Comments on: Can $2,000 buy bona fide high-end audio?

The Audiophiliac assembles a killer headphone-based stereo system for that amount, with a Woo vacuum tube headphone amplifier, Grado headphones, and an Oppo player.

[gsna_dkm]

Why refer to the "system" as "W-G-O" when you very clearly state, "I didn't have time to acquire an Oppo..."? In essence, you evaluated a W-G-S and/or W-G-P, to continue with your shorthand. So, why create and perpetuate the misconception that you evaluated the Oppo?

Finally, why not place the WA6SE in line with a scope to verify that the signal going into the amplifier isn't changed (other than amplitude) when it comes out? There should be a fundamental precept among amplifiers just as there is for medical students, "First, do no harm" becomes "First, alter no signals".

[smoskowitz]

great post ... have had really solid results with an integrated JoLida 502 tube amp at arguably better price points - (originally purchased in 1995) - response audio did an excellent modification recently ... i highly recommend their mods & their bella extreme line at comparable price points ... (my input is a 1995 linn mimik cd player & for sacd a 2000 sony dvp-s9000es) ... fwiw, given the tube replacements as suggested by response audio the following materials really opened up in my personal tests : pearl jam authorized bootlegs (1994, 2000, 2003, 2008 performances - since pearl jam does the mastering it seemed appropriate), the last shadow puppets recent release, any arctic monkeys material (for solid brit pop), & radiohead ... tube suggestions by response audio were well suited for dynamics & warmth as the tubes "opened up" ...

[alegr]

"Audiophiles" are ready to buy into any "steer manure", like $500 digital cable or $2000 CD player. Never mind that in digital domain you either get the data or you don't get it. So called "jitter" is an artifact of ancient primitive DACs that were deriving their clock from the raw data.

Regarding tube amplifiers, I'm pretty sure that their "special" sound is just an artifact of very specific non-linearity. A vacuum triode posesses quadratic characteristic of anode current vs gridle voltage. A balanced circuit cancels the quadratic component, but may not be able to do that completely. Output transformer adds its own cubic non-linearity. If you just simulate that characteristic with digital pre-processing, your $300 transistor amplifier will sound the same. That's it.

[Dalkorian]

Amazing. How can you use so many big words and still have no clue as to what you are talking about?

[alegr]

Dalkorian, I'm an EE and know those things.

[jharrisofkansas]

And I am a lowly musician that will put my ears up against any ones...Tubes sound warmer and you know the even and odd harmonic reasons why.Tell the people that make guitar amps there isn't a difference in sound.I do feel that at a certain point specs are for the birds as many times I see specs that go way beyond the ability of the human ear to hear let alone discern quality of sound that is partly subjective anyway....Not a one of us needs to be an engineer or understand specs to know if something either sounds good to us or it doesn't.

[alegr]

Want to add. There was a study about how price label on wine affects its taste. Same wines, but priced higher, were getting consistently better marks in tasting.

[Seaspray0]

You should compare today's entertainment system against HiFi in its hayday... the 70's. Those were the days when stereo HiFi was king, record players ruled, and everything was bought as components (i.e. amp, preamp, tuner, equalizer, reverb), 20hz-20khz was the "standard", and they all had DIALS. So, how does one of those "entertainment systems" with the 4 inch speakers compare?

[alegr]

And do that in double blind test, of course. I'm really curious how that would end up. Though, with the affordable systems, even though their analog output is great, those undersized speakers are really crap.

[v1m]

While auditioning integrated amps this year, I decommed my Oppo DV-981 from TV duty and used it as a CD transport. This was convenient and the Oppo sounded good enough for my tests, as I was building a two channel system through trial and error and needed some kind of consistent reference.

However, I always had in mind replacing it with a digital source later and am I glad I did. A ~$200 Chinese DAC (easily moddable, see reviews on head-fi.org) fed by lossless files dramatically outperforms the Oppo playing CDs in terms of soundstage and detail. I didn't have SACD discs to try; this is where the Oppo reportedly shines. Anyway, my DVD player's back now where it belongs.

About Grados, I can't say enough good things. Love the RS-2s: lush and warm. They and their big brother RS-1s are dazzlingly beautiful objects, too -- the Eames chairs of headphones. I keep thinking I'll jump on a Woo one of these days to treat my ears even better.

Alegr's allegation in this thread that tube sound can be readily faked can be evaluated by anyone on a PC by downloading the free demo of the Izotope plug-in for Winamp, "OzoneMP," a DSP which simulates analog tubes. It does some things surprisingly well, although to my ears it sounds like all DSPs: identifiably electronic kitsch. That said it'd be fun to see Steve compare DSP tube simulation to the real thing. How about it, Steve? Free column idea for you. Pit a $30 DSP plug-in vs. Woo's entry level tube amp at over 10 times the cost.

[nostromo_be]

there are a couple of problems with dsp programs, it adds the second harmonic, wich makes the music sound warmer, but it also adds a bunch of higher order ones, and often also skew the phase of higher frequencies. It's the same problems as with mp3's...

[nostromo_be]

alegr, No way that you are a real ee.... Otherwise you're a disgrace for us real ee's, that actually understand what's going on with harmonics in an amplifier, and with jitter in a cd-player.

[alegr]

Enlighten me, what would cause jitter in the following real-life design:


1. Raw encoded data is read from a CD in a $30 CD drive, decoded and error-corrected (suppose there are no uncorrectable errors) then buffered in RAM.

2. It's then fed to a DAC which is clocked by the appropriate master clock. Where the master clock is produced by a crystal oscillator+PLL, then phase-filtered by another PLL to eliminate phase noise (which is the jitter, BTW). Though with a well-designed PLL that second stage would not be necessary.

What would cause jitter in this scenario? Why a $2000 CD player with optical output or with $500 cable (like Denon AKDL1 Dedicated Link Cable) would work any better than a $30 CD drive?

And by the way, paying $500 for a length of CAT5 cable is so stupid. Nevertheless, there are people who buy that BS.

[make_or_break]

There's only so much crap you can shovel into a 10 lb. bag...or didn't you know that already?

Funny comments...shame it's only true in your reality. I've heard audio component pieces who have price points that would put a serious dent in this country's national debt sound like absolute crap, and I've heard great sound come out of some truly affordable components that are indeed easy on the wallet. But by and large, the amount of effort in manufacturing and engineering that goes into those 'money grabs' (a title that you would seem to castrate them with) far exceeds that of the mass market gear that measures their life cycles in months at best before hauling them off into the nearest landfill.

Yes, the HDMI "super" cable is a fiasco. And the price of hi-end interconnects in general are for the most part laughable given how incremental the improvements may (or may not) be. But to expect the shoddy and cheap construction of a typical sweatshop $29 CD player special at Wal*Mart to match even a sundry, mass-market $200 unit...that only speaks volumes at how really uninformed you truly are.

I went through this exercise several years ago when I bought my Naim CD5. I listened critically to a number of units that were far cheaper...and several that were FAR more expensive, yet my ear kept coming back to the Naim. I spent weeks audtioning units, bringing examples home to listen on my own system. I definitely wasn't fond of the $4750 price of admission (with discount, no less), and I tried my best to find a cheaper alternative that I could say was as good if not better, but in the end I sucked it up and chose it anyways because it just did CDs better than anything else I tried. Now years later I've heard machines that outshine my Naim for only a fraction of the buy-in cost, but that's progress. Yet they still are nowhere near your blue-light special price point with it's imaginary "equality".

[make_or_break]

BTW...this is in response to alegr. If only I knew how to properly branch a thread...

[azide]

Ditto and great CD player.

I am not sure why some folks think 1's and 0's are just 1's and 0's is that not like making a statement that all turntables are the same and that a particular bump is a particular bump whatever the equipment? Some questions for the original poster to think about. Does the CD player consist of more than 'perfectly' reading 1's and 0's and spewing them perfectly in analogue form out the rear? Is not the error correction required because it is a function of the disk read and transport stability etc. so that a better transport might require less correction? Do the internal circuits and components affect the signal quality both before DAC and after DAC? I oversimplify, but as far as I know electrical loss, distortion, RF effects, magnetic effects are a common factor of all materials and what the audio folks do is try optimise equipment with these properties in mind to give the best possible sound quality for the money while remaining competative.

Case in point is why playing a CD through a computer CD-Rom, MB and soundcard to your hifi sounds like pants compared to any stand alone CD player, let alone a good one.

This aside ... I really hope the quality of CD recordings improves, I just bought a couple and my head aches, they are so loud and compressed it's not funny!

[alegr]

What would make a great difference for a CD player is a DAC and the rest of the analog circuitry. But the mechanics and optics are so perfected now that they don't have to cost a fortune to allow a perfect reading. For $30 CD drive a was not referring to a portable boombox, but a drive you put into your computer. Only mechanics with PATA or SATA interface. The drive will give you digital data that is all the same as your beloved 4 grand player gives.

Any error correction is perfected too. With silicon prices so cheap is't not necessary to cut corners and implement partial error correction.

[make_or_break]

SG: your RS-1s bite.

Just kidding...no, really...I am...

[dcstephens]

I think that the low power requirements of most headphones, including the Grados, make them great candidates for tube amplification. I use a tube headphone amp to drive my AKG K701 cans, but use an Rowland ICEPower amp for my speakers. The two systems sound very much alike.

I see no need to "prove" my choices since my two-channel system is about enjoying music for hours on end with no listener fatigue and it does that as well as any system I've heard. The Audiophiliac is offering "reviews" here, so I understand the interest in specs, but for those that want leads as to what to go listen to for themselves, his advice is very useful.

Dave