http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost.php?p=18176216&postcount=541

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Wait, his "opinions" get worse.



http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost.php?p=18182261&postcount=546

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Of course he does not explain why, since he has not even measured the jitter in the DX-5 he is just blowing hot air.



http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost.php?p=18190992&postcount=551

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Sorry charles but it looks like everything you have said is a guess.



http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost.php?p=18191532&postcount=552

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To his knowledge, looks like to me charles needs to do some more reading.

Steve, I guess my Cambridge 840C CD player is great for audio since, it does true isolated video / audio systems - it has no video) and it has no HDMI or S/PDIF jitter problems - it's a single box player! Its got the high-fillutin' analog circuits too.

I don't know what the Ayre costs.....

F rch

Charles hansen reminds me of a used car salesman.

while charles may be a lot of things, one thing for sure is he is a competent business man and knows how to milk the well to do audiophiles.  credit where credit is due if you believe in the "let the buyer beware" concept.  double blind testing shatters all class barriers.  think of it, the people who write the reviews depend upon those that produce the products for their livings, its like letting the fox loose in the henhouse yet we all seem to play the game, and double blind listening tests would almost immediately shatter the myth of sound verses the reality of associating your ego with the cost of the products you use.

manufacturers have to make money, just some also make a lot of noise about the value of their product instead of letting it stand on its own merits against the competition in a fair and unbiased (double blind) testing environment.

my friends and i went through blind testing in the early eighties and discovered the value of it,.....it made us better listeners and better audiophiles and gave us confidence to trust our own ears and not those of the audio press.  we also found that measurements did not tell the whole story, but as long as components were nearly the same measurment wise, they sounded very similiar, but not in every way similiar.  the question always was and is, which is more accurate!

Hi f rch

thats interesting but i dont think unusual actually.  i mean, a resonably designed amp from the 70's or the 10's should sound very similar within its genre (sand state, glass state, push pull, single ended, digital!?) 

for example, amps with output transformers will skew the low frequencies and help make that fat tube sound to a certain extent, while a sand state device, no matter when made, will not do that, so comparing like to like i would not expect a big change. 

i hear you are running solid state now and as i think we have both said in the past, good solid state or tube tend to sound more alike.  its the fringe products that sound different and can sometimes pull us in their direction.  also, SET is working on enhanced dynamics by design and so that should also be a stand out feature of his rig. 

the idea of a resistor buring away as heat your lowest details is catching on nowadays with transformer input volume controls and what not (although you trade one thing for another....ie added harmonics in the transformer volume control verses the faintest loss ..and arguably non audible in my opinon...of heating a resistor ever so slightly in a "standard" volume control)

also, in the old days, when one could quite easily audition products at the local audio saloon, it was more tempting to jump on new equipment you heard down there.

i remember once, when i auditioned blind cd players, i could only really hear the difference in one quick section of the song i played, and it really was not enough to select one over the other and it came down to which one i thought looked best.

the concept of burining in components for hundreds of hours until they sound right i think is a bunch of baloney.  yes, some components need some break in time, but not hundreds of hours.  whats really happening is your ears are just getting used to the sound and like all things the shound becomes familiar, just like the way you make your favorite steaks and nobody else's can taste as good as yours.  some times i think just hearing something different can be "better" if you are sort of in a positive mood at the time...that is the atmosphere and sourroundings and even the song being played and all can come into play.

i noticed that often times, when listening to some new gear and with an open feeling in my heart and money in the bank things tended to sound better too.
especially if they looked "cool".

so, i am in sympathy with what you say and also if you liked that amp then i would suspect you would like it now   

in the end, each component puts its harmonic spin on the signal and you like it or you dont or you dont care one way or the other and then maybe it looks cool or has been hyped up or whatever. 

i can play cds that will make the best system in the world sound like trash but i cant play a cd that will make a lousy system sound great (in most cases).
for me, if you are groovin to your fav music then the system becomes less noticeable (of course we are talking decent systems as we all have anyway now, or even 35 years ago).

it is a hobby after all, not a scientific study.  although personally, i think we all like to think we are progressing in our systems resolving powers (i mean strictly frequency response not ability to discern quality playback) meanwhile our ears are resolving less and less as we get older.  we change and our systems change and along the way hopefully our toes are tappin and we are jammin to the tunes.

i am an instructor for my company and in the recent class we had young technicians and one guy aged 28 had never heard of supertramp, so i turned him on to the 4 cds i have and he copied them.  funny how soon groups are forgotten to the next generation. 

anyway, enough waxing poetically for tonight!  cheers!

t melex