range 20Hz – 20000Hz)
Adjustment stereo base
Bass Drums L: left side (Peak -2dB, RMS -15dB)
Bass Drums R: right side (Peak -2dB, RMS -15dB)
Bass Drums L-R-L: transition from left to right side and back (duration 30s, Peak -2dB, RMS -19dB)
Treble Drums L: left side (Peak -1dB, RMS -16dB)
Treble Drums R: right side (Peak -1dB, RMS -16dB)
Treble Drums L-R-L: transition from left to right side and back (duration 30s, Peak -1dB, RMS -21dB)
Indication of inverted phase
Guitar-normal: phase in order (Peak -0.3dB, RMS -14dB)
Guitar-Invert: right channel inverted (Peak -0.3dB, RMS -14dB)
Cool-normal: phase in order(Peak -0.3dB, RMS -13dB)
Cool-invert: pitch channel inverted (Peak -0.3dB, RMS -13dB)
Test records
Classic: duration 30s, Peak -0.3dB, RMS -15dB
Cool: duration 36s, Peak -0.3dB, RMS -13dB
Guitar: duration 36s, Peak -0.3dB, RMS -14dB
Jazz: duration 36s, Peak -0.3dB, RMS -15dB
News: duration 38s, Peak -0.3dB, RMS -15dB
Road: duration 50s, Peak -0.3dB, RMS -16dB
Microphone
Precise graphics indicators for the both channels (from -22dB to 0dB, step by 1dB)
[Getting a TON of news from CES this year. Very rarely is something somewhat relevant. Here is one of the ’somewhat cool but still not exactly relevant’s]
“AfterShokz is a brand new company on a mission to change the way the world listens to music on the go — with ear-free headphones that transport sound through your cheekbones. They’ve used patent pending bone conduction technology (initially developed for military special ops) to create the ultimate sports, mobile and gaming headphones. Benefits for users range from basic comfort, to long-term eardrum health, to increased safety during activity. This technologically-advanced product line will be available to the masses at everyday price points in time for CES — innovation yet to be matched. The flagship product (Sport) is currently one of the most popular semifinalists in the Last Gadget Standing competition: http://bit.ly/tLkmxA. “
… or perhaps over the last 2 days… but things should be cleaned up now… I hope.
If you still see some FORBIDDEN messages around here - that is because we are trying to keep black hats out while allowing all us audiophile hats to still do our thing… just let us know and we’ll make it UNforbidden again.
Ugh.
Robert Koprowski, at the University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland, has designed an interesting speaker which has won several design awards in Poland. He sent us some information on it and we would like to pass it on to you all so 1) you can all see where new designs, and potentially new manufacturers, come from and 2) besides Silbatone, we haven’t seen any other horn speakers using the Manger drivers [although I believe theirs was more efficient)
Robert has applied for/received patents on the industrial design and seems to be eager to take the project further. If you want further information, please contact him at the email address below.
Transducer - 1.2 W05 MANGER MSW- MANGER MTC0803-8 ”
Impedance - 4 Ω
Operating Frequency - 25 Hz-20 kHz (+/-3 dB)
Efficiency - 86 dB 1W/1m Power - 100W
External Crossover division at - 150 Hz
Column weight - 40 kg and 21 kg crossover
Dimensions - 1.3 x 0.5 x 0.5 m
Skeleton enclosure - wood
Thickness of casing - 10-20mm
Anechoic chamber measurements: Accuracy: ± 1 dB 20 Hz to 10 kHz ± 2 dB from 10 to 20kHz Max SPL: 130 dB.
Robert Koprowski
Uniwersytet Slaski
Instytut Informatyki
e-mail : koprow (at) us.edu.pl
www: http://robert.frk.pl
At this time the current plan is to duplicate all of our past show reports and convert them to the new website look and feel.
The first one we did is of the most recent show, RMAF 2011,
This is all brand spanking new, so please be patient with the little gremlins…
This also commences the start of the creation of our Show Photo Database - something I have wanted to do for many years [but got talked out of it for some reason each time ].
Only 50 photos have been indexed so far, and we have at least 30,000, so there is a ways to go.
Speaking of which, we will be adding better navigation tools for the Show Photo Database as well as the show reports - to more easily jump around in the galleries.
Our plan, for CES 2012 anyway, and at this moment in time , is to do the show reports both here on the blog and in the show galleries.
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