It's true after all....

That's a very interesting piece by Chris Frankland. I loved The Flat Response and used to buy it from the wonderful Sound Advice in Loughborough. Those were the days! As for the earth being flat, well.....

Great Mag - the perfect antidote at the time to the Jimmy Hughes fuelled madness in Hi-Fi Answers...

Very good reading. I wish i could have been there in those years having such information sources close at hand.

Here hi-fi meant for years all those japanese silver boxes that sounded worst than my grandfather 1948 tubes radio. Indeed hi-fi was watts power.....

I feel bound to respond, and expect to be well and truly pilloried by many on the forum for this post.

Yes, it was always interesting, but I found some of the views portrayed to be just as eccentric and pretentious as those put forward by the 'other side'.

For example, the inference that a NAD 3020 would sound better than virtually any big, exotic and expensive American import. Utter nonsense! (my opinion, I hasten to add). I have no doubt that Chris Frankland managed to find specific examples, and specific set-ups in which this could be demonstrated to be the case, but the general inference was just a step too far.

My main irritation with the stuff that Chris Frankland wrote was that much of it was his (and his followers') opinion, but stated as fact. Ultimately, it was (and still is) all very subjective.

I seem to remember that the policy of only one set of speakers in the room was pretty widely adapted, and taken to the extreme that TVs and phones were absolutely no-go in a hi-fi listening room. I can recall reviewers claiming that they could hear a substantial adverse impact on sound until they removed a telephone from the room. Does anyone adhere quite this strictly to the one set of speakers rule these days?

I can still remember listening to very expensive systems using Linn Kans (sorry all small speaker users) and thinking that this was crazy. How could people spend this much money for a sound that just has no bass at all. OK, maybe they "set your feet tapping", but I much preferred a more balanced sound that had some (to my ears) resemblance to real music and the real scale of live music. 

There were of course loads of (much more) whacky ideas from the Michael Hughes side as well. I can remember being goaded into sticking some funny little sticky paper triangles to a few of my CDs in order to gain what he deemed to be a substantial SQ improvement. I'm still a little ashamed to admit I even gave this a try - akin to demoing some of the really expensive Ethernet cables (something that I intend never to do, and a real prejudice that I have).

On the real 'Flat Earth' debate - I studied Mathematics and Astronomy at University, and so I guess I bought into the whole "Earth is a sphere (well, almost), and the Earth goes round the Sun" thing. However, as I grow older, the idea that we travel through space on the back of a very large turtle is beginning to sound less & less insane. 

From the Guardian article:

... following in the footsteps of the recent flat earthers trend ... movement gaining ground in the US of late...

Yes and maybe the 6,000 year old dinosaurs fell off the edge of the earth resulting in the mass extinction event...

I guess I could agree with BoB but then we'd both be wrong.

@HMack, nice TP reference there, if only it was true

Hmack posted:

 

 

There were of course loads of (much more) whacky ideas from the Michael Hughes side as well. I can remember being goaded into sticking some funny little sticky paper triangles to a few of my CDs in order to gain what he deemed to be a substantial SQ improvement. I'm still a little ashamed to admit I even gave this a try

Did you flush your toilet between LPs?

No, I'm not making it up.

I did get some subjective improvement using a green pen on CDs but after I got a CD5 I finally wandered away from the last knocking of all that stuff (flat and round) because all of a sudden the music and people playing it had got very interesting.

I remember sticking a bit of tape on my LP12's platter and listening for the difference......

I first met Julian round about 1977 when he had a relatively small company in Salt Lane.

He was certainly opinionated, but incredibly helpful. At that time he was selling his stuff both directly and through a handful of dealers. I already had a Rega Planar 2 but his demonstration soon showed that an LP12 with the same arm and cartridge was far more enjoyable and detailed to listen to. He had an affinity with Carley Simon and Anticipation and clearly the more you were attracted to Carley as a woman (as opposed to a singer) the better the system, in his opinion, of course.

So he sold me an LP12 as well as the 12/160 and the Isobariks followed soon after because despite assurances about "source-first" and all that, it was only the 'briks that delivered the bass ! - I maintained then, and have done so consistently since, that a balanced system will deliver a more enjoyable experience than a lop-sided "source-first" system.

As for the Earth is Flat and BoB, well, he's a Rapper.........'nuff said

Hmack posted:

 

Does anyone adhere quite this strictly to the one set of speakers rule these days?

 

Yes. I have a dedicated office/listening room and it's simply a matter of lifting the laptop off it's dock and putting it in a desk drawer along with the VOIP headset. Makes a surprising difference. Know of at least two other folks who maintain a "single set of speakers" environment.

Regards,

Willy.

Hmack posted:

I can still remember listening to very expensive systems using Linn Kans (sorry all small speaker users) and thinking that this was crazy. How could people spend this much money for a sound that just has no bass at all. OK, maybe they "set your feet tapping", but I much preferred a more balanced sound that had some (to my ears) resemblance to real music and the real scale of live music.

I am curious to know which very expensive systems using Linn Kans you listened to and which systems produced the more "balanced" sound that you preferred.

It was the closer resemblance to real music and the scale real scale of live music that led me to use Linn Kans on the end of an LP12/Lingo/Ekos/Troika/Naim 52/250 rather than spending less on the preamp to allow for larger, more expensive speakers.

That system had much more life and generated much more genuine musical excitement than an alternative system in which the money was more evenly distributed and the speakers were bigger and more expensive. In comparison, the alternative system sounded dull and throttled. And I never noticed a lack of bass in the system with the Kans.

To have spent the money on the inferior system just because the speakers were so small and cheap compared to the rest of the system would have been crazy.

My observations are not a criticism of the larger speakers. Before we swapped out the more modest preamp for the 52, we swapped the speakers for the Kans and the Kans were clearly a downgrade. However, the 52 was such an upgrade that I did not want to go back to the more "balanced" system. I declined the dealer's offer to hear what the larger better speakers could do on the end of the 52 because I couldn't afford them and the 52 at the same time.

Until I heard them in that system, I had never really liked the Kans, finding them harsh and lacking in bass. In my system, I finally heard what they were capable of given a decent signal.

Sometimes size isn't everything.

Don Atkinson posted:

So he sold me an LP12 as well as the 12/160 and the Isobariks followed soon after because despite assurances about "source-first" and all that, it was only the 'briks that delivered the bass ! - I maintained then, and have done so consistently since, that a balanced system will deliver a more enjoyable experience than a lop-sided "source-first" system.

See above for a defence of lop-sidedness in a hifi system

Paul Davies posted:

"I am curious to know which very expensive systems using Linn Kans you listened to and which systems produced the more "balanced" sound that you preferred".

Paul,

I am afraid that I cannot answer this question. The last time I heard a pair of Linn Kans would have been back in the 80s, and although I am pretty sure that they were on the end of a Linn LP12 setup, I really can't remember details of the arm, cartridge or amplification. My viewpoint is fairly generic in respect of 'very' small speakers used in very expensive hi-fi systems, because I can remember thinking at the time that the Kans weren't anything particularly special. I considered them to be 'over-hyped' (along with the Rogers LS3/5a) . I preferred the Rogers, but thought they were horrendously expensive for what they were. If I had had that sort of money available for speakers, they would not have been my choice.

However, there was one small speaker around at roughly the same time that bucked the trend and did genuinely astound me, and if I could have afforded them at the time (circa early to mid 80s) then I would definitely have bought them. They were the original (metal bodied) Acoustic Energy AE1s. They certainly did not lack in the bass department, and were way better than anything else I was auditioning at the time. Their only drawback was that they needed to be played at a fairly high volume to sound at their best. I auditioned them very shortly after they were released. The salesman insisted I should hear what my proposed system could really do and brought in these innocuous speakers with their custom stands at the end of my demo period. I was underwhelmed by their looks, but astounded by their ability. If I could have somehow scraped together the money to buy them, they would have come home with me. Unfortunately, I ended up with a pair of Heybrook HB1s.  

I do freely admit that I have not heard the Kans at their best in an optimal system and listening space, and am certainly prepared to accept that on the end of an appropriate system they can sound very good. But did you audition any other small speakers, or other larger speakers at the same price point before selecting the Kans?    

LP12/72/140/Kans - friends would always marvel at the sound for the size and always commented "how can they produce so much bass?"
Usually whilst I played "We Close Our Eyes (Total overhand mix)" by Go West at a reasonably high volume.
Amazing!
Sounded even better after aligning all of the screws in light switches and power sockets 

blythe posted:

Sounded even better after aligning all of the screws in light switches and power sockets 

...but were they horizontal, vertical or for absolute perfection 45 degrees?

You have to take the screws out, and disconnect all electrical services in the house with the exception of the hifi circuit.  I've found you can also get significant improvements if you sneak out in the early hours and disconnect the rest of the street and all of the street lights at the nearest substation.  The downside of three months in hospital with electrical burns is totally worth it

HMack and Paul,

I have used Kans in the past with a 250 and they are amazing for their small size.I still use Rogers LS 35 A which have a more accurate studio sound.

HMack

I changed the Kans for some AE 1s in Rosewood.They where good speakers but always found that their low sensitivity made them very current hungry and slightly constipated.You really needed over 100 watts a channel to make them really sing.Loved their transparency but always thought the treble could have been smoother.Funny the AE1 s I had on home dem in black metal bodied cabinets sounded better than my pair in wood.

Back to the Flat Responsance I enjoyed reading it but it but hated their bias.Especially the way they rubbished everything Absolute Sounds imported. A classic was the preamp section in a NAD 3020 was better than an Audio Research SP 8 preamp.A Linn basik was better than a Koetsu black.

A mate who worked for a big Linn Naim dealer in London in the flat earth days once told me their Linn rep told them to keep their feet tapping while demming the Linn stock or keep knodding there heads like they where in some sort of trance !!   Nuff said !

Hi Tabby Catt,

I too was seriously 'put off' a number of brands in the 70s & 80s by this type of blatant promotion. I'm reluctant to mention this as a guest on this forum, but another annoyance for me was the suggestion (or stronger) that there was no point in purchasing Naim Audio amplification if you didn't possess a Linn LP12 turntable. Now Linn may have dramatically improved the LP12 over the years, but around the time of the introduction of the Linn LP12, and when this 'philosophy' was at its peak, there were in my opinion a number of alternatives around that were as good or better than the LP12. 

At the time, certain journalists used to say that you either 'got' the Linn sound or you didn't, and if you didn't then you should keep listening until the penny dropped. For me, there was a huge inherent contradiction between the subtle difference that people didn't quite get and the subsequent revelation that was bound to come in the end.  

In those early days many of the alternatives were at least as expensive as, and often more expensive than the LP12, but nowadays, a fully kitted out LP12 is astronomically expensive. That is my gripe with the modern LP12, and is nothing to do with the actual quality of sound itself. They may not be any better, but from a simple engineering perspective I can understand why a top of-the-range Clearaudio or Goldmund turntable might be very, very expensive to manufacture and produce in bulk. However, I really can't quite get why a top of the range LP12 is as expensive as it is. 

Mind you, I could say the same about cables by a number of 'audiophile' cable manufacturers, including the ones that I myself use. I think they sound great, and I was prepared to pay a lot of money for them. However, I really can't see why they need to be quite so expensive. Research (if indeed much of this was carried out) costs can only be so much, and the manufacturing costs can't be that high. Still, I did purchase them.    

Yes, the AE1s did require lots of power to sound at their best, although a number of relatively small powered amps could drive them successfully, for example the Audiolab 8000A; and yes, the earlier metal bodied versions did sound to me significantly better than the later AE1s with wooden cabinets. The AE1s and AE2s were great speakers. It's just a pity that AE lost their way a but and went downmarket after these two models. 

dayjay posted:

You have to take the screws out, and disconnect all electrical services in the house with the exception of the hifi circuit.  I've found you can also get significant improvements if you sneak out in the early hours and disconnect the rest of the street and all of the street lights at the nearest substation.  The downside of three months in hospital with electrical burns is totally worth it

By coincidence, the street lamp right outside my house has gone out, so we're in relative darkness outside.

Like a fool, I went and reported this malfunction on the council web site straight away.  In hindsight, I should have left it until I had completed some serious night time listening without the interference of the street lamp.

RJ:  Not to worry, you should have about 6 months before they change the bulb.

The flat earth rapper stuff is publicity whoring and I pay no attention to it but the Flat Response was superb and I've still got them all buried somewhere in the garage. I assumed tongue was firmly in cheek at times and I found the idea of top of the line Linn/Naim into Kans preposterous then as I still do. Source first yes but as part of a balanced system. Balanced being the operative word here.