Varying mileage
Join Our Community Subscribe to Paul's PostsTwo identical car models will both live up to their performance promise, yet they come with a warning their mileage will vary.
Of course, the variance is not in the car’s performance but rather in the drivers.
Stereo equipment is no different.
Identical systems in different hands and rooms will never be the same. A fact that makes it rather difficult to provide an accurate list of expectations.
What we can confidently provide are trends, flavors, and promises. “Our new transport will reveal once-hidden nuance and detail. Its sound is sweet and never fatiguing.”
Your mileage as measured by exacting standards will most certainly vary.
What should never vary is how we feel—our emotional response to a promise given.
When I replaced my CD-transport playing CDs in real-time and applying error-correction algorithms by a HDD recorder playing bit-perfect from an internal RAM the sound became much clearer and detailed. But how do you define “sweet” and “fatiguing”? Doesn’t this depend of the music selected, individual hearing abilities and the loudspeakers used for listening? Or are there specific measurements and selected components which make the sound “sweet” – vacuum tubes ???
Un cuarto de sonido muy “vivo” hará que cualquier equipo instalado en él, suene con un brillo excesivo que producirá fatiga al poco tiempo de haber iniciado la sesión de audio.
Can someone explain this to me, please.
A very “lively” sound room will cause any equipment installed in it to sound excessively bright which will cause fatigue shortly after the audio session has started.
Courtesy of Google translate.
I’ve been setting up a home office the last couple of months. 3m x 4m room and I put some speakers in when the room was completely stripped out. Unbearable sound. Addition of furniture, a rug, some framed pictures (glass removed) have resulted in a very nice sound I can listen for hours. New windows went in this week and blinds arriving in a couple of weeks. The acoustic probably changes daily. A dealer I spoke to recently was of the view that most high-end systems are a complete waste of money because of the room they are set up in, and another dealer told me he has customers who come in and buy lots of expensive kit and then he has the unenviable and often near impossible task of getting it to work in the available space. I certainly found it interesting to hear the incremental improvements as I’ve been doing my office. My original plan to send $2,000 on wall panels has proven necessary.
…& he’s back! 🙂
I always understood the level of detail is largely a function of the noise floor of the DAC. 1-bit is 6dB, so -96dB is 16-bit, about the measured level of the PSA DSD DAC. According to Stereophile the limit is caused by the noise from the power supply. Other DACs, more and less expensive, are much more resolving, the benchmark seems to be set by the Benchmark DAC3 at -160dB. The cheap-as-chips RME DAC is not far behind.
As far as fatigue is concerned, which I understood to relate to increased high frequency energy from speakers, I suppose you can address that with most DACs using their filter settings.
Not only does high frequencies cause hearing fatigue, a sound with booming bass also causes listener fatigue.
I have no clue what “hearing fatigue” is. I can’t hear above 20kHz for sure, so this cannot “fatigue” me.
Oye, “mano”, se te fue la mano….Tranqui, tranqui!
The term “hearing fatigue” was coined by HP at the time that TAS did not accept propaganda from manufacturers (therefore, there was no conflict of interest) and refers to the fatigue detected by the brain, when it is exposed to distortions that recognizes them as such, of course within the audible spectrum, which varies in each individual.
Example to listen to some recordings before 1957, of course including those of the records reproduced by the phonographs, in addition to the music reproduced in the first CD players.
En cuanto a se te fue la mano, es posible que en cualquier momento publique un comentario en italiano, que lo hablo y escribo aceptablemente bien y como dijo el chavo se me chispoteó.
“Fatigue detected by the brain when it is exposed to distortions…”
There is either measurable distortion within hearing sensitivity or not. If you can hear distortion, it is measurable. I don’t know if that would be fatiguing, it is just unappealing.
Mano, te crees realmente todas esas cosas? Hay mucha brujería en todo esto. Es como la astrología.
A system that has an amplifier with very low IMD and THD figures, but with distortion in the rest of the chain, especially in the speakers and / or the front end, can produce distortion that is not always measurable.
Measuring tools to quantify these are seldom available to audio enthusiasts, but the ear-brain complex tells the trained listener that something is wrong.
Personally, I have experienced this sensation without necessarily having to perform measurements, which have been conditioned to protect manufacturers, such as the determination of the THD and IMD that are made through a fixed resistance of 8 Ohm. knowing that the actual loads (speaker systems) are NOT purely resistive, which in good romance means a deception to the promising buyer. Regarding these figures, an amplifier with 0.1 and another with 0.001 may be more pleasant to the ear, the former, as is the case with tube amplifiers, which despite not having such spectacular distortion figures, the brain registers the sound as nice. I am talking about this type of “distortion”.
In things like this, I am not so naive, because regulators like the FTC and the reviewers are at the service of the industry, this is how the system works. As for astrology, that is something else.
Sighted perception is worthless. Only blinded assessments have value.
There must be a great deal of variation in emotional responses of people to cars and stereo systems. The tastes and sensitivities of the masses seem to be very different, depending on age group, social status, education and cultural experiences. I am shocked by many of the new car designs that sell so well. I find nearly all of them atrocious.
Regarding gas mileage, I am one of the most fuel efficient drivers there are–avoiding traffic lights, driving at steady moderate speeds, never accelerating aggressively, driving mostly on uncongested freeways–yet I still cannot get the EPA gas mileage promised by the automobile maker. In my case, I think it is not the driver. It is the lying car manufacturer.
Not going to dispute what you say here JLG.
I had a Mitsubishi – ‘Mirage’ for 12 years; a little 5 speed manual town run-around.
And it regularly recorded spec mileage, even when I lead-footed it a little here & there.
Maybe it’s that some manufacturer ‘boost’ the truth.
Like Klipsch who rate their RP-600M loudspeaker at 96dB/W/m when it independently tests at 88.9dB/W/m.
YMMV, is a useful disclaimer.
In my case it is probably because my car is manufactured by a car company with initials VW, not known for its EPA reporting honesty.
HA!
There you go Joseph.
I’m typing, “HA!” because when I read your post I was thinking about that whole VW debacle 😉
On cars with 4 cylinder and even some 6 cylinder engines, I have found that use of the A/C system subtracts 1-2 mpg. My guess is that the EPA specs are without A/C which must put some load on the engine, causing a drop in fuel efficiency.
Car…transport… d’oh…I get it 😉
D’oh
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/ca/JamesFinlaysonPublicityHeadshot.jpg
Can’t find the headshot in the nightcap.
Wait wait fat rat I found it:
https://i.pinimg.com/474x/4c/33/77/4c3377251c300c1733300174aac8765f–laurel-and-hardy-film-noir.jpg
Doesn’t sound like live music but like canned music, can’t compensate for variables of recordings and room acoustics, entirely unpredictable in its performance and considerably varied in it from one location to another, and it costs a fortune. Is this what this industry calls engineering? What’s more the basic design that imposes these limits never changes. It’s left to the end user who is likely unskilled at it to figure it out. They can’t be happy with their results or they wouldn’t constantly be looking to buy something else that’s “better.”
Paul,
Your premise is indefensible. Two identical systems in two different rooms will perform identically on the electronics side. The only variation will be in the speakers interaction with the room. However, if you use as a source a flimsy turntable, strong vibrations in one room may affect it, but there will be no effect on the digital transport.
The comment of in “different hands” is even worse. You are not touching the equipment while it is playing, are you? You just set it up and let it play. Again, it is the speakers interaction with the room that matters.
The speaker designs and system designs are so awful that all you have to do is move the speakers slightly or point them at a slightly different angle and the sound changes. There is nothing you can do about it except to make the best of a very bad situation. Not a single consideration has been given to compensating for any variables in most high end system designs and those that do are extremely limited and often not particularly satisfactory. You connect everything together, plug it in, and that’s what you’ve got. Anything that sounds wrong leaves little that can be done to fix it. So then you go out and buy something else expensive, bring it home and it has different shortcomings. Why do audiophiles pull their speakers away from walls? Because they are fighting a hopeless war they can’t possibly win against the acoustics of their room. If it looks like a piano, sounds like a piano it’s a piano, not a hi fi.
By the way, I lived very close to Murray Hill’s Bell labs. I gather you were there. I still remember weekends seeing those cricketers in the beautiful lawn in front of it. All dressed in white. And almost none of them were “White”.
Yes Murray Hill is a large campus. I really enjoyed working there. It was a great place. I met a lot of really great people. It was a shame I had to leave but Nokia who owns it ran out of money. I turned out one serious project a month on average. I designed them and I supervised their construction. The fact that it was old only increased the challenge. I think on the day I left my boss was nearly in tears. He calls me up every now and then. He quit and moved to Maine where he’s working as a laborer. The thing that amazed me is that I solved problems that I didn’t think I could. He’d been an electrician once. Sometimes he’d work on some jobs with me, usually minor ones. I have to admit I loved that place.
Sm,
Some can argue that life itself is about making the best of a very bad situation…just look around.
Once you’ve attained your ‘sweet-spot’ why would you need to move out of it?
Do you really need to be roaming around the room whilst enjoying a ‘canned’ performance?
I thought it was an interesting problem. It piqued my interest and curiosity. I wondered how concert halls worked to make the sounds I heard live and enjoyed so much. I had as much fun figuring it out and experimenting with it as I did using it. I really had an awful lot of fun with it. I’ve gone where no audiophile has gone before. I’m alone in my own universe where your audiophile universe’s rules don’t apply. These sites for me are like a telescope looking into the universe I came out of myself. How is my universe different from yours and everyone else’s? It has more dimensions. It’s the same universe live music and other sounds are in. For me looking back it’s like someone in a three dimensional world looking at life in a two dimensional world. They have figured out that other dimensions exist but they can’t conceptualize them because they can’t have any way to experience them let alone build anything in them. Imagine what it must have been like when people thought the earth was flat and the center of the universe. You don’t have to travel very far above the earth to realize what an absurd notion that is.
Wow – you really, really ARE special, out on a whole other level.
Hey Sm,
I tagged your (this) reply with my next reply, but for some strange reason it posted separately further down.
Cheers,
FR.
Man, you’re as literal as they get. 🙂 An engineer, no doubt?
Two identical systems in terms of equipment, set up in different rooms by different people will sound totally different. I should have spelled it out but was hoping to use fewer words. My bad.
And different hands refers to different people. A brief attempt at writing literature as opposed to a technical manual. 🙂
Blame it on the wanna be author in me.
I am not an engineer. Two identical systems in different rooms will interact differently to the room. It has nothing to do with the equipment or who set them up. It has to do with the interaction. You know that.
So, today i designed and made snorkel hats for my speakers. Using 7” foam. The idea was to stop or reduce first reflections before they happen. Of course totally unacceptable aesthetically . But its scientific study. It was fun some positive results. I’ll reinstall them next week.sorry, you guys are the only ones that listen.hahahha
True Sm!
I have experienced, even with just the usual L + R channel loudspeaker audio set-up, that illusive ‘synergistic’ 3D holographic imaging & soundstaging back in the early 90’s, as you know.
These days I’m ok with the nearly 2D ‘Wall of Sound’ presentation again as long as it’s crisp, clear, detailed & dynamic.
This means that I know what’s ‘better’ (& that there is ‘better’ out there), but that I’m willing to compromise because I’d rather listen to the music than spend that precious time trying to solve the problem of turning ‘canned’ music into ‘live’.
Each to their own.
I know that the Earth is not flat, but I wouldn’t really care if it was because to my feet (for all intents & purposes), it is.
Looking for perfection in an imperfect world is not the way that I wish to drive myself insane…I can think of better ways to do so 😉
Hi Paul, Car guy here. Permit me a minor clarification. The reason that that disclaimer is given for car mileage is that the method by which the EPA mandated mileage is determined and provided to customers. This test is performed under very specific set-up and procedure and is used to test each vehicle model and engine/powertrain. This standardized test is carried out for automakers world wide for vehicles sold in the US such that each OEM is testing using the same method and permits customers to make fair comparison judgements. The test is done on a dyno under very specific conditions and fuels. That said. A consumer will NEVER get the stated EPA mileage since on road vehicles use different fuels, different inclines, different driver habits, various altitudes, various passenger capacities, various road conditions, wind, etc… Kind of like testing power amps for rated wattage output. Thanks for a great blog.
I do love my Audi. I only put about 1,200 miles per year on it, so a couple of mpg discrepancy is not a huge concern to me. It’s just the principle of it.
My last comment was meant in reply to FR.
Got it 😉