Bi-Amping and The Law of Conservation of Ignorance

[Enzo]

As in it is not a crossover if it only serves one driver? So it becomes a passive filter? I'm not saying you are wrong, I just am not sure what you are accusing them of.

[bob p]

the signal path argument comes up all the time. i don't know why -- at the carver board everyone is using a "sonic holography" preamp that has opamps sprinkled all over the motherboard. i can understand the minimalist argument that comes from the tube guys who opt for direct coupled stages to eliminate coupling caps from the signal path, but once you go into SS circuitry with DSP, its not as if a virginal signal path is even an option.

[bob p]

This looks like a good candidate for a Bi-Amped system.

tom, now that i think about it, i've seen that picture before! it was maybe 30 years ago in an audio engineering text. for the life of me i can't remember exactly where.

[Enzo]

the signal path argument comes up all the time. i don't know why

It gives them something to hang their hats on. Never mind that on the other end of the circuit board something violates their rules of thumb. right HERE we can obsess over it. Even if they accept op amps, they want as few of them as possible, they want that EQ kill switch on the panel, their CD inputs have a bypass switch so the thing can directly feed the power amp, or some such.

It is more important to them to claim they removed a stage in the middle than it is to recognize the poorly designed input stage itself.

I think a lot of it is form over substance - as long as you can make a lucid rationalization for something, that is all you need. Physics don't matter.

As a model railroader I see something similar a lot. A discussion goes on about realism and operation true to real life. WE have to replace the little foot ladder rungs because they are not the exact shape of the ones on the Santa Fe, but it is OK to have Albuquerque right around the corner from Flagstaff a scale mile apart, and the inevitable giant trestle bridge BEFORE Taos rather than AFTER it. THAT is OK, but not the wrong ladder on the boxcar. Selective focus.

But the railroaders are nice and like to be helpful, the audipholes are snooty and want to be holier than thou.


Of course that is just my opinion.

[Steve Conner]

I never understood why the audiophools do "Bi-amping" that way either. I guess they just don't understand the reasoning behind it, and that the way they do it removes all of the advantages.

I always get the feeling that audiophools would rather NOT understand what goes on behind the scenes anyway. It would ruin their fun if they knew, for example, that practically all solid-state amps sound identical and can't be distinguished in blind tests. Or the horrible things that happen to the audio in virtually any record made in an ordinary studio. All those electrolytics, cheap op-amps, regular non-OFC copper cables... and worse... I was shocked the day that I discovered that a few of my favourite CDs even had hard clipping deliberately added at the mastering stage.

Assuming they're actually having fun, that is. I'm sure some of these guys have stopped listening to music and started listening to equipment. Or worse still, imaginary properties of equipment that don't have any basis in reality! At the end of the day, I listen to music, as a message from another human to me. I don't really care about the medium unless it's grossly distorted. As long as nobody moved Flagstaff closer to Albuquerque, who cares about the ladder on the boxcar? (I like that analogy )

No matter how messed up you are, you can always find at least 3 people on a forum somewhere who will agree with your point of view, but that doesn't make it right. You get crazy little audiophool cliques on forums who believe that such-and-such a tube or chip is the new holy grail, and go crazy with it.

[Arthur B.]

As in it is not a crossover if it only serves one driver? So it becomes a passive filter? I'm not saying you are wrong, I just am not sure what you are accusing them of.

Sorry; I meant that they didn't understand that a crossover could be passive as well. At least that's the impression I got from those threads.

[Enzo]

Well, I think the audiophiles would fall over if they really understood the recording process. They want to get all the EQ and everything out of the system so they can hear the "true sound" of the preformance, as if that is what is on the recording in the first place.

Then there is the belief that two mics aiming crossways in the center of the house provides a signal the way the human ear hears it. Fooey. I wonder if they fill all the seats in the hall with people so the room acoustics sound like a real performance. SOunds nothing like an empty hall.

[mashaffer]

What does a phase locked loop have to do with a crossover? Anyway, it seems that the crux of the problem is that they can't understand the concept of a passive crossover.

Sorry, I meant Passive Line Level. Too many TLAs for my own good. If one doesn't want to go with active this would seem like a better solution than using a power level filter after the PA.

mike

[bob p]

I never understood why the audiophools do "Bi-amping" that way either. I guess they just don't understand the reasoning behind it, and that the way they do it removes all of the advantages. I always get the feeling that audiophools would rather NOT understand what goes on behind the scenes anyway. It would ruin their fun if they knew, for example, that practically all solid-state amps sound identical and can't be distinguished in blind tests. Or the horrible things that happen to the audio in virtually any record made in an ordinary studio. ...

I've been working on restoring a big floor-standing JBL L150A 3-way speaker system from c. 1980. I've reconed a woofer and I've done 3 re-surrounds for foam rot, and I'm working on the passive crossovers. I've been visiting the Lansing Heritage forum looking for technical data.

There's a "JBL Haters" thread over there, which discusses all of the different reasons that people hate JBL speakers. Hatred of JBLs is very widespread among audiophiles, and I think a lot of it isn't based in logic. Never mind little things like J.B. Lansing having created the concept of performance HiFi in the theater, nevermind that Lansing is the de-facto standard for live sound reinforcement, and nevermind that JBL has won numerous Oscars, Grammys, etc., and has a long list of successes in the industry-- audiophiles just hate JBL, period.

Its a vitriolic hatred, and if you mention owning JBL speakers in any audiophile forum, there's no shortage of people who will tell you that you're listening to California Crap. Of course, they're conveniently overlooking the inconvenient facts: their favorite recordings probably feature amplified musicans who played the concert through a JBL or EV system, they probably listened to themselves through JBL monitors, and they may have had JBL speakers in their amps. Don't even mention that there was a period in time where just about every recording that was pressed to vinyl was mixed-down on a pair of JBL 45xx series studio monitors.

I think that this all boils down to the fact that people who don't know any better are very fond of their pre-conceived notions and they don't like to be confused with facts. There are so many examples of this stuff in the audiophile world that its mind-numbing.

[bob p]

I never understood why the audiophools do "Bi-amping" that way either. I guess they just don't understand the reasoning behind it, and that the way they do it removes all of the advantages.

I made myself a sacrificial lamb over at another "audiophile" forum in a biamping thread. What truly amazed me was the amount of "groupthink" that was going on over there. Everyone agreed that they were right, so it wasn't possible that they were wrong. One person went so far as to say that I was unnecessarily making things complicated, and that you didn't need to understand quantum physics to run your stereo. (Enzo, there goes that physics metaphor again.)

What really strikes me as so odd is how pervasive the lack of understanding of biamping is among autiophiles. Even worse is the fact that their minds have already been filled with all of the variables that they can fathom, so they've stopped listening.

Its funny, today I was reading the operator's manual for the Carver PM-1.5 amp, the big behemoth power amp from the era when Bob Carver still owned the CarverPro company. It featured a section on bi-amping that gave a nice explanation about the benefits of active bi-amping and the dangers of high power delivery into speakers containing passive crossover networks.

It specifically addressed the dangers of placing a frequency dividing network after the amplification stage. It went so far as to discuss how bad things can go when you overdrive a passive xover network beyond its power rating -- Yep, it mentioned things like core saturation in the inductors, network saturation and its effects to decrease rolloff slopes, the appearance of harmonics in the HF outputs, etc. It also mentioned that it even clean power was still dangerous if it was allowed to overdrive a fitler network and introduce distortion into a system that had an insuffient power rating.

This makes me ask myself a question that I haven't been able to answer -- will these audiophiles still not want to be confused with science and facts if the person that wrote the article is their all-time-hero and idol?

[Enzo]

I had a kid working for me for a while, and he fancied himself an audiophile. He was typical of the breed. I mentioned once I was thinking about some new stereo speakers for my home. He came in the next day with a brochure on THE perfect speaker for me. Has he ever heard it? No. But he KNEW it was perfect because his phile buddies said so.

But his overriding characteristic was that he was not interested in learning anything, he only wanted to verify his preconceived notions about stuff. This was also the guy who, first day on the job, asked me to point out to him the weak parts in each amp. You know, the ones they purposely make weak so they will fail and generate extra income for the amp maker selling repair parts. he would not believe me when I told him they don't do any such thing. I offered that if they did, all any competitor had to do was point it out. "Oh no, they are ALL in on it." This guy's troubles went beyond audiophile.

I think they all think that way. They find something they want to believe and then only look for data that supports it and ignore anything that doesn't. Basically religious fundamentalism.