BS Button List of worthy Myths

[ClaudeJ1]

17 hours ago, Chief bonehead said:

You understand you are talking about Paul W Klipsch. Lots of people who were very involved in this industry when it started knew that his character and integrity were impeccable. Flawed yes and open minded. So if “audiophiles” found his statements irritating, then irritate away. 

Unlike the "McIntosh" amp curves you could get done on any amplifier when their techs were on dealer tours, speaker curves are never flat. In fact PWK was the only on that I knew of that showed and used the term "Peak to Trough Ratio" about speakers. IOW, the really BIG Wiggles!

 

I see an appropriate Analogy to Lie Detector Test plots. Poetic, don't you think?

 

The Yellow button LIVES!

[ClaudeJ1]

22 hours ago, Travis In Austin said:

His Dope From Hope articles announcing changes to the Heritage models are very illustrative of his thought process on what justified a change, whether it be drivers, balancing networks, etc. The specific ones I recall all made a reference to testing, sometimes followed up by subjective listening, to justify the change he was announcing. 

I had most of the DFH dealer publications when I ordered "the Klipsch papers" in the 70's. My favorite was the "Ultimate LSH loudspeaker" making fun of a statement by Bob Carver.

 

Of the "flawed" statement by Roy concerning PWK, was his refusal to accept that Time Alignment made a difference, concluding that 2 milliseconds was the Threshold of Audibility on Music. See "the Shuffleboard Experiment" in the DFH.

 

When I met him he told me he didn't like the Compact Disk, either, as it was overkill and unnecessary in the Signal to Noise Ratio department being 30 db better than tape. Wrong or not, he still made a good point about what was required, vs. wasted, which has always been his Credo as an Engineer, as far as I know.

 

 

[Chief bonehead]

4 hours ago, ClaudeJ1 said:

 

 

Of the "flawed" statement by Roy concerning PWK, was his refusal to accept that Time Alignment made a difference, concluding that 2 milliseconds was the Threshold of Audibility on Music. See "the Shuffleboard Experiment" in the DFH.

 

 

 

Actually no. when I worked with mr K and As with anything, data was necessary and later he came to understand the value of time and phase alignment. He was very good friends with heyser and they corresponded with each. 

[garyrc]

3 hours ago, ClaudeJ1 said:

 

No speaker company EVER puts IM distortion in their specs because the numbers would be too Gross to publish!

 

One did.  Guess which? 

 

If I remember correctly, the spec sheet said:

Klipschorn, at 100 dB, Total Modulation Distortion = 1%

Cornwall, at 90 dB, Total Modulation Distortion = 3%

With identical drivers, the difference might be attributed  to horn loaded v.s. direct radiator woofers, and possibly partly to the different midrange horn.  I'm only guessing that the measurements were taken at 1 meter.  Could be wrong.

 

Would someone with the old spec sheets (from the 1970s, I think), please check this?  My memory for material read about 45 years ago is not infallible.  Thanks!

 

Also, I found some of my notes from a review in about 1986 in which the Khorn, at 100 dB, with an input of Middle C mixed with 41 Hz, produced 0.9% IM.  How close to the spec sheet could it be?

 

How about the one, often revealed, that really is not nearly as important as IM, namely THD in the bass range?  At 100 dB, the reviewer got for the AR9-8LS (considered a good to excellent speaker by middlebrow dealers) 11%.  For the Klipschorn, also at 100 dB ... 0.5%

 

And so it goes.

[ClaudeJ1]

3 hours ago, Chief bonehead said:

Actually no. when I worked with mr K and As with anything, data was necessary and later he came to understand the value of time and phase alignment. He was very good friends with heyser and they corresponded with each. 

He had not evolved with those thought yet, early August of 1985.

[mikebse2a3]

3 hours ago, garyrc said:

One did.  Guess which? 

 

If I remember correctly, the spec sheet said:

Klipschorn, at 100 dB, Total Modulation Distortion = 1%

Cornwall, at 90 dB, Total Modulation Distortion = 3%

With identical drivers, the difference might be attributed  to horn loaded v.s. direct radiator woofers, and possibly partly to the different midrange horn.  I'm only guessing that the measurements were taken at 1 meter.  Could be wrong.

 

Would someone with the old spec sheets (from the 1970s, I think), please check this?  My memory for material read about 45 years ago is not infallible.  Thanks!

 

This was from a Klipsch Brochure I believe from 8/83

 

 

[Travis In Austin]

Dope From Hope, notice the date - 1972. 

 

To duplicate a reviewer's curve he had to but a speaker in the center of a 4,000 sq. foot room, on a pedestal, with the microphone behind the speaker. 

 

Another reviewer that PWK ran across said that distortion increase only slightly with power level and that modulation distortion was "inaudible." Then he goes to point out that tests showed that total distortion was nearly proportional to power level, and that modulation distortion usually exceeds harmonic distortion and that it was certainly audible and "irritating."

 

[Travis In Austin]

1972 - still evaluating claims:

 

[Travis In Austin]

On time delay in 1977, referring to his '72 AES paper on the same subject. His studies and others, showed, two, three or 4 milliseconds of time delay are inaudible, provided distortion is low.

 

 

He just bought a new HP Spectrum Analyzer (that one was a ton of money in the day) to have the sensitivity for him to dig deeper yet into horn throat distortion.

 

What was the alternative to eliminate 0.002 - 0.003 second time delay at that time?????? Align direct radiators to the point of no time delay and get this:

 

 

"It is just good judgment." 

[Travis In Austin]

The Ultimate LSH* Amplifier/Loudspeaker AES article by O. Gadfly Hurtz mentioned by @ClaudeJ1:

 

 

 

 

 

The quote from Carver, cited for the proposition in the article that to achieve greater sound quality you need to lower sensitivity.

 

So here is PWK, sorry, I mean Mr. Hurtz, is addressing several people, including Carver and his mega Phase Linear amps, who are out there to justify why you need that power to have good sound, and addressing an amp as a "major breakthrough."

 

This was in the AES Journal, a peer reviewed publication. This is how "bullshit" got addressed by PWK, you didn't get flashed a BS button, you got the puffery and claim of a major breakthrough that was merely equivalent to "milking a mouse" sent all across the world. 

 

When he spoke to the people in his field, they listened. I'm not sure how many other people in audio science would have been able to submit a satirical article to AES and have them publish it. 

 

"Milking A Mouse", another metaphor. PWK had so many metaphors they are referred to as Klipschisims.

 

*Loud speaker and space heater

[Rolox]

Ahahahaha

 

you people really need to get out more. and use your ears. it's not that hard.

 

Break-in: it's a fact. Put a brand new midrange driver diaphragm only on one channel, keeping the other driver old, and your stereo image will be skewed to a side for a few days, because the brand new diaphragm will be harsher. Then it will come back to normal. Same goes for the capacitors in your crossovers.

 

Cables and power cables: you really can't tell until you haven't tried. No need to spend fortunes.

 

Separates: oh come on now. While they don't ALWAYS offer better sound, they very often do, because there is less compromises being made specially at the lower end of the market. Using separates is usually a good idea.

 

I could go on forever. 

 

You know, things have changed since the apparition of the "BS" button. Even at Klipsch...

[jjptkd]

"All amplifiers sound the same"       Bob Carver who's been "voicing" his amplifiers for 40 years...

 

 

[ClaudeJ1]

7 hours ago, Rolox said:

Ahahahaha

 

you people really need to get out more. and use your ears. it's not that hard. Bullshit comment, we stay in to listen.

 

Break-in: it's a fact. Put a brand new midrange driver diaphragm only on one channel, keeping the other driver old, and your stereo image will be skewed to a side for a few days, because the brand new diaphragm will be harsher. Then it will come back to normal. Same goes for the capacitors in your crossovers. It may be a fact, but it's a very MINOR fact, less than 1%, which makes it 99% Bullshit, especially about Capacitors. MYTH

 

Cables and power cables: you really can't tell until you haven't tried. No need to spend fortunes. Not need to try at all. PWK said to me, concerning my observation of  Khorns with Monster Cables in the Hallway at the Factory in Hope: "It's the Marketing guys doing. It's a waste of good copper to drive a a 30 Gauge Voice Coil in the Woofer section." The most prevalent Bullshit.

 

Separates: oh come on now. While they don't ALWAYS offer better sound, they very often do, because there is less compromises being made specially at the lower end of the market. Using separates is usually a good idea. MYTH. Modern components, like AVR's of a higher price point work just as good or better than separates on high sensitivity speakers. 99% of consumers the get separates do it to use more powerful amplifiers they need for 86 db speakers. I went the other way with my all horn systems, I did separates to use LESS power and still have a top end signal processor. Past a certain price point, they would all be undisguisable when tested with an ABX box. There are fewer compromises in a unit like the NAD M33 because the connections between signal and power amp as short as humanly possible. NO Cables between, just very short internal connections.

 

I could go on forever. So could everyone else on the WEB the persist in propagating the MYTHS.

 

You know, things have changed since the apparition of the "BS" button. Even at Klipsch...MYTHS haven't change that much. Wrong again.

If it only affects the "sound" by one db or so, then it's still a very small percentage of the output of the non-burned in device. Just like they used to say the first 1,000 miles in a car's engine were part of the break in period and the oil should be changed, then you could run the engine to the red line, but not before break in.

 

Since most cars in "those days" would run for 100,000 miles before a final visit to the junk yard (unlike speakers) in less than 10 years, real MECHANICAL break in was still a very real thing, but for only 1% of the miles.

For speakers, Break in TIME is a possible exaggeration created to minimize dealer returns and give the customer more time to acclimate their Ears. So it's mostly MYTH after that first 1% is all they need to "loosen things up a bit."

[Curious_George]

I wonder why capacitors (supposedly, I don’t believe it) have to break in, but resistors do not? More myths… 

[Tom05]

The biggest myth of all . The myth of elite sound quality from Bose . It’s true  what Claude said  “you have to admire the Bose Marketing “

[Audible Nectar]

7 hours ago, Curious_George said:

I wonder why capacitors (supposedly, I don’t believe it) have to break in, but resistors do not? More myths… 

 

Teflon capacitors have a break-in period - a rather lengthy one too, and it's not subtle. Some of the early versions (see Cardas Golden Ratios, holy smokes) have such a lengthy time on break-in that manufacturers and sellers started burning those types in at voltage before sending them out (like V-Cap does now), because in some instances they were never run in long enough to know what they sounded like. Who the ---- is gonna run a piece of gear for over 1000 hours to finally evaluate the damned thing? I've done several gears with teflons and they are the craziest things I have ever seen in this business. 

 

I am convinced the Cardas caps "failed" in the market because nobody waited long enough to hear how good they were. This is plainly evident in reviews. Mind you I have played with a bunch of these, and when I can nod along with cap comments over and over on a review, knowing full well what the reviewer is talking about, well, let's say I've heard some caps 🙂

 

I just completed the setup on a NOSValves NBS preamp with a set of Cardas Golden Ratios from NOS stock - I logged 1500 hours on that preamp before they "bloomed". No ---- I had replacement caps all lined up because I gave up on them - literally thought I had something wrong with the unit potentially, and in a final power on and series of checks before I boxed the thing up - they finally bloomed, and as stated previously, it's NOT subtle.

 

I think the teflon cap "takes the prize" when it comes to legitimate break-in characteristic. It's like a "gestation period". Nothing like those in this biz whatsoever. They're almost maddening, but worth the wait 🙂

 

Everything else in the realm of electronics had much more subtle aspects to this. In areas where I have done this repeatedly (see the wholesale replacement of the drivers on all of my Heritage to MAHL/A55G/Eminence MFG equivalents as an example). I got the opportunity to really "play" with this aspect of new drivers, as with each pair reconstructed I was able to evaluate those speakers over a 30-50 hour period - over and over again, though each of the four builds. On each, it was clearly identifiable how the imaging would "lock in" over that first 20ish hours or so. Not too much "change" in as much the perceptible frequency response, but the image would start to really show up about 20ish hours in, when we discover what a difference those tweeters really make. The speakers got "taller".

 

To a lesser degree I do see this in newly built components, like power amplifiers, where I don't really judge the amp until it starts to show more of that "flow" that the break-in imparts. It's very subtle and I've yet to meet an amp (absent teflon, of course) that "changed the game" from that process. There is a change over a couple hundred hours though.....

 

Being one who DOES respect the break-in process, I can pretty much say in most instances that you're not likely to see huge changes that warrant a return of new gear vs. not.  Like a new mattress I would always have the client fidget with the system for 30 days, so we can find out as much as we can about how well (or not) things are working. Most who do this haven't had the repeated over and overs with similar gears like I have (I've broken in THREE VRD sets from new, four Heritage speaker rebuilds just recently with same parts over and over) as well as MC30's rebuilt over and over and over, so I've got lots of practice and repeated looks at this. It IS a real thing but in all but the case of teflon, and maybe those Duelands and similar "esoteric" it's not likely to be enough of a game changer to go "hey, that break in made these a keeper". The only component I can definitively say that applied was with the teflon capacitors in audio path/coupling positions, with that exception the concept is really pretty much over estimated in it's importance. I would tell anyone with new gears to use/keep/run it for a while and see what you can learn, even if initial impressions aren't great. You're likely to get better benefit on a set of new Cornwalls by trying a few varying positions along the walls, or angles, etc that the break in will ever be, especially once you pass 20+ hours or so.

[veloceleste]

.

[Shakeydeal]

37 minutes ago, veloceleste said:

My troll question of the day:  Does your system sound better after being allowed to “warm up” after a certain amount of time? Can any sonic change, if said to be noticed, be proven through measurement? 🥸

Absolutely. My amp sounds dramatically differently after being on for a couple of hours. Not an hour, that won’t do it.

 

As a general rule, most electronics sound better after an hour of warm up. This amp has proven to be an outlier for me.

 

And for sure, a stylus needs an album side to come on song.

 

Now excuse me while I don my flameproof underwear……..

[Islander]

17 hours ago, ClaudeJ1 said:

If it only affects the "sound" by one db or so, then it's still a very small percentage of the output of the non-burned in device. Just like they used to say the first 1,000 miles in a car's engine were part of the break in period and the oil should be changed, then you could run the engine to the red line, but not before break in.

 

Since most cars in "those days" would run for 100,000 miles before a final visit to the junk yard (unlike speakers) in less than 10 years, real MECHANICAL break in was still a very real thing, but for only 1% of the miles.

For speakers, Break in TIME is a possible exaggeration created to minimize dealer returns and give the customer more time to acclimate their Ears. So it's mostly MYTH after that first 1% is all they need to "loosen things up a bit."

 

What keeps this debate going is that it’s not that easy to get a visual indication that a component is sufficiently run in, unlike with engines.  As a motorcycle mechanic who sometimes worked on racing engines, my own and others, I learned to check for full break-in of parts, to ensure that maximum performance would be available.  When you build an engine, especially 2-stroke engines that can be quickly and easily disassembled, you can see whether the piston rings are fully seated, i.e., the full width of the rings is contacting the cylinder walls.  Before they’re fully seated, they won’t have their full sealing ability, so full compression won’t be reached.  This level of performance is more important in racing engines, of course, and they get inspected much more closely and frequently than engines for street use.

 

With the 2-stroke engines, you can even see the state of the piston rings without taking the engine apart, because you can just take off the exhaust pipes and look in through the exhaust ports to see the rings.  You can also inspect the cylinder walls, in case of a suspected seizure, for example.

 

Other parts break in, too, like brake pads.  Once again, you can just pop them out after they’ve been in use for a little while and see if they have contact all the way across their faces, or just at the edge, which obviously won’t give you full braking performance.

 

Contrast those things with speakers or phono cartridges.  In the audio parts, there’s no visual indication whether the parts just came out of the box or have been in use for some time.  You can’t just grab a cart’s cantilever and give it a wiggle.  And as for capacitors, we hear about how capacitors have to “form”, which happens after they’re used a few times.  

 

Claude, you must be familiar with this term from photo flash units, which use capacitors to build up the high voltage that’s then dumped in a few milliseconds to provide the bright flash needed to give the desired illumination.  In flash owner’s manuals and discussions, we read about how capacitors need to form after having been out of use for a while, so they should be charged and discharged a few times before actually using them to take a picture.

 

Do audio capacitors also need to form?  And is there a way to know if this ideal state has been achieved?  This would suggest that capacitors perform better when they’re continually in use, warmed up, in other words.  This could be why some solid state amplifiers are described as needing a full 24 hours to warm up.  Since the temperature of every component in the amplifier should have stabilized within a few hours at most, this suggests that temperature is not the actual factor that indicates whether the amplifier is ready to operate at its optimum level.

 

To some people, the difference between a fully warmed-up amplifier and a cold one is like the difference between day and night, but to others, myself included, the difference is not that obvious. Reviews sometimes mention this, but don’t provide any test numbers to back up this assertion, so we’re back to “the opinion of the golden ear”.

 

And what about tube amplifiers?  It must take some time for all that iron to reach optimum temperature, or does it make any difference at all?

 

I’d rather listen to music than worry about things that are inaudible to many of us.

[ODS123]

sheesh...  Breakin-in (beyond a few minutes); Amp warm up (beyond a few moments) are pretty much acknowledged myths.  What I see from break-in believers above are quasi sciency-esque but largely nonsensical or anecdotal accounts where no effort is made to account for bias.

 

From the break-in believers, please explain why CT scan, MRI, and ultra-sound imagining devices - all of which have tons and tons of electronic components - don't require break-in' ? ...Ask technicians who operate these if their images get better as these incredibly complex machines break-in?  ..I'm not talking about stress-testing sub-assemblies during manufacturer to assure reliability, i'm talking about break-in after it's manufactured, passes quality/operational tests, then arrives to a radiology dept.

 

Or how about electronic components and sub-assemblies in aircraft? Again, not talking about stress testing during manufacture, but "break-in".  Do you ever hear aircraft manufactures say, "the aircraft is not going to be maximally responsive to pilot input until the thousands of micro-controllers, relays, switches, servo-motors, capacitors, wire, etc.. break-in.  ..So expect a slightly sugglish aileron roll-rate, yaw from rudder input and even pitch response from the elevator will be a bit slow for a few hundred hours. ...You know, Mr. pilot... It just needs to break-in!  ..So don't expect maximum precision as you fly this aircraft - along w/ it's 200 passengers - for maybe 1000 hours."

 

C'mon people..  don't be so gullible.