ARCHIVED FORUM -- March 2012 to February 2022READ ONLY FORUM
This is the second Archived Forum which was active between 1st March 2012 and 23rd February 2022
http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/nov/29/lost-in-music-the-world-of-obsessive-audiophilia
Hi-fi nuts more typically will live in dungeons and economise on bathing to fund insanely expensive equipment
Great quote, last sentence mentions B and O
Good article!
Last sentence:
"And finally: never be put off by hi-fi nuts who sneer at beautiful hi-fi by Bang & Olufsen. Design-focused and high street it may be, but it still sounds great. As well as having lashings of WAF."
Graham
Beosound Stage, Beovision 8-40, Beolit 20, Beosound Explore.
As a side to the article above, I was going to post the comments below on a new thread but thought I would hijack this one instead.
Having spent a few years away from my BL5’s, I had not been spending a much time listening to music on them – plenty of TV and films but little music and even less critical music listening.
Moving to a new flat, the few times I did listen, I started to feel a little underwhelmed. Perhaps it is because I’m mentally eyeing the BL90’s?, perhaps it’s because I have become too familiar to the BL5’s which I have owned since 2003 – being one of the first few people to buy the loudspeakers? Perhaps, it is the critic of the BS5 tracks are not good (lossless recordings) or there’s a damaged coax cable somewhere? The BV soundcard? Change, change, change is in the air.
The arrangement I have in my home is that the BL5’s are placed in an equilateral triangle, 4m apart, with the primary listening position and a BV7-55 between the two speakers (BL3’s 2.5m to the side of the listener).
I had begun to notice – with my rather primitive listening skills, vocal images had shifted to within 0.5 - 1m of one of the BL5. I changed the combo of cables, speaker switching, even sides. I even changed the TV's over to prove it was not a cable or the BV soundcard. The 4 way units of both speakers all played different tones of the music?? Finally, I played pure sine tones from 125hz to 8000hz (125, 250, 400, 800, 1000, 1250, 2500, 3150, 4000, 6000 & 8000) and this revealed that one of the tweeters was giving only a fraction of the output of the other. I called a B&O technician in and a few days later by swapping the ALT heads over, we established that one of the Tweeters was indeed weak (as opposed to the more costly electronics in the BL5 body). A new tweeter was supplied and swapped over in 10 minutes. This however, presented another problem; namely that the new tweeter was more powerful than the remaining 12 year old one. (Even after each BL5 was software upgraded and the sound profile of the new tweeter uploaded into the guts of the 5).
To resolve the problem, I ordered another 2nd new tweeter for the remaining older unit and now the BL5’s are back to how I remember them. Crisp, dynamic, lively and with that make-you-smile beat/rhythm sound they play so easily. Volume settings are down and vocals are now mainly dead-centre of the sitting position and the speakers themselves have become invisible again.
Moral of the story and the article to some extent…….is that a) we can easily become accustomed to a sound and finding the actual fault is not always easy nor easy to actually admit to, b) we probably have a tendency to blame everything apart from the equipment that is actually doing most of the “wear and tear” work, i.e. the transducers (speakers cones) which are shown to be susceptible to degradation over time (by carrying an awful amount of sound energy over their lifetime) rather than the often implicated culprits of modern electronics and cables etc. which probably are not at fault. c) always best to swap over matching tweeters/cone units in pairs rather than one at a time if you have the same problem I had.
Cheers.
Given that this is The Guardian I'm surprised they didn't blame either HiFi for global warming, or global warming for bad HiFi.
Jeff
I'm afraid I'm recovering from the BeoVirus.
Jeff:Given that this is The Guardian I'm surprised they didn't blame either HiFi for global warming, or global warming for bad HiFi. Jeff Beovirus victim, it's gotten to be too much to list!
Mr 10Percent:Moral of the story and the article to some extent…….is that a) we can easily become accustomed to a sound and finding the actual fault is not always easy nor easy to actually admit to
That's very true and it's the same with many things. I've lost count of the number of times over the years that some fault has occurred on a vehicle I've owned, which I've then had repaired, and only at that point when *normal* performance has been restored have I realised that there had actually been a gradual but long term deterioration prior to the failure becoming obvious. We are good at adapting to small changes, even when they are cumulative, without really noticing we are doing so.
The flip side to that, is that even when your setup is performing perfectly, it is easy to get used to that sound, accept it as the norm, and no longer notice how good it sounds. I rarely watch television when I am staying in a hotel, but when I do, the usually poor sound quality is always striking. I have a "wow, is that really how 'normal' televisions sound?" moment, followed by a renewed appreciation when I return home and listen to my own setup...
Martin.
riverstyx: Mr 10Percent:Moral of the story and the article to some extent…….is that a) we can easily become accustomed to a sound and finding the actual fault is not always easy nor easy to actually admit to That's very true and it's the same with many things. I've lost count of the number of times over the years that some fault has occurred on a vehicle I've owned, which I've then had repaired, and only at that point when *normal* performance has been restored have I realised that there had actually been a gradual but long term deterioration prior to the failure becoming obvious. We are good at adapting to small changes, even when they are cumulative, without really noticing we are doing so. The flip side to that, is that even when your setup is performing perfectly, it is easy to get used to that sound, accept it as the norm, and no longer notice how good it sounds. I rarely watch television when I am staying in a hotel, but when I do, the usually poor sound quality is always striking. I have a "wow, is that really how 'normal' televisions sound?" moment, followed by a renewed appreciation when I return home and listen to my own setup... Martin.
Excellent points, and the real source of what a lot of audiophiles twaddle on about with respect to component "break in." If the component in question has any particular sound at all, you'll eventually get used to it, the human ear/brain combination is remarkably pliable. So, the overly bright speaker that breaks in really doesn't, and when you go back to your old speakers suddenly they sound dull, until you listen to them for a few days/weeks.
I had an old car when I first started driving, felt fine to me, until my father drove it and immediately decided we needed to change the various suspension bushings. Man, I didn't know what I was missing with it, what a difference. You can get used to and adapt to quite a lot. Had a car once where the steering had gotten loose, so slowly it still felt normal to me until it finally got bad enough even I realized it and changed the steering rack. Suddenly it felt like an F1 car compared to the way it felt before, tight steering, what a concept!
Another thing is something I've seen a lot in various audio club DIY speaker builders and such, your own baby is never ugly. I've heard some horrendously bad speakers that the builder was in love with. One person I knew called this Peaches Theory, after a record chain called Peaches. Somewhere out there is a recording that will make your speaker sound good, so don't worry about fixing the design just go record shopping!