Audio Critic the 22 r schematic

Issue No. 22

Display until arrival of

Issue No. 23.

Is this the format of the future in power amplifiers?

(See the analog electronics reviews.)

Retail price: U.S. $7.50, Can. $8.50

In this issue:

A number of exceptionally competent (and in some
cases controversial) loudspeaker designs are
evaluated, with special emphasis on subwoofers.

In an editorial that will raise some eyebrows, and
even some blood pressures, your Editor analyzes
the hypocrisy of the high priests of the High End.

We continue our survey of amplifiers and preamps.
The question of when, if ever, absolute polarity is

audible is clarified in a letter from a top authority.
Plus other test reports, all our regular

columns, and the return of our popular
CD capsule reviews (oodles of them).

pdf 1

Contents

Paradoxes and Ironies of the Audio World:

The Doctor Zaius Syndrome

By Peter Aczel, Editor and Publisher

Loudspeakers Are Getting Better and Better

By Peter Aczel, Editor and Publisher

12 ACI "Spirit"
13 Bag End ELF Systems S10E-C and S18E-C (continued from Issue No. 21)
14 What the Bag End ELF System Does and Doesn't (sidebar by Dr. David Rich)

15 Velodyne DF-661 (continued from Issue No. 21)
21 Velodyne Servo F-1500R
23 Win SM-8
43 Snell Acoustics Type A (last-minute mini preview)

Good Things Are Still Happening in
Analog Electronics

By Peter Aczel, Editor and Publisher
& David A. Rich, Ph.D., Contributing Technical Editor

25 Line-Level Preamplifier: Aragon 18k (Reviewed by Peter Aczel)
27 Line-Level Preamplifier: Bryston BP20 (Reviewed by Peter Aczel)
27 Mono Power Amplifier: Marantz MA500 (Reviewed by Peter Aczel)
28 Stereo Power Amplifier: PSE Studio IV (Reviewed by David Rich)
29 Line-Level Preamplifier: Rotel RHA-10 (Reviewed by Peter Aczel)
30 Stereo Power Amplifier: Rotel RHB-10 (Reviewed by Peter Aczel)
30 Passive Control Unit: Rotel RHC-10 (Reviewed by Peter Aczel)
31 Stereo Power Amplifier: Sunfire (Preview by Peter Aczel and David Rich)

Catching Up on the Digital Scene

By Peter Aczel, Editor and Publisher
& David A. Rich, Ph.D., Contributing Technical Editor

33 Compact Disc Player: Denon DCD-2700 (Reviewed by David Rich)
35 Outboard D/A Converter with Transport: Deltec Precision Audio PDM 2 and T1

(Reviewed by Peter Aczel)

36 Compact Disc Player: Enlightened Audio Designs CD-1000

(Reviewed by Peter Aczel)

41 Compact Disc Player: Marantz CD-63 and CD-63SE (Reviewed by David Rich)

Large-Screen TV for Home Theater:
Is a 40" Direct-View Tube Big Enough?

By Peter Aczel, Editor and Publisher

45 40" Direct-View Color TV: Mitsubishi CS-40601

Obstructionism By Tom Nousaine

Hip Boots Wading through the Mire of Misinformation in the Audio Press

Four commentaries by the Editor

Recorded Music Editor's Grab Bag of CDs, New or Fairly Recent

ISSUE NO. 22 • WINTER 1994-95 1

10

12

25

33

45

47
50

52

pdf 2

From the Editor/Publisher:

This issue is dated Winter 1994-95. The
last issue, No. 21, was dated Spring 1994.
That was late spring; this issue goes to

press in early winter, so the gap is smaller

than the apparent nine months but bad
enough. What are we doing about it? Lots
of things—but we have learned, painfully,
not to make promises before the implemen­tation is a reality. Three things are certain:
(1) something has to give; (2) we are here
to stay, regardless; (3) we are not chang­ing our editorial stance. That still leaves a
number of viable scenarios to choose from.

Issue No. 22

Winter 1994-95

Editor and Publisher
Contributing Technical Editor
Contributing Editor at Large
Technical Consultant
Columnist
Cartoonist and Illustrator
Business Manager

Peter Aczel

David Rich

David Ranada

Steven Norsworthy

Tom Nousaine

Tom Aczel

Bodil Aczel

The Audio Critic® (ISSN 0146-4701) is published quarterly for $24

per year by Critic Publications, Inc., 1380 Masi Road, Quakertown, PA

18951-5221. Second-class postage paid at Quakertown, PA. Postmaster:
Send address changes to The Audio Critic, P.O. Box 978, Quakertown,
PA 18951-0978.

The Audio Critic is an advisory service and technical review for
consumers of sophisticated audio equipment. Any conclusion, rating,
recommendation, criticism, or caveat published by The Audio Critic
represents the personal findings and judgments of the Editor and the
Staff, based only on the equipment available to their scrutiny and on
their knowledge of the subject, and is therefore not offered to the reader
as an infallible truth nor as an irreversible opinion applying to all extant
and forthcoming samples of a particular product. Address all editorial
correspondence to The Editor, The Audio Critic, P.O. Box 978,
Quakertown, PA 18951-0978.

Contents of this issue copyright © 1994 by Critic Publications, Inc. All rights
reserved under international and Pan-American copyright conventions. Repro­duction in whole or in part is prohibited without the prior written permission of
the Publisher. Paraphrasing of product reviews for advertising or commercial
purposes is also prohibited without prior written permission. The Audio Critic
will use all available means to prevent or prosecute any such unauthorized use
of its material or its name.

Subscription Information and Rates

First of all, you don't absolutely need one of our printed subscrip­tion blanks. If you wish, simply write your name and address as legibly
as possible on any piece of paper. Preferably print or type. Enclose with
payment. That's all. Or, if you prefer, use VISA or MasterCard, either
by mail or by telephone.

Secondly, we have only two subscription rates. If you live in the
U.S., Canada, or Mexico, you pay $24 for four consecutive issues
(scheduled to be mailed at approximately quarterly intervals). If you
live in any other country, you pay $38 for a four-issue subscription by
airmail. All payments from abroad, including Canada, must be in U.S.
funds, collectable in the U.S. without a service charge.

You may start your subscription with any issue, although we feel
that new subscribers should have a few back issues to gain a better un­derstanding of what The Audio Critic is all about. We still have Issues
No. 11, 13, 14, and 16 through 21 in stock. Issues earlier than No. 11
are now out of print, as are No. 12 and No. 15. Please specify which
issues you want (at $24 per four).

One more thing. We don't sell single issues by mail. You'll find
those at somewhat higher cost at selected newsdealers, bookstores, and
audio stores.

Address all subscriptions to The Audio Critic, P.O. Box 978,
Quakertown, PA 18951-0978. VISA/MasterCard: [phone].

2 THE AUDIO CRITIC

pdf 3

Box 978

Letters to the Editor

An archetypal letter we seem to get again and again lists in loving detail all the components in the
writer's system, down to interconnects and tiptoes. In nearly every case it's quite unclear what the

letter writer wants. Our official blessing? Recommended changes? Recognition as a blood brother?
Please, all you audio addicts, if you insist on talking about your equipment and want to get our
attention, make sure you explain how it all ties in with our editorial concerns. Letters printed here
may or may not be excerpted at the discretion of the Editor. Ellipsis (...) indicates omission. Address
all editorial correspondence to the Editor, The Audio Critic, P.O. Box 978, Quakertown, PA 18951.

The Audio Critic:

...I have read Issue No. 20 and
found it quite charming. Your elegant
chopping to pieces of the audio tweakies
was very nice indeed. I even enjoyed the
writings of the others, many of whom I

know quite well....

* * *

[Six weeks later:]

I have now read the several issues of
The Audio Critic which I recently re­ceived. They are very interesting, and I
want to congratulate you on getting some
very good people to write for you. I am a
bit surprised that you and some letter
writers refer to my modest work so fre­quently but appreciate the interest I have
generated. There are many issues that
need deep thought, and I am delighted to
have these discussions take place, since
the light envoked (with some heat) even­tually seems to pry out the truth.

It is very annoying to have persons
at the extreme fringes of an issue use
one's writings to prove their point with
elements of these writings taken out of
context. Unfortunately, it happens only
too often. Shades of gray are too often
made black or white by fanatics.

I was pleased to see complete para-

graphs from my paper quoted in context
printed in Issue No. 21. Additionally,
your interpretation, printed on page 8, of
what my article said is quite accurate but
a bit more truncated than I would have
preferred. If you have the patience, I sup­ply for you herewith my own summary of
my work on acoustic polarity.

For perspective, my paper on polari-

ty was presented at an AES convention in

1991 and was published in the Journal of
the Audio Engineering Society, Vol. 42,
No. 4, 1994 April. Needless to say, this is
a professional Journal for which all arti­cles are extensively reviewed for quality
and accuracy. A version of this paper was
also printed in Audio magazine with mi­nor modifications to satisfy a different
(and much larger) audience. Neverthe­less, the essential contents of the several
versions of the paper are identical.

I strongly suggest that anyone inter­ested in this matter read the original
paper and not someone else's interpreta­tion of what it might say. Some of the lis­tening tests are fairy easy to duplicate,
and the paper is written in very simple,
not highly technical, terms.

These comments cover both the
work I did in 1991 and my more recent

experiences (1993-1994), which are indi­cated by brackets [...].

There are four points made:

1. It is clearly possible to show the
audibility of acoustic polarity inversion
with steady-state tones (electronically
generated) or quasi-steady-state tones
(produced on physical instruments but
with steady monotone playing tech­niques). These are boring, nonmusical
tones. The audibility of acoustic polarity
inversion for these very special cases has
been documented by several authors. [I
have repeated this listening experience
many times with both headphones and
various loudspeakers, and the experience
is so definitive that there is no question
about its existence.]

2. When real musical performance
material is used in such tests, it is very,
very difficult (nearly impossible) to hear
the effects of polarity inversion. Our
large group tests showed only very slight
positive results with loudspeakers in a
highly idealized and simplified listening
environment. [These listening tests have
been repeated with headphones and a
great variety of loudspeakers, and it has
been confirmed that it is very, very
difficult to hear polarity inversion. Nei-

ISSUE NO. 22 • WINTER 1994-95 3

pdf 4

ther I nor anyone I know, and trust, has
heard acoustic polarity inversion with ste­reo program material in a normal listen­ing environment.]

3. Because it was so easy to hear
polarity inversion with simple steady­state tones and so difficult to hear with
real music, a large part of the paper is de­voted to trying to determine the reasons
why this is the case. A major part of the
paper suggests, but does not firmly
define, these reasons. More work is re­quired to define this very subtile psycho­acoustic effect. [While I have continued
some work in this area, I have not found
a consistent, definitive cause/effect rela­tionship. However, it is clear to me that
the audibility of acoustic polarity inver­sion is dependent on both the acuity of
the listener and the nature of the program
material, and not highly dependent on the

transducers involved.]

4. The issue of the audibility of
acoustic polarity inversion is not a matter
of black and white but of a series of
shades of gray, seemingly dependent
upon the simplicity or complexity of the
program material being auditioned, to
some small extent upon similar factors of
complexity of the listening environment,
and to some extent upon the sensitivity of
the listener. [While I would like to see
standardization of polarity in recording
and reproduction, it seems to be a minor
issue compared to others that affect
sound reproduction much more strongly.]

Several final issues need to be laid
to rest. One is the question of the use of
digital recordings and digital program
material to do listening experiments. The
essential results described above have
been duplicated with real instruments,
microphones, and headphones in real
time without the use of any recording de­vices. Some fanatics suggest that only
they can hear things because of their
equipment. This is total nonsense.

Some have suggested that the quali­ty of the loudspeaker and/or measure­ment techniques used for the original
paper were somehow defective. (This has
been implied by some snide remarks by
C. Johnsen in The Audio Critic letters
column as well as in Audio magazine.)
Our experiments were set up with ex­treme care, using a large array of the
very best professional-level instrumenta­tion equipment in my Electroacoustics
Laboratory. We are totally comfortable
that we know how to use this equipment,
have designed a suitable loudspeaker, and

4

have analyzed the results in an entirely
professional manner.

Finally, all of our findings have been

confirmed with headphones of various

sorts and a number of quite diversely de-

signed loudspeakers. The design of the
headphones or loudspeakers, within rea­son, is in my experience irrelevant to re­vealing the phenomenon.

I have over the years discussed these
issues with many AES members, includ­ing Richard Heyser and Stan Lipshitz. I
believe that we all would prefer that the
industry took care with polarity conven­tions. But, they have not for the most
part. Polarity is simply not a high-priority
issue for most professionals and certainly
not highly important for the enjoyment of
reproduced sound.

Nevertheless, I am actively carrying
out additional experiments and I hope to
pursue the matter with the goal of
finding sources/causes of audibility of
acoustic polarity inversion and to specify
it more clearly in a scientific, responsible
manner.

That's it for the time being. I suppose
that heated debate will continue, just as it
does with the cable/interconnect issue.

Very sincerely,
R. A. Greiner
Professor
Fellow of the AES

Thank you for the kind words about
The Audio Critic. We not only get "some

very good people" to write articles for us
but also, as your example proves, some
very good people to write letters to the
Editor. Indeed, your letter dots the i's
and crosses the t's on the subject of pola­rity for all rational audiophiles. Let the
tweaks read it and weep.

—Ed.

The Audio Critic:

I love you curmudgeons. You're
even occasionally correct—but then, so
are John [Atkinson] and Harry [Pearson].

I have no doubts as to your superior
theoretical and technical qualifications; I
also have no doubt that much subjective
reviewing necessarily utilizes poor meth­odology; however, why do you have
problems accepting the idea that some au-

dible differences are either difficult to
measure using conventional parameters,
or are the result of phenomena not yet
fully understood?

Howard Cowan
Woodland Hills, CA

/ have no problem whatsoever with

the ideas you state as long as those "au­dible differences" are indeed audible.
What I have a problem with is the state­ment that "I can hear the difference"
when you are unable to prove to me un-

der controlled conditions that you can ac-

tually hear it. If there really is a provably
audible difference, the cause may or may
not be easy to determine—that's a totally
separate issue.

As for John and Harry, see "The

Doctor Zaius Syndrome " (page 10).

—Ed.

The Audio Critic:

I have some ideas about how I think
a modern music-reproducing system
ought to be be configured to minimize
hardware interactions with the music in­formation. I think from what I've read in
this magazine, and from some compo­nents already placed on the market (Me­ridian comes to mind), that some very tal­ented people are thinking along these
same lines, and I'm wondering why we
(meaning the industry and the hobbyists)
are not headed a bit more quickly in this
direction.

Before I explain, let me admit (as
you're wont to question this) that I have
no credentials other than a 30-some-year
interest in the hobby. I'm also a fairly re­cent convert from the music-to-justify­hardware group.

My concept of a system would have
it divided into two basic modules. One
I'll call the control module, the other the
speaker-system module—or actually mod­ules, as there would be several of these.
The control module would look very
much like a home computer system or
possibly a TV set, and might actually be
integrated with one of these—or both.

The purely electronic functions, such as
preamp, tuner, processor, etc., would be
installed as industry-standard plug-in
boards, with all of their switching and
control functions accessed as icons on the
screen—very similar to Macintosh, or

IBM with Windows, menus. Access to

the sound system might actually be a
menu option on your computer terminal.
The actual hands-on control would be a
mouse or infrared remote.

The control module would provide
ports with a standard multipin socket, for
inputs from purely mechanical program
sources such as an LP turntable [buggy
whip on the space shuttle?—Ed], CD
transport, cassette transport, etc. The

THE AUDIO CRITIC

pdf 5

module would operate entirely in the dig­ital domain, which would eliminate the
need for expensive hardware to maintain
a clean signal, and the output, or outputs,
to the speaker systems would be via
fiber-optic cables. System upgrades
would be accomplished by replacing or
adding boards.

The speaker systems would each
contain a speaker, or speakers, a band­width-limited amp with equalization (if

necessary), an electronic crossover, and a

DAC circuit for the fiber-optic inputs.

These systems would be tailored for their
particular function, such as subwoofer

(similar to the Velodynes), main left and

right, and surround-type speakers. I visu­alize the surround speakers as designed
much like track lighting on the ceiling,
spherical enclosures that would be aim­able and could contain their electronics in
small boxes which could flush-mount in
the wall or ceiling and be attached by
short cables to the spheres. A full system
would consist of two subwoofers limited
to 80 Hz, two mains for left and right (80
Hz and up), and four of the ceiling­mounted speakers, center front and back,
and back left and right.

Now tell me, where am I wrong in
this concept? And, if it's basically accu­rate, why aren't we already there? Disre­garding the tubes-and-LP crowd, I think
we're hung up in oldthink. I, for one, find
the stack of black chassis and their tangle
of wires an eyesore and probably unnec­essary.

Hartley Anderson
Waco, TX

To quote that song from the big­band era, "I'll Buy That Dream." As you
point out, bits and pieces of the dream ex­ist already: powered subwoofers are the
rule rather than the exception; powered

full-range speakers are still the exception

but no longer a great rarity; Marantz
showed a computer front end as early as

1991; I could go on. It hasn't all come to-

gether, though; the demand isn't there;

"separates" are still the audiophile

norm.

Your basic concept is very much in
line with my own thinking, but I'll go
even further: A/D conversion should take
place right out of the microphone preamp
and the signal kept in the digital domain
throughout the recording, editing, mas­tering, duplicating, broadcasting, domes­tic playback, etc., processes, right up to
the D/A conversion just before the ampli-

ISSUE NO. 22 • WINTER 1994-95

fication stage of each separately powered

speaker channel—and that includes digi-

tal filters for all crossovers. (Maybe you,
too, had that in mind but didn 't quite say

it.) The speaker deployment should prob­ably follow the Lexicon model in its full­est form: front left, center, and rear, sub­woofer(s), side left and right, rear left
and right. But these are details. You've
got the main idea right—and you will see

it happen. The question is, when? Some
observers feel that the audio consumer
will continue to resist the idea of the sep­aration of amplifiers and speakers.

—Ed.

The Audio Critic:

...My question specifically has to do
with whether a pair of subwoofers is bet­ter than one subwoofer. This question is
generated by a recent article by John F.
Sehring, which appeared in Audio maga­zine (February 1994). In that article, Mr.
Sehring gives a number of reasons why
stereo subwoofing is superior. I wonder
whether The Audio Critic has an opinion
in this regard. I also realize that the an­swer might depend partly upon a number
of variables (placement, room size, room
acoustics, etc.), and therefore no univer­sal answer or rules of thumb may obtain.
However, any opinion at all would be
helpful.

I also have another question regard­ing the use of built-in amplifiers in sub­woofers. Some recent literature which I

received from VMPS suggested that
built-in amplifiers are a bad idea because

subwoofer vibrations will eventually sim­ply rattle them apart, as it were. Does this
turn out to be the case? Do the electronics

in powered subwoofers self-destruct after

a relatively short life span?

Please keep up the good work; your
magazine is a delight.

Sincerely,
David R. Reich
Auburn, NY

/ have always been of the opinion

that a pair of stereo subwoofers is prefer-

able to a single mono (L + R matrixed)

subwoofer—see Issue No. 16, page 16—
but Tom Nousaine, who has studied the
subject in considerable depth, vigorously
disagrees. His findings are documented
in a forthcoming article in the January
1995 issue of Stereo Review. This looks
like one of the few legitimate controver-

sies in audio (unlike the nonsense about

blind tests, tubes, etc.), and I am quite

open to all arguments. But, as in other
debates about all but the most obvious
audio phenomena, a number of reliable
practitioners have to be able to repeat

the same tests and obtain the same re­sults. Maybe Tom Nousaine needs to
broaden his statistical base before com-

ing to a sweeping conclusion; maybe not.
(For one thing, he is not into classical
music; as I once told him, it's a case of

"Pop Goes the Weasel.")

The VMPS caveat sounds like sour
grapes to me, since they make and sell
only passive subwoofers. Why don't built­in crossover networks, whose large com­ponents and large boards are much more
prone to vibration than amplifier parts,

fall apart untimely? Why don't radios in
jeeps fall apart? Needless to say, a cer-

tain amount of care and competence in
construction and placement must be as­sumed in all such instances. Audio hypo­chondria is, of course, a proven market­ing platform.

—Ed.

The Audio Critic:

...I...noted that David Rich made
reference to the Marantz CD-63 in his
footnote on page 16 of Issue No. 21.
However, I was disappointed to see that
he (Editor?) refers to the unit as "Philips­designed." Ordinarily, such a reference
would be taken as a compliment. Indeed,
in the Journal of the Audio Engineering
Society, I noted some years ago in their
regular review of audio patents that the
reviewer referred to Philips in the follow­ing way: "In many ways, Philips is the
audio equivalent of Mercedes-Benz. If
there is an esoteric way of doing things,
this is how Philips will do them." As I
seem to have misplaced the particular is­sue, I cannot say that the above is an ex­act quote, but it surely is very, very close
to the original comment.

In the case of the Marantz CD-63,
the model is in fact wholly designed
within the Marantz organization. Specif­ically, our chief CD designer, Mr. Yo­shiyuki Tanaka, is the gentleman respon­sible for the CD-63 and most of our other
CD players. He has a strong technical
background in digital audio as well as
analog circuit design, including power
supplies, and is very familiar with a wide
variety of available devices, CD mecha
nisms, and the like. I have in the past for­warded to him articles of interest, most of
which have come from the pages of your
magazine.

5

pdf 6

I am always pleased to see mention
of our gear in your magazine, and at Ma­rantz we are always quite proud of the
Marantz association within the giant Phi­lips concern, but I would ask that in the
future products submitted for review such

as the CD-63 be referred to as Marantz­designed, as this is the reality. Philips per
se had nothing to do with the CD-63 de­sign; however, we happily acknowledge
the fact that the CD-63 employs a number
of Philips-originated components, such as
the CDM12 mechanism, TDA1301 servo,
SAA7345 decoder, etc., that are also
found in Philips-branded models, as well
as models from other firms, such as Au-

dio Research....

As always, I appreciate your interest

in Marantz gear.

Best regards,
David Birch-Jones
Marketing Manager
Marantz America, Inc.
Roselle, IL

You'11 find that the review of the Ma-

rantz CD-63/63SE in this issue, essential­ly an updated leftover from Issue No. 21,
has been annotated to reflect your input.

That purely Marantz, non-Philips engi­neering seems to come up with products
that offer very solid performance per dol­lar. As for the articles you send to Mr.
Tanaka, I can understand why they are

from this publication, not from the digital

cloud-cuckoo-land of...well, you know.

—Ed.

The Audio Critic:

Having just completed reading the
review of the Magneplanar MG-1.5/QR, I
believe some important issues are raised.
Audiophiles know well that assessing
loudspeaker performance is difficult be­cause it is to a large extent subjective.
Every loudspeaker design is a compro­mise, and no particular transducer tech­nology has exclusive rights to accuracy.
Given your statements at the outset of the
review, some would question your "de­tached objectivity" in this case. It is clear
that you hold planar magnetic loudspeak­er technology in low regard and this ap­pears to have predestined your conclu­sions.

One of the generic criticisms of
Magneplanar designs made in the review
is the lack of low bass capacity. Your
nearfield measurements of the MG-1.5/
QR indicate its response extends to ap­proximately 40 Hz. The farfield response

6

in my listening room is significantly
flatter than you suggest (±4 dB), and
there is usable bass down to approximate­ly 30 Hz. Static distortion in the bass is
low (did you even bother to measure it?).
The conclusion that the MG-1.5/QR has
"not enough bass" doesn't follow, partic­ularly when compared to other loud­speakers available at the same price.

The other major criticism presented
involves driver ringing. This has been
noted by others in the past and appears
to be related to the physical nature of the
driver. It has been described in a variety
of uniformly driven nonrigid drivers,
which include ribbon and electrostatic
systems in addition to Magneplanar driv­ers. The audibility of the effect has not
been established, to my knowledge, as it
relates to a farfield listening position.
Transducers with significant energy stor­age typically emphasize and smear con­sonants in the spoken voice and have
poor square wave response, neither of
which is true of this speaker.

As for the "not enough focus, too
much coloration" that is reported in the
review, I can only comment that in my

experience the MG-1.5/QR is an extreme-

ly revealing transducer that allows a
wealth of musical detail to emerge. A

common characteristic of neutral trans­ducers is that each recording played

sounds different. This is exactly how

transparent the MG-1.5/QR sounds. Per­haps the Editor heard what he thought he
measured rather than the reverse.

None of the many conventional

loudspeakers that I am aware of in its
price range produces as wide, deep or
stable an image as the MG-1.5/QR. These
aspects of performance are not even dis­cussed in the review. The LEDR tracks
from the first Chesky test disc provide an
effective and quick method of evaluating
the spacial characteristics of loudspeakers
in conjunction with the surrounding envi­ronment. Few loudspeakers can generate
substantial "height" with the vertical sig­nal on the disc or provide an apparent
soundstage wider than the stereo pair.

With the MG-1.5/QR, the signal extends

to the ceiling in the vertical test and be­yond the width of the stereo pair in the
horizontal test.

The rather cursory nature of your
loudpeaker reviews has concerned me
since I first subcribed to your journal.

Perhaps it is time for the Editor to apply

the same rigorous standards to loudspeak-

er reviews as Dr. Rich does with the vari-

ous electronic components he discusses.
May I suggest that in the future more of
the test results and discussion of the lis­tening conditions (especially speaker
placement) be provided. It would also be
useful to have the manufacturers respond
to issues raised in the reviews. These
changes would allow the reader to better
assess the relative merits of each design
and reach his own conclusions.

Yours truly,
Dr. Douglas M. Hughes
Rochester, MN

I'm not surprised that the Minnesota
audio mafia finds staunch supporters at
the Mayo Clinic (or am I misinterpreting

your prefix and your address?), but you

happen to be mistaken on most of the

points you bring up. Not all of them,

though.

You 're right when you say that loud-

speaker evaluation is highly subjective,
although I try to back up my subjective

opinions with objectively verifiable evi-

dence. Furthermore, my subjectivity has
been refined over the years through expo­sure to literally hundreds of speakers—/
have some very good reference points of
subjective comparison.

You're also right in observing that

my loudspeaker reviews are not quite as
rigorous as David Rich's reviews of elec­tronic components, but there are good
reasons for that. A typical electronic sig­nal path in audio (such as, say, the left
channel of a power amplifier) has one in-

put and one output. It's relatively simple

and straightforward to examine the I/O
relationship. A speaker, on the other
hand, has one input and n outputs. Which

of the latter do we examine? Where in
space is the valid, or "official," output of
a loudspeaker system? How many points

in space are sufficient to give us an accu-

rate picture of the total output? These are
nagging questions of measurement meth­odology, and then there are the endless
other questions such as the physical
difficulty of ABX comparisons of speakers

(see Issue No. 20, page 39) and the vari­ous biases introduced by the reviewer's
accustomed listening room, etc. Rigorous
standards? We're working on them. Don
Keele is perhaps the most rigorous loud­speaker reviewer of us all, but then I do a

few tests that he doesn't. Amplifier-like

certainty in speaker testing we don't
have—and will not have soon.

Now then, here are the points where

you are wrong. (1) I do not "hold planar

THE AUDIO CRITIC

pdf 7

magnetic loudspeaker technology in low
regard," au contraire, my MG-1.5/QR re-
view begins with "Yes, I have a soft
spot," etc., and later I enthuse over the

upper bass and lower midrange of the
Tympani IVa. (2) The lower bass of the

MG-1.5/QR is defined by the fundamental

resonance of 44 Hz; it may be that your

particular room happens to offer some

reinforcement down to 30 Hz, but the de-

signer can't count on that in my particu-

lar room. (3) My frequency response
measurement was anechoic (via MLS)
and therefore closer to reality than any
in-room measurement. I don't know how
you arrived at your ±4 dB in-room figure,
but it's irrelevant; no speaker designer
deliberately makes the anechoic response
nice and jagged in the hope that the room
will homogenize it. (4) The (true) ribbon
tweeter of the Tympani IVa doesn't ring,
so your generalization is incorrect. (5)
The audible effects of ringing depend on
the frequency but they are very real; hav­ing been deeply involved in speaker de­sign as well as testing, I can only say I
wish you were right. (6) The MG-1.5/QR
does have poor square-wave response;

furthermore, ringing doesn't necessarily

affect the square-wave response unless

located near the square-wave fundamen­tal or its odd harmonics. (7) Revealing­ness is a relative quality—revealing com­pared to what other speaker? (8) I listen
before I measure. (9) I did comment on
the excellent height and width of the
soundstage. (10) Just as a single exam-

ple, the ACI (Audio Concepts, Inc.) G3

speaker, reviewed in Issue No. 19, beats
the MG-1.5/QR on bass and just about
everything else, at less than two thirds
the price.

As for manufacturers' comments, we
publish every word of them unedited—if
they write us. I don't believe in letting
them preview the reviews, however; it
makes for fruitless preemptive hassles.

Final thought: your Magneplanar
MG-1.5/QR is every bit as good, or bad,
after my review as it was before it. You
are quite certain that it's a great speaker,
so why is it important to you that it
should be blessed by The Audio Critic ?

—Ed.

The Audio Critic:

Most, if not all, of the articles ap­pearing in The Audio Critic are informa­tive, so I would like to suggest that some
knowledgeable individual write a short

article on what qualities make something

ISSUE NO. 22 • WINTER 1994-95

sound live. When one walks into a dining
room or bar and hears a piano, it is easy
to tell with the first chord if the music is
live or is being reproduced, and some­times even the make of the piano. It is
one of the reasons I have stopped going
to most concerts, as they seem to feel
they must use speakers, and therefore I'm
forced to listen to a loudspeaker (not nec­essarily a good speaker) and not the in­strument itself. If I go to a concert I want
to hear the actual horn or piano or what­ever. If I want to hear speakers, I can stay
home, as I've better speakers than they
use and far better sound.

I happen to be a collector of jazz
from the 1920s to the 1950s and still buy
78 rpm records when I find something in
very good condition that I want. I collect
these old records because many of these
recordings have not found their way onto
LPs or CDs. The bonus is that the music
on these 78 rpm records has more of a
live sound than LPs and much more than
CDs. I think Doug Sax touched on this
once. I truly believe, and hope, that I'm
not being influenced by the scratch and
noise common to these old records.

My cassette deck, a Nakamichi
680ZX, has a plasma display in place of a
VU meter or LEDs as level indicators.
When I copy a CD or even a 33-rpm LP
record onto a cassette, it is easy to see the
lighted portion of the display move from
left to right on drum rim shots or struck

piano notes (anything percussive). By
that, I mean one can easily see the lighted

portion travel from say -40 to 0 dB. Al­though fast, it's easy to see it move up

the scale with an increased level. When I
copy a 78-rpm record onto a cassette, it's
different. The music going from -40 dB

to 0 dB will result in the entire display,

up to 0 dB, instantly being lit. It is so fast
that one cannot see any movement of the

lighted display; it just appears. This in­stant change in level also happens if I

record the grand piano in our great room.
All of this is not as noticeable on LED
displays and completely obscured on VU

meters, as both are slow in comparison

to respond. Maybe that is why there are

so few plasma displays.

This leads me to believe that the at­tack time of a sound seems to have a di­rect bearing on how live it appears, and a
live sound is what we are all striving for.
Even when played through a 5 or 8 kHz
lowpass filter, 78-rpm records have a live
sound. To focus my question, why
doesn't a CD sound as live as a 78-rpm

record? By eliminating the compressors
and limiters and minimizing the active

stages and feedback, surely we should be

able to archive CDs that sound as live as
the old 78-rpm records of sixty years ago.
The added benefit of having no noise
would be wonderful.

I have every issue of The Audio

Critic, having read all of them at least
twice. Keep up the good work, as there
is so much #*%!# being shoveled out

there....

Yours truly,
Thomas F. Burroughs
Prescott, AZ

Aren't you the Tom Burroughs who
was selling Klipschorns in New York City
circa 1951? (I was very, very young then,
of course, and so were you.) If so, here's
some advice from one geezer to another:

Finagle yourself an invitation to a
live recording session (of a reasonably
competent label, I should add). Listen to
the direct sound of the musicians. That's
live, right? Now step into the monitor
room. (I'm assuming something a little
better than a telephone booth, and decent
monitor speakers.) What you now hear is
the CD sound (via the same l's and 0's
as will appear on the CD). How "live " is
it? Do you now feel that 78-rpm shellac
would sound more nearly like the live
musicians? I seriously doubt that you
would feel that after such an exercise. I
think you have lapsed into some kind of
technostalgia (to coin a word).

Of course, a superb 78-rpm record­ing from 1947, pressed on vinyl (which
they started to use around then) may
sound more "live" than an indifferent LP

from 1951, which in turn may sound bet-

ter than a botched CD from 1984 (they
had a few of those). But the best 78s ver­sus the best LPs versus the best CDs? Get
out!

I have no idea what's with your lev­el indicator—it could be any number of
things, including overload—but it isn't
attack time you're measuring. The lead­ing edge of a dynamic peak is determined
by the high frequencies, and the 78-rpm
shellac medium was certainly not superi­or in bandwidth to LP and CD. As for
compression, yes, it can upset the apple­cart, but good CDs aren't compressed.

And, by the way, feedback (correctly
applied feedback) is not the bad guy.
That's a 1970s notion, meanwhile laid to
rest by some of the best minds in the engi­neering world. Gotta keep up with the

7

pdf 8

times, old-timer. (Oops, what if you're

not that Tom Burroughs? What a burn...)

—Ed.

The Audio Critic:

I am a recent subscriber and I am
unbelievably happy to have found The
Audio Critic. I assembled a good system
for the first time in the last year, so I as­sume that I am the kind of person that
other magazines whine about needing to
recruit to save the "High End." Please al­low me to give you my perspective as an
inquisitive novice.

After reading enough analog drivel
every month, I actually started to wonder
if I had made a mistake by selling my LP
collection 4 years ago, so I went down to
my favorite hi-fi dealer and compared a
CD player with a much higher-priced
turntable/cartridge combo. The CD front
end was so vastly superior in detail, dy­namics, noise, and overall quality that I
remembered instantly why I smiled the
first time I heard a good CD system. I
also thought it was pretty darn musical
too, whatever that may be.

I am constantly bombarded with ar-

ticles recommending unbelievably expen-

sive wires, interconnects and, most re-

cently, magic wooden disks. I can't hear
a difference in controlled blind tests and
neither can the people that recommend
them, but if you don't agree with them
you are some kind of uncultured ignora­mus. Isn't it convenient that the differ­ences are supposed to be unmeasurable
things such as dynamic bloom and liquid-

ity.

I guess some people like distortion
in their music and that's why they love
those outrageously expensive vacuum­tube amps. I think that the real reason is
that a lot of people went over to Grand­pa's house as a kid, and his stereo glowed
in the dark. Now that they have six-figure
incomes they'll be damned if theirs isn't
going to glow too! It's a good thing we
have those East Bloc 1930s economies to
supply us with 1930s-technology vacuum
tubes.

When I entered the High End I had
no inkling that it was a fantasy world in­habited by mystics, romantics, and char­latans. The High End is hurting and at­tracts almost no women (another frequent
lament) because it is dominated by re­viewers, retailers, and manufacturers that
are either greedy or foolish and have lost
touch with reality. I don't think a lot of
them realize how bizarre it looks from
the outside.

8

The Audio Critic is like a breath of

fresh air. I'm glad that logic, reason, and
facts have a proponent in the audio
world. Keep up the good work!

Darren Leite
Scottsdale, AZ

Everything you say is right on the
money, but you don't ask the sixty-four­dollar question:

Is the truth bad for business?

My answer is that, in the high-end

audio world, the truth is probably bad for
business this week and next month but
very good for business over the next ten
years. B.S. has a limited shelf life; given
sufficient time, most consumers tend to
switch to the truth. The tweako/weirdo
high-end promoters, however, don't think
that far ahead.

Thank you for your kind words.

—Ed.

The Audio Critic:

I would like to know if you have an

explanation for the fact that, in my sys­tem, the Parasound HCA-2200II sounds
noticeably better through its balanced in­puts. I have a Parasound P/LD-1500 driv­ing it, with 24' lengths of Straight Wire
Flexconnect (unbalanced) or Canare Star­Quad (blanced). The levels are matched
to within about 0.2 dB, and out of 10
trials, single-blind (I was unaware of the

choices, but the switcher was), the differ­ence was immediately apparent each
time.

Yours truly,
Rob Bertrando
Reno, NV

As David Rich's review in Issue No.
21 clearly explained, the simplistic input
buffer circuit makes the balanced-input
distortion of the Parasound HCA-2200II
more than an order of magnitude worse
than through the unbalanced input. The
distortion is probably still below the
threshold of audibility. Parasound has
acknowledged that there was some kind
of minor foul-up in the production ver­sion of the balanced input circuit, and we
were supposed to get a letter from John
Curl that would clarify the matter. We
are still waiting.

"Sounds noticeably better" is of
course a purely subjective opinion and
unprovable. "The difference was immedi­ately apparent" is, on the other hand, a

provable statement and probably true in
your case.

Here are the possibilities that I see:

(1) The balanced-input distortion was

just above the threshold of audibility in

your unit, and you liked it. (2) The level
matching wasn't good enough ("about"

0.2 dB could have been 0.3 dB, which is
often perceptible), and you liked the loud­er or the softer choice. (3) The tweako
Straight Wire interconnect, which I'm not

familiar with, may introduce a rolloff or

other marginally audible inaccuracy, and

you liked it.

One thing is certain: the I/O rela­tionship is more linear when the unbal­anced input of the HCA-2200II is used.

—Ed.

The Audio Critic:

I am writing to respond to Mark S.
Willliamson's letter, as well as the excel­lent article on clock jitter by Robert W.
Adams, in Issue No. 21. First, Mr. Wil­liamson states, "My only regret is that
some of the information is a little techni-

cal for those 'laymen' who are not part of
the engineering kingdom. I would be
grateful if you could dilute some of the
techno-lingo from time to time."

Williamson has been complemen­tary to The Audio Critic as am I; howev­er, the idea of catering to a less technical
(or nontechnical) readership sends shiv­ers up my spine. Dilute? To what end?
I'm not trying to attack this man. I just
don't want you to do what he says. I have
been reading audio publications for 25
years, with a craving for the detailed arti­cles and technical subjects that appear in
every issue of The Audio Critic. There
are many audio publications that are al­ready diluted for those who have no
stomach for details. If I want serious,
scientific, technical analysis of audio is­sues, there are only two choices: TAC at
$24 per year, or pay hundreds for a pro­fessional journal such as that of the Au­dio Engineering Society (AES). I worry
that there will be continuous pressure on
TAC to broaden its appeal by deleting the
important details and writing for the mar­keters. I must admit to you that I am a
practicing electronics engineer with a
B.S.E.E. under my belt, so it figures that
the technical details would be much to my
liking. I do not wish to demean Mr. Wil­liamson's comments at all, and am
pleased that he has joined the thinking
among us. The physics of the universe is
a complicated thing, and we as mortals
must use difficult technical language to
describe it with any accuracy at all.

THE AUDIO CRITIC

pdf 9

Robert W. Adams's article on clock
jitter was simply outstanding, providing a
great analysis of the specifics of clock­jitter effects on digital-to-analog conver-

sion. This is a good example of what I am
talking about. Mr. Adams is in a position

(as few are) to write this article. We need
just these kinds of articles in order to
really understand what is going on, and
what is important. David Rich has written
several detailed articles that spoke to me
as a designer and engineer, sending me

scurrying for my semiconductor data
books and reviewing circuit theory. Ex­cellent. I have been waiting many years
for this kind of reading from the audio
press. Reading TAC is actually challeng­ing for me. I get through a Stereo Review
in about 15 minutes, but TAC takes
weeks to fully absorb.

Diluted summary: If you change

anything I'm going to get really mad.

Clark Oden
Project Engineer
Frontier Engineering, Inc.
Oklahoma City, OK

Just how technical should a respon­sible audiophile journal be? It's a
difficult question. If we oversimplify, we
become superficial—and there are al­ready plenty of other superficial audio

magazines. If we speak mainly to the E.E.
sensibility, we lose the vast majority of
our readers. We must strike a delicate
balance. As I've stated before, The Audio
Critic is not "My First Book of Electrici­ty. " If you don't know what impedance is,
or what a FET is, you'11 have to find out

elsewhere. On the other hand, we aren't
the "Journal of the AES, Junior," either.
We try to keep the math to an absolute

minimum (although David Rich always
wants to sneak in more and more). I want
the reader who doesn't understand, say,
20% of what we publish to understand

the remaining 80% perfectly. That way
the 100% understanding can be expected

to come eventually. Our basic conclu­sions must be crystal clear to everyone—
and I think they are.

One thing we can do is to break out
the highly technical stuff in sidebars, so it
doesn't slow down the nontechnical read­er of the main article. Sometimes the arti­cle is written in such a way that it's very
difficult separate the rough from the
smooth, but as you know we try to do it
when we can.

Don't worry, we don't intend to "di­lute " our technical accountability. And I
agree completely with your beautiful sen­tence about the physics of the universe.

—Ed

The Audio Critic:

.. .Keep up the tweak bashing!

Seriously, I have been working on
two processes relating to digital audio

recently—sample-rate conversion and

noise-shaped dithering. In an effort to
find out what is really bearable vs. what
is measurable, I became sucked into the

audiophile-tweak world—I was con-

vinced my sound system wasn't good

enough because I couldn't hear character­istics I could measure. After all, these
golden ears doing reviews can obviously
hear the differences—right?

I found your magazine in time to be
rescued from a fate worse than death—
financial and otherwise. Thanks.

Regards,
Bruce Hemingway
Hemingway Consulting
dB Technologies, Inc.
Seattle, WA

It's useful to know what to say first,
right off the bat, to those golden ears who
claim to hear the differences you can't.

You say, "No, you can't hear that. You're

just telling me you can but you'll never

be able to prove it." That immediately
steers the discussion in the right direction
without allowing it to go off on some
highfalutin, abstract, pseudoscientific, psy­chobabble tangent—which is what I find
worse than death.

—Ed.

The Audio Critic:

To the little person "in the smallest
room of [his] house" [Issue No. 21, page
4]. The Editor gave you credit for writ­ing, but we know it was copying, don't
we? You forgot the quotation marks on

"/ am... and ...behind me." Then you
forgot to give the composer Max Reger
credit for the quote.

You could have signed your name.

We would have understood the X.

Ron Garber
La Porte, IN

What an erudite subscriber! What a
sucker of an Editor! What a scummy
anonymous letter writer!

I looked it up, and you're absolutely
right of course. Here is what Max Reger
wrote to the Munich critic Rudolph Louis
in response to the latter's review in the
Münchener Neueste Nachrichten, Febru­ary

7,

1906:

Ich sitze in dem kleinsten Zimmer in
meinem Hause. Ich habe Ihre Kritik vor
mir. Im nächsten Augenblick wird sie
hinter mir sein.

Translation: "I am sitting in the
smallest room in my house. I have your
review before me. In a moment it will be
behind me."

One must understand that in Europe
in 1906 the use of newspaper for hygienic
purposes was quite common. As for the
quip, Max Reger (1) obviously made it up
himself and (2) signed his name.

—Ed.

Coming:

A review in depth of the $19,000 Snell Acoustics Type A loudspeaker system,

along with other interesting speakers.

Reviews of high-quality surround-sound processors and preamplifiers, from

Lexicon, Marantz, B&K Components, and others.

The long-promised survey of FM tuners and indoor antennas (really!).
Still more reviews of power amplifiers and preamplifiers (they keep coming).

Further evaluation of perceptual coding technologies and hardware.

Some big surprises (you'll never guess).

ISSUE NO. 22 • WINTER 1994-95

9

pdf 10

Paradoxes and Ironies of the Audio World:

The Doctor Zaius Syndrome

By Peter Aczel

Editor and Publisher

When the truth is so terrible that admitting it would surely make
the whole system crumble, ape logic demands denial and coverup.

Have you ever seen that marvelous 1967 science­fiction movie The Planet of the Apes? If you have, you
will recall that it depicts a planet of the future where
English-speaking anthropoid apes are the rulers and
humans are speechless beasts of burden, enslaved by the
apes and despised as a totally inferior species. The apes
have horses and guns but no real technology. Doctor
Zaius, the subtle and highly articulate orangutan who is
this society's "Minister of Science and Defender of the
Faith" (he is played by the great Maurice Evans), knows
something the other apes do not: that humans in a past
era possessed not only speech but superior technology,
flying machines, powerful weapons, and so forth, all of
which served only to bring about their eventual downfall
and reduce them to their present condition. Doctor Zaius
fervently believes that any knowledge of this truth about
humans would totally destabilize the society of apes and

result in the end of their world. The ape dogma he fanati­cally protects, even though he knows better, is a blatant
denial and coverup of the actual history of the vanished
human civilization and a paean to the eternal superiority
of the ape.

I won't give away the rest of the plot to those of
our readers who haven't seen the movie and may want to,
but doesn't Doctor Zaius resemble certain key figures in
the high-end audio community? He knows the truth but
it's bad for the establishment. The system would come
crashing down if the truth were revealed. To pick an ob­vious example, consider John Atkinson, the subtle and
highly articulate editor of Stereophile. Don't you think he
knows? Of course he knows. But if he admitted that
$3000-a-pair speaker cable is a shameless rip-off or that
a $7000 amplifier sounds no different from a $1400 one,
the edifice of high-end audio would begin to totter—or so
he thinks (and may quite possibly be right). Consequent­ly, he spouts convoluted scriptural arguments and episte­mological sophistries, just like Doctor Zaius, in order to

pervert the obvious, uncomplicated, devastating truth.

There is a perfect illustration of this process in the

August 1994 issue of Stereophile, where Zaius-Atkinson
once again bashes blind listening tests in an "As We See
It" editorial. Such tests are of course considered extreme-

10

ly threatening by a publication that reports night-and-day
differences in sound which absolutely nobody can hear
when the levels are matched and the brand names con­cealed. He brings up all kinds of intricate flaws and draw­backs that may very well exist in some blind tests but
turns his back on the large number of blind tests in which
all of his objections have been anticipated and eliminated
and which nevertheless yield a no-difference result every
time. He knows very well, for example, that no one has
ever, ever proved a consistently audible difference be­tween two amplifiers having high input impedance, low
output impedance, and low distortion, when operated at
matched levels and not clipped—but like Doctor Zaius
he conceals that knowledge. He'd rather collect rare case

histories of screwed-up blind tests than deal with the vast
body of correctly managed blind tests that undermine the
Stereophile agenda. (Just for the record, I'll state for the
nth time that there are only two unbreakable rules in
blind testing: matched levels and no peeking at the name­plates. To eliminate "stress," take a week or a month for
each test, send everybody else out of the room, operate
the switch yourself at all times, switch only twice a
day—whatever. The results will still be the same.)

A hard-nosed insight by the Weasel.

Our columnist Tom Nousaine (a.k.a. the Weasel),
in a recent conversation with me, stated his belief that
any longtime audio reviewer who has tested hundreds of
different audio components over the years knows exactly
what the truth is about soundalikes because it is utterly
impossible to escape that truth after so much hands-on
experience. It asserts itself loud and clear, again and
again. Therefore, he argued, the audio journalists who in­variably report important sonic differences are most like­ly a bunch of hypocrites, i.e., exhibit the Doctor Zaius
Syndrome. I was strongly inclined to agree with him, but
then I said, "Well, what about Bob Harley?" We agreed
that Harley could be an exception. He may very well be
sincere because he just doesn't get it, not even after all
these years. Larry Archibald, on the other hand, is smart
and tough and definitely knows the truth, we felt. He is
probably the biggest Doctor Zaius of them all, ready to

THE AUDIO CRITIC

pdf 11

make a monkey of any insufficiently enlightened audio­phile. At the risk of offending against the principle of de
mortuis nil nisi bonum, I'm willing to venture the opinion
that even the late Bert Whyte and Len Feldman, regard­less of their other important contributions, did a Doctor
Zaius number on certain audio issues rather than face the
wrath of the tweaks and the accusation of heresy. As for
Harry Pearson and company, who knows? Are astrolo­gers, shamans, and witch doctors sincere or hypocritical?
As long as they don't try to usurp scientific arguments,
what difference does it make? And if they do try, they're
pathetically ineffective anyway.

A serious credibility gap.

In the same issue of Stereophile as the John Atkin­son blind-test-bashing editorial, Larry Archibald views
with alarm the low bit-rate coding scene in an open letter
to Pioneer. He wants them to hold off on the implementa­tion of the Dolby AC-3 coding standard for LaserDisc
because it may not be the highest-quality solution soni­cally. In other words, he suddenly doffs his orangutan
suit and shows concern for something that may actually
be true, i.e., audible.

Well, you blew it, Larry baby. You went ape—or
cried wolf, to mix my animal metaphors—so many times
about low-credibility tweako matters that on the Pioneer
level of big-money decision making you are no longer
taken seriously even when you may have a perfectly le­gitimate, nontweako argument. That's quite obvious
from the two replies by Pioneer executives printed in the
September issue, both of which basically tell you to re­lax, tweak boy, take it easy, and let the real experts get
on with their work—at least that's the way I read them.
You may conceivably end up being right, and Pioneer
wrong, about Dolby AC-3, but you're clearly wasting
your breath. (See also Tom Nousaine's column in this is­sue for a somewhat different perspective.)

By the way...

As I recently noted with a poignant sense of recog­nition, Stereophile's visual leitmotiv for blind testing is
the familiar three apes with hands on eyes (get it?), ears,
and mouth. Now you know why. It isn't just an art direc­tor's passing fancy. Doctor Zaius can feel right at home.

Why do I even bother to tell you all this?

All of our readers who have been with us for more
than just one or two issues are aware of my enormous
frustration on the subject of scientific truth in audio. The
very idea of a Doctor Zaius Syndrome, even it's only a
parody, suggests the existence of antiscience in audio as
a tradition, not just a momentary aberration—and a tradi­tion it is, going back to the early 1970s, at the very least.
In the late '40s and throughout the '50s and '60s, whatev­er the most highly qualified and experienced engineers
said about audio was the accepted truth. Then came post-

ISSUE NO. 22 • WINTER 1994-95

modern irrationalism, post-Watergate anomie, fortune
tellers in high places, pyramid power, Jesus-haired
record-store clerks as self-proclaimed audio experts, un­tutored high-end journals, pooh-poohing of engineering
societies, derision of degreed academics—the B.S. era of
audio (and I don't mean Bachelor of Science). Today, the
melancholy truth is that tweako cultism has become
mainstream audio, at least above a certain price range,
and engineering facts are regarded as disturbingly radical
or at least eccentric. The scientific audio community has
been marginalized.

I despair at this point of a journalistic solution.
Even if The Audio Critic increased its circulation by a
factor of 50 overnight—I'm being deliberately absurd—
it might still be too late for the message. The cultists
have been too deeply indoctrinated and too long. The
pimply-faced kid in the Bon Jovi T-shirt who tried to sell
you AudioQuest Sorbothane Feet (the bigger kind) in
your local audio salon is not going to change his belief
system. Not in this antirationalist age and culture.

I can think of only one effective remedy. Many
years ago, long before our younger readers became inter­ested in audio, the Federal Trade Commission put an end
to fraudulent power-output claims in amplifiers. Today,
the power-output specification must take the form of
"200 watts rms into 8 ohms from 20 Hz to 20 kHz at less
than 0.25% total harmonic distortion." Before then, the
same amplifier could have claimed 800 watts because it
could produce that for 2 milliseconds at 1 kHz into 2
ohms with 10% distortion. What if the FTC suddenly be­came interested in audio cable advertising, for example?

That chattering sound you hear comes from the teeth of
cable vendors at the mere mention of the possibility. And
that low, rumbling sound you hear is Doctor Zaius growl­ing, "That's heresy!"

Anyone out there whose nephew or brother-in-law

is a young, crusading, Ralph-Nader-like employee of the
FTC? Get him interested!

* * *

P.S. Long after the above was written, just before

press time, I received a PR release from one of Stereo-
phile's flacks, hyping the magazine's willingness to tell
the "absolute truth" about a product even at the risk of
losing the advertising support of the manufacturer. The
latest editorial by Larry Archibald-Zaius simultaneously
proclaims the same lofty principle. The Velodyne
brouhaha is used in both instances as proof: they panned
the DF-661 speaker; Velodyne canceled all its ads; see
how incorruptible they are. Hey, you can't buy off the
Defenders of the High End Faith with a few ads when
they face the deadly threat of a midpriced super speaker!

"I [don't] see any reason...why a magazine

couldn't have both principles and commercial success,"
the PR release quotes Archibald-Zaius. "I've never had
even a second thought on the subject."

The monkey doth protest too much, methinks. •

11

pdf 12

Loudspeakers Are

Getting Better and Better

By Peter Aczel

Editor and Publisher

The proof is in the recent designs that nudge the state of the art,
particularly in bass reproduction, but also in minimizing distortion
over the full range.

I can't say it often enough: if you already own a
fairly decent home music system, nothing can sig­nificantly change the quality of your audio life except
new and better loudspeakers. They are so much more im-

portant than preamps, power amps, CD players, etc.
What happens in most audiophile households, however,
is that the main speakers are firmly embedded in the liv­ing-room décor, so that any major change is subject to
vigorous spousal objection, especially if larger speakers
are contemplated. The typical audiophile then satisfies
his lust for shiny new equipment by buying, say, a new
preamplifier and persuading himself that the sound is
now much better, when in effect it hasn't changed the
least bit. It's a syndrome that depresses the hell out of me.

(Incidentally, I was recently exposed to a pair of

rather large loudspeakers packaged in a novel way that
could conceivably overcome spousal objection, even
though at first glance the speakers actually appear to be
larger than they are. The system, not yet sold anywhere,
is called the Applied Acoustics Model 10A and is the
brainchild of Jim Suhre, a Raytheon rocket scientist (real­ly!), and Vic Kalilec, an electronics engineer, both from
Tennessee. What they showed me was a monumental
floor-to-ceiling wall system, the most salient feature of
which is its gigantic, seamless, curved tambour door.
Open the door and all your electronic equipment is in
there, including your large-screen TV. Close the door
and the whole shebang looks structural, not like audio
equipment. Jim Suhre claims that the curved tambour
acts as an ultrasophisticated dispersion device. I have my
reservations about that but can report that the sound had
exceptionally even spectral balance, from the lowest to
the highest frequencies. The speakers, when their floor­to-ceiling grille is taken away, are revealed to be only
chest high; I'd say they have the overall impact of B&W
Matrix 803's or something along those lines. The drivers
and network appear to be of the highest quality. The
price was still up in the air when I looked; those who go
for this sort of thing will no doubt be able to afford it.)

12

ACI "Spirit"

Audio Concepts, Inc., 901 South 4th Street, La Crosse, WI

54601. "Spirit" floor-standing 2-way loudspeaker system,
$499.00 the pair (direct from ACI). Tested samples on loan

from manufacturer.

"In this world nothing can be said to be certain, ex­cept death and taxes," Ben Franklin wrote. That may
have been true in 1789, but today I would add: "and good
value from ACI." The combination of direct marketing,

conscientious design, and just plain common sense have
made Mike Dzurko's trademark synonymous with "more
speaker for your dollar." That's certainly true of a pair of
Spirits, which satisfy all the basic audiophile demands,
except for the deepest bass, at the totally unexpected
price of $499.

The speaker is a 32" high box with a footprint of
less than a square foot, housing an 8" woofer with poly­propylene cone and a 1" aluminum-dome tweeter. The
woofer is aperiodically loaded with four small holes in
the back of the cabinet near the floor; the tweeter has a
plastic dispersion plug and is surrounded with felt. The
left and right speakers are mirror-imaged. The oak veneer
of my samples was of good quality.

The impedance curve of the Spirit shows the box to
be tuned to 50 Hz and the minimum impedance of the
system to be 6½ ohms (8 ohms nominal). Total impe­dance variation is between that minimum and 33 ohms in
magnitude and ±45° in phase. Any decent amplifier
should be able to drive such a load.

The quasi-anechoic (MLS) frequency response was
interesting in that both the woofer and tweeter were quite
flat, within ±2 dB or so, but the transition between them
in the 2 to 3.5 kHz range was not smooth, showing vari­ous irregularities of the order of 7 dB, depending on the
angle of measurement. Since all these irregularities were
basically minus (i.e., not peaks) and in the most sensitive
range of the ear, they may have acted as inadvertent zip-

THE AUDIO CRITIC

pdf 13

piness suppressors. At this price, you can't expect the
crossover network to be too sophisticated; it appears to
be second-order, with out-of-phase wiring of the drivers.
The tweeter has a double resonance at 17 kHz and 24
kHz; otherwise it's quite smooth and remarkably clean in
response to tone bursts; there is no ringing at any fre­quency. The same is true of the woofer cone.

The nearfield response of the woofer shows the f

3

(-3 dB point) to be 50 Hz, with only a 12 dB per octave
rolloff below that frequency. That means useful response
down to 35 Hz or so. Can't ask for much more than that.

The sound of the Spirit is essentially neutral. That's
a simple statement but not a simple achievement. More
than a few extremely costly speakers don't sound neutral.
Transparency is good but not superb (what did you ex­pect?). Dynamic range is very good. I didn't measure the
distortion because it's obvious from the drivers that it
can't be either very low or very high, and the process is
time-consuming; the sound, let me assure you, is quite
clean at high levels. All in all, this is a highly acceptable,
far from puny-sounding, musically pleasing little loud­speaker. I was demoing a very high-end speaker to a
friend, and then switched to the Spirits. The difference
was obvious but not very dramatic. Hey, for $499?

Bag End ELF Systems
S10E-C and S18E-C

(continued from Issue No. 21)

Modular Sound Systems, Inc., P.O. Box 488, Barrington, IL

60011. Voice: [phone]. Fax: [phone]. ELF-1
two-channel dual integrator electronics, $2460.00. S10E-C
black-carpet enclosure with single 10" woofer, $234.00 each.
S18E-C black-carpet enclosure with single 18" woofer, $658.00
each. Tested samples on loan from manufacturer.

I see this equipment in a slightly different perspec­tive now that I have measured it and evaluated it at con­siderably greater length. I don't take back my original
statement that "I have never heard bass like this in my
listening room," but the reason for that was not the ELF
technology. It was the combination of the air-moving ca­pability of two 18" drivers, flat response all the way
down into the 20-to-10-Hz octave, excellent damping,
and little or no dynamic compression—a combination I
hadn't previously experienced, as a total package, in my
listening setup.

I now believe that good conventional technology
could achieve the same results—even if it rarely does, for
various reasons. (See also David Rich's sidebar on the
subject and the Velodyne Servo F-1500R review below.)
Since an ELF-1 unit plus two S18E sub woofers plus two
high-powered amplifier channels could run into $5000 or
more, the question is whether or not the ELF approach
yields any substantive benefits in a domestic sound sys-

ISSUE NO. 22 • WINTER 1994-95

tern (as distinct from professional applications—see be­low) that are not obtainable by simpler means for less
money. My present feeling is that, from the stay-at-home
audiophile's point of view, the ELF system is "a solution
in search of a problem." That doesn't make it sound less
good than I said, but the I've-got-to-have-it factor is gone
because what makes it sound good isn't its uniqueness.

My measurements showed the S10E and S18E to
be almost identical in small-signal frequency response
when driven via the ELF-1 (with all switches down, the
most wide-open setting). The deviation from absolute
flatness is ±0.5 dB down to 20 Hz, dropping to -4 dB at

10 Hz. The Bag End literature shows curves for the S18E
that indicate -2 dB response at 10 Hz, which is more
consistent with an f3 (-3 dB frequency) of 8 Hz, the
claimed system cutoff. I see no reason to make a federal
case out of the discrepancy; the measured f3 of 12 Hz is
good enough for me. Of course, as the signal is in­creased, the air-moving and power-handling capability of
the S18E quickly passes that of the S10E; on the other
hand, multiple Sl0E's in a cluster could keep up with the
S18E in all respects.

The f3 also moves up, inevitably, as the level is in­creased; either the driver or the amplifier (remember, it's
boosted 12 dB per octave), or both, will reach a limit in
linear output capability. The ELF concealment circuit
deals with this very neatly (again, see sidebar); it is prob­ably the cleverest and most original element of the total
system. You can crank the volume to any level you wish;
at some point when, say, the bass drum is thwacked, the
concealment threshold lights come on, but you hear no
distortion and are unaware of compression; it's smooth
as silk. You could argue, of course, that this is needed
only because the system has the inherent weakness of be­ing based on tremendous electronic boost—one compli­cated mechanism to correct the side effects of another
complicated mechanism.

I measured the distortion of the Bag End subwoof­ers with the ELF concealment threshold set to leave the
circuit inactive at the levels tested (all switches down).
That way I was measuring the true electroacoustic accu­racy of the equalized transducers. Needless to say, the
amplifier was at all times operating well below clipping.

On the whole, the distortion figures were not im­pressive. For example, at 30 Hz, as I gradually increased
the 1-meter SPL from 80 dB to 95 dB, the distortion of
the S18E as measured very close to the cone went from
2% up to 4%. At 40 Hz, the distortion over the same SPL
range varied between 1.1% and 1.7%. At 20 Hz, I mea­sured 2.6% (80 dB) to 10% (95 dB). Compare that with
the Velodyne F-1500's distortion figures (see below) and
you'll begin to understand the design priorities of each.
The S10E has a very similar distortion profile down to 30
Hz but gets worse at 20 Hz, as you'd expect. Overall,
even the bargain-priced Hsu Research HRSW10 sub­woofer (Issue No. 19, pp. 21-22) beats the Bag Ends on

13

pdf 14