Awesome Audiophile Snake Oil

Great article. I've heard the Fleetwood Sound speakers mentioned in the article at a shop. I was curious since I went to hs where they are made. Sounded phenomenal, but they had some pricey tube amps driving them.

that was great, thanks

haha i totally recognize this impulse:

I find myself defending whoever is on the other end of the spectrum from the person I am talking to. When audiophiles start babbling on about old blues records or some dishwater new classical, I make it clear that I love Doja Cat. When someone tells me they are perfectly happy with Spotify and earbuds, I plead with them to listen to a live recording played through a decent setup.

The issue is people who insist there’s only one way to enjoy stuff.

Enjoyed that a lot. Cheers.

(My uncle bequeathed me a Garrard deck. It's huge and wooden and gorgeous - as much table as deck. I *must* get the thing fixed up and ready to use.)

You should! I would love to get one and have it refurbished.

Seconding that! It's a shame that the industry decided black metal was the standard for audio equipment; I have an old Sherwood receiver that's dying and not worth the cost of repair, but am loathe to give it up because I love the wood and chrome. (Well, that I get a lot of use out of the "mono" switch.)

In general that gear is worth fixing, it's usually the capacitors and a complete replacement set would cost under $40 in most cases. The time and ability to fix is a greater barrier, but if you have a soldering-iron savvy friend it could be doable.
I've probably already mentioned it but I got my amp, a 1979 Marantz 2285B receiver, for $150 from a local repair shop about 17 years ago. I've spent maybe $80 in replacement components and lamps, and probably 15 hours of pulling it apart and replacing stuff, but it's worth ten times that now.
https://i.imgur.com/v5YGxUt.jpg

Love that era of Marantz! And the Nak at the bottom.

Did enjoy the SFJ article. I should experience the SET-horn thing once in my life, just to see what it's all about.

You've inspired me: I've just found a local(ish) guy who repairs old decks and valve amps etc. Have emailed to see if he's interested in fixing her up. Fingers crossed. (I mean, I'd basically have to remodel my lounge to mount the bloody thing but I'll worry about that if I get it sorted!)

remember wandering around ginza late at night and randomly popping into a record bar (i think it was called something generic, like "ginza record bar"). dimly lit, smokey. we ordered a cocktail, the proprietor put on the first record for the night. it blew me away - the vocalist on the song sounded like she was next to my ear. didn't get a chance to shazam the song. he put on 'eye in the sky' by alan parsons project next, first time i ever heard the song (by this time i had gotten my shazam out). i suspect people on this board will regard it as bland MOR, but i'll forever remember/associate it with that sound system. i made a note of the speakers, tannoy westminsters, and i looked them up later - $30k MSRP, each. run on mcintosh equipment, naturally. the bar itself couldn't have been more than 3-400 square feet, railroad style. one wonders how those speakers would sound in a properly large room, but maybe that was part of the magic - $30k speakers vibrating a shoebox.

i have this documentary in my queue on youtube, been meaning to watch. my sense is that even if you are skeptical of the money that was spent on this, it is a beautiful gesture.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4b2IOOhJmxw

xp to myself - here it is! ginza music bar.

https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g14129573-d8148325-Reviews-Ginza_Music_Bar-Ginza_Chuo_Tokyo_Tokyo_Prefecture_Kanto.html

https://media.timeout.com/images/105234750/image.jpg

i think we ended up visiting 4-5 music bars in and around tokyo that trip, this is the one that stood out to me - all the others had (relatively) average sound.

It's a shame that the industry decided black metal was the standard for audio equipment

When I read this sentence I had a hilarious (to me) vision of someone testing out their brand new hyper-expensive stereo by popping on Mayhem's De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas instead of, you know, Donald Fagen's The Nightfly or something.

龜, I am planning a trip to Japan at some point and one of the highlights for me will be hitting record bars. Thanks for the recommendation.

James Murphy's wine bar in Williamsburg had McIntosh gear when I went a number of years ago.

go Chinaski!!

went to a whole mess of jazz kissa etc but my favorite was violon, a classical-oriented one: https://experience-suginami.tokyo/2015/09/violon/

very cool article, love to think about listening environments. my own ideal is a mix of corner and cathedral that I can stay inside of forever.

Lion Classical Cafe in Tokyo is one of the best places I've ever visited.

https://thevinylfactory.com/features/meikyoku-kissa-lion-tokyo/

i'm enjoying the article so far, but this sentence

I bought a Lodge cast-iron skillet that cost about forty dollars. It heats up quickly and evenly and can be easily cleaned.

is a huge hit to his credibility

In what way?

I've been cast-iron agnostic for years mainly because I didn't have the patience to keep my previous one seasoned. I got a new one recently and after the initial seasoning it has been great.

1) maybe inflation has taken its toll, but a lodge cast iron costs maybe $15 at target. online the prices hover around $30-40 (with free shipping) because the shipping cost is built into the price. cast iron is very dense, so it costs a lot to ship!

2) cast iron does not heat up quickly - it takes a lot longer vis a vis aluminum or carbon steel. this article appears to be the victim of internet formatting but:

Cast iron has a higher heat capacity than copper, so it takes more energy to heat a pound of cast iron to a given temperature than a pound of copper. More energy is stored in each pound of the cast iron. Aluminum has a higher heat capacity than iron (it stores more heat per pound) but is much less dense than iron. For a given volume, therefore, cast iron stores more heat than aluminum.  Because cast iron pans typically weigh much more and are thicker than the same size pan in another material, they tend to store more energy when heated. This combination of high heat capacity and weight means that cast iron takes a long time to get hot. Once hot, however, a cast iron pan usually contains more thermal energy than other pans at the same temperature — a significant cooking advantage. Cast iron has unparalleled searing power because it has a lot of available thermal energy – and unlike almost any other type of pan, cast iron pans won’t warp when left dry on a burner to heat up. Thick and heavy cast iron will remain flat and true.

3) cast iron does not heat up evenly - it has hot spots! same article:

The popular wisdom that cast iron cookware provides even heat is misleading. A cast iron skillet placed on a gas burner will develop distinct hot spots where the flame touches the pan. If you heat the center of a cast iron pan you will find that the heat travels slowly towards the pan’s edge, with a significant temperature gradient between the center and the edge. The pan will heat very unevenly, because cast iron is a relatively poor heat conductor compared to materials like aluminum and copper. An aluminum pan will heat more evenly because heat travels quickly across aluminum. Because of poor heat conduction, undersized burners are incompatible with cast iron cooking. The edges of a large cast iron pan will never get hot on a tiny burner. On properly sized burners you can minimize hot spots by heating slowly, but the best way to evenly heat cast iron is in the oven.

and images!

https://cookingissues.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/casr_iron_gas.jpg

Interesting. I wouldn't advocate it as the best cookware (stainless coated aluminum core), but I like having it as another tool.

yeah that non-stick analogy is very bad, teflon is a really practical technology which unfortunately also causes cancer and fills the world with forever chemicals

I guess also the point of the article was lost on me, maybe because I'm reading it on a busy day at work but... Japanese jazz clubs are cool? Vintage hifi enthusiasts hold semi-religious beliefs as to the superiority of old analogue tech? Their systems sound great? You can get a wonderful home hifi setup without paying a lot and it might increase your enjoyment of music?

isn't the point that cast iron is the "low tech" version of non-stick? like except with eggs and acidic things, the seasoned coat works like a nonstick surface. the trade-offs have to do with the time and energy of maintaining this durable long-term item, versus a simpler thing that breaks down and has to be thrown in the landfill and replaced (and the manufacture of which has frightening toxic byproducts).

also you can start things on the stove and move them to the oven, which is cool.

eggs are definitely nonstick on cast iron! you just need to use a little butter or oil.

i kept holding my breath waiting for him to take the doja cat side of things when hanging out with these guys and their $500,000 systems. play some beyonce, some real maximalist bangers that move a lot of air. instead he kept on bringing intimate test recordings of tender strokings of guitar string, maybe a guy on the drums holding one of those things that looks like a miniature leaf rake, real audiophile stuff. i thought he was going to be a bomb thrower but looks like he got captured instead!

shaggy dog story about his nice new pair of speakers.

hello yes i would like to play kesha - your love is my drug (dave aude remix) on your $600,000 system

i do wonder how music that is basically just all-digital ableton output or whatever sounds like on a very efficient system.

crunchy

So I got a question
Do you wanna have a listening party in my basement?
Do I make your heart beat like $808K?
Is my love, your drug?

otm about all these guys playing just some nimbly
plucked guitar jazz jams or a prestige Coltrane, I’d like an article where a guy has one of these systems and it’s like “mike took me to his basement and pulled out a black vinyl copy of senjutsu by Iron Maiden…”

Not quite the same thing, but the last time I visited my audiophile pal in Hertfordshire, I made sure to play some filthy electronic nonsense and it sounded wonderful.
Pan Sonic, holy moly.

But then he's got some sort of monster kilowatt solid-state Bryston into Wilson Benesch arrangement, not the tubes-breathing-delicately-into-horns end of things.

yeah, as might be obvious i'm on the audiophile side of the spectrum, have heard/read about the SET tube amps into horns, but have never really been that interested because it seemed like the range of music you could actually play on them was so limiting.

back when i was still actively trying out gear i got a new DAC that did DSM decoding and somehow waded into the middle of a big PCM vs DSD fight. sort of related to the mofi debacle, although in that instance i think the analog end-to-end guys were poo-pooing on dsd, even though it turns out none of them could hear the difference. anyway, the DSD guys all say how DSD is vastly superior to PCM (which i understand is what the vast majority of music is recorded in), you simply have to try it out, etc. being curious, i downloaded a DSD sampler. hoo boy, i turned it off after 10 seconds. i can't comment on the classical music stuff, but the "pop/rock" tracks? imagine building one of these systems and only being able to listen to the 80 albums ever recorded in proper end to end DSD. classic case of tail wagging the dog, exactly what SFJ means when he says "He also clearly loves music (oddly not a prerequisite in this cohort)", i think, but if any of those guys are reading this, no disrespect, don't mean to yuck your yum, you do you!

(oh and i think i was able to a/b the pcm and dsd version of these tracks, couldn't tell any difference with these tin ears, natch)

I would think that horn speakers would work great with modern music. Horns are designed to really project music - the knock on them (at least from the anti-horn crowd) is that they project music in an unnatural way. PA systems often use horns or at least did at one time, so if you are going to a concert or a club, you might be hearing horns. The legendary system at Paradise Garage were based on Klipschorns:

To procure quality sound for their 5,000 square foot dance floor, and after many experiments and tinkering, the finalized setup is something to behold:

Four Waldorf bass speakers, the high ends consisting of the largest available JBL horn lens, which electronically crossed over at 800 hz. The speakers featured a custom sub-bass horn called the “Levan Horn,” which consisted of two parts: a main cabinet, with a large “W” type hyperbolic folded horn, fueled by two 500 watt custom-built 18” drivers — and an extension which bolted onto the mouth of the “W” horn. The extension alone was 8 feet wide and 3 1/2 ft. high. That 28 square feet of mouth could apparently overwhelm a quartet of scaled-up Klipschorns all playing together at once (!!!!!!!!!).

Oops, cut out the previous paragraph:

The garage commissioned master carpenter and sound designer Richard Long and Al Fierstein, who built wooden speaker boxes by hand. They drew from the design of Klipsch cabinets, and remained in constant communication during the Garage’s operation for tuning and retuning. Justin Berkmann, founder of Ministry of Sound in London best explained it: “Rather than EQing the system, they EQ’d the room. So they took the whole concept of a sound system and turned it on its head by fitting the room around the sounds rather than the other way.”

best sounding setup I ever had was a Sun Audio 2A3 amp (2 1/2 watts) into Lowther drivers in back-loaded horns. listened to everything on that and it was glorious, so it wasn't limiting for me (though the low end wasn't the best). worst thing was the tiny sweet spot, real head-in-a-vise listening position.

those speakers developed issues, and I'm solid state into Eggleston speakers these days. my audiophilia is pretty basic: best speakers I can do, setup to the best I/the room can do (no extraordinary measures, though I am tempted to try an inexpensive DAC with DSP for EQ).

A mate of mine was looking for a new phono preamp and we went to the local hifi store. They had set up a few for him to test with $30k speakers. He played an old LP copy of PiL's "Flowers Of Romance" and it sounded INCREDIBLE, it made sense in a way it never had before. Then we went to the next room and listened to The The's "Mind Bomb" on $250k speakers. You know the picture of the guy in the Maxell ad? That was me, no kidding. But these are also acoustically perfect rooms, something I'll never have (let alone insanely expensive speakers). But it was fun and I can see why it's aspirational for some folks.

xp Yeah, tiny sweet spot is one of the issues I was referring to. Horn speakers project music like a hose, so if you step outside that stream, the sound supposedly decays. Non-horn drivers also have sweet spots, but they supposedly aren't as limited because they aren't projecting the music in the same way.

Properly set up PAs often get around this issue with arrays of horns so the sound is not projecting from a single source.

i want to get back to cast iron skillets, i know the aesthetic from the outside looking in can be worryingly akin to a beardman artisanal thing but they're very useful if taken care of properly. just my 2 cents.

they're also not that hard to take care of, you can use dish soap to clean them no sweat, the 'no soap' thing is from back when soap had lye in it and could actually strip the seasoning.

probably the only thing you don't want to do in a cast iron is to reduce a can of tomatoes to sauce in it, the acidity will strip the seasoning.

no citrus either! I love our cast iron

just added "go to a kissa" to my life goals

great for pancakes, in my experience!

The analog pancakes experience!

Stephen ushered me into his kitchen and removed a soft, lint-free cloth from a bowl to reveal a perfectly mixed, pleasingly yellow batter. "The turmeric gives it its hue," he said, ladling batter with a handcrafted wooden spoon into a lightly heated cast iron pan.

i have recently realized that, after building/tweaking my system for a long time, it's over - this is the system i'll have until some component dies. i love how it sounds and i got some good deals on clearance/used along the way. but at this point, i think anything further would be getting into mania.

setup:
cambridge audio cx60 integrated amp

rega p1 turntable (about 15ish years old)

audio technica VM540ML Microline MM Cartridge (best cartridge i've ever owned including the popular ortofon 2m blue)

hsu research subwoofer

dali zensor 1 bookshelf speakers

rotel cd11 cd player

google chromecast audio > schitt modi DAC

nice

Mine is maybe more silly in terms of complexity, but more basic gear. When I finally put in the Kenwood VR-705 after 3-4 unsatisfying "main" amps, and added the subwoofer, everything clicked

Kenwood AR-404 as the main channel-changing amp, fed by a GLI MX99 Pro mixer. Channels on the mixer are a Technics 1700, an Onkyo tape deck, and the laptop out w/Dragonfly. Another input on this Kenwood is for the dedicated "fancy turntable" MMF-5 with Cambridge Audio preamp that I use for ripping vinyl. I can also use the radio receiver on this.

That Kenwood runs the living room speakers, and then there is a separate out from that Kenwood to another Kenwood VR-705 that runs the listening room speakers exclusively. I have a remote that adjusts the volume on both amps at once, a handy feature.

oh and the speakers are Paradigms, smaller bookshelf ones for the living room and Studio 20 V.3 for the listening room