Not An Audiophile – The Podcast features News in HiFi: News, Releases, Views & Opinions – a regular segment offering discussions and strong opinions on HiFi News, New Releases, Trends and Misconceptions by HiFi professionals.
EPISODE 012 – Andrew Hutchison & David Corazza – * NEW RELEASE Wharfedale Super Linton Loudspeakers * DO NOT choose HiFi by the specs!! * TIDAL – the rise & fall? *How your brain adapts to poor quality sound.
EPISODE 015 – Andrew Hutchison & David Corazza – * BOSE takeover of McIntosh Group? * The stupidest HiFi tweaks and “improvements”? *Kooky audio ideas *HiFi regrets?
Podcast transcripts below – Episode 012 and Episode 015
TRANSCRIPT
S1 EP012 News in HiFi: News, Releases, Views & Opinions
Andrew Hutchison: Welcome to not an Audiophile
Andrew Hutchison: A, It’s a. It’s a fun speaker to listen to.
David Corazza: It is. It has no pretensions, of being a nearfield studio monitor, nor the most accurate line array in the world or anything like that. It’s just like. Please sit down, put on your smoking jacket and grab your glass of whiskey.
Andrew Hutchison: Hello everybody. Welcome to not an Audiophile. This is Andrew Hutchison and this is episode 12 season one. today we’ve got a guest, David, Corazza, who’s not going to tell us too much about, his history, but I can tell you that he’s been around the audio business one way or another for a very long time and knows. Knows some stuff and and so we’re just going to talk, news items and a few other conceptual things and hopefully you might find it all interesting here.
Turns out that Tears for Fears released a new album the other day
Turns out that Tears for Fears released a new album the other day. And it’s a live album, largely four new studio tracks and a bunch of live tracks which I didn’t take too much notice of, except Arts from was shot in Tennessee in this quarry, which is actually not a quarry anymore. It’s a proper venue. But it, it, And then I’m reading and it’s like, oh, it’s a film. And the film’s called the name of the new studio album, which is about, oh, it’s not new, it’s two years old or something. Or long story short, it says so and so film. I’m like, oh, a film. And then I. So I just sort of pressed a button and it was like. And then the next minute, it says tickets or something. And I’m like, my God, they’re showing this film in air quotes. concert video if you want. twice, only ever in cinemas around the world, all at the same time.
David Corazza: Okay.
Andrew Hutchison: And one of them, we’d missed one which was either Thursday or Friday night, and the other one was Saturday afternoon and it was Saturday morning. So I went, oh, okay, where? Surely not in Brisbane, right? Because nothing happens in Brisbane.
David Corazza: Holy shit.
Andrew Hutchison: There’s like eight cinemas. One was at Coorparoo.
David Corazza: How very odd.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes. So I don’t really know what this is. I mean, and you will explain because you’re, you know about these things. But this. So, this is a. They’ve made a film of the concert. It’s not really a film. It’s not feature. Well, it’s a feature film. It goes for, you know, two, two and something hours. But anyhow, it was on in a few hours time, which is why I left early last week because I went to a Tears for Fears live cinema experience or whatever you call it.
David Corazza: And was it worth it?
Andrew Hutchison: Well, it was interesting because I thought it would be interesting from the point of view. Who’s going to go? How has this been publicised? Will anyone be there other than me? Because really if it wasn’t for Sharon playing the new live album and me actually going, that actually sounds pretty good. and nice interpretations, not studio replicas, but at the same time sounding good and you know, a good. I mean they’re fairly talented musicians, as is the band that they had collected. And long story short, it was interesting. So the people that were there, all of a particular age, surprise, surprise, the kiddies aren’t much, into Tears for Fears. And And they were all, they were all fans. Yeah, I guess, I guess that’s the people that know the super fans. And so, I’m not a super fan but you know, I have a respect for them and and that was actually pretty good. But here’s the reason why I bring it up. I mean it was a live concert, you know, in a theater, you know, in a cinema in one of those tiny cinemas with I guess 30 seats, you know, sort of wider than they are deep. And this is how cinemas are, built now, I guess. You know, lots of little cinemas for, you know, for I guess a broad range of audiences. And, and the reality is that I guess 500 people don’t come at a time anymore unless it’s for a Marvel comic thing or something. So not anymore.
David Corazza: But anyway, that’s another story.
Andrew Hutchison: Are you.
David Corazza says the sound of the film changed dramatically after an hour
Well, is that done? Is it.
David Corazza: Oh, the MCU is, is over.
Andrew Hutchison: It’s over pretty much. Oh dear.
David Corazza: I, I could rant on for hours about the.
Andrew Hutchison: I finished this boring story because this.
David Corazza: Go ahead.
Andrew Hutchison: This comes back to something to do with audio other than the music. Beautifully made film, beautifully shot, great performance. Sound was good. But I’m sitting there and it starts and I’d heard I’d been at a live concert a few days before and I guess I still had that in my head. And of course it’s very flat, two dimensional,
00:05:00
Andrew Hutchison: kind of sizzly and a bit brash sounding as a cinema system can be, I guess. And, and a bit light onto the bass and So. But I’m enjoying it, you know, and I’m thinking, oh, Sharon who came with me may or M may not be impressed by this. She’s not as big a fan of the band, etc. And but she Seemed happy enough and But I caught myself some time later. So I wasn’t impressed with the sound initially, but it wasn’t, it wasn’t hurting my ears, so to speak. But an hour later. This sounds great. This is really good. Bass was suddenly more. I noticed it was suddenly more extended. It was full, it was rich, it was fast. The top end had sweetened right up. It was beautifully balanced. So what the hell happened? There’s no way two things happened that the mix changed dramatically. Well, it would. It’s not a live mix. Right.
David Corazza: They can correct it was pretty ordained.
Andrew Hutchison: That’s right. Second thing. Second thing. the technician wasn’t at the cinema re eqing the system or playing with something, installing new speakers.
David Corazza: Would they even care for a small audience?
Andrew Hutchison: No, but not that it was terrible, but it did sound like an affordable cinema system at the start. And then an hour later it dawned on me. I wasn’t thinking about the sound. I was in the concert. It was good enough that I was the same as a film. You’d be drawn into the film. And then I noticed the sound was really good and much to my taste. So I’ll just leave that there because I don’t have an explanation. Although a previous guest, David Spargo, has strong opinions on this sort of. Well, he has perceptual this and perceptual that. But in this case it feels like the ear brain interface I like to call it, which is a, ah, perhaps a terrible term, had adjusted itself to what I would like to hear. And of course that’s quite scary from the point of view of all of us walking around going, you know, have you ever heard so and so’s they’re amazing, you know. So anyhow, so David is here. David Corazza. Is that a good pronunciation or.
David Corazza: Absolutely brilliant. Thank you.
Andrew Hutchison: Thank you.
David has a long history in audio of all kinds, which we may cover
Cool. David is listening to me prattle on. But he’s about to prattle on. So, David has a long history in audio of all kinds, which we may or may not cover at some point. But you’ve had a fair bit to do with music production, Correct. Mainly of the electronic.
David Corazza: Correct. That’s tool of the devil.
Andrew Hutchison: And so you’re aware of, and of course you’ve had an involvement with the hi fi industry as well, most recently with some very high quality products, that probably had a little bit of a connection to the pro industry in a way. I guess, we can say what that was. There’s no reason not to. I don’t think is there?
David Corazza: No, not at all.
Andrew Hutchison: So Dutch and Dutch loudspeakers.
David Corazza: Yeah, Dutch and Dutch. And there’s, you know, there’s a whole handful of companies now that have got crossover products that go from, you know, kind of multi, track creation monitoring to mastering into the domestic sphere. So you know, it used to be the case where years ago you could count them on one hand and now you can count them on four or five hands. It’s quite amazing how it’s diversified.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes, absolutely.
The world has changed. It has, thank God. Apparently, um, my observation about the sound changing in a cinema is correct
The world has changed.
David Corazza: It has, thank God.
Andrew Hutchison: That’s right. So, this episode is primarily other than a. Apparently, my observation about the sound changing in a cinema. And I mean that was profound by the way. I caught myself out going, oh, no, what’s going on here? Because it’s, I observed it was not that good initially and now I’m observing that I’m really enjoying it. It troubles me that. But anyhow, you know, after a lifetime in audio and you, you got to get to nearly 60 before you realize you’re fallible.
David Corazza: Well, if it can’t be measured, it can’t be real. Right? I say that in profound jest.
Andrew Hutchison: Well, I’ve been reading, recently, I don’t know if you’re aware of this thing called the Internet, but there’s like stuff on it you could read and there’s, there’s too much comments from people about theory and it is at times it is both impressive from the wise comments from someone who clearly really does know what they’re talking about. And then there’s the other stuff.
One trend that continually raises its head is the return to retro high five
So to get to the news though, because this is meant to be about the news. Did you bring any news articles with you today?
David Corazza: Not as such, but I see you have, some that you’ve previously
00:10:00
David Corazza: prepared before you.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, actually I have. and to prompt you, one that, Excuse me, one that continues to raise its head.
David Corazza: Continually.
Andrew Hutchison: as a lot of things that continually raise their head do is the return to the 70s or even the 60s or the 80s in some cases.
David Corazza: We’re talking about retro high five.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Well, what is the correct term? is it retro or is it renewed vintage or is it re engineered or is it. What is it? I don’t know. I mean, some.
David Corazza: It’s possibly all of the above and none of the above. I think it’s an interesting, it’s an interesting thing to follow because a lot of this stuff is primarily aesthetic. and following from the aesthetic there is this perceptual assumption that it’s going.
Andrew Hutchison: To sound like X. Yeah, I think, yeah.
David says the new A1 musical Fidelity looks absolutely gorgeous
Talking once again about perception which we don’t want to harp on about too much and ruin the hi Fi industry. But it’s. It There is a bit of that, isn’t there? So if it looks like something from the 70s and you were around in the 70s or at least maybe you’ve heard vintage equipment from the 70s, do you then. Similar to my cinema experience, do you then do you think you feel you hear a little bit of the 70s? Sort of.
David Corazza: Without question. I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve been in hi fi stores so called with vintage gear and people of varying ages. I’m not just talking middle aged folk who are pining for their youth. talking about people in their 20s and perhaps their 30s who are sitting in front of various gear that is either from the 70s or attempts to have a wink and a nod to the 70s and listening to recordings more importantly from the 70s and you can just see the nostalgia aura ah. Emanating from them.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes. Which is no bad thing though.
David Corazza: It’s not a bad thing. I’m not judging. I’m simply saying that that’s the thing.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, it’s I mean I, I kind of like it. But there. It’s almost on a per sample basis there are there are revisions of the past that are really lovely. Not just homages or homages to the past, but are really pitch perfect as far as the look though. I mean if anything they’re probably better made in some ways. Certainly the standards of fit and finish are probably going to be higher just because of the tooling tools we have available now. But I mean I remember When was it. Was it earlier this year? Earlier last year. I’ve forgotten. But Whenever the new A1 musical Fidelity came out was released at Munich. Oh it’d be the one before. I was genuinely excited because it just looked. And you’ve got one.
David Corazza: Yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: I should mention David does work nearby at a retail store that may run an ad sometime through this. Through this ah, broadcast. But I believe you have one over there.
David Corazza: Correct.
Andrew Hutchison: What do you think? I think it looks magical.
David Corazza: It looks beautiful. It’s wildly understated aesthetically and it does not draw visual attention to itself. Unlike some American testicular power amps that I will not mention.
Andrew Hutchison: M which don’t even release retro versions. They just have always looked the same. You mean.
David Corazza: Well, I don’t know if you’re Opening a Jules Verne novel and you are needing an illustration, perhaps they’d be suitable.
Andrew Hutchison: Oh, are we.
David Corazza: I will not mention names. Far be it from me.
Andrew Hutchison: you mean the slightly steampunky looking one?
David Corazza: I’m not going to say a word. however, the A1 looks gorgeous because it’s extraordinarily pared down and minimal. But more importantly, it’s one of those so called retro devices that actually sounds to my ears extremely good.
Andrew Hutchison: I’ve m not heard it yet. I mean I’ve heard the original ones on a regular basis because I have to repair them. But, and I like the sound of the original A1. It’s just got that natural sort of cleanness and warmth to it and it makes music. Absolutely. but the elegance of the design has always appealed as well. And to see one, because I’m not sure I ever saw one absolutely brand new. So to see one brand new now is like, wow, that’s. It’s like when you occasionally see an original of anything, an old car drives down the road and rather than being tarted up or hot rotted up, it’s just as it was in 1977 or something as it rolled off the showroom floor. It’s quite striking and that’s the way the A1 appeals to me.
welcomes new Wharfedale Linton loudspeakers
there are other kinds of retro products that are not exact replicas of course, but are still really great products. And I feel the Wharfedale Linton is a lovely, example of that.
David Corazza: You read my mind. Absolutely.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Okay. I mean, because it’s a, it’s a, it’s a fun speaker to listen to.
David Corazza: It is, it has no pretensions, of being an nearfield studio monitor, nor the most accurate
00:15:00
David Corazza: line array in the world or anything like that. It’s just like, please sit down, put on your smoking jacket and grab your glass of whiskey.
Andrew Hutchison: M. Yeah, and it, I mean I, was selling a similar kind of loudspeaker that about three times the price when I needed, a more affordable loudspeaker in the stores is some years ago actually about the time that. Well, it was when the Linton came out because a. That was about when I was getting out of retail. But it was, I think it came out in 2019. I think I just need something a bit, I need something a bit similar to what I’m selling, the UK built speaker that I was importing and sometime retailing and distributing what have you at the time. And I just need something lower price point for those that don’t want to spend seven grand right, on this kind of speaker. And so I thought I’d get a pair in and try it. Bloody embarrassing. Because it was so. Well, frankly, almost more fun to listen to. And that’s the thing, like you said, not as accurate, perhaps, and not as correct in some ways, but fun in the way a lot of speakers in the 70s and the 80s were. They made music.
David Corazza: Absolutely.
Andrew Hutchison: And, I like it for that. there’s other things about it I probably don’t like. but they are, those aspects might be the way it’s made, but it’s. But it’s certainly. No, it’s. No, it’s almost a proper replica in a way because it’s probably made it to about the same standard as. As the ones from the 70s. Adequate, you know, in the sense that it’s a simple box, simple components. Probably got a slightly better base unit in it maybe than the originals, might have had, because, you know. Well, maybe not in the case of Wharfedale, but a lot of companies were using press steel frames back then. And this I’m pretty sure has a. An aluminum cast frame. But, And I see there’s a new version of it.
David Corazza: M. The super version. Yes, above and beyond.
Andrew Hutchison: Which then raises the thought, or, you know. Okay, so the. The Linton as it was, was kind of perfect, I thought, really Pitch perfect. Well priced, included, the stands, you could put records in it. It was fun to listen to. That’s why millions have been sold. Maybe not millions, but clearly tens of thousands of pairs. and then you have a super version.
David Corazza: Correct.
Andrew Hutchison: Do you. Will you be getting the super version.
David Corazza: Into your store, Gentle listener? We have them in our store now.
Andrew Hutchison: Oh, do you really?
David Corazza: Indeed. We, unboxed them yesterday. There was a global embargo until, I don’t know, a few hours ago. And we unbox them and we’ve just started playing it, so it’s just burning in.
Andrew Hutchison: But, what are your thoughts?
David Corazza: Well, you know, kind of cut from the same cloth, although a, ah, couple of new drivers.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
David Corazza: sonically it’s somewhat similar. It’s a bit more refined. But I hasten to say anything because I haven’t m. Really burnt them in and haven’t really sat down and had a long listen to them. But, you know, they will appeal to the same customer. But it’s an interesting thing corporately what they’ve done. They’ve gone up a couple of grand in the price.
Andrew Hutchison: Oh, is it gone up that much?
David Corazza: Oh, yeah, yeah, it’s a little over 5k.
Andrew Hutchison: Oh, is it really? Okay, that’s interesting.
David Corazza: So the original Linton, I believe, is still in existence. but the Super Linton is kind of like taking the mantle of the top dog, so to speak.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay, that’s, Or I wasn’t aware that it was jump. I mean, I must admit the article I saw where it was mentioned probably only had a US price or something and I didn’t really do the, didn’t do the mental arithmetic on the exchange rate etc. So, okay, interesting. I mean, and quite coincidental that I mean, I guess you’ve had them ordered for a while or something. Like you say, you can only talk about it today.
David Corazza: There’s all the politics in the industry about disclosure at certain times, etc. But that’s in the automotive industry, in the camera industry. Virtually every consumer object that purports to be desirable and acquirable has already been around. We always have this, you know, kind of like, index finger up to our lips going shush, shush. You know, you’re not allowed to talk about this Secret Squirrel business. It’s, it’s a beautifully constructed ethos.
Andrew Hutchison: Well, I, you guys have done a reasonable job of it because I hadn’t, I didn’t know it existed until yesterday and that was just perusing the Internet.
Secret Squirrel has released a quad 303/33 combo, which looks pretty crappy
So the other one that’s perhaps less Secret Squirrel, is the quad 303/33 combo, which I did do remember where I saw it, and that was Munich, this year.
David Corazza: What were your thoughts?
Andrew Hutchison: I thought it looked like a piece of shit. And
David Corazza: And what. What matter of would you be talking about and why? Well, it.
Andrew Hutchison: I have a suspicion, having said that, that the reason why it’s been not spoken about since Munich much until I think it was released this week as well. and bizarrely, of course, by the same company. So we should talk about some other company.
David Corazza: We should.
Andrew Hutchison: But, is it looked really crappy, fit and finish wise. it was. I don’t think it was plugged in, so maybe they hadn’t, you know, got the. Got it the way they wanted, electronically speaking. But fit
00:20:00
Andrew Hutchison: and finish, it looked kind of scrappy compared with the original, which of course I’ve never seen one in absolutely immaculate condition. But I have had the pleasure of working on them on and off many years and they, are. I mean, Peter Walker was a genius as far as designing a chassis and the way all the bits fitted together so elegantly inside. And this is not to be appreciated unfortunately, by 99 of the people who listen to these amplifiers because they a. Probably don’t care about what’s inside, which is, you know, kind of understandable. they care how it sounds and that’s. That’s, I guess, what matters. But as a technical person, you. When you pull these things apart and compared with so much equipment is just kind of thrown together thoughtlessly inside these. All of his products were beautifully thought through, particularly in that era. So, I suspect. Well, from the outside, I could see straight away this thing was. It kind of had a few exposed screws. The gaps were not right. And then of course, it had this ridiculous, display for the tone control.
David Corazza: Yes, I. I’ve seen images of it and it just looks a little interesting.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. That I’m pretty sure those displays did not exist in 1970, whatever, when that amplifier was originally conjured up. And, And so that. That is this. So that enters a different realm of this retro era of, you know, reinvention of earlier products, which I don’t like, because there’s no way. Because that amplifier sounded a particular way because of the way it was designed and the topology internally. And I’m pretty sure the new one, as much as it purports to be similar, is not in a couple of fundamental ways. And one way is that it obviously has a microprocessor in it in the preamp. There definitely were none in the original. And And it has the display and it has all of. I don’t know, it has stuff on it. It even has XLR connections, I notice.
David Corazza: But it begs the question of A, why they re released it as a homage to the original, and B, there are certain marketing assumptions about who will buy this. And my question is who will buy this and why?
Andrew Hutchison: I don’t think anyone’s going to buy it because the people who had the quad originally are, probably almost. Well, the suit. I was going to say something kind of rude.
David Corazza: You mean expired?
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Either underground or moving off to a nursing home.
David Corazza: Yeah, yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: Not probably quite that old in all cases. Certainly some people are fitter than others. But what they are more. Almost certainly in a process of doing is downsizing. Although it’s not a large product, so maybe it fits a downsizing scenario. Maybe you’ve got some kind of giant pair of Sonus Fabers with a stack of Macintosh, which apparently the other two, they are, They have to go together those. These days, those two brands. And you’ve. You’re in the process of selling that and you’re going to buy a 33303 combo to put on your bedside table at the nursing home. But I see. That sounds kind of nasty, doesn’t it? I might backpedal from that slightly. Or not. I’ll edit it out later, as I like to say. So it’s, But why? It. It doesn’t do all of the things you really want a kind of small system to do. It won’t do. Streaming, I presume. Right. So you’re gonna plug what into it? It’s got nothing. There’s no sources built in. Right. So you have a turntable or a tuner. Or a tuner or a, you know, or a, you know, obviously some kind of transport or a streaming box of tricks into it. So I just.
David Corazza: Yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: So what do you think? Do you. I mean, I just, I don’t. And what’s the matching component?
David Corazza: Look, it’s, it’s.
The preamp and the power are two completely different looking products
Andrew Hutchison: It was oddball in the first place. The preamp and the power, two completely different looking products.
David Corazza: God knows we all miss the tilt function of the tone controls. look, I. I don’t. I think we’re overthinking this, Andrew. I think. And, no disrespect to Quad or their current owners or whoever’s pulling the financial and marketing strings, but it’s purely an aesthetic and it’s purely a nod in a wink to more than half a century ago. So, there is a.
One thing I’ve noticed is there is a strong market for the retro look
One thing I’ve really noticed is there is a strong market for the retro look. Now, I say look quite distinctly from sound because I recall years ago when I was living in Sydney, I was walking down. Gosh, Sydney. People will kill me. Now, the main street in Newtown. King Street. Thank you, David.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes, King Street.
David Corazza: and, there was a retro shop at the end of King street. And at the time, this is the 2000s.
Andrew Hutchison: Classic hi fi.
David Corazza: Classic hi Fi. Thank you.
Andrew Hutchison: free plug for Classic High.
David Corazza: Indeed.
Andrew Hutchison: I’ll be in touch with them.
David Corazza: No doubt they’re still there. doing well. It was remarkable because I walked in and I saw all these boxes of my youth, like, yes, early Luxmans and, the odd AC
00:25:00
David Corazza: phase and certainly Pioneer receivers, which. Have you seen how much they command on ebay these days? Holy shit. Are you serious?
Andrew Hutchison: That’s another conversation.
David Corazza: Yeah, so these guys had a really interesting business model where a lot of the stuff that they source was taken from Asia, specifically Japan. they changed from 110 or 100, 100 volts, depending what part, what prefecture you are in Japan, to 240. And you know they bit of spit and polish and you know, it looked like new and you know, it’s, it sounded rather good but there was the whole, you know, Macquarie banker crowd who’d walk in.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, yeah.
David Corazza: With lots of spending cash and there’s no, just. I’m not disparaging bankers. Cough, cough. they, why not? And pulled out their folding cash and said I want one of these because I’ve seen an ad for these, in an old magazine and they look really sexy.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
David Corazza: And I think the whole retro thing and it’s still going and I don’t think it’ll go away. A lot of it’s psychological, some of it’s real gear from the 70s does have a specific sound whether you like it or not. It certainly has a very distinct aesthetic. A lot of it’s in my estimation also, pining for days gone by. It’s not necessarily about the gear, it’s what the gear represents sociologically and psychologically.
Andrew Hutchison: Oh yeah, I get. And like with kind of said earlier, fine, you know, that’s, I’m not judging.
David Corazza: I’m simply saying that that’s yeah. Why people buy this.
Andrew Hutchison: The people talk a lot about all the sound. But I mean I, I wonder sometimes whether the sound of the 70s was the sound of the 70s gear now that it’s 50 years old because, it’s kind of worn out.
David Corazza: You don’t say, you know, I mean.
Andrew Hutchison: I mean certainly in the case of loudspeakers, my God, you, you don’t want an old 80s, 70s or 80s pair of speakers. They’re, they’re shagged. They just are. I’m sorry but the materials have lost.
David Corazza: Well, you, you of all people, you know, from first hand experience, will know how components age and how they change chemically and, and you know, therefore they impart a certain sound, be it good, be it bad.
Andrew Hutchison: well, they’re certainly well run in at this point, aren’t they?
David Corazza: Just being very kind.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes. Yeah, it’s Yeah, I don’t, I don’t, I don’t have an opinion either way. I mean we’re really just observing. I mean you clearly don’t have a problem with it. I mean, you like the Linton’s. I don’t,
David Corazza: It’s interesting you asked that question. Why would I have a problem? I’m not being defensive, but I’m curious as to why you would couch that question that you.
Andrew Hutchison: Well, I mean there’s no reason to have a problem with them except that It’s. Is it a waste of energy that we are re, engineering past product rather than moving forward and trying to do something like say Dutch and Dutch did, where they had a clean sheet of paper from what I understand, and just sort of let’s build the best possible loudspeaker on all of the R and D that everyone has done before. So we’re going to take everyone’s ideas, we’re going to have a good look at it and we’re going to sort of have a focused idea of what we want to achieve based on all this, R and D, do our own on top of that and create a thoroughly modern loudspeaker.
There are people who buy hi Fi because it’s a motorbike
David Corazza: Well, look, I understand and I think there’s, you know, the market, the buyers, whatever you want to call the pool of people who buy hi Fi, they’re very divergent. There’s not a single hi Fi buyer. There’s not a type. You could probably subcategorize them, you know, in a very generalized sense. But there are some people who really don’t care about what we would objectively and empirically call the best in inverted commas. There are people, and this cuts across with other hobbyists, shall we say, like people who are into watches or photography. camera people are another mob. There are people who will only touch old film likers and things like that and not be. And you know, and no disrespect to any particular brand there, but do they buy old film likers because it’s the latest technology? Evidently not. It’s because it’s an old film camera. It has a story, a history. Yes, a, beautiful. A beautiful history. And it’s got the lovely red badge on it. So, you know.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, that’s. It’s always. And I always. I used to, I used to believe that motorcyclists were somewhat different because people who like bikes, there are people who we of course know ride Harleys and there are people who ride motorbikes.
David Corazza: Correct.
Andrew Hutchison: But then you can. And that sounds being slightly facetious there, but there’s an inkling.
David Corazza: Well, I mean, let’s face it.
Andrew Hutchison: But let’s break that down.
David Corazza: Well, a Harley buyer will buy a Harley because it’s a Harley, not because it’s a goddamn motorbike. No, no, it happens to be a motorbike. by extension, yes, they’re buying the so called lifestyle and experience.
Andrew Hutchison: Absolutely. This is certainly m. Well, they are buying that, but they, but then the interesting thing. So you’ve got in bikes, you’ve Got people who would ride like a ah, large trailer like a BM BMW GS. You’ve got people who would never ride that
00:30:00
Andrew Hutchison: but they would ride a KTM950 or they might be a naked bike rider, a sports bike rider, a super duper proper dirt bike rider on the road just because they can and pull wheelies everywhere. And then, but then coming back to the Harley rider, then you’ve got people who ride Harleys but then there’s other brands of American cruiser style motorcycles and those, those, those paths will not cross largely. I know I would never have a Indian because that’s a. Probably in this, probably a new rejuvenated version. But also then there’s people who ride metric Harleys as they’re called, as in Yosuzuki and Kawasaki kind of on Honda for that matter, sort of interpretations of what a Harley might be. None of these people’s paths will cross.
IAG as a group are a bit stuck on vintage stuff at the moment
But of course it applies even more so I think in hi Fi.
David Corazza: I couldn’t agree more.
Andrew Hutchison: You know with people who love horns, panels, Closed box speakers, open baffles, blah blah blah. And and that’s just speakers. And then of course you’ve got your tubes, transistors, class A, class ab, class.
David Corazza: D now and then the other class H class ADHD
Andrew Hutchison: That’s right, Class ADHD which actually is quite a popular.
David Corazza: Yeah, yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: so and then we divide that up now to people who will or will not buy homage to rep to another time products. And then you could split that further as we’ve just kind of done into ones that are legitimate revisions and improvements of an old design which maybe the musical Fidelity A1 is. I think it probably is. and then in the case of the quad, I don’t think it is. I think it’s like you say, it’s window dressing for nostalgia nostalgic purposes only. Which is kind of fine as well. but slightly What’s the word? Wow. We’ll leave it at that. A bit like. No we won’t. We’ll leave it all of that. But actually IAG as a group are a bit stuck on vintage stuff at the moment, aren’t they? I mean between the missions. Yes, indeed, indeed indeed. The revision of the other Wharfedale, you know, the Linton and the Denton. Then now we’ve got the quad. they kind of had already done it with new quad valve amps which were actually quite good but interestingly did done 20 years ago and not, not popular. Not really. Maybe they were too damned expensive. It was also just prior to maybe tubes becoming popular again. But anyhow. So, M. Anything else to say on the vintage retro front? I think we worn that out. I mean we’re really just venting about it to some.
David Corazza: Well, I don’t know about venting. Look, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s going to stay here. It’s going to be manifest for years. I don’t think it’s ever going to go away. There’s a certain subset of hi Fi. Buyers, consumers, listeners, whatever you want to call them who will pine for the fjords. They’ll want the old stuff, whether it’s the original old stuff or new iterations and interpretations of the old stuff. So. And that’s fine. It’s the, the great thing about our industry is it’s so wildly diverse. There is. We’re a very broad church.
You mentioned Pioneer receivers of the 70s would be expensive to replace
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, yeah. And, and, and, and just as a finishing touch on that, someone told me this week and it was either you or any number of other people sorry. That I, who I may have spoken to this week said Pioneer was maybe breaking away on its own from its current owners or whatever. Does that mean we can look forward to. You mentioned Pioneer receivers of the 70s. I mean that’s what you’d do, wouldn’t you?
David Corazza: Well, Pioneer, possibly Pioneer, poor things have gone through a bit of a rough trot the last few years.
Andrew Hutchison: I mean how do you get it back? Maybe just rejuvenate the 70s, which wouldn’t be, which wouldn’t be all bad.
David Corazza: I could think of worse strategies.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, yeah. But the problem is the way they were made, they’d be so expensive to replace.
David Corazza: Poisonously expensive.
Andrew Hutchison: As much as you’re right, the value of secondhand Marantz and Pioneer receivers is very high at an all time high. If you tried to recreate one to the same standard. Oh my God. Yeah. They would be $20,000.
David Corazza: And the market by extension has been spoiled the last decade or so because we’ve got a lot of. Well, you know, even more than a decade ago a lot of manufacturers went to southern China and other parts of Asia for their fabrication. I remember when the Levinson Group under Harmon started building in China and I thought wow, this is interesting. This will set a precedent. And it did. and you know we’ve got stuff now that’s historically quite inexpensive when you adjust it for inflation and everything else.
Andrew Hutchison: Absolutely.
David Corazza: To bang on the money. If we were to go back and manufacture say amplification with your Big toroidals, your proper caps,
00:35:00
David Corazza: your XYZ components. Ah, in a chassis that’s extruded from a solid hue and block of granite. and all the other good things in inverted commas that you used to do, the price would be out of the reach of most people.
Andrew Hutchison: It would be because hi fi unlike homes has actually hardly been affected by inflation. Even though Peter Como’s want to say that the reason why the dove dials cost as much as they do now is because of inflation. But nothing else has actually gone up. I mean if you forget the retro reinventions, you can buy a pretty damn fine loudspeaker New for 3 to 5 to $6,000. but the, you know they’re, I mean they are a big box, they’re hard to ship around and what have you. But I mean that, I mean he, he makes an argument for. That’s why the huge difference in price. But I guess I’m losing my own argument here because it doesn’t. You can’t make an argument. There are examples thanks to China and high volume manufacturing where the value for money equation high today on consumer goods of all kinds. Your phone being an example of probably the best example. The technology in that is astounding. And yet there are a thousand or two thousand dollars. But yeah, other stuff of course is you know high end American and European brands are kind of outrageous amounts of money. But that comes back to. They’re made in very small volumes. I don’t know what I’m trying to say. Except those Japanese receivers of the 70s, as complicated as they were to make, they had a focused workforce who could do good quality work and they were made in enormous volumes. You know they were made in. I would say oh, I don’t know, they would have, they would have done a batch of 5,000.
David Corazza: I would say oh easily. But you’ve got to, you’ve got to. You know we tend to forget this, that structurally our society has changed enormously in 50 years. tell me how. Well, what we considered. Seriously, there’s a manner of ways I’d be here for hours. But the stuff that impacts our industry and most of consumer electronics is this 40, 50 years ago there was no Internet and there were no computers at least consumer based of any functionality anyway. Really. I mean we can always talk about whimsically about the Apple 2 and the Tandy TRS 80 but they weren’t real computers by our standards at the moment.
Andrew Hutchison: Not really.
David Corazza: Well not really.
Andrew Hutchison: But we forget graphical User. Well, Apple too, had.
David Corazza: Yeah, yeah, but let me finish my story. I mean, like, you know, we forget that comparatively with a phone, Android or iOS, whatever it is, it’s got more computing power than a Cray xmp, for God’s sake. and that I find absolutely astonishing. I really find that astonishing. There’s no technical arena that I can think of that has this totally exponential increase in power. There’s simply nothing.
David says music had far more relevance 30, 40 years ago than it does now
Getting back to my thesis about how we’ve changed is that back in the 70s and 80s, well, music was really a binding force for a lot of people. Not just young people, but certainly young people. one of the rites of passage of a lot of young people was, you know, I’ve got this artist or I love this band and. Oh, do you love that band too? We’re part of this secret club and we love Band X and we don’t.
Andrew Hutchison: Love bandwidth, we’re not telling anyone about it.
David Corazza: So as much as an identity branding is anything else. And because there wasn’t, you know, people playing Minecraft for 20 hours a time on your Steam account globally, with 300 other friends trying to kill you, you know, that stuff, music was far more centric. It was far more.
Andrew Hutchison: Oh, yeah, well, simpler times.
David Corazza: Well, simpler times, but yeah, there was far less distraction. But music actually, this is my position and I please could be persuaded to be wrong, but I think music had far more relevance to people’s lives certainly 30, 40 years ago than it does now.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes, absolutely. And does the retro thing to go full circle as much is it as much about for those more mature customers who are interested in a, look back at the past, whether by buying genuine vintage or the retro revisionist brigade of products is just about just wanting to, in some small way relive a time when things were simpler, were more about, well, music. Yeah, and just less distraction, I guess. And I mean, you know, there was really. I’ve said to people forever, you know, oh, wise high find, not as big a deal as it was. And of course, hi Fi is a bigger deal than it was in the preceding 20 odd years. But in the preceding 20 odd years, I would say, well, Internet, Internet and Internet really, I mean, basically, and all of, all of that ability to communicate, it just means that there
00:40:00
Andrew Hutchison: is, I guess you’ve just got. Because you got toys, there’s less time. I remember the Internet became a thing. I spent the first seven years on the Internet just doing the Internet, learning stuff and, and I do. It does strike me that the current crop of, of smarty pant 20 somethings. They really are so much smarter than I was in my 20s because I had to go and buy a textbook and trawl through it for the facts that I needed. It could have taken a couple of weeks to read it. Well yeah, you just go tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. And assuming you can choose a reliable source for your information, you’ve got it immediately and it goes on and you, I mean it’s, it’s ah, a great time to be alive and away.
David Corazza: Well, it’s, it’s opportunity cost. I mean this may surprise you, but we’re all going to die one day and we have, we have a limited amount of time on this spinning rock apparently. So what I’m trying to say is with opportunity cost, one can spend one’s time in front of a screen on certain sections of the web, whether it be 4chan or whether it be Reddit or whether it be, shall we say, the more murkier aspects of the interwebs. Or we can kind of like have our brain numbed by certain other websites and indeed social media, portals. But that’s irrelevant. The point is you are choosing to spend your time there rather than sitting down in front of a stereo and actively, yeah. Listening to music. Now, neither is good nor bad. All I’m saying is there’s a resource called time and you determine where that goes.
Andrew Hutchison: It is finite. Yes.
David Corazza: It is finite indeed.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes. As to where you might end up. Yeah, I think we’re getting away from high five. And on that note, we will have a short break.
David Corazza: Good.
Andrew Hutchison: And maybe there’ll be an ad for a, from a highly regarded supplier. Thank you, David. Back shortly. Hello everybody. Thanks for listening. Hey, if you could rate, review or follow or even subscribe if you’re on YouTube, the show, that would be fantastic. On Apple podcasts and Spotify. I’m pretty sure it’s follow. If you could follow. That would be great if you want to. You know you don’t have to, but it would be very much appreciated and without any further ado, back to the show.
What specifications do you take notice of on a hi fi product
So we’re back. We’re back, with a within. With a new exciting line, of discussion and one that I just, it just occurred to me yesterday and I thought you’re the ideal person to ask David about this. So what specifications do you take any notice of on a hi fi product? Because it occurred to me, and I’ll preface this question with my own thoughts so you don’t feel uncomfortable answering It I take notice of almost none.
David Corazza: Yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: I take more notice of how deep it is and whether it’ll fit beside a cabinet.
David Corazza: Well, that’s probably a more real world metric. specifications. Oh God, what a, you know, hoary chestnut we’re going to open up now. let’s keep it simple because I.
Andrew Hutchison: Reckon I then thought further over lunch yesterday that there is a couple that I care about.
David Corazza: Sure.
Andrew Hutchison: But then I thought they’re not, they’re less specification than more, you know, is it, okay loudspeakers, Is it a panel, is it a closed box, reflex box? Is it a, is it horn loaded or something is probably going to tell me more about whether I’m going to like it or not.
David Corazza: Yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: But then I realize, aha. Uh-huh. That’s because if we’re kind of directing this conversation more towards a beginner audio equipment enthusiast or at least someone who’s, you know, just as much into music as equipment and is kind of interested in, you know, it’s really, it’s hard, you don’t have that experience to know how those different products sound. So really it’s not a useful specification. horn loaded speaker is probably going to sound a particular way because it’s more sensitive and maybe it’ll sound maybe a little horn loaded, but most don’t these days thanks to computer modeling etc. so they’re the things I, Is it an active speaker or a passive speaker in the case? If it’s an amp, if it’s tubes, transistors, whatever. But then if you’re not such an experienced listener, or experienced with the equipment, you don’t really know maybe how a tube amp sounds and of course they all sound different anyhow. But it’s going to sound a little bit like a tube amp. And then if it’s single ended, you go, well, it’s going to be not particularly powerful and if it’s a push pull, it’ll have enough power to drive a normal speaker. That, that’s as much as I, I realize I investigate the specifications.
David Corazza: Is that the question?
Andrew Hutchison: Well, the question is do you find yourself taking any notice of specifications? I don’t think. My point is that I don’t.
David Corazza: Yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: I certainly don’t care about distortion figures.
David Corazza: Well, personally, very little. it depends. A lot of it depends from which manufacturer it comes from.
Andrew Hutchison: Ah.
David Corazza: And how it’s predicated as well. a lot of manufacturers
00:45:00
David Corazza: just, you know, roll out spec saying blah, blah, blah, like for instance, frequency response between X and Y with a, you know, plus three decibels envelope. Here are the turning points that you know, kind of we, we dive precipitously at 50 cycles and there’s nothing above 18. Or we’re DC to light and flat or DC to light. Come on, you must have heard that. but you know it’s, it’s all, it’s all very interesting and a lot of it’s, you know, DC to light.
Andrew Hutchison: Plus and minus 0.1 of a DB.
David Corazza: Correct, correct. a lot of it’s to assuage people’s fear about. Well, this is, you know, it predicates what it’s going to sound like. Oh, you know, it’s going to sound like this. And you haven’t even unpacked the speaker or the goddamn amp and already you’re presupposing what it’s going to sound like. So that’s an interesting thing, I think that is always in play with a lot of people. But you make a really good point. people like us and some of our colleagues that will be listening have been in the industry for years and we’ve heard hundreds if not thousands of pieces of gear and we’ve built up a mental map and an audio map of what things generally sound like.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
David Corazza: now the novice who walks into a store or walks into a mate’s place listening to a system, if they’ve not had a lot of exposure about anything, they, they’ll probably be blown over by most things. I mean, just a very quick example of this.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
David Corazza: When I was lecturing in engineering production and critical listening at the Conservatorium of Music in Brisbane here years ago, I remember some of my students, a lot of my students were just young, between I guess 17 and 20. Thereabouts.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
David Corazza: And you know, they would congregate in the hallway with their Macs or their PC laptops open and they’d be watching YouTube and you know, this God awful heinous sound would be coming from their laptops and I’d be like Gollum going ah, it burns, it burns. And I just kind of roll my eyes and we’d all walk in and I’d deliver the lecture. And I noticed this after about five or six times I’m thinking I’ve never seen these people actually listen to, obviously because they’re not dragging speakers around, but even talk about good two channel audio. And I asked them during one lecture, I said, you know, how many people have a stereo system at home? And I think about three hands went up in the. And most of Them had things like UE booms or you know, jbl, Bluetooth, you know, not disparaging these brands or the people. And I said, right, okay, here’s what I’ll do. because I was living at Sunnybank at the time, I said, look, I tell you what, if five or six of you want to come over for dinner one night, I’ll cook you a slap up deal a meal and I’ll show you. I’ll sit you down and listen. And you know, you can have a listen to a two channel system and at the time I won’t mention brands, but I had some really excellent TAU speakers, really excellent amp and a bloody excellent turntable.
Andrew Hutchison: Yep. So I thought, wow, so you were going to play them a record? Yeah, I thought this is a few years ago, right?
David Corazza: The kids are into this. yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
David Corazza: Yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: So anyway, so was that pre album, pre vinyl? Boom?
David Corazza: No, no, this is, this is only about six or seven years ago.
Andrew Hutchison: So they, they knew what a record was. Yeah, yeah, they certainly hadn’t heard one play.
David Corazza: They’d never seen us one as Skeletal. The turntable of Skeletal is this. And that’s as far as I’ll go. and anyway, the stylist went into the groove and this hologram manifested itself in the room. And it’s cliche to say it, but the jaws actually slackened and dropped and they just looked at one another like with it, it was a huge, I bet it was Road to Damascus WTF moment.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
David Corazza: And then after a couple of tracks, you know, I couldn’t shut them up and they said play more play. I had to kick them out at around 11 o’clock saying I’ve got to work tomorrow.
Andrew Hutchison: That’s fantastic.
David Corazza: Yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: Wow. I guess we all kind of had that moment and that’s how we ended up where we are now.
David Corazza: Indeed.
Andrew Hutchison: a lifetime later. But, you know, half a lifetime or you know, 2/3, whatever it is. yeah, that’s great.
Once you hear holography, there’s no going back
So you’ve, you’ve ruined their life now.
David Corazza: Well, they can’t unhear what they heard. that’s the problem.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes. Yeah.
David Corazza: But that’s also a good thing because once you have a strong, or at least start to have a strong frame of reference with anything, whether it’s cars, wine, sex, clothes, music, whatever, there’s no going back. It’s very hard to go.
Andrew Hutchison: Apparently the first time is the best time as well.
David Corazza: I mean, it’s the first time, so really they’re just all the most terrifying.
Andrew Hutchison: Chasing the, chasing The Dragon. I mean, that’s. It’s almost why people keep coming back into hi Fi shops, isn’t it? And changing equipment there.
David Corazza: Well, you understand what I mean. I mean, it’s, it’s. You know, I often joke with colleagues and friends saying, you know, kind of, oh, yeah, hi Fis. like heroin. it’s just as expensive but more benign.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
David Corazza: and it is for a lot of people. It’s a drug, but probably equally as.
Andrew Hutchison: Damaging to some people’s mental health.
David Corazza: Well, yeah, I’m not going to argue with that.
Andrew Hutchison: that’s great. So they, I mean, what, what were the. They loved it. They wanted to keep hearing,
00:50:00
Andrew Hutchison: I guess, music that they knew or, you know, because we all do that. I guess we get a new piece of equipment at home and, Well, I go, how’s it going to sound? That’s amazing. How I’m going to play something else. I wonder what it’s going to do, you know. And, So there was a bit of that. But what was the. What was the. Were they saying things like, we never knew this could exist or this did exist? Correct.
David Corazza: They were utterly gobsmacked by me because experientially, two things had happened. number one, I think that the most salient thing that they perceived was holography. Like three dimensional placement of items in a space.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
David Corazza: and this went across the board whether it was an acoustic recording or whether it was totally synthetic production in the studio. Kraftwerk’s a great example of this Daft Punk, etc, etc. And I was playing orchestral stuff. I was playing some Prokiev and Ship. What else was I doing? Shostakovich’s fifth. And it’s. I mean, they were just gobsmacked because they’d never heard true dynamic range.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
David Corazza: True image placement and extension and that. Metaphilius.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, Sorry, I was going to check what this light’s saying on this machine. Oh, that’s all right. That’s fine.
Don’t take any notice of specs prior to listening to equipment
to come full circle to what we kicked off about. So they weren’t asking about any specific. What is the specifications. They didn’t give a.
David Corazza: About the specifications. They were just. They were just admiring the magic that was taking place in front of them and between their ears.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. And so that’s. That’s kind of. I mean, I, I don’t. Okay, here’s the other. I don’t even need to read my comments because I can remember what I wrote, which is that I basically wrote that I don’t take. Or maybe I should Read it. I don’t take any notice of specifications when it comes to listening to equipment. So don’t take any notice of specs prior to listening to a piece of gear. I couldn’t really care less. I mean we know it’s going to be properly manufactured, it’s going to produce enough volume, it’s going to sound basically correct, undistorted and of a certain level of quality. We can’t draw any real conclusions from the specification.
David Corazza: You’ve got to listen, you know.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, okay, it’s a 500 watt amp or it’s a 12 watt amp. We, there’s 12 watt amps that sound pretty grippy in the base. We know the 500 watt one will. But that would depend entirely what speakers and all sorts of other things. So. But I then make the comment. I take an enormous amount of notice of specification measurements when I’m either repairing or designing a product. Less so repairing because we’re really just trying to put back what the original designer had already created and we’re not really redeveloping it. But in the case of developing a loudspeaker, the measurements are without, you can’t, you can’t progress without measurements. You know, you can, I mean ultimately it’s. The decisions are made based on how enjoyable it is to listen to. But to get there you need measurement. But when it comes to choosing hi Fi and I will assume a scenario where you can listen to it, not make decisions over the Internet, which is of course fine for those who wish to do things that way, but is ultimately ah, colored by more of a desire to save a small amount of money or perhaps because you live somewhere not handy to a hi Fi store. So those are not reasons. They are, they are. Let’s go down that path. The point is, you go into a shop, high five is about listing. Right. You should really be either a mate’s house who’s got a system and listening to that if you, you know, if, if you can’t get to a high five shop and make assumptions about it. But the point is you want to listen, you listen and you either enjoy or you don’t. I don’t think there’s any. I mean you don’t, if you’re a beginner, you don’t know what camp you fall into yet. You don’t know whether you’re a Harley rider or a BMW rider. So just start somewhere.
David Corazza: Can I make this point there?
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
David Corazza: This is, this is crucial and it’s something that a lot of people don’t they misunderstand or they don’t understand this correctly. there’s this bullshit narrative that says you’re either objective or you’re subjective, and the answer’s somewhat in between. And you’re bang on the money about when you’re designing or repairing something, you need those metrics in order to get the product right.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
David Corazza: However, it’s like wine tasting. I mean, seriously, does any sommelier pop in a PH meter into a glass of Beaujolais and go, well, it’s Ph 7.2. I can’t possibly drink it.
Andrew Hutchison: No, that’s. That will be.
David Corazza: I mean, that’s right.
Andrew Hutchison: That’s unacceptable.
David Corazza: Well, you know, and this. And a, Gentle listener. I would argue strongly that this happens at all stage of all stages of our hobby, whether we’re a novice or whether we’re 20 years under our belt, 50 years under our belt, whatever. There are times I can count on one or two hands where at various points in my life, you know, and I’m not talking when I was young either, where, I popped in a piece of gear in my system and I’ve listened
00:55:00
David Corazza: to it and I’ve literally recoiled and gone, holy shit, what is this?
Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
David Corazza: And it’s happened to me once or twice at high five shows where I’ve walked into a room, there’s this unassuming thing, and someone has devilishly played, say, Takata in fugue and.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, okay, which version?
David Corazza: Well, the one with a lot of bass. You know, they all have a lot of bass. And the. And these goddamn speakers were making this noise, and it was just like, this is not possible. And it just rearranged the mental furniture for me.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Every YouTube hi Fi expert says you cannot judge sound at a hi fi show
Well, that brings me to one of my pet subjects, which is all about listening as well, is, for crying out loud, anyone who’s listening to this and is an enthusiast and. And thinks that they know how things sound or they’re interested in knowing how things sound. For crying out loud, go to a major hi fi show. I mean, everyone says. I’m gonna say everyone. Every YouTube hi Fi expert.
David Corazza: Yeah, yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: Says you can’t judge sound at a hi fi show. Well, that’s utter horseshit. Of course you can. The things the systems are playing and turned on. Yes. It’s not an ideal environment.
David Corazza: That’s what they’re saying. It’s not an ideal.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. They’re also saying that there are certain ones that say, you cannot expect to get good sound at a hi fi show. I’ve heard amazing sound at high five.
David Corazza: Yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: So it’s about, it’s about having a room fortuitously that perhaps has a lower level of ambient noise and less, you know, leakage from other rooms. Also about having polite people in the room who aren’t yabbering too much. And that is a problem. It shows because lots of people are excited and want to talk. and you need to forgive a certain amount of chatter, I think. But, because there is business that needs to be done. And so we won’t go on about that too much either because, you know, I have strong opinions about that. The business does have to be done. It’s an expensive exercise. Very expensive. No one really realizes how expensive. It’s horrifically expensive to get there. So you do need some kind of return. Maybe something needs to be said at that moment. Be patient. Wait for the room to get quieter. Da da da da da. some systems are more sensitive of room acoustic quality. Some speakers live better in a tougher space, etc. But I’ve heard amazing sound at shows consistently. And I’ve heard what I think is the character of some brands at shows. And it’s not to my taste, which is probably how I end up being a lover of certain kinds of gear. But, but like you, I’m quite often amazed. The most amazing thing I heard at Munich this year was a horn speaker. I’m not a horn speaker fan at all. But these didn’t sound like horns. These sounded like music. They were amazing. And yeah, I didn’t expect anything. And I was literally. Well, my jaw was slack. Like, genuinely, this is, this is so close to having a small, you know, a four piece, in the room. You know, a four piece string ensemble type or not ensemble. Well, I don’t know what the definition of ensemble is. How many people make up an ensemble? Could it be a quartet? I don’t know.
David Corazza: It could be.
Andrew Hutchison: It could be. Anyhow, there were people playing stringed instruments and it’s. They sounded pretty bloody good to me.
David Corazza: Good.
Andrew Hutchison: I don’t know music, but I know what I like.
David Corazza: Yeah, well, I know that. And that’s an old joke in the art world. I may not know art, but I know what I like.
Andrew Hutchison: And then there’s a picture of dogs playing pool on the wall.
David Corazza: Well, you know, it’s really funny. I don’t want to waffle on about my past, but I used to be an art dealer and I had a gallery for a while. And the amount of asinine comments I received from people walking up to paintings, they couldn’t have possibly. Possibly, oh, conceived of, let alone executed. And they come out with this horseshit about like, oh, my kid could do this. Or the best one. The best one was I had this central desert piece from a sadly now deceased, Aboriginal painter of some renown. And, he looked at it and he goes, mate, is it finished yet?
Andrew Hutchison: Bastard.
David Corazza: So I just thought that was funny. But, you know, I mean, I remember going to the, To, what was it, Mona in Manhattan years ago, and I was in front of a Mondrian, and I just thought, gosh, this is the first time I’ve seen a Mondrian. And gosh, it’s really beautiful. Yeah, because, you know, photographic reproductions on the web are all in print. Can’t really reproduce the glory of art up front. and, there was this guy from Nebraska, God knows where he was from, and he was. He was there with his wife and his kids. And I swear to God, I’m not making this up. He was oblivious to the fact that I was by the side there. And he goes, oh, my God, you could do that to me. You know, he said it and I just rolled my eyes and walked off. I’m thinking, what the.
Andrew Hutchison: You know, probably the only bit of fancy art that I’ve seen that I’m pretty sure I can do is the stuff. Some of the stuff in, Tate Modern in, In London.
David Corazza: Okay.
Andrew Hutchison: You know the ones I’m referring to.
David Corazza: You mean
01:00:00
David Corazza: you could arrange a bunch of bricks on the floor?
Andrew Hutchison: No, no, no. I could paint.
We could spend five podcasts on conceptual art, but our listeners will sleep
I can roll out a canvas in white. I can roll that out. I can even hang it on the wall. I could definitely do that.
David Corazza: Yeah, it’s. We’re going down a very slippery path about, what conceptual art is since the 1950s. But, we, could spend five podcasts on that, but our listeners will go to sleep.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, yeah, they. And yes, because I think it’s supposed to be some mention of music or hi Fi.
David Corazza: Equipment.
Andrew Hutchison: We, I’m with you on the, Where you insert a piece of equipment in your system and you go, wow. And you re. Listen to your whole music collection, which if you’ve got title, could take a while. but we. Yeah, we’ll get to that in a sec. So, I, I, Specifications. Not. Not, Not part of the equation though.
So to answer the question and actually offer some advice perhaps to the. To the listener
So to answer the question and actually offer some advice perhaps to the. To the, To the listener. I’m not sure I have any, but I mean, if we’re not really looking at any Specifications, I mean, so what are we looking at? So in the case of, say, a turntable, where we’re going, well, it’s a. Okay. If it’s a Lin. It’s going to sound a certain way, I guess. And we know it’s a quality product, and we’re telling the listener. A Lin Turntable probably won’t sound bad. It may not be the best turntable in the world either. If it’s a Riga, it will be of a certain quality. Even a P1. If it’s a project, it will probably make a decent sound. If it is a Marley from JB hi Fi, it will not.
David Corazza: God help you.
Andrew Hutchison: It will not be very nice for a variety of reasons.
David Corazza: Well, can I just.
Andrew Hutchison: So we don’t need to read the specifications. Because the turntable has been made for different. The rig of the project. The Lin Are all about trying to get the best out of the record.
David Corazza: Yeah. Maximum out of the record.
Andrew Hutchison: Marley is something else.
David Corazza: Let me give you a direct real world example that. That staggered me. And I’m saying this not to boast.
Andrew Hutchison: And what I meant by that. And I didn’t mean m M To be nasty about Marley or the problem. But it is a bit. Yeah, whatever. The point is, specifications don’t need to be read, but people won’t. People I know don’t realize. People ring me up and go, I’ve got this Marley turntable. I want to fix it. And why? Oh, it’s broken. It’s a year old. Yeah. Well, yeah, Get. Get a proper turntable. And they. They don’t know. So I guess. And it’s slightly. It sounds slightly nasty to say they’re no good. But it’s a. It’s a piece of information. We all know it in the hi Fi industry. Like a, What’s that other Crosley? Seriously? Yeah, worse again. Right. So you don’t need the spec. Get back to what you’re saying, though.
David Corazza: Yeah. Okay. Well, you know, I just hasten to add. I’ll be very quick.
Andrew Hutchison: Illegal case.
David Corazza: Yeah. Where’s my Casey? Basically, with that stuff, a lot of the neophytes, they don’t know, if you’ll pardon the phrase shit from Shanola about stuff. And so they in. In great innocence and great naivete, walk into a store, and some person who is equally ignorant. Is going to sell them something that they don’t need.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
David Corazza: so that happens. But this is why reputable hi Fi stores, please, God, exist. I was about to say with specifications.
The two best turntables I ever had came from diametrically opposed design philosophies
Another thing, too, is from Personal experience, I found astonishing things like. Again, I want to preface this by saying, I don’t want to brag, it’s not about pissing rights or anything like that, but the two best turntables I ever had in my system were so diametrically opposed in terms of design philosophy, it wasn’t funny. The first one that totally changed what I thought a source, a piece of source gear could do was a Goldman reference.
David Corazza: I was lucky. I think about. There was maybe three in the country that were never imported. 100 kg of just over engineered Swiss nonsense. and as soon as the stylus hit the groove, it was just like all your other audit. it was only your auditory sensors that worked. Everything else just went away. That’s the only way I can put it.
Andrew Hutchison: You went sort of limp. Is that what you’re saying?
David Corazza: Well, I had, I was living in Sydney at the time. I had some friends who worked at Sony 301 Studio. So I invited them around, conspiratoriously said, come around if we kind of listen to some vinyl. And we did. And they were just agog because they were firmly ensconced in the digital is better camp. And that’s fine.
Andrew Hutchison: So this was at a particular time when records were done at this.
David Corazza: Well, yeah, it was done. This is very early 2000s in the 1990s, even when people were throwing out vinyl. Weep, weep. and you know, I had some. Well, they were, they were throwing out vinyl.
Andrew Hutchison: They would just put it in the bin because it wasn’t worth anything.
David Corazza: No, well, it wasn’t. But you know what really changed my perception of how good vinyl could sound was this goddamn 100 kilogram piece of Swiss engineering. Fast forward. a few years back I sadly and stupidly sold a Goldman. But you know, you can’t move around Australia lugging around 100 kilogram turntable. Yeah, all that jazz. So I bought a Riga P10 with their factory fitted moving coil.
David Corazza: And it too was stupendously, stupendously good. Way beyond that its price tag would
01:05:00
David Corazza: seem to suggest. And here we have two tremendously different turntables. One, more than 10 times the cost of the other and one more than 10 times the weight. Well, let’s say 100 times.
Andrew Hutchison: So I, I would say the P10 weighs. Well, if you took the platter off, that weighs nothing.
David Corazza: A kilogram or whatever it was. Seriously. So, you know, and this from a purely empirical point of view, does your head in because you think, hang on, you’re thinking this Manufacturer X has employed this design philosophy to achieve outcome Y. And this manufacturer has used a totally supposedly different in every way, ethos to design and. But the outcome, ah, why was equally delicious and lovely.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes, but different, I guess in presentation.
David Corazza: Yeah, yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: But equally not that much different.
David Corazza: No, no, this is my point. The point is both were extraordinarily musically valid, but they came from totally diametrically opposed design philosophies. Yep, yep.
Andrew Hutchison: And yeah, for what it’s worth, I. I do like the way Riga does things. I mean that light, stiff it makes it’s, it’s practically as you found out, so much easier to move from home to and and so much more easy to buy as far as the amount of shekels that need to be sort of poured in a funnel into the hi Fi dealers bank account.
David Corazza: So I ah, know it’s a circuitous route for an answer, but again, if you would. If you were to judge turntables by mere specifications, I. Weight, mass and dimensions. All that jazz. Forget it.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, yeah, that’s right. So we could, we can. One thing we could say is you can’t judge turntable by specs at all. You, what do you do? Do you. I mean, I would say under $10,000. It’s basically index to cost, isn’t it? Pretty much largely, accurately indexed to cost.
David Corazza: Correct.
Andrew Hutchison: and obviously you don’t skimp on how you mount the turntable. It needs to be, you know, mounted in a way that obviously it’s not affected by vibration or air currents in the room or what have you of the structural vibration. And then also obviously spend an amount of money on a cartridge that’s, you know, in proportion. assuming it comes with a tone arm. In proportion, get a decent phono stage. In proportion.
David Corazza: Correct.
Andrew Hutchison: So, amplifiers. Yeah, it gets a bit more complicated, but I mean you gotta buy one that’s got the features you want. Right. you know that, that you need to get right. If you need digital in and you need a certain complexity, it probably limits the kind of amplifier you can buy. But you could have an external dac, but you can’t get bogged down with the specs of a dac. You have to listen to the DAC and then there’s the camp. That’s all DAC sound the same. Which, I loved. I wish, I wish that was the case.
David Corazza: Life would be a lot less expensive if that was true.
Andrew Hutchison: It’s just I did years ago, I just. I got four DACs in a room and I spent about four hours and I did do blind testing. I had a mate with me and he played different things. I’m sorry that the name DAC, which was 10 times the price of the least expensive DAC, was consistently easy to tell that it was playing and it was more enjoyable. And that’s the end of that. And then it’s. Of course, it’s probably changed now to some degree maybe, or maybe not. I mean, I’m not even convinced that DAC chips sound better than they used to 10 or 20 years ago.
It’s all about how they implement the filters, right?
David Corazza: No, I think not just the chip, the. Well, it goes with the implementation. I mean, equally, if not more important is the current, voltage.
Andrew Hutchison: There’s people laughing right now. This guy’s a fool and an idiot. There’s some hoo ha about R2R. and.
David Corazza: Well, it’s again, as I was attempting to say, know, it’s all about how they implement the filters. I mean, a lot of manufacturers, and I’m not accusing them of being lazy, but it’s convenient and cost effective. Like ess, a perfect example. They provide the manufacturer with a bunch of onboard filters. So virtually all manufacturers say, yeah, we’ll use the ESS filters. There are a couple of maverick designers that go, you know what, we can do better. And they’ve done better. And I’ve heard these DACs, and I’m just like, ah, okay, wow, this sounds really good. But again, you’ve got to have a great power supply, good analog stage. It’s everything.
Andrew Hutchison: Yep, that’s. That’s right. So Dax sound different. You’re gonna have to listen to them. Sorry. And that will be potentially a black hole. You may travel down.
Uh, get back to amplifiers, um, amplifier power, distortion, noise floor
get back to amplifiers, amplifier power, distortion, noise floor, etc. I’m, sorry, there’s no. It’s highly unlikely that you’re going to hear any real difference in signal to noise ratio on an amplifier. They’re all pretty quiet. if you really want to play it loud, yeah, you’re going to need some power. You’re going to need preferably sensitive speakers if you, if you’re a teenager, as we all were once. I had large speakers and a powerful amplifier that I built myself. It was loud. It was great. It’s what I needed. At the time. it was still, only 50 watts. it was. But in a, in a, in a room this size of a large bedroom, basically
01:10:00
it was tons, with a big pair of calves. So, you just. Power is just not that big a deal. Distortion. Yeah, well, I think, you know, it’s it’s, it’s a, it’s probably an important thing, but I think it’s something you’re going to hear in the resultant sound and you’re going to need to listen to it. So I don’t know. All amps sound different. I know there are pools of people on the Internet who say that all amps sound the same. These people need to get off their keyboards and start buying audio equipment and listening to it. Either that or get their ears cleaned up.
David Corazza: They patent, they patently don’t. if I can just give a bit of personal experience too. And again, I probably, at least intellectually was in that camp many years ago. I’m thinking, you know, if they measure the same, they’ve got, they’ve got to sound the same. What could possibly go wrong? And again, in that system that I had in the 90s when I was in Sydney with, the Goldman as a front end. Am I allowed to say why? I’ve already said brands. I can say brands, can I? No one’s going to with a scimitar and lock my head off.
Andrew Hutchison: I don’t think we. I think it is a waste of our and our listeners time to not either.
David Corazza: okay.
Andrew Hutchison: Raise up the good stuff and shit on the crate.
Can I talk about the Krill integrated amp? I’ve got one
David Corazza: Okay. Can I, can I, can I blaspheme and talk about the Krill integrated amp? I think it was KSI 300 or whatever the wretched thing was. wretched thing. This is when Dan, was still designing for Krill back in the 90s. And there was. It’s funny, it came up secondhand in Sydney somewhere. And I hopped in the car and went out and bought it and brought back.
Andrew Hutchison: Wow.
David Corazza: I’ve got a Krill integrated. I popped it on my electrostats with my Goldman feeding it. I just thought like, the imaging, like it just collapsed. It was like a hard sheet of pressed metal in front of me.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
David Corazza: It was the worst goddamn thing I’ve ever heard in my life. Two weeks later I went to a certain place on Parramatta Road.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes. And bought the Corral.
David Corazza: No, no, no, no. I got rid of it real quick, smart. And some poor devil per just said, you know, may I rot in hell. and, I bought a Gryphon DM100, which is a Gryphon entry level, 100 watt per channel power amp and had a class A pre at the time. And I popped the Gryffon in into the same system and it was just, it was revelatory. Revelatory. It was like, what the. How can these things sound so utterly, utterly, utterly different? And they’re solid state.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
David Corazza: And they’re designed by reputable designers from reputable companies and yet they couldn’t be more different.
Andrew Hutchison: No, no, absolutely.
David Corazza: One made music, the other made me run out of the room.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, yeah. And, and even though I was.
We started this, this episode today with concerns about whether we really can judge sound quality
We started this, this episode today with me alluding to concerns about whether we really could judge sound quality ultimately. if you. Now, I sat there for an hour or so and noticed that it sounded better and we could explore how that happened. And maybe someone will not get a dvd, but I mean, I guess you download, it’s going to be on Netflix, whatever. Someone’s going to hear that concert at some point and go, yeah, it does sound better in the second half. and ah, that will be the answer. But I don’t believe that’s the case. But we all know though, I mean, look, bottom line is either like it or you don’t. Absolutely no doubt. You didn’t sell the Krell after an hour, you know. But it didn’t come good after an hour.
David Corazza: No, it didn’t. That’s the whole point. Look, psychologically I was invested in it, wanting to be good because I paid good money for it. I’ve taken time out of my life to acquire it. I plugged it in and of course I’d read all the, glowing reviews. This is before the Internet. This is when we had flat dead trees with ink on it. and, you know, reading, all the mags and there it was. And it was just like, oh, yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: We’Ve all been there. Yeah, this is. Brings on. I was almost going to bring the subject to reviews up today, but, you know, maybe we won’t.
David Corazza: No, that’s another.
Andrew Hutchison: No, no, but it’s, it’s, it. Yeah. And I. And then you could say, well, is it system synergy or is it just that that amp sounds awful? And you know, I think there is a system synergy thing there. It’s a big deal. I mean, certainly when you develop your system at home, you are, you are searching and you’re tweaking around the edges to get. To maximize the synergy between components and you, I guess, the acoustics of the room, and, and for your own. And, and balancing that against your own tastes and. But in this case, one could say it’s probably not a case of taste or synergy. It just was not a great sounding amp. And I say that because no doubt you tried different things indeed, to get before you made the decision And I got to get rid of this thing. And then bizarrely, like you say, you put another amp in and magic and, happened immediately.
David Corazza: Correct.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. So I’m, Yeah, I’ve. I think, you know, so get back to the spec thing.
There are some things that measure really badly yet sound strangely good
Once again. It’s. It kind of. This is why, folks, we’re not looking at specs. And I. And then the reason why I bring this up is
01:15:00
because I was listening to someone else’s podcast the other day and they were crapping on about there’s, a particular guy I can’t think of. It is. And probably best that I don’t even say who it is, but he knows who he is and he won’t be listening to this. So 0.0000001% THD versus 0.00001% THD on another component. And he’s going on and on about it. I like, you gotta be joking, right? Like, that’s a mental illness at that point, isn’t it? I mean, that’s seriously. Like, you are. So you do. You are not any kind of authority on audio gear. If you are even mentioning these numbers. These are so far below audibility as to be ridiculous. That doesn’t mean the two products don’t sound different. But this is not the reason.
David Corazza: There’s an analogy, if I may make it, in the world of photography. and it’s interesting how a lot of people who are into hi fi are strangely, into photography as well. And this is all about.
Andrew Hutchison: And on motorbikes.
David Corazza: I’m sorry, also.
Andrew Hutchison: And on motorbikes. Possibly.
David Corazza: Yes, possibly in many cases. And a number of other diverse cars. However, isn’t the end outcome or the end purpose of a stereo system to listen to music and enjoy the music, is it not? Is it not a vehicle for the music? Okay, similarly with. In the photography world.
Andrew Hutchison: But then tick some other boxes.
David Corazza: Let me finish the analogy first.
Andrew Hutchison: It has to fit into the room.
David Corazza: Let me finish the analogy.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. And it has to fit the wallet.
David Corazza: True. There are people in the photography world who will. And, for those of you out there listening who are into photography, you’ll know the youtubers, you’ll know the bloggers, you know who the hell I’m talking about, will invariably do what’s known as pixel peeping. They’ll, look at a, camera sensor and go, oh, it’s only 16 megabytes. Or this one’s. You need 100. Or you’ll need, you know, 16 bits of depth on your Tip Tiff file. And all this jazz and all this is hubris. All this is a total intellectual distraction from the actual purpose of photography. That is to create an image that is compelling.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
David Corazza: Now, I’ve seen photographs that were done, I swear to God, on point and shoot shitty cameras with six megapixel center that I adore. I’ve seen stuff done.
Andrew Hutchison: Pinhole camera.
David Corazza: Sorry. Well, even. It depends what aesthetic you’re after. I mean, you know, if you’re doing archival stuff for museums and art galleries. Yeah, you’ll probably need a phase one or, you know, a Fuji GFX or something with sufficient resolution for archival work. But the purpose of photography is to entice you with an image. The purpose of hi fi is to entice you with a sound.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes, yes, yes.
David Corazza: And how you get there.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, yeah.
David Corazza: Cannot be mapped out with specifications. bitter. History has taught me that there are some things that measure really badly yet sounds strangely good and vice versa.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, I, I agree with one or with a slight twist or caveat, which is I think things that that measure completely wrong, that are really bad but fluke occasionally the right. I’m thinking mainly loudspeakers because they’re the things that tend to be really, really wrong. But you can occasionally get them in the right place at the right time on the right amp and then that kind of work. But overall those. Though the measurements and the reputation of a product to be room sensitive tend to coincide that they measure somewhat poorly. And you know, certain products, you know. Yeah, like Bose 901s have a reputation for being, some people will be saying right now, no, they’re actually a weirdly good speaker in some ways and they look kind of cool. And you know, I kind of like them to look at. They measure weird. They’re an odd speaker. They need active equalization to even work at all. They have a reputation for being room dependent, like very much. If you put them in the right space, they work. And maybe I’ve picked a bad example in form of the 901, but. But it, it. They can sound amazing in the right place. But yeah, they measure kind of weird. And they’re not. They got all sorts of weirdness about them because they are weird. And so that’s why they’re in that category of hard to get along with. And then there are the same could be said of, you know, Lin Isobarics from years ago or whatever. You know, they were hard to drive. They were relatively insensitive.
David Corazza: Absolutely.
Andrew Hutchison: A lot of isobaric speakers are apparently. And and they But in the right place at the right time on the right amp. Wow.
David Corazza: Oh yeah, they were spectacular.
A very low sensitivity figure can be a problem in loudspeakers
Andrew Hutchison: But they, yeah so, so there is a correlation between not measuring particularly linearly or well. And I mean let’s face it, a sensitivity figure is, is a number that is probably more important in a loudspeaker than like a very low sensitivity figure is going
01:20:00
Andrew Hutchison: to create a problem. 82 decibels or something is definitely a problem indeed. And they probably weren’t spec to that but they may have been close to that. we might have a break please and then we will wrap up. Hello everybody. Thanks for listening. Hey if you could rate, review or follow or even subscribe if you’re on YouTube, the show that would be fantastic. On Apple podcasts and Spotify, I’m pretty sure it’s follow. If you could follow that would be great. If you want to you know you don’t have to but it would be very much appreciated.
The question remains can Tidal make a profit against Apple and Google
And without any further ado back to the show and we’re back, back to discuss Tidal. Not the brand because apparently there is a brand of electronics or something called Title.
David Corazza: There’s also a brand of washing powder called Title. Or maybe that’s tied.
Andrew Hutchison: I think it’s just tied.
David Corazza: Maybe I’m just tired.
Andrew Hutchison: there is, but there is a music streaming business which is called Title. Duh. And I don’t know. Do you have thoughts? But apparently they’re having trouble working how to make a profit.
David Corazza: All my streaming companies are except Apple and Google. But they don’t need to make a profit. No, it’s interesting if you track back a decade or two, maybe a decade, 15 years and see the ascendancy of streaming services. I mean Tidal was really interesting because it was the first one that really said hey, we’re going to actually work with a bunch of artists and I mean people like Jay Z, Madonna, Dead Mouse, etc, etc on board going yay. We’re going to have you know, kind of high resolution streaming over the interwebs and it’s going to be great. And, and the business model seemed to be doable. What they didn’t bet on was the elephant in the room. and I’m not talking so much about Google but I’m talking about Apple. Yeah, because Apple when, when Apple had itunes and it was just like what was it, 256 kilobit halac or something? It was, it was okay. It was better than MP3 but it wasn’t anything to write home about. Yeah, well as you know a few years ago Apple said, you know, bugger it for the same price we’re going to give you full lossless 44, 116 bit over the over airplay and away we go. Well that kind of fucked up Title’s business model to a great degree because Apple has, has a huge ecosystem out there, a lot of fans, and for what is it, 1112 bucks a month? Aussie? Yeah, yeah, you get Apple music and bloody blah. I mean I was a title subscriber and I love Tidal especially under Rune. It worked extraordinarily well. I’m not saying it’s, it’s dead but since Jack Dorsey x Twitter bought it under his, I think his company’s called Block, they’re like most kind of late stage capitalists. They’re going, you know, we really need to make a lot more money than we’re making. let’s eviscerate 10% of the workforce which I’ve just done. M. Tidal is kind of an answer without a question for a lot of people. Now I’m not saying it’s done, I don’t think it is. I think there’s a lot of people who not using other streaming services will love Tidal and continue to use it. That’s all very well and good. The question remains can Tidal make a profit up against Apple and Google and if Spotify go high res it’s probably game over for Title, who knows?
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, I thought Spotify was gonna go high res but they haven’t have they?
David Corazza: Ah, they’ve been threatening that for years.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, ah, yeah, I couldn’t give a shit about Spotify. I’m an Apple user as far as the phone. I don’t believe in it as far as computers so I don’t, I’m sort of got a foot in both camps and I don’t get on with itunes and yet many people, you know, obviously I interact with it because this podcast is you know, at least on 40 something percent of occasions has been listened through Apple podcasts and it’s a great system. I like the way it works. I’m a title user and have stuck with it from the, from, from the start and I was exposed to it early on because name which I was involved with at the time in retail, were an early adopter if you like and they gave us an account and there’s two stories with that. One is that I had the account for about a year or so before I even logged in because I had all of my CDs on a hard drive. Yard Records, I guess we were selling turntables and we were selling CD players and I had boxes of CDs so I just didn’t feel like I needed it. And then one day someone said, oh, this streaming stuff, you know, what’s this I’ve heard about? Title goes. Oh actually I’ve got it. I’ll. Why don’t I blog in and see what happens.
David Corazza: And what happened?
Andrew Hutchison: Well, that was the end of that. You know, put the CDs upstairs on the mezzanine, put the records back in their sleeves except for the one that I used to use for demo. And I haven’t used anything other than Tidal ever since to listen to music basically because it’s great. Well, except one thing.
David Corazza: What’s that?
Andrew Hutchison: Well, they don’t seem to be as bad at it right now, but they albums would disappear. And so often the album that would disappear
01:25:00
Andrew Hutchison: is the key album of any particular artist. So in the case of say Fleetwood Mac, obviously it was rumours would disappear. But I don’t think that ever happened with that particular example. But that’s the example I’ll use. So if it was some particular, there’d be one album missing and it’d be really annoying.
David Corazza: Yep.
Andrew Hutchison: that seems to have been. They seem to have fixed that problem. I don’t know what that was about. You may throw some light on that. But but yeah, I like it. I like the way it works and I guess but I say that in ignorance of what Apple is like or the other one, Google. Yeah, I don’t know anything about that at all. Well, the thing look, well, how’s Google work for music?
David Corazza: Well, please explain, please explain. badly in my estimation. Look, I’m not a, I’m not a fan of the whole Google ecosystem but I don’t want to go down that rabbit hole. but let’s leave that for another time. but the point is just from a purely economic point of view, Title can’t compete with Apple and probably certainly not Apple and probably not Spotify that. M said I was a title user for many years and I love Tidal. I think it’s probably the best streaming platform in the sense that the audio is really good. Its algorithms for suggesting new and like minded stuff is very, very good too. Beautiful interface. Probably the best interface out there.
Andrew Hutchison: I think so. but you know, I don’t, I don’t know because what’s the other? not Geezer.
David Corazza: Cobuz.
Andrew Hutchison: Copas.
David Corazza: Yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: Where’d I get Geezer from?
David Corazza: Although they used for geezers, mate.
Andrew Hutchison: They used to be, There used to be one that sounded like Geezer. Deezer.
David Corazza: Deezer, yeah. There’s all these aborted platforms but Deezer’s gone, right? yeah, well, most of them have.
You’ve got Spotify, Apple, Tidal, Google, other streaming platforms
Andrew Hutchison: So, most of them have. So how. Okay, so what, what streaming platforms are left? Other. You see, you got Spotify, Apple, Tidal, Google, but I don’t know what that is.
David Corazza: Just Google Music.
Andrew Hutchison: Google Music. Yeah.
David Corazza: Okay, but it’s. I don’t think Google. Some listeners may waggle their finger at me. I don’t think it’s contended to, in the hi fi realm. But you know, again, poor old Title. As much as I’m kind of there, you know, standing on the stadium, rooting for them in the American sense of rooting for them.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
David Corazza: you know, I’m thinking, yay, title. Go Title. they made some, what’s, what’s the euphemism? Some missteps, shall we say, with the adoption of mqa. And then.
Andrew Hutchison: Oh yeah.
David Corazza: Then the sudden like, oh, we don’t want MQA anymore.
Andrew Hutchison: So that’s gone.
David Corazza: Well, it’s kind of gone away. See which venture capital mob have bought them this week. yeah, you know, I don’t know and quite frankly I don’t care. It was kind of an answer without a question.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes. Yes. So we’re going to lay bets on the future of Title. I’m going to. It sounds like you’re saying 50. 50.
David Corazza: I think it is. 50 50. I’m not a gambling person or betting man, whatever you want to say. But look, I am a realist and I think Apple have just got so much momentum with Apple Music. and I know, you know, kind of non Apple users like yourself with.
Andrew Hutchison: Phones or half Apple users.
David Corazza: Well, half Apple user. But you know, people with iPhones and iPads and you know, I mean you can play Apple Music on a PC. It’s not as if it’s, you know, platform dependence, platform agnostic actually. you know, it’s just, it works. It works really well. It’s typical Apple. It’s straightforward, it doesn’t cost. Cost much software. and it just works. And when you’ve got the capital reserves of cat. Of Apple.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
David Corazza: and you look at the capital reserves of Title and you know, Jack Dorsey’s not exactly a fool and if he’s going to hemorrhage money for the next year or two, he’ll just pull the plug.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Yeah, okay. Yeah, well, that’s, That’s a shame, I think, but that’s, that’s the world, you know. See, I,
One day Facebook will be gone, Makin says
Things change. And I love the idea that one day Facebook won’t exist. But. But, you know, I mean, but it won’t. I mean, at some point it will be gone.
David Corazza: Well, I actually got out of Facebook. Gee, when was it? Back in 2011, when it was on its ascendancy and people were frothing at the mouth about it. I was one of these m, you know, with strange people who actually read end user licensing agreements, you know.
Andrew Hutchison: Oh, hang on.
David Corazza: For a lot of people, it’s like religious. Well, you know, a lot of people and you license agreement are like religious texts. And I won’t mention religious texts, but, you know, they kind of scroll to the end and go, yeah, I accept that. They don’t read the thing, for God’s sake. They’re purporting this worldview or this, you know, kind of mythology of, you know, kind of otherworldliness, and they never even read the original text. E Gods. Anyway, so I actually spent a good half day reading Licensing Agreement and all right. As I, as I got more pallets during the day, I thought, there’s no way I’m putting anything up on here because I own total mechanical copyright on everything you put up here.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I, I. Look, I, Those agreements, Do I want to use the product or not? Yes, I do. I will have to.
David Corazza: Yeah. Well, yeah, you have a choice.
Andrew Hutchison: I’m pretty sure if you hit. No, it just. The installation process fails, you know?
David Corazza: Do I feel a Beretta pressing against my temple?
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, I mean, you know, it’s. Yeah, I. What? I. Look, this isn’t. This is just going to prove that I know nothing
01:30:00
Andrew Hutchison: about technology. But when you install an app on your phone and it says, you know, allow access to your contacts or any other, like, I always. I like that. I feel like, I feel like they’re immediately uploading the contacts to their giant database. They must be.
David Corazza: Well, a lot of apps do that. A lot of apps, they track you. The metadata leak out of A lot of phone apps, regardless of whether it’s Android or iOS, is if people knew how much data was being harvested on a daily basis, they’d shit in their pants.
Andrew Hutchison: Well, I’ve. It must be a lot because it’s heaps. I think both in my life. you know, the Two of us, we’ve got both phones, although one of each type. Both got phones, one of each type. And we both use a bit of social media for work. Not. None of, none of it personally. But. But, But I tell you what, it’s got to the point where the ads. That I’m being served. I’m not even sure that I’ve spoken. I’ve just had the thought, oh, I need a new battery drill. And then the next, I’m not even. I’m using the battery drill. Yeah, yeah, but it’s like this thing’s kind of rooted. I should get another one. And the next minute. Well, maybe not the next minute, but within the next 24 hours, I’m being served. Ads for Makita. What?
David Corazza: What? Matter of sorcery.
Andrew Hutchison: How has there been an implant or something done? And I’m not. I’m confused. How. It’s like they’re reading my mind. But I guess there’s these. There’s Collecting so much data. They’re combining.
David Corazza: That’s exactly.
Andrew Hutchison: I mean, I guess. Do they know that I’ve been in a power tool store?
David Corazza: Yeah, absolutely.
Andrew Hutchison: Because of the track.
David Corazza: Absolutely they do. The metadata is so rich. It’s. It’s. It’s not just kind of, geolocating. It’s how often your phone’s on, you know, who you’ve spoken to, how long you’ve spoken to them, and whereabouts you are during that. It’s much deeper than that.
Andrew Hutchison: So you’re having a phone call, and they’re listening to every word of that. When I say listen, not so much.
David Corazza: But they know certainly the length of the call and the recipient and how many cell towers it went through, so they can triangulate and know exactly where you are. But that’s, That’s. That’s, you know, that’s been around for decades, man. It’s.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, but they’ve refined it, haven’t they?
David Corazza: Of course.
The licensing agreements for all the, all the bloatware are there
Andrew Hutchison: Well, do you find.
David Corazza: Every intelligence agency on the planet knows this? It’s old news.
Andrew Hutchison: I don’t know anything. I’m too busy.
David Corazza: Just.
Andrew Hutchison: I don’t know, just getting through the day.
David Corazza: Yeah, but it is what it is. It’s. It goes back to your metaphor about, you know, kind of like, do you want to use this app? It’s like, Do you want to use a contemporary phone that has Internet access? Well, yeah, I do. Well, honey, you’re going to pay the price. We’re going to harvest your data. That’s why things, you know, I mean, people are really funny because they go, oh Geez, these bloody TVs at JB. They’re really cheap, aren’t they? I’m going, shit. There’s a reason why they’re cheap because the licensing agreements they have for all the, all the bloatware.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
David Corazza: On their OSS are there. I mean, you know, you can buy 55 inch, you know, backlit, micro LED, mini, LED TV for 400 bucks. I mean, it costs him more to make it. It’s just the licensing that pays for it, man. But when you. Okay, yeah, seriously, just have a look at the license. This is why I use, like I bypass.
Andrew Hutchison: So reverse licensing in a sense.
David Corazza: Well, it’s. Yeah, it’s like.
Andrew Hutchison: So the manufacturer is getting paid more units out there.
David Corazza: The manufacturer is getting paid by the software licenses. Like for instance, if you have a Google OS or whatever os, Tenzin and all the others, they have agreements with ad, you know, kind of cyber ad agencies, if you want to call them that. And so if you want a smart TV in adverted commerce, you want to use those smarts that’s built into the OS and the tv.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah.
David Corazza: Part of the user licensing agreement is that, you know, we have the right to track what you watch, when you watch it, what ads we serve you, how long you look at the ads. I mean. Yeah, but that’s just. I mean, I know, I don’t know why you’re laughing.
Andrew Hutchison: I mean, of course it does. It makes complete commercial sense. Of course you would, of course you would do that to, you know, leverage more accurate ad place.
David Corazza: Correct.
Andrew Hutchison: But, but I just don’t think about it very much.
David Corazza: most people don’t and you know, they don’t have to. But we’re crafting a. Well, there’s a, there’s a great book called Techno Feudalism. the ex Greek economic minister, Yanni Vanosakis. I’m sorry, I may have rooted his name, but Techno Feudalism.
Andrew Hutchison: In which sense? The American sense or the Australian sense? I think in the Australian sense.
David Corazza: I may have mucked his name up, mate. but Yani Vorisakis, I think it is. Techno feudalism, look it up. Fantastic. It talks about how contemporary capitalism is going away from production and building of goods. It’s all about not even building of services or software. It’s about hosting platforms and Google, Amazon, etc, Apple Music. Anything that’s you’ve got a subscription to, Netflix, etc. Is, it’s all about a hosting platform. but read the book. I don’t want to, but you still.
Andrew Hutchison: Got
01:35:00
Andrew Hutchison: to make the content. That goes.
David Corazza: You’re still going to make the content. But, did you think that Jeff Bezos buys any of the stuff that Amazon’s hosting?
Andrew Hutchison: the answer is no. I would. Yeah.
David Corazza: No, you have to pay for the privilege to be on Amazon.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, yeah.
David Corazza: And Amazon take a cut. Thank you very much.
Andrew Hutchison: I’m aware. I’m aware of that. Only from the point of view that, you know, back in the day, if you wanted to, if you were producing a TV show or something that you, you would pay to have it aired on, you know, on channel.
David Corazza: Well, it’s a similar thing. It’s.
Andrew Hutchison: Oh, maybe you wouldn’t pay to have it in channel 10, maybe nine or seven.
David Corazza: Anyway, we’re getting off topic, fundamentally. Go ahead.
David: Very interesting stuff, Sharon. Very, very interesting stuff
Andrew Hutchison: All right, well, I think we’re done. But I. Look, I really appreciate your time, David. Very, very interesting stuff. I, I think the listener would like to have you back on again.
David Corazza: Okay.
Andrew Hutchison: When I say the listener, I think there is only the one, really. Sharon.
David Corazza: Well, whoever you are out there, I’m sorry, I’ve prattled on.
Andrew Hutchison: No good stuff. very interesting. And I guess, next time we have you on maybe more structured, questions. But, you know, would be always, you know, people can of course, send, an email. the details are on the website. The website is not an audiophile dot com. And the, But there’s you. Can you go to YouTube and we’re there and you can make comments.
David Corazza: I think, I think it’d be great if, if the, if they’re gentle listeners, plural.
Andrew Hutchison: I hope there’s actually quite a lot of listeners. Good.
David Corazza: That’s great.
Andrew Hutchison: Hundreds.
David Corazza: Very, very.
Andrew Hutchison: Judging by our data mining.
David Corazza: but if there are topics that you’d like us to discuss, we welcome that for sure.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, absolutely.
David Corazza: Yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: Because we have no imagination. All right, thanks again and, thank you, listeners. And, we’ll be back. We’ll be back very soon. Thank you again. Bye.
01:36:36
TRANSCRIPT
S1 EP015 News in HiFi: Bose = McIntosh? Stupidest HiFi tweaks? Kooky audio ideas. HiFi regrets?
Andrew Hutchison: Hi fi gimmicks that perhaps should have never existed
Andrew Hutchison: Yes, it was. Well then there’s, of course there’s those cartridges. Sure. I think being the number one maker of them.
David Corazza: That’s right. They had a dusty thing in the front.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes, but it only cleaned the record after the star.
David Corazza: Oh, the irony.
Andrew Hutchison: And hello, this is not an audio file. The podcast. I’m Andrew Hutchison and today we have David Corazza here with me to help us celebrate the bose takeover of McIntosh. Probably not celebrate and of course discuss various hi fi gimmicks that perhaps should have never existed. And maybe hi fi components that we both wish that we, hadn’t. Sol.
Bose took over another American hi Fi company this week
And we’re back with David Corazza and we’re discussing news. Apparently an American hi Fi company. That’s a stretch. took over another American hi Fi company this week or maybe last week.
David Corazza: And by extension an Italian one.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes. So how odd. I’m not sure what to say next.
David Corazza: Well, I’d like to say something where you go, David, if the audiophile community so called was a little bit more sophisticated, there’d a raft of hilarious memes flying around the interwebs.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, the best meme, the only meme, the best meme that the hi Fi crew could come up with was a piece of McIntosh with a Bose badge.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, even I could have done that.
David Corazza: But oh, I don’t know. I think the takeaway from all this is not so much that, a dear old venerable McIntosh has been subsumed.
Andrew Hutchison: By their arch non hi fi enemy.
David Corazza: Well, you know, you said it, I didn’t. But, the son, Sonus Faber, who, you know, posits themselves as, you know, kind of the, the artisan handmade crafts, you know, kind of Northern Italy type of, you know, here we are making the finest instruments and Bose comes along and essentially buys them. I find that one of the greatest ironies in the industry over the past 20 or 30 years.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Mind you, McIntosh Group, I guess you have to refer to them as buying Silas Faber in the first place was a little bit of a, ah, an odd conjunction because I’m not sure that there was ever McIntosh powering Sonos fathers before they were owned, by McIntosh.
David Corazza: Never once have I spied such a beast.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, but there’s a lot of it now. so now I guess there’ll be the same McIntosh equipment, you know, rack of rack of multiple similar looking blue lit equipment powering giant Italian speedboat looking loudspeakers, but with a pair of. Well, what can we choose from the Bose lineup? What Will we add from Bose to that, that, to that system? A pair of noise canceling headphones perhaps?
David Corazza: I don’t know.
Andrew Hutchison: There’s nothing to add. You.
David Corazza: Look, honestly, as I said a moment ago, there’s. This is so ripe for exploitation in the meme world.
Andrew Hutchison: but do you have any thoughts on what those memes could be?
David Corazza: Modesty forbids me.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes, it’s I looked up, I went to the Bose website because I have had some contact with Bose recently and I needed a spare part. But I’ll come back to that story in a second. But I I had a look and I, it said you know, products. So I went, I clicked on products and then it has three choices. Earbuds, headphones and speakers. Yep, speakers is something Bose have always done. Of course that is what they started doing. and they had a pretty interesting range of loudspeakers back in the day which many would in in the hi Fi community would regard as some as curious, some interesting and some silly. they all kind of sounded like a bit of fun and they sold in huge quantities and they got rid of that and no one knows why really except them. But speakers now consist of a variety of plastic moldings with garbage electronics in them with perhaps some patented Bose ideas. But mediocrity, abounds from 299 to 999. Not a hi Fi product. Various types of blue tooth speakers and things. a few earbuds and I see six pairs of headphones. So that business a, they managed to turn an enormous, the best known hi Fi brand in the world in the 70s and 80s. Such a great marketing company that they were with interesting looking products that sounded kind of well, salable. Sold by hi Fi stores back in the day by the way.
David Corazza: Absolutely. We forget this.
Andrew Hutchison: I was one of them.
David Corazza: Yeah.
00:05:00
Andrew Hutchison: bizarrely, and so huge business, huge presence in various countries in the world, lots of local offices, enormous turnover of boxes, pallets and pallets and pallets of speakers sold every week. So they managed to get rid of that over the years, having invented the lifestyle system which they then patented the term lifestyle which is the case on their brochures, you see a little correct, C or R or whatever the. I’ve forgotten now but I always wondered about that. But I’ll come back to that as well because they, they love to love to sue people but but they so they run this business down over the years to the, to the four pairs of earbuds the six pairs of headphones and the random collection of oddbod speakers. But to fix that problem, we’ll buy McIntosh and Sonus Faber. And then.
So what happens now, do you think?
David Corazza: Very, very good question. I think like a lot of acquisitions, if they’re wise, they’ll leave the acquired companies be. They won’t change, any kind of management structure or anything like that. I mean, obviously McIntosh, and certainly Honest Faber in and of their own right, are doing rather well. They have been doing so for many, many years. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. M But as we know in the corporate sphere, many weird things can happen.
Andrew Hutchison: It’s, Yeah, I mean, McIntosh. I, feel in the last, I guess 15 years, maybe 20, have gone from sort of being lost to a huge force in, in that part of the market, by very careful, branding. Good quality, good sound, you know, if you like that sort of thing, which is, I mean, it’s a very nice sound. and, you know, that nice is good in the luxury end of the market, I guess. And, and Sonus Faber, of course, always been pretty good at what they do and probably powered ahead under McIntosh ownership. But, I’m just not sure that Bose can leave it alone now. Bose is interesting. So Bose, when Dr. Amar, ah, kicked, off his shares went to MIT. So they own the university, owns the business. At least a majority stakeholding, according to Wikipedia. And, so I don’t know that to be absolutely true, but that’s what the Internet tells me. now I’m not sure about universities and business. You got any thoughts on that?
David Corazza: Well, what’s the difference these days?
Andrew Hutchison: Ah, well, nicely said, I guess. Yeah, yeah. Biggest export. A, biggest export industry in Australia is university education pretty much bigger than mining or something?
David Corazza: Yeah, pretty much. It’s just absurd if you look at the metrics. Universities aren’t, in the business of actually promoting critical thinking or even empirical knowledge anymore. It’s a cash cow. Can we just be frank about this? Oh, I can say this because I taught. I taught in one for a number of years. I saw it firsthand and I just thought, wtf? Yeah, I could tell you, I could tell you some stories that would make the hair on the back of your neck stand up in terms of who gets admitted, how much they pay, and, what special privileges they get academically.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, Leave it at that. Yeah, yeah, I can guess what one of the privileges is. so, yeah, and I don’t have I don’t have a huge amount of further thoughts on the takeover, except to give you an indication of where Bose are at with customer service, which is something they proclaim quite heavily on their website is their forte.
David Corazza: Absolutely, yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: I don’t understand that. Now, in the 90s, I would say, yeah, they were pretty good to deal with from a, From a dealer point of view. they were quite professional and probably a typical American company. organized. You know, things happen pretty quickly. No problem with money, plenty of stock. that seems like that’s changed. So you ring up the 1, I think it’s a 1, 300 number to buy a spare part. I’m not sure on their phone answering system whether there’s a number to press for actually for spare parts. I think that’s hidden under others or miscellaneous. So they’re not too concerned about spare parts. But, this particular client had a pair of the last series of 901s. The, series six, version two.
David Corazza: Wow.
Andrew Hutchison: So they were the very last. I couldn’t quite remember when that was and I haven’t looked it up. So I’m going to make a mistake, but I, I think it feels like it was 10 or 15 years ago, but it was possibly longer. But, so, you know, mid 2000 through to 2010, I guess there was a handful of pairs left and they were, they bought them. And, yeah, one of the drive units had gone open circuit and we’ll leave out the reason why because that was very special, but that it was not the product’s fault. and, so, I thought, oh, well, you know, 901 driver, right. Probably the most common
00:10:00
Andrew Hutchison: relatively inexpensive driver on the planet.
David Corazza: That’s a reasonable assumption, you would think, you know, considering they had, what, nine in each box?
Andrew Hutchison: There’s nine in each box. And in fact, I’ve got a quiz on the 01 series of Bose loudspeakers, which I was reserving for another episode.
The Bose 901 had nine drivers, very of the era
But now that we’re talking Bose, we can, we can perhaps talk about that because. Very exciting. But, I, but it involves memory, which you may have of the O. You know, like 601, 501s, whatever. We’ll come back to that. Remind me, the, So, yeah, nine drivers, three screw holes, kind of a weird triangular shaped driver. they use that frame in all sorts of products, but different voice calls. But the 901 had, nine drivers, as I’ve said, as you said, but wired in series that all of the impedances were the same at kind of point 7 ah or something or 0.8 or whatever less than an ohm impedance so wide in series to become more or less a 7 or 8 ohm speaker. I think they were rated as 8 ohm on the back, on the sticker or on the underneath is I should say more correctly because on the back there were some kind of jet engines installed.
David Corazza: It was like a DC8 actually.
Andrew Hutchison: It kind of was wasn’t it? So very of the era, very 70s and really pretty I think a pretty cool design you know but you know absolutely iconic. Yes. And so I thought I want to get a driver. There are aftermarket Chinese copies on the Internet. But I thought I’ll bring bows and surely they’ll have them now this was coupled with the, with the Instagram post maybe fake of a 60th anniversary 901.
I don’t know if you’ve seen that.
David Corazza: No I haven’t. That’s interesting.
Andrew Hutchison: It’s so a It’s a, it’s sort of a worse looking 901. They’ve sort of made the top and bottom panels thicker. They put more of a radius on them and the classic hourglass stands have been kind of ruined and made sort of thicker looking.
David Corazza: And this is from Bose themselves.
Andrew Hutchison: Well I had trouble working that out and it’s from another company but it’s. Yeah. And I’m like ah, someone’s. So I kind of thought it was a, a fake posting or a fake product like an AI yeah. Who knows thing I don’t know. So I didn’t put too much weight on that but I thought well you can hardly deliver a 60th anniversary 901 without nine of these drivers per box. One would think they must have millions of them in stock. I’ll ring them up. Eventually I get through to someone quite helpful in Manila or somewhere and certainly not in Sydney and not in Los Angeles or not in Massachusetts either. So judging by the accent, which I can’t judge but then judging by the competence it was typical call centre levels of competence. So the working from the script, not, not able to really understand what I was saying. But eventually with the aid of the, of her she was very helpful, very professional but didn’t know anything and not her fault and she she got her you know her manager or what have you to assist and eventually understood what I needed and then said oh that we haven’t had many requests for those. I’ll check and came back after a while, maybe five minutes. So not too bad. And said we, we no longer have that as a spare part, but the customer would, would be a good fit for our product exchange program.
David Corazza: Do tell. This is interesting.
Andrew Hutchison: This is interesting. I thought maybe this 60th anniversary product.
David Corazza: Does exist and it might be part of the exchange.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes. You might be able to trade in your old series six 901s for for series seven, if that’s what they’re going to call it, or series 60 or whatever the. Yeah, as I say folks, this product probably doesn’t exist. You may have seen the Instagram post and ignore them, much as I did as a bit of a, ah, I don’t know, strange, fake of some description. So anyhow, long boring story short, the exchange, program offering was that for an equivalent. For equivalent product. She made a point to say it’s for an equivalent product, which is important.
David Corazza: Well, what, what did they define subsequently?
Andrew Hutchison: Well, the equivalent product is a 999 Bluetooth speaker.
David Corazza: Jesus.
Andrew Hutchison: Guess what it was. That was the offer. And the offer I believe was a two, hundred dollars voucher or something against the purchase of that. If you were to send them the 901s.
David Corazza: In what universe is that an equivalent product?
Andrew Hutchison: I don’t know. This is not a made up story. And if anyone wants to test the veracity of this, just ring the number, right, and say that you need a 901 part. And that is what you will be told. So that’s, that’s where Bose at. So that’s But then I could go on about all of the other companies that I have to deal with in my normal working week, and the bizarre, bizarrely poor levels of product
00:15:00
Andrew Hutchison: knowledge, customer service, spare parts stocking.
David Corazza: But seriously, and not a facetious question, why does that not surprise you? Why does that surprise you? I should say it shouldn’t surprise you.
Andrew Hutchison: It doesn’t surprise me.
David Corazza: Good.
Andrew Hutchison: No, no, no, but I thought I, for the sake of my customer service in my business, I thought. Well what I mean, I like to cover off on all possibilities.
David Corazza: No kidding.
Andrew Hutchison: I’m not going to say you can’t get 901 drive units anymore, which I was pretty sure was the case, without checking with Bose, because that would have been kind of ridiculous. Now I checked with Bose on this same thing some years ago and they weren’t available then either. But things do change. And when you see the 60th anniversary product, you think they’re not.
David Corazza: Maybe they’ve Risen from the dead.
Andrew Hutchison: That’s right. I mean, I mean it would be very easy for Bose to make that drive unit again, you know.
David Corazza: Absolutely.
Andrew Hutchison: They would just send an order back to Mexico and say, you know, as per 25 years ago, we’ll have 1 million of these, please. You know, and they would arrive in a truck shortly afterwards. I mean, I was driving. I’ve told the story a million times because it’s just so bizarre. But there was the joke about when we were Bose dealers that, oh, it’s all made in Mexico and a lot of it was. But I was driving along the, I was driving through a Mexican border town in Arizona I think once, and literally a road that kind of paralleled the border. And like I was driving through the main street of the town. It was like the border was just down that side street and coming out of that side street was a giant semi trailer, tractor trailer with giant Bose banners on the side of it. And I’m like, okay, you’re pretty proud that it’s made over the board. Which is fine. There’s nothing. Yeah, there was never anything wrong with the product that was made in Mexico. In fact, Bose was quite reliable overall. I mean, it’s, you know, and I say was because they don’t really make anything anymore.
David Corazza: Correct.
Andrew Hutchison: And what they make now is, you know, largely throwaway.
This is not the strangest takeover we’ve had on this podcast
So anyway, I think I’ve finished that with covered, we’ve covered bows. But I mean, you know, it’s just, I mean I think I said before the show, if you had to think of before last week or the week before, whenever it was of the strangest takeover, this is not one you would come up with.
David Corazza: Well, certainly not because just the the optics of it are really amusing and I’ll leave it at that.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, it’s, yeah. Okay, well, we’re we’re, we’ve covered that and we’ll be back in a minute after this ad. Hey, thank you for listening to not an audiophile podcast. We really appreciate it. And you can leave comments on the YouTube, versions of these shows. That’s right, they’re on YouTube as an audio only podcast and you can review like and follow subscribe etc there but also on Spotify and of course Apple podcasts. You can you leave comments or score us and we’d really appreciate it. Thank you very much.
We discuss the stupidest modifications or tweaks in hi Fi ever
Back to the show. Hello folks. Not an audio file. We’re discussing the stupidest modifications or tweaks in hi Fi ever. It’s a It’s actually a short list because many things that are put forward as, you know, tweaks that will improve your system, kind of, kind of are, you know, putting isolation doohickeys under your products or your speakers will probably change something and may well change it for the better. But, I just use that as one. One, one slightly, polarizing, possibility, but, one that does get up my goat a little bit. On my goat or up my goat?
David Corazza: On your goat?
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, on the goat.
David Corazza: Yeah, beside your goat.
Andrew Hutchison: You don’t want to get this. Yeah, you don’t want to get up your goat.
David Corazza: So, it’s not, it’s not a podcast about an animal husbandry.
Andrew Hutchison: No, no. Nor do I know obviously anything about it. So, by wiring links, fancy ones for $500 or a thousand dollars or even $200 per four, I suppose. So you take your, the supplied little bits of folded bent tin that have been quickly, and very thinly gold plated. and you take those out and you put in these, generally I think they have banana plugs, but sometimes spades, and you put them on the two pairs of posts to link them together for single wiring. interestingly, you could have bought the BI wiring cables for the 500, but instead you bought.
David Corazza: The irony’s not lost on me.
Andrew Hutchison: Instead you bought two 4 inch long, sorry, 100 millimeter long pieces of wire with rather fancy connectors on them. The connectors being 90% of the value of the product. so 99% probably. And you put those on and you are in awe of the improvement. And not only that, you’ve been instructed by your favorite, friendly hi fi geek forum on the Internet that you must connect the positive terminal to the positive on the HF pair of terminals. This is the cable from the amp and
00:20:00
Andrew Hutchison: the negative connector, on the cable should go to the negative on the LF because that cross pattern helps with something. Oh dear. And if you ever see one of those arguments on the, on the forums about this, there is so many people who willing to argue to the death that it is chalk and cheese. David, have you ever experimented with this? I have because I’m an idiot. So I’ve tried it.
David Corazza: You’re far from an idiot. no, I, look, how do I put this modestly? The short answer is no. The long answer is I don’t care. but why don’t you care? Well, you know, I mean, I’m yet to be convinced that that’s really an improvement. I mean, you know, hey, listen, I should really cast my judgment aside until I actually do it. But from an empirical point of view, I don’t think it would work. And I see no substance to it. I’m running a pair of active speakers at home anyway.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. So you’re out of that.
David Corazza: Yeah, yeah, but. But I mean, to do it, you know, in the store and kind of furrow my brow and kind of point to Mecca and do all that stuff, I, you know, I could do it, but like, a lot of this stuff and, you know, I’m not denigrating the fact that, you know, as you said quite eloquently a moment ago, a lot of tweaks actually do work because some of them are grounded in simple physics and electronics, and they do work. But a lot of this stuff, let’s not kid ourselves, along with the greater, macro level of hi fi is, you know, it’s confirmation bias. It’s suggestion. It’s this and that and all the other things.
Andrew Hutchison: Indeed it is.
David Corazza: Yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: I mean, it must be, because it simply doesn’t. From an electrical engineering point of view, changing a pair of, links, whether they be pieces of scrap wire like the ones I’m looking at right now, which they is all it needs to be. Yes. This is recorded in the, HiFi Stereo workshop. It’s a disaster area at the moment. It was a big week. But there are scraps of wire in front of me. They would do fine. They would probably be better than the bits of folded tin, because those things do play up, they get corroded. And you will get sometimes an intermittent open circuit between your bass and your treble pairs of terminals. And that needs to be fixed. And the best way to fix that is, frankly, a piece of reasonable weight bare wire between the two. And people are laughing right now, going, you, you hick. But, if you seriously believe that you need anything fancier than that to connect the LF to the HF terminals, and then that somehow positioning one connector on one set of terminal, you realize what’s going on inside the speaker, folks. There is literally hookup wire connecting the drivers to the crossover and the crossover to the terminals. The same again in your amplifier. there is just literally 18 gauge garbage connecting the speaker terminals, assuming the terminals are not mounted to the circuit board. In which case do you want to start modifying the circuit board because it’s a piece of 1 oz copper, which I’ve forgotten the definition of. I think an inch. An inch by the thickness is. No, I’ve just confused myself there. But one ounce board is the lightest thickness of copper on a circuit board, but it’s pretty much what everyone uses. And, it’s, it’s adequate. Does the job. Absolutely.
Don’t try jumper cables on passive speakers
And you go to 2 ounce board and won’t. Unless it’s a high current situation, you won’t notice any difference.
David Corazza: Well, sure, but which.
Andrew Hutchison: It is a high current situation with speech wiring, which is why some manufacturers do jump a piece of wire.
David Corazza: Oh, God, yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: Along the circuit board. But to go back to the speakers. Come on, folks, you need to. If you felt there was an improvement there, then you should be rewiring the whole thing.
David Corazza: Okay, but hang on a second. I mean, look, you’re dangerously rational and I think we’ll have to take you out.
Andrew Hutchison: I’ve done the test and I’m willing to tell you.
David Corazza: Okay, but this is emblematic of hi fi. As a hobby, and let’s not kid ourselves. It’s primarily a hobby for a lot of people. So, I don’t want to steal less Lexus’s marketing jargon from 20 or 40 years ago, but it’s the relentless pursuit of perfection. basically. Was that their, that was Lexus’s when they launched the LS400 in this fair, brown, wide land of ours. It was, the relentless pursuit of perfection. And, you know, to, to, you know, to their, credit, Lexus really launched with a bang in this country with a car that really kind of shook up everyone.
Andrew Hutchison: But it was a perfect car almost, except for perhaps the lack of personality.
David Corazza: But, yeah, it was. It was actually derided as the sexless in British automotive magazines, which I thought was rather witty, but only the Brits could come up with that. But I digress. We’re not talking about Alexi here. plural. It’s okay.
Andrew Hutchison: I’m m. With you.
David Corazza: So, yeah, so basically, look, you know, I mean, the folks who have furiously arguing about this, you know, hammer and tongue on the. On the interwebs of good on them, that’s fine, you know, it’s. It’s harmless. No one’s gonna die.
Andrew Hutchison: I don’t know. This is not about. You shouldn’t
00:25:00
Andrew Hutchison: do it. Don’t. Don’t try it. This is. I’ve tried it. I’ve tried it a couple of times and I could not detect a scrap of difference. And I, then was lucky enough to be invited to a Audio Quest cable night at a nearby retailer, the Audio Tailor. I don’t know if you know anything about them.
David Corazza: I’ve heard of them. Scurrilous bunch of folks.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes. So, but generous and so, I was invited to this audioQuest cable demonstration. And it was a great night because, I mean we all know cables in a, you know, on a passive pair of speakers it can make quite a significant improvement. But I thought it would be a. I mean, you know, not always, you know, for those that don’t think cables are worthwhile. Worrying. Worrying about. I would agree that in some cases, and this was an example this night, that it. Some cases, yes, the improvements are discernible and worthwhile. But for $50,000 I could probably improve the whole loudspeaker for that. But to get back to the cable night, so they did start with some affordable cables and they were a worthwhile improvement for about a thousand dollars a pair over the. The starter kickoff pair of I think the heads on an old pair of monster cable,
David Corazza: Got it.
Andrew Hutchison: Standard. Yeah, standard figure 8 heavy cables, which I guess are better than lamp cord. So the step, the start off was okay. And then there was a significant improvement. And somewhere along the way as they went up through the cables at some point the gentleman who ran the. Ran the evening said well we’ll put the. Or maybe it was after the cable demo we’ll do the by wiring jumper demonstration. And everyone was happy at this stage, I think a vast majority of people had heard a worthwhile improvement in the various. Stepping up of the various actual cables. And then at some point we went back to a basic set of cables and then. And the person confident by this stage, the person doing the AudioQuest demo felt very confident that we would all cheer when he put the bi Wiring wires on instead of the bits of pressed tin. And silence greeted him unfortunately some small tittering in one corner.
David Corazza: Yes, yes, yes.
Andrew Hutchison: Adam, was it Adam, I can’t remember his name. He’s a good guy. He’s very entertaining. And he Yeah, it was. It was not a rapturous applause moment. And that’s because it sounded exactly the same. So we’d been listening to improvements all well for half an hour. And then he changed this one cable and we. On each speaker they put the. Took the links out, put the buy wiring retail about $500. Not having a crack at AudioQuest. Everyone makes them. AudioQuest makes some great cables. We heard that on the night. Absolutely no problem with AudioQuest, but not a scrap of difference. But then what would they be? So it’s impossible for there to be a difference or an improvement. And we’re not talking about improvements, we’re just talking about differences.
There was another thing that you did to CDs to make them sound better
Because an improvement is, I guess, in the ear of the beholder.
David Corazza: Indeed it is.
Andrew Hutchison: Have you ever, David. just moving sideways from, Rather than labouring the point with this. But it is an example of some silliness. But, What, Have you struck something over the years that’s, outrageous and needs to be exterminated?
David Corazza: Well, I don’t know about. Well, outrageous. Controversial is probably a better word. But, Cast your mind back, gentle listener. those of you of a certain age, who will remember this rabid propensity to grab our little silver discs back in the 90s and coat the periphery with a green texture to stop the light, you know, kind of. Otherwise the light would magically refract. And, you know, it was bizarre because all this was predicated on a fundamental ignorance of how CDs were read. and,
Andrew Hutchison: But, you know, green pens.
David Corazza: Oh, the green pens. And not. You just can’t go down and buy a text. Local news agent. Gee whiz. No, you have to.
Andrew Hutchison: Special one from the Hi Fi shop.
David Corazza: And God bless them, they made a lot of money. and I remember, too, as a young man, kind of furiously cutting the periphery of my.
Andrew Hutchison: I also did that once as well. Yeah.
David Corazza: Yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: Because the hi Fi shop that I was involved with actually sold them.
David Corazza: Oh, for sure.
Andrew Hutchison: So we had to test it. but.
David Corazza: But isn’t it interesting how, you know, again, this is at the very dawn of the interwebs. It was more, you know.
Andrew Hutchison: Oh, it was before interwebs.
David Corazza: Yeah, yeah, it was. It was.
Andrew Hutchison: This is, mid-80s, I guess. Is it? Or.
David Corazza: Yeah, that was a little. A little later than that.
Andrew Hutchison: Maybe late 80s. You know, CD player sales had slowed and they needed to spice up the turnover a bit.
David Corazza: Well, you know, it was just, you know, again, it was this relentless pursuit of perfection, if I may paraphrase Alexis. You know, you know, it’s that whole joke about, you know, Audiophilia nervosa. you know, the audio files are never happy. They’re never happy. Some of them are, but most of them aren’t. It’s a relentless hobby. And I’m not. That’s not a judgment, that’s a simple observation.
Andrew Hutchison: Well, I think hobbies are like that, aren’t they?
David Corazza: Of course they are. Ah.
Andrew Hutchison: You’re always having a crack at the audio file concept. Just, you know. No, no, we.
00:30:00
Andrew Hutchison: We love it.
David Corazza: Well, our businesses Are predicated upon it.
Andrew Hutchison: Well, yeah, I’m not. I’m not.
David Corazza: Well, yes, yes, yes.
Andrew Hutchison: The, the green pen. Yeah. I wouldn’t say I’ve forgotten about it, but I, I had put it out of my mind.
David Corazza: Sure.
Andrew Hutchison: There was another thing also that you did to CDs to make them sound better.
David Corazza: You demagnetize them as well.
Andrew Hutchison: There was. Was it that how you demagnetized the aluminum?
David Corazza: Yeah, well, yeah, I know. The metallurgy. The absurdity of, you know, if you knew anything about metallurgy with just. But anyway, you know, I forgotten. But you know, getting back to silly.
The Tice Audio clock was basically, it was a modified clock
Well, silly things in inverted commas, again, there was this thing that was going around. Certainly it emanated from the US Certainly stereophile and absolute sound were kind of banging the drum about it. The Tice Audio clock.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay, The Tice Audio.
David Corazza: Yes. Some. I can hear.
Andrew Hutchison: Some of you, I know that’s a very quiet clock that you put on the wall. That doesn’t go tick, tick, tick and interrupt.
David Corazza: No. If memory serves me correctly, and I do have an imperfect memory. Gentle reading, you will forgive me.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes, reader.
David Corazza: Well, listener, perhaps. I don’t know. What medium is this? Who knows? I will never transcribe this.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, it is. There is a transcript. Yeah. So you’re right. Yeah. Gentle reader, keep, going.
David Corazza: But my understanding of it, you know, all these decades hence, was basically, it was a modified clock. Like a clock used to buy a Tandy Radio shack.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
David Corazza: Like a 25, you know, big red LED thing.
Andrew Hutchison: Oh, an LED one.
David Corazza: Okay. And what, and what the.
Andrew Hutchison: This is. This is sounding juicy. So you’ve got.
David Corazza: No, no, no, you can’t make this stuff up.
Andrew Hutchison: Digital clock.
David Corazza: Yeah, it was seriously an off the shelf digital clock. And Tice Electronics, I believe was the name of the company. They did some jiggery pokery inside. Maybe they put some magic crystals and it aligned.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
David Corazza: Some kind of extra dimension or whatever. I don’t know. I’m being somewhat sarcastic. But, anyway, they did some jiggery poker pokery in the guts and they sold it for, I can’t remember how much now, but it was substantially more than the Radio Shack clock that one would buy. Imagine putting 0 or 2 on the. And these flew out the door apparently, because everyone was, you know, kind of foaming at the mouth going, oh, this is it, this is it. and I remember a few reviews saying, you know, we don’t understand what it does, but it does it. And look, it may or may not have indeed any effect on it. But you know, this is lost in the annals of time now, so I’ve never heard one. But I do remember the brouhaha over it. And you know, that too has gone into the annals of time. No one fucking does that anymore.
Andrew Hutchison: What, modify Radio Shack cloth? No, sadly you gotta find a radio show for a start.
David Corazza: So that alongside with the green pen stuff, I just find it interesting how some modifications as we’ve talked about are indeed, they do make a difference. like the speaker isolation thing that you just mentioned before. Yeah, for sure. And some things fall by the wayside and you know, it’s just a really interesting thing to go back and see what stuck and what has just been.
There was another thing you did to your CDs that it wasn’t just cleaning
Andrew Hutchison: Well, that’s right. In fact, if we’d made this, this episode, this segment, I should say, about kooky stuff that’s fallen by the wayside, I would need to do a bit of research and remind myself because I, I think there was a bunch of them. And this, this other thing that you did to your CDs I’m pretty sure was some kind of.
David Corazza: Oh, hang on.
Andrew Hutchison: Coating or something or pen that you. I can’t. There was another thing that you did to them that it wasn’t just cleaning and there was all sorts of. All sorts of fancy cleaners.
David Corazza: I’m going to say this before it falls out of my cranium. There was also a German device where you could cut the periphery of. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, no, no, seriously, it was a moat. It was like, it’s like Stellavox made, Stellavox didn’t make it, but it was. If Nagra Stell made it. It was just this beautiful looking machine with this cutting arm and it would cut the periphery of the CD to make sure it was perfectly circular. Can you believe it? And it sold. No, there’ll be some people jumping up and down. I’m sure there’s, you know, in the comments below, as they say on YouTube, correcting us or not correcting us. But it was a real device and you could buy it.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay.
David Corazza: Yeah, that’s another cookie. Sorry to interrupt.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, it’s not a problem. Interrupt ah, at will. I, Yeah, I won’t go down that road because I can’t remember but there was a fancy. I mean it was diskwasher but not dishwasher in there. Probably original, original, ownership if you like. Because Disquasher made great brushes but for cleaning records and they made the best stylus brush in the history of stylus, brushes easily the SC2 stylus brushes.
David Corazza: Which I still have.
Andrew Hutchison: Which actually works great. what a shame someone doesn’t remake that properly. But anyhow, the, The, They had a little machine, a little plastic box. And you put your disc in it, you squirted it with some stuff and you cranked the handle.
David Corazza: No, I remember it.
Andrew Hutchison: And it was like a radial cleaner.
00:35:00
David Corazza: Yes.
Andrew Hutchison: So no one would use a squirt of Windex and wipe it on their T shirt, as I would do. And I still wipe every cd, assuming I’m wearing a T shirt. Which, I guess most of the population is. Most of the time. Unless you go too far west and they’re not wearing a shirt at all. Or they’re wearing a,
David Corazza: Which would complicate playback.
Andrew Hutchison: But anyhow, the point is that. Yes, it would. So they, Long story short, wasn’t even that long a story. so yeah, it was a radial cleaner. Can’t scratch your discs circum. Circumferentially, I never could say the word So the. Which would cause mistracking, of course. But you could just wipe it across the disc. But anyhow, I read something on the Internet this morning briefly while I was quickly, getting my brain to kick, out of, sleep mode. And that was that There was a thing that you could buy a bit like your tice clock. It was a black box and you could put it on a shelf and you pointed it at, the equipment. It had an arrow on it. Apparently it wasn’t powered. It was a passive device. And it wasn’t designed by Peter Brock. Go ahead. Obviously a local joke when it comes to crystal.
David Corazza: Yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: The power of the crystal. But this was. It had something in it.
David Corazza: Okay. Right.
Andrew Hutchison: Obviously it cost 9.99 US 900 days when that was a deposit on a house. And you could point.
David Corazza: Are you serious? It was under a thousand dollars. Just on a thousand dollars?
Andrew Hutchison: I believe so.
David Corazza: Okay.
Andrew Hutchison: Hey, this is from the Internet. You pointed it at the gear. So you put it on it. It was important to have it a certain distance from the equipment. And you pointed it at it. and it would. It would reportedly absorb all bad EMF and other badness that would affect sound quality. It would absorb it passively, but.
David Corazza: Okay.
We’re gonna go down the automotive silliness rabbit hole. Here we go
Andrew Hutchison: But you know, speaking of crystal stuff. And it doesn’t cross over into hi Fi anywhere near enough, in my opinion. I once was in someone’s car. Of course.
David Corazza: Here we go.
Andrew Hutchison: And
Andrew Hutchison: He, He was a nice old guy, but he was a bit kooky. And, He Was driving like a lunatic. Actually. It was one of those old Land Cruisers. Big giant. The first big, giant wagons. And we’re on this curvy road, and he is chucking it around. Things rolling around like some kind of ocean liner. But anyhow, he goes. I said, what’s that? I asked a stupid question. I said, because he’s thrashing this thing right like smokes piling out the back. I said, jesus, what’s the fuel economy, you know, like, in this thing, like. And he goes, well, I’ll tell you what. As he taps the center console. He taps the center console, and there’s this little gadget in the center console. And he goes, well, if it wasn’t for this little beauty, it’d be using about twice as much.
David Corazza: And. And pray tell, what was the little beauty?
Andrew Hutchison: That was just a little box of crystals, you know, had some name on it. It wasn’t a Peter Crockett.
David Corazza: Peter Croc.
Andrew Hutchison: I know you’re talking Brock invention. It was some other.
David Corazza: Yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: Crystal.
David Corazza: But was it attached to any. Any.
Andrew Hutchison: It was just sitting in the center console like a packet of cigarettes.
David Corazza: Okay, so it wasn’t on the fuel line or anything.
Andrew Hutchison: Oh, no, no. It’s nothing even vaguely technical like a high clone. But now we’re getting. We’re getting. We’re gonna go down the automotive silliness rabbit hole. We’ll come back to audio.
David Corazza: Okay.
Andrew Hutchison: But yeah, he. Oh, He was adamant. I said, oh. Oh, really? Yes. Yeah. Not only that improves the handling. Getting closer to Peter Brock at this point. But, Peter Brock, nicest guy, by the way. I had the pleasure of meeting him once. He, Just the nicest guy. But anyhow, he got a bit. He went off the rails there for a bit. But anyhow, getting back to, audio.
I think probably the stupidest thing ever invented to help with cleaning records is
You got any other. You got one more.
David Corazza: To round out the segments I’ve provided three so far.
Andrew Hutchison: Have you. I only remember.
David Corazza: Well, yeah, the title. The green thing.
Andrew Hutchison: The cutter and the cutter. The cutter.
David Corazza: Sorry, it’s an old song.
Andrew Hutchison: well, you could go into turntable. There’s. There’s so many of those.
David Corazza: True.
Andrew Hutchison: I. I think probably the stupidest thing ever that was invented to help with cleaning records is the auxiliary tone arm with the brush on the end of it.
David Corazza: Oh, yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: That you suction cupped onto.
David Corazza: That’s right. Yes, I remember that.
Andrew Hutchison: And in the. The amount of times that I’ve, had to say to people who bring in grandma’s turntable for repair, they go, Oh, there’s this. What is this. There’s a suction cup thing on the plinth right where the. That’s right where it mounted. And they go, well, we don’t know what this is for. And he’d have to explain it. And they go, well, that wouldn’t work, would it? Dragging something across the record as well as the stylus at the same time. I said, well, I’m pretty sure it didn’t help. No, but, I mean you could just clean the record and then play it. But apparently there was a concern that within 22.2minutes so much dust would fall on the record that you needed to be cleaning it in real time. People are wondering what the hell we’re talking about. It was called a dust bug, I believe.
David Corazza: I think it was. And from memory it had a, a red tufty cylindrical.
Andrew Hutchison: It had a cylindrical red rollery style.
David Corazza: And in front of velvety brush it had a cluster.
00:40:00
Andrew Hutchison: And then it had a little. Yes, a little paintbrush of.
David Corazza: That’s right. Yeah.
Andrew Hutchison: Yes, it was. Well then there’s a. Cool. There’s those cartridges. Sure. I think being the number one maker of them.
David Corazza: That’s right. They had a brushy thing in the front.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. Yes. But it only cleaned the record after the stylosity.
David Corazza: Oh, the irony.
Andrew Hutchison: I guess there was. There were fibers cleaning the.
David Corazza: The.
Andrew Hutchison: The The other tracks near.
David Corazza: Great idea. At that time I’m sure the marketing guys, you know, just went great. Can you imagine?
Andrew Hutchison: Sure. Probably put their cartridges on the map not through sound, but by having a feature that no one else had, which in this case was the real, time cleaning brush. which I think on some models was retractable. You could click it up maybe. Or am I just getting confused with the stylus guard?
David Corazza: Who knows?
Andrew Hutchison: Yes, yes. The retractable stylus guard rattling around there on the cartridge probably also didn’t make anything better. Not, according to Roy Gandy. Anyhow.
There was a fad there for doing the cartridges up to extraordinary talks
actually, speaking of, also childhood, you know, 40, 20, 30, 40 year ago record, playing talk was the. There was a fad there for a while of doing the cartridge up to, extraordinary talks. Talks to an extraordinarily high talk walk. extraordinary high number of Newton met into meters or you know, foot pounds or something. Pound foots as they say in some language. some languages. So the, the. Yeah, you would. You’d literally get a spanner on there and. And I mean I, I mean m. Many people. DIYers must have broken a little.
David Corazza: No, I’m about to say how much.
Andrew Hutchison: Should torn the head off the, the tiny little nuts and bolts that hold the things on. There was also a thing with super gluing the stylus on. If it was a removable stylus that you should super.
David Corazza: Oh wow. I was not aware of that.
Andrew Hutchison: It was that as well.
David Corazza: And what, Just you know, just going to cut to the chase and buy moving coil if that’s what they want.
Andrew Hutchison: Well, or yeah, or a rega since they don’t have removable styling on their moving magnets. Which is another great marketing ah, plan.
David Corazza: Roy Gandy still alive. Stop.
Roy Gandhi has donated his shareholding in Bose to employees
Andrew Hutchison: Well, there’s other news.
Andrew Hutchison: And we could round this episode out this this segment very quickly with the generosity of Roy Gandhi.
David Corazza: Indeed. It’s an excellent story, isn’t it?
Andrew Hutchison: It is. And I’m not quite sure how it works. No one does I suppose, except the employees. But the reality is that without employees that business wouldn’t work. And I guess Roy is. Well apparently there was word for the last year or three that he was going to do it. He used to tell his best friends that he was going to do it and he’s gone and done it. So he’s given the company at least the shareholding to the staff which is great. Which hopefully Bose will be doing soon. the great thing is that if they do do that is the 16 people that work at Bose these days, actually it wouldn’t be that many would there? Well there’s the guy that does the Internet, there’s the guy that answers the phone. He’s rarely in. if they, I don’t know. Hey, thank you for listening to not, an audiophile podcast. We really appreciate it. And you can leave comments on the YouTube versions of these shows. That’s right, they’re on, on YouTube as an audio only podcast. And you can review like and follow subscribe etc there but also on Spotify and of course Apple podcasts. you can you leave comments or score us and we’d really appreciate it. Thank you very much.
David is sitting on a spare Delacorte prototype microphone prototype
Back to the show. David, you’re back as well in the chair. I’m back on the box and it.
David Corazza: God, you are sitting on a box.
Andrew Hutchison: I’ve noticed, sitting on a spare Delacorte prototype. But I had to have a piece of cushioning on it.
David Corazza: It’s very rustic, I must admit it’s pathetic.
Andrew Hutchison: But the thing is it’s the right height for this microphone and so hence you know, it would make.
David Corazza: A rather fetching cover photo for the podcast.
Andrew Hutchison: It’s not because I’m going to buy a chair soon because I’ve had a big week and I can afford a $99 chair from Officeworks.
Has there ever been a piece of hi Fi that you regretted selling
Hey, has there ever been a piece of hi Fi that you owned that you regretted selling?
David Corazza: That’s an excellent question. And I love the way.
Andrew Hutchison: And why did you regret selling?
David Corazza: Well, I love the way you’ve couched it. with regards regret. And you didn’t use the word best or most wonderful sounding because they’re different parameters. They’re different parameters. to answer. And again, as I said in the last podcast, I say this not to boast or anything because some people say, oh, you’re a fucking wanker.
Andrew Hutchison: you know, I’ve hardly heard anyone say that. Well, sure, there’s a few, but I mean, you know.
David Corazza: Yeah, well, you know, people, people. It’s, you know, whatever. Anyway, all I’m saying is. Yeah, I, I should not. I do regret selling the Goldman Reference. And I hasten to add.
Andrew Hutchison: Goldman Reference.
David Corazza: Goldman Reference turntable. The original.
Andrew Hutchison: Made in Switzerland.
David Corazza: Made in Switzerland. They only made. I think it was 250.
Andrew Hutchison: Oh, is that right?
David Corazza: Yeah, yeah. Oh, well, 100 kilograms. They came in two massive, flight, flight cases. crates.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, wooden crates. Yeah.
David Corazza: And it took half a day to assemble because I think I had the T5
00:45:00
David Corazza: tone arm on it. Parallel tracker.
Andrew Hutchison: Oh, okay.
David Corazza: And it was a really interesting turntable because although it was literally massive in the. In the physics sense of massive, it was on a three point floating suspension. So can you imagine how that suspension had to hold up? I mean, the platter alone was 20 kg or something stupid. So.
Andrew Hutchison: So where was the 100 kilos? It was all in the plinth mostly. Other than the floor.
David Corazza: It was. The base was brass. It was solid brass.
Andrew Hutchison: Was it really?
David Corazza: Yeah, it had a tachometer on it. Yes, read out. and for those of you who are interested, you can just go to Google or your search engine of your choice, DuckDuckGo. Whatever. and just Google,
Andrew Hutchison: So you’re going to Google on DuckDuckGo?
David Corazza: Yeah, boom, boom. I got a million of them. anyway, and you’ll see what it looks like. And it looks like something out of Darth Vader’s toy box. It’s the most amazing looking turntable. And the reason why I regret it is, you know, of course it’s sounded great, it was wonderful, but I regret it because of the sheer industrial design of it. There’s nothing in existence that looks like it, it’s so imposing.
Andrew Hutchison: I must look it up. I have a computer next to me. But would involve turning my head, so I’m not going to bother. But it’s I. When you go to a fancy hi fi show these days, you do see, an enormous amount of over the top outrageous turntables.
David Corazza: Oh yeah, for sure.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah. But this was, I guess, a simpler time and a simpler design and it was really just massive.
David Corazza: Well, it was massive. And I think Michel Revachon, who was guiding Goldman at the time, just literally gave carte blanche to the engineers and said, just make the greatest turntable in the world.
Andrew Hutchison: Okay?
David Corazza: And they did. At the time there was no contest that it was the greatest turntable in the world. And I’ve had linz. I’ve had riggers, I’ve had a lot of high end turntables. And this thing was just like. You’ve got to be kidding me. M. But that’s why it cost 50,000 US at launch. It was insanely expensive.
Andrew Hutchison: Wow. You were feeling rich in those days.
David Corazza: Oh, no, I I was in the right place at the right time. I won’t tell the entire story, but do you want to hear it or.
David Deck found amazing hi fi secondhand in a Sydney store
Andrew Hutchison: Well, I guess you’d broken into a house. I mean, I don’t know.
David Corazza: You.
Andrew Hutchison: Little did you realize this particular job that you were executing, there is a more colorful owner of the home had a love or penchant for expensive hi fi.
David Corazza: Exactly.
Andrew Hutchison: No, no. well, you could. Can you tell the story?
David Corazza: I can tell the story. I won’t tell the full version because, it’s. It’s actually. It’s actually quite interesting. But I don’t want to bother the listener. But fundamentally I found it secondhand in a hi fi store. I was rifling through a, well known hi fi store in Australia when I was living in Sydney at the time. And every Friday afternoon I used to wander in and see what wonderful. What a wonderful light up has spilled out of the hands of the upper middle class. And you know, were traded in because this is at the time when people were kind of reading magazines and going, oh, every six months I must change my system. And they do now. Thank goodness.
Andrew Hutchison: Thank goodness.
David Corazza: And so I was rifling through one of the rooms and there was all this, you know, mad array of plain ass speakers and you know, big almost, you know, kind of insanely complex things here, there and everywhere. And you know, of course the obligatory, transformerless, tube amp sitting on the floor, forlornly waiting for someone to come and love them. And I walked through and in the corner there was literally a Goldman reference. And physiologically I involuntarily gasped and my heart.
Andrew Hutchison: You gasped?
David Corazza: No, I did. It was like seeing a fucking unicorn. Because I’d read about this m. Mythological creature.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, I know the feeling.
David Corazza: You know, considering there’s only 250 or so ever made. I mean, the fact that I saw one, you know, I think two or three made it to Australia. And there in front of me lay one. Kind of beckoning, you don’t need your second kidney kind of thing, you know?
Andrew Hutchison: Yes.
David Corazza: So, I, ah, was feverish. I literally was feverish. I went up to the proprietor and I said, listen, what the hell is that doing there? And the proprietor, in his gruff Hungarian tone said, I can extrapolate who this might be.
Andrew Hutchison: Said, yes.
David Corazza: Ah, David. This is, from a Perth millionaire. You know, he sells it, he’s into surround sound now. And I’m thinking of the poor sod. Great. His losses, my gain. I said, great, how much is it? And he goes, it’s not for sale.
Andrew Hutchison: Oh,
David Corazza: And I went horseshit. It’s not for sale. anyway, the next couple of weeks, the poor bugger, I would literally harangue him on the phone.
Andrew Hutchison: You ground him down.
David Corazza: Yeah, I did. And at the end of, at the end, end of, God knows how many phone calls, he literally told me to fuck off. And he told me the price and he said, I want half in cash and half in a bank check.
Andrew Hutchison: That never would have happened.
David Corazza: Oh, I saw it. I sauntered in. I actually levitated in that Friday afternoon. And the next day it was delivered to my home. Two gentlemen set it up and it changed my look, it changed my perspective of what hi Fi could be. It was that profound. It was a source. And, you
00:50:00
David Corazza: know, I’d been working in studios and I work with digital gear, analog gear, blah, blah, blah. But this thing as a consumer source.
Andrew Hutchison: Material or good source quality?
David Corazza: As, yeah, good source quality as a consumer object, that transmitted music so magnificently. It, you know, I just was agog and so, yeah, I regret selling it. Not only because it sounded good, because it was so utterly beautiful from an industrial design perspective.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that’s. That sucks because you’re not going to get another one of those.
David Corazza: No. No way.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, I’m. I, I’m a bit the same, but not with any particular component. I think I regret selling every single piece of hi Fi. That I ever bought. Seriously. Probably regret it more than selling my records, which I also did like an utter fool. So I had some interesting hi fi. None of it expensive like yours. but you know I mentioned to you the system Deck 2, the sponge cake as it was kind of known in the trade, which is System Deck’s second idea of turntable but a budget one and it was quite good. It was, it was not great. It was annoying. It didn’t have a lid because it would get dusty and So potentially I guess you couldn’t put the lid down. And so you did need one of those real time record brushes way that I think we mentioned in a different segment possibly after this one gets played, I’m not sure.
I had a number of different open reel machines which I regret selling
But anyhow, so yeah, I had m. A bit of Meridian gear. I had a pair of KEF transmission line speakers with B139s in them. And I think anyone who’s ever owned a similar transmission line with B139s regrets selling them because the base is of a particular quality.
David Corazza: Yeah, the 139s were just brilliant drivers for that eight.
Andrew Hutchison: As a teenager they did not play at nightclub levels so I would bottle them out occasionally and I guess I ultimately mostly destroyed them. But they they were, they moved them around the country a bit. They, they, they were a, they were. I had them for a while. They were great. Those roughest guts to look at. They were a kit built job. So they were not, they were not pretty cabinets. They were built from a KEF kit, had a KEF crossover on a connector which used to go intermittent on some drivers, you know. But I guess I. Well no, I was going to say I fixed that but I probably didn’t because a technician’s equipment rarely works much like a mechanics car. I Oh, lots of other m. For some reason I had a number of different open reel machines which I regret selling.
David Corazza: Yeah, absolutely.
Andrew Hutchison: I had a very, very good tape deck I bought new and it failed quite early. A TEAC, a 660. It had DBX. It made spectacularly good recordings. But then it, I remember trapped itself and I could not fix it. It lost its recording quality. It was some queer fault. I could never sort it out and I think I just dropped it in the bin. And speaking of dropping things in the bin, I was once gifted a Thorin’s turntable or a Torrens turntable depending on your your level of German. And and had an SME arm. the popular 13009 or.
David Corazza: Yeah, that one.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, yeah. Which I guess was the Econo arm. perhaps. I don’t know. I could not get that thing to work properly. It wouldn’t track properly. And I stuffed it in the cupboard and I piled things on top of it and I got it out one day and I went, no, I still can’t make it work. I can these days. I don’t know what was wrong with me, really, but it’s a hell of a long time ago. And you do. You do get better at fixing things, as a rule. And, long story short, I put it in the wheelie bin and I really regret that. And I. I don’t know why I did that. I just had one of those. I think I was moving and I’m like, well, I’m not moving this because it never worked. I can go in the bin. Who wants a turntable anyhow? I mean, CD players were king by then. So this is mid-80s.
David Corazza: It’s really funny. You would. That would have been born out of frustration of not getting the bloody thing to work.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, it. It would just skip a track mid, like, third track in, and it would just jump. And I’m like, ah. you know, it sounded pretty good. I couldn’t. I guess there was something wrong with the bearings in the arm. It was something kooky. So, you know, and I just. It was beyond me. And frankly, those arms are an amazing piece of engineering, but only the person that designed them originally knows how to set them up. I would guess so. Yeah. Anyhow, you were going to say.
David Corazza: Oh, I was going to say,
Have you ever thrown a piece of equipment in the bin? Yes, I have
Andrew Hutchison: Have you anything ever thrown a piece of equipment in the bin?
David Corazza: Yes, I have.
Andrew Hutchison: Funny, but not a Goldman.
David Corazza: No, No, I couldn’t lift.
Andrew Hutchison: Couldn’t lift.
David Corazza: Freaking thing.
Andrew Hutchison: Not in one arm and left a lid with the other.
David Corazza: No. One piece of legacy gear I had from my studio days was, a, Panasonic. Yeah, Panasonic wasn’t called Technic. So, Some people might know this. So a debt Recorder player, a mastering machine, a 3800, great DAT machine. But I had this epiphany moment one day when I. Again when I was moving like you. And I looked at it and I thought, hang on, I’ve transcribed this via Pro Tools into my hard drive archive. Why
00:55:00
David Corazza: do I want, you know, kind of basically, what is it? A tiny video recorder. Yes.
Andrew Hutchison: Horrible machines to repair. But they were good.
David Corazza: They were good machines that will become legacy and unrepairable in the Next few years. And I just, I literally walked down from my apartment and threw it into the industrial bin. I’m thinking, you idiot, someone would pay good money for this. I’m thinking, no, no one in their right mind would pay good money for this. I toss it and you know, that really rankled me because it was a perfectly functional machine, but it was of its time. No one wants them anymore.
Andrew Hutchison: No, no, no, no. yeah, I can’t say I’ve. I haven’t been requested to repair a DAP machine for a very long time. But I did repair a mini disc the other day and I got it going and it sounded fine. It was a mid price Sony thing and it was, it was, it was, it’s like, it’s, it’s not a bad format. I know. I’m pretty sure the audio’s compressed. Yeah, it is a bit.
David Corazza: I think they’re using Sony Attrak or whatever algorithm.
Andrew Hutchison: But it was nice compression.
David Corazza: Yeah, they, I had a Denon one and a Sony one and I thought, yeah, this is great for, you know, absolutely non critical listening. Certainly in the car I had an Alpine.
Andrew Hutchison: Is that right? Geez, that’d be a rare bird.
David Corazza: Very rare. But it’s funny you should mention minidis because it never really went away. There’s some underground people on.
Andrew Hutchison: This guy was one. Could you please fix this?
David Corazza: He begged me. They love the format and God bless them, they’re dedicated iHubs.
Andrew Hutchison: Yeah, no, I don’t have any hate for MiniDisc, in fact quite like it because the alternative was DCC.
David Corazza: Yeah, that was an answer without a question, wasn’t it?
Andrew Hutchison: Was, that was a mistake. Yet another Phillips mistake.
David: Thanks for listening and we’ll be back soon with another episode
Yeah, so, I guess, yeah I guess it’s time to say goodbye. We, we’ve, it’s, we’ve Yeah, of course I don’t really know what episode. What’s. For the umpteenth time I’ve said episode instead of segment. I don’t know why it is early, in the morning. I think that’s the problem. But hey, thanks David. Thanks for coming in. We’ll make this the last, segment so we can say our goodbyes. Thank you for listening folks. I know we rambled a bit today. Ah, that is a trap. But I, I assure you next time around, more focus, we’ll be more focused and organized. Yep. Thanks for listening and we’ll be we’ll be back soon with another episode. See you, David.
David Corazza: Ciao.
Andrew Hutchison: Bye.
00:57:16
TRANSCRIPT
S1 EP018 News in HiFi 3: 2024 HiFi News Wrap Up
Not an Audiophile Podcast (00:00.078)
The NAD 3020. Oh, I remember when Harry Pearson hooked it up to his infinity reference system and he was boasting in the pages of TAS about how he drew the IRS. Well, can you imagine the readership? They just would have had this collective orgasm and rushed out and bought 3020s.
Not an Audiophile Podcast (00:29.839)
Hello, welcome to Not an Audiophile, the podcast. This is episode 18, the last episode actually for 2024. And because of that, we’re going to wrap up the year in all kinds of ways. Basically, we’re going to discuss products that are either over-market and under-performing, or in fact do perform. And there’s the ones that are over-performers and under-marketed. Best sound of the year, worst sound of the year, thoughts on how to find new artists in title, and much more.
Not an Audiophile Podcast (01:07.888)
Hello David, we’re back at the bench. Is it a bench? At the Batcave. At the Batcave, yeah, the electronic Batcave. With much to discuss and really it’s a kind of a wrap up of 2024, I nearly said 2025. 2024, looking at how things will be in 2025. I guess the way forward is that cassettes must come back. And then we must build large.
ceiling height cabinetry behind our YouTube desk and fill it with cassettes. yeah and floor mounted transmission line subwoofers. Sorry floor wall did you say wall mounted? Floor. Floor mounted. Yeah yeah building cavities under your house. Yeah yeah yeah okay that yeah I hadn’t thought of that but that’s the new thing. Oh I can see that coming back especially in apartments. know. Well 2024 was a
It was an exciting year for Not An Audiophile because I, know, when I say I, mean three of us, four including yourself really, and couldn’t do it without you obviously, have got this thing going and people are listening. So that’s a miracle. But anyhow, I just guess there’s always room for an alternative viewpoint. In this case, this is one that comes from the point of view of audio industry professionals.
So I reckon that I kind of see the same products reviewed, awarded, mentioned over and over again by a multiplicity of both, I guess they’re called online magazines these days, the oldie worldie press. of course the new age way of reviewing Hi-Fi, YouTube video.
They only seem to have seven brands or seven products or something. I don’t know what that is Seven favorite ones come on. Well, I mean are they favorites. Is that what it is? I mean I’ve got here in my notes If I could scroll to the correct part of the screen Brands such as well KEF KEF KEF KEF monitor audio Anything from IAG mostly wharfedale WiiM WiiM WiiM
Not an Audiophile Podcast (03:27.217)
I know how you pronounce it. Well, if you’re from Germany, it’s WiiM Well, it would be yes. It would be WiiM. Or am being Wiimsical? So I, you know, I don’t know what the two Ms are for, but there’s a love for that. Eversolo I’ve got here and Hi-Fi Rose. There’s a pattern. The pattern is there is a lot of IAG products in there, which are quite good products generally. There’s a lot of,
I used to call it T and A.
Apparently that’s inappropriate. really? What is the T plus A T plus a because you know, that’s an Australianization of T plus a would be T and a man. But apparently that’s not it. And of course we all know what it really stands for. A couple of German guys who started an audio company, presumably. So, what do you got? you, are you, do you see similar, repetitive reviews? look, it’s, it’s, it’s kind of always been there. I remember.
in the days of flat dead trees with ink on it. Certainly things like Stereophile and Tas and certainly the British press, God bless them, would have their favorites and every edition. guess so. Well, yeah, I mean, in every edition you would kind of see who would be reviewed and you know why. this came at a point where obviously advertising revenue.
had an influence on editorial. mean, we all know there’s supposed to be a Chinese wall between editorial and advertising. That’s patently untrue, as we all know. Not to say that that’s necessarily not. We talk about it a lot. Well, think it’s a commercial reality. It’s a commercial reality. then that’s the problem with reviews is that, you simply can’t spend days doing a review for free. No one can. Somewhere or another it’s got to be paid for.
Not an Audiophile Podcast (05:24.049)
Are there products that don’t get reviewed, don’t get mentioned? Maybe their marketing department is disorganized or non-existent. I mean, it is unfortunately quite an important part of a Hi-Fi brand is to tell people about the products you have and that you exist. Some are better at it than others. One presumes that the IAG people are very good at it, I guess. And very clever because they’ve tapped into a seam.
of want that people have. you know, I know I’m being kind of generalist about it, but it is the retro nostalgia scene. Yeah, they are. Actually, when you think about it, I think we mentioned this previously, but yeah, they have a deep vein, mind, seam thing. Like you’ve got Leek, which they bought for a dollar at an auction and then reinvented. Well, they presumably did. Yeah. I mean,
he was chuckling by the way for those not watching YouTube. That’s right. There is no camera. you know, um, you know, which is just a made up thing of audio lab parts. Should we be saying that? I don’t know. But I mean, clearly it is. I let’s check with our legal department. Okay. Well, I’ll edit this out. Um, it’s, uh,
And it’s not a bad product. at all. Yeah. And the speakers are kind of a, which I haven’t heard properly, only briefly at the show earlier in the year, but it, it, I dunno, I didn’t, I didn’t think much of them in that room, but that that’s irrelevant. They could have been, you know, not run in or whatever. I don’t know. The point is that, yeah, between that and the classic series of Wharfedale and the, the, course the quad, stuff they do. So, and it goes on.
What do you like that’s not mentioned? Cause that’s what we’re here for. We’re here to expose, shine a light. Lift up the rock. Yes. Lift up the rug. It’s just, pull the pants down on something that no one knows about. That’s really good. Yeah. look, there’s, there’s a couple of contenders and you know, it’s not a binary, I E, you know, something’s been marketed.
Not an Audiophile Podcast (07:39.057)
to its death or something’s unknown. I think there are gradients in between. I’ve got three products that I genuinely think are quite remarkable that really haven’t been reviewed to death or they’re not certainly mass market reviews, if you know what I mean. First and foremost, in no particular order, Acoustic Energy have a speaker called the Corinium, which is their flagship speaker. Not inexpensive, but not stupidly priced either.
and there’s been a price really well i think it’s extraordinarily good value considering uh… how it’s made but also more importantly how it sounds it’s one of those rare birds in audio where you can listen to it again and again and still have a grin on your face and go there’s something beguiling about this thing that i cannot articulate in fact
Acoustic energy, the rejuvenated acoustic energy that has been around for the last, I guess, five, six years, is a very good range, a loudspeakers, as far as listenability and just being quite charming and very good value for money. And they did have a light shot on them for a bit. But that, I guess, went away. Maybe they’re selling as many as they can make. don’t know. But yes, this is a new high-end model, isn’t it? I mean, we say high-end.
made from better materials, it’s a bit more substantial in size and the way it looks, looks like it’s sort of hewn from the solid to some degree. And briefly, I have heard it and it sounds good. Very good. Yeah. Yeah. So I were the contender of not really, although I did win an award or two. It’s not like it’s completely. Oh, it’s not that that’s why I’m kind of like qualifying my responses. The gradient thing, because look, it’s not entirely unknown.
But in my humble opinion, I don’t think it’s getting the love it deserves along with a lot of other stuff. Yes. We’ll get to that. I find if I have my three, I find that the good old famous Japanese brands are the ones that kind of get ignored. Esoteric audio. I wasn’t even sure they were still going. Absolutely. The stuff is made.
Not an Audiophile Podcast (09:55.698)
possibly to the highest standard on the planet. If you lift the lid on one, it is just a Japanese engineering tour de force. It is so beautifully put together, so thoughtfully made. The sound would be personal taste, but one thing you can be sure of it is built exceptionally well. And to some degree, the price reflects that. But compared with the likes of Luxman,
Another Japanese made brand but owned by IAG. Somewhat secretly it seems. I don’t talk about it much but…
It gets a lot more exposure, of course, although their price points are a bit sharper. And then Accuphase, of course, just is just so bizarrely olde-worlde Japanese where their website looks like it was built before the internet really began. and, know, clearly, you know, all developed on notepad and, you know, just photographed onto the Here you go. Kids. The products of course are just delightful. And so.
lovely to listen to and maybe not everyone’s cup of tea of course because they are quite sweet sounding but I do find it odd that those well even the three brands if you could probably include Luxman to some degree kind of kind of not flavor of the month not in everyone’s budget but but still
very little coverage for the two others than like. So have you got another one, David? Yeah, there’s an Australian brand, not being sycophantic here, called Dellichord. No, I’m dead serious about this. Oh, OK. Well, I’ll be quiet then. The big Dellichord system with
the active bass unit. I am very familiar with it, Yeah, indeed. You may have heard of it. Yeah, I know something about it. Yeah. I’ve recently had an experience with it over a couple of days.
Not an Audiophile Podcast (11:47.37)
I did not know what to expect, but I was more than pleasantly surprised with the outcome. Wow, thank you. I didn’t know that this compliment was coming, but I’ll take it as a, well, I don’t know. mean, I’ll admit that it sounded good in your store, your store, not being your store, but the store that you work at or for. there, you know, it’s not like I sold it to you or loaned it to you. You just happened to be there.
Yeah, I think it sounded pretty good there and I’m very happy with that system. Yeah. That was a group effort, of course. was, Brad Serhan had some part in that system as well in the mid range and treble area. But yeah, it is my, it is my, what’s the word? Well, 12 month project. And it’s got a few unique ideas in it and whether that is part of the magic.
I don’t know, but you know. Well, this, this, speaks to the very, does, does. You know what it does well? And this is going to sound terrible as someone who, I mean, the person who designed the thing, but it does, it does image rather nicely and rather unquestionably. Yeah. And, and, and not in a, must lock your head into a chair, you know, vice head, a right head, vice arrangement, you know, you can sit somewhere in the.
somewhere in the general vicinity of the middle of the speaker of the sweet spot and it just generates a very nice stereo image which is kind of of kind of you know i think it’s a bit to do with incredibly careful stereo matching
There’s lots of other things as well. So again, it’s even as of the three products or two of which I’ve spoken about so far. It’s the one that’s got the least exposure with marketing. actually that’s, that’s a whole subject in itself, which has got nothing to do with, with my brand. except that just, you know, the value of a brand now has probably never been higher. And I can assure you from firsthand experience at starting a new brand is a silly idea.
Not an Audiophile Podcast (13:57.963)
because it is a very long-term project. There is no quick way. I mean, if you look back, I mean, we interviewed Mike Creek recently. He kind of had instant success. Ralph Waters was ripped Those were different days, though. So massively different days. absolutely were. Absolutely were. Because if you got a great review in a good magazine, you were kind of made. That was enough, yeah. The NAD 3020… Oh, I remember when Harry Pearson hooked it up to his Infinity reference system.
And he was boasting in the pages of TAS about how we drove the IRS. Well, can you imagine the readership? just would have had this collective orgasm and rushed out and bought 30 20s. And the other thing being in a bit like the creek being an affordable amplifier in this case.
the more mature client, but perhaps just buy one for a second room or for an experiment. And why not? Yeah. Why not? mean, the Creeks are 99 pounds for crying in that. Well, this is right. When, know, and listening to the interview, when you know, when he disclosed the actual purchase price of it, I thought, well, it’s a lay down mosaic. Why would you not buy it for 99 pounds? And similarly with the old NAD 3020, it was cheap as chips. Yes. So like you have this oracle in the industry, Harry Pearson saying,
my god, this is manna from heaven. And by the way, it’s only a couple hundred bucks US or whatever it was. yeah, there was no cognition involved. People just walked out and bought the bloody thing. Absolutely. And I guess, even though I’ve mentioned we, I don’t know how to pronounce it. probably don’t much care. I guess is to some degree a modern day or ever solo is a modern day version of that where it’s not particularly expensive. It’s very good value for money. Why not give it a try? Sure. But like a lot of.
Very tight budget products. think ultimately for me, there’s little satisfaction with either of those things because A, I’m used to something better, which is through hard work and being in the business for a long time, I have a better stream it’ll listen to. But in the case of the women, it’s so cheap. Why not just spend a bit more?
Not an Audiophile Podcast (16:07.203)
and get the blue thing that I bought the other day. blue sound. Yeah. So the blue sound Nano, isn’t it? It’s called the Nano. It’s brand spanking new, I think. But I grab one to try. And this is not a review, but I mean, it’s very pleasing to listen to. The app works well. I did have some trouble setting it up because I’m a non, but
I don’t know what that was although I think it needed the new firmware and then eventually the app offered to upload new firmware and everything worked better after that. But I think it sounds quite a bit better than…
than the other products that I may have alluded to. Not sure about the Eversolo, I’m thinking more of the one that starts with L. there’s two paths here, Andrew. I mean, there’s the whole notion of what sounds good and, you know, everyone’s ear and experience is different. But there’s also the companion dialogue about how it feels, how it looks and all that jazz, the whole user experience. And I remember being on a certain website recently.
I won’t mention it. Anyway, all these people who have quote unquote done their research, I love forums. their own research. look, don’t get me started. Anyway, they were waxing lyrical about some $500, $600 streamer and why would you buy anything else? And then they had the temerity to start to eviscerate Eversolo about their new A10, which is their high-end contender thing. And it’s about $500, $600 on the, wherever you are on the planet. in this,
in the banana republic australia it’s what six something i don’t think it’s not inexpensive it’s not inexpensive but it’s human human from a solid piece of metal like the look and feel of it is just beyond anything it’s it’s it’s a nod and a wink to the esoteric stuff out of japan it’s really extraordinarily well made and people in the forum were kind of saying you know why would you just buy an a6 and i’m going now you you’re missing the goddamn point here kids
Not an Audiophile Podcast (18:09.059)
It’s for those people who want that pride of ownership, who want that experience. That’s absolutely part of it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But there is everything in balance. So if you’ve got a pair of entry level Kefs with the modern day version of an ad 30 20 driving them, you’re probably not going to hear a lot of difference. But I have to say on the, the FR 20 35 is the active Dellichord is referred to the, the obvious difference between different streamers.
preamps that I’ve plugged into those things is just chalk and cheese. Of course, no kidding. You know, it just lays they and they’re not particularly revealing loudspeakers at least the way they sound. They don’t sound kind of etched like some. Are you suggesting they’re not like some near field monitors perhaps? Or they’re not like some wide far field multi, well they a multi enclosure thing, but anyhow.
the top enclosure is quite rectangular, not rectilinear, not egg-shaped. Anyhow, but they do easily show the difference between, we’ve had a NAD streamer preamp on them, we’ve had an Eversolo on them, we’ve had a name on them, we’ve had a Lumin, I’ve had the cheapest Wiim.
And I’ve current, I haven’t put the nano on them yet, but I’m about to. So, but the difference between all of those was, you know, and some might say, well, what was the best? Well, for me, it was absolutely the lumen. It was just really nice, really nice, clean and deep, not clean and detailed sounds. It’s not clinical. No, not at all. None of that. And I am talking the cheaper ever solo, the one for.
2000 or 1600? Yeah the A6. Yeah well how much does it retail for? Well the A6 is around $1300. Okay yeah so it’s very inexpensive so you can forgive it for that but it does sound like breaking glass compared with the sweetness and just the musicality of the lumen. I’m sure there’s a huge price difference but… Well you know there’s a huge price difference between even the lumins and the top-end Aurenders but the the Aurenders just sound like manna from heaven they’re astonishing. they are very…
Not an Audiophile Podcast (20:29.245)
Well bordering on warm for my test and sorry I have played Also the Aurender through them and when I think about it, I’ve had a crack at just about everything and they they’re quite They expose what what’s going on? You definitely have to I mean this is not about our product my product This is more about you the system synergy. Hey, we got off into this I don’t know but the thing is it’s a little bit to do with what we’re talking about because the hot seven products if that’s what there is on the interwebs
It’s kind of irrelevant. There’s 700 other products that may be more for you. So reviews are only worth so much in that regard. Have you got another product that doesn’t have a spotlight on, oh, which you mentioned. Yeah, and it’s a little left of center. Ferrum out of Poland. have a device called the Wandla, which is a high-end DAC. And it’s quite extraordinary.
it’s to my ears anyway I’ve got to predicate this by saying. look cool. Well that’s that’s that’s their Achilles heel. The problem with Ferrum is that they they’ve gone for a like a desktop audio look and I agree I think the aesthetic is rather lovely it doesn’t call any undue attention to it’s visually it’s a diametric opposite of say Macintosh okay it’s very quiet understated
Most things are really. Centurion, why do you titter so? McIntosh is clearly for the giant ram truck owner, isn’t it? You want to make a pretty obvious statement about the size of things. Well, that’s true, but the whole Ferrum ethos is, as I
said, the diametric opposite. So it’s small, it’s compact, it’s very confident, but it’s not visually alluring in the sense that you don’t have to, it doesn’t get in your way visually when you’re watching something.
And for a lot of people that’s a problem. The Wandla is one of the best acts I’ve heard at any price. But it’s not getting enough love. What is a particular aspect of its performance that tickles your fancy? Well, Ferrum, one of the few manufacturers who actually will buy D-to-A converters, like in this case it’s the high-end ESS chip, but they forego the onboard filtering and they actually architect their own current to voltage converters as well.
Not an Audiophile Podcast (22:50.792)
So they basically grab the ESS chip, run it in balanced. We’ll look after the bum end of it, so to speak. And it is just sweet, entrancing, like, you know, God, I hate the English language. It’s extraordinarily listenable. I’m not trying to imply that it’s like a soft and… German word that more accurately… I don’t know. But look, it’s one of those, look.
If you were to do this kind of bipolar thing about audio, there’s some audio, and I’m sure the listeners will totally agree with this, regardless of price, that after five minutes you want to run from the room screaming. there’s other audio that like you sit down and after two hours you go, where the fuck did the time go? And it lies in that camp. It’s just like, I just want to keep listening. Yeah, there’s that and you learn, you keep…
learning more about its ways as time goes on. There’s a complexity to the way it delivers music that, yeah, other products, very one-dimensional, just sort of they smash it in your face and it’s not very pleasant. We don’t need to mention those brands. Everyone knows who they are.
In the reality is, and I’m just looking at my notes, if the stereo images collapse because I’ve moved my head away from my stereo microphone, it’s, some are, what was I going to say? It’s personal taste ultimately. Whatever works for you, this is where we, well, I sit on these things. I’ve got another, I’ve got a couple of quick brands I’ll run over. There are a couple of UK built brands, which I feel,
kind of slip under the radar and actually one of them is Creek, which have, you know, like Mike’s the nicest guy and he doesn’t have a huge product range these days, but he has got this little inexpensive amp that yeah, we know it’s all made in China and that, it’s, it’s very nicely done and it is very much the modern version of his original 4040. It’s a very affordable amplifier that does a lot of things well and it makes sweet sounds. They say, I haven’t heard it, so I’m not going to
Not an Audiophile Podcast (24:58.604)
But looking at it the way it’s put together from a technical person’s eye, I like it.
because he shows off the insides quite happily so so there’s that exposure yeah it’s a pet favorite because it’s such simple good quality engineering it’s got a very transparent sound it has no real character and that’s what holds exposure back is that it’s just literally i would describe their amplifiers as largely a straight wire with gain so lack of personality means that some people don’t immediately
get what they’re doing and you have to listen more and then of course then worldwide they’re extraordinarily well marketed or distributed and I don’t mean to say that’s not taking a crack at the local distributor who does a great job. I’ve taught him everything he knows. just that stores can’t stock it because no one’s coming in and asking for it so it’s a two-way street.
But fell audio is the one I really wanted to bring up. So fell audio is, a new brand. going back to the new brand problem. Have you heard of no, well, it’s a, it’s a guy in the UK who owns a few stores, who has put a team together to build these two affordable products, much similar size to the thing on the bench behind you. for those.
who aren’t watching on YouTube. And pray tell, what is the thing on the bench behind me? Well, it’s a B200 musical fidelity, which is in the same case as an A1, the original A1. So it’s a tiny little slimline thing. And it’s very similar to a Creek 4040, the original one, size-wise. The point is this new fell thing is a bit bigger than that, but super simple, made in the UK. Price points are about £500 a piece for a CD or an integrated amp. The amp is…
Not an Audiophile Podcast (26:56.835)
It’s got a bit of class D power out stage in it. That’s you know, it’s a traditional transistor Probably op amp Front end has got a phono stage in it. Just super simple good old integrated amp sort of analog I guess except well, it’s analog class D is not digital as such but it’s but
You know, hey, it’s supposed to, haven’t heard it. I’m just mentioning it because I just find it bizarre that someone goes to the trouble. Yeah, exactly. these very sharply priced made in the UK, which is a, you know, pretty, it’s, yeah, it’s a tough thing to do to sell it for 500 pound.
No one mentions it anywhere. isn’t that indicative of how much noise there is out there on the interwebs? Yeah. And that’s the thing you’re talking about the good old days. It was easier to get a product going and now there’s more products and there’s more noise. by a factor of hundreds. marketing channels, if you Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. And everyone’s got the, you know, this goes to the fact of, you know, everyone having their favorite YouTuber, favorite influencer, how I dislike that term. And now anyone with a green screen.
a couple of Panasonic cameras and a mic can purport to be an influencer. It’s fabulous, isn’t it? Well, the thing is they are an influencer. Hence my despair. that influence of terms right out there with the term audiophile in my opinion. I mean, it’s got a certain, there’s a certain something that is associated with the term that’s, you know, I mean, I think audio reviewer, and if you think of the ones that have been around that have
done it for 30 years and typed words. I think there’s a care and a thought to the process that is not there with a 10-minute piece to camera. I’m still not sure what that’s about, by the way. You’re still looking at…
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And the reason why we do a radio style podcast is because, do you don’t want to look at my head for 10 minutes? I can assure you it’s not mine. It’s just not what you want to do. We want to attract listeners, not repel them. And the other thing is the product quite often hardly gets of showing. There’s usually a pop-up on the screen, a couple of product shots that the manufacturer has given them. And that’s mostly a talking head.
Okay. Now there’s good talking heads and I’ll mention Darko in this because he’s a pro and he’s, he’s a pleasure to listen to. he’s not a pleasure to look at necessarily, but he’s, he’s not, he’s not horrible to look at. It’s not like me, but, but you know, he, he has a very persuasive way of massaging information into you and, and that’s good. And there are others,
and then there are others that are like, you shouldn’t be doing this. know, I mean, there’s the cheap audio man. I watched something he did yesterday. I mean, that’s like, he’s, I don’t.
He was saying some things that I completely disagree with, like the room doesn’t matter and room treatments pointless. really? which it is. If you’re a cheap audio guy, you don’t have any money for room treatment. I must go and tell all my friends in the pro audio field that their control rooms are poorly displayed and irrelevant. You should just fill them up with curtains and
Which gets me onto another of my favourite subjects which we won’t go down, which is just how there’s just too much absorption in people’s rooms. Now, did you have another product or have we done that one? No, I’ve listed my three that I think need more love. Yeah, well, and look, I concur with all of those. We’ll put them on the website when we put this up so people can have a quick look and remind themselves what they were. And then there’ll be links through to the products.
Not an Audiophile Podcast (30:46.627)
I should mention that we don’t get paid for this of course, in any way. just for clarity, this is just our personal preference. I’ll finish that just by saying there’s not just Dellichord there’s a bunch of Australian brands that are probably not well known internationally. And maybe that’s their fault. But it is hard to get…
the word out. I it would have cost money and time. It costs money and time. That’s right. So it costs time. therefore it costs money. So Alan March at March Audio is great guy. Super smart. We did interview him earlier and
in the year. And we made a mistake with that interview because we spoke far too much about his history at Rolls-Royce and not enough about audio, but we will have him on the show again. Pitt and Giblin, a of young guys in Tasmania who make very thoughtful and quite original, mostly horn-loaded loudspeakers. Yeah, they’re interesting speakers. Yeah, they’re all active.
And they sound really great as do Alan’s amplifiers. Serhan Swift, of course, you know, very much in the house with Brad Serhan being the Serhan part and Morris Swift we’ve also interviewed. yes, it’s a little bit of a circle of Australia. Well, here’s another one. OAD Ultra Fidelity, Jon De Sensi. But what a product. I mean, if any of these products I’ve just mentioned deserved
bit more fame it would be John’s. This thing is designed from the ground up. Now Alan’s a great guy and a smart cookie but you know he he skips a step with the power amp stage obviously so but
Not an Audiophile Podcast (32:28.462)
John, not at all. And every single part of that amplifier is pre-andpower, his design work, and they’re made locally to an exceptional Swiss standard. look, yeah, it’s kind of like the Australian Nagra. I’ll
never forget this. When I first met John and I saw the Power Amp at a Sydney Hi-Fi show a few years back, I walked in. And you know how sometimes you do a double take?
the amplifier was in my left peripheral vision. And I thought, how lovely someone’s bought an old Yamaha B2 power amp. And then I looked at it and I gasped because the casework was just astonishing. It’s up there with like boulders casework. It’s really exquisitely done. And in the podcast, he explained how that happened because
the people that do his machining, the people who make not the machining, but the tooling to make the machine for Apple phones and other tooling they make for other super premium products around the world. And that all happens in Melbourne and not Melbourne, Florida, but Melbourne, Australia. So, then Duntech. So, Kiat Low, we haven’t had him on the show. Brad has mentioned him.
because he was involved with Brad back in the good old Orpheus days. what I once again, and Kiat has put an enormous amount of effort into that, and I have heard the loudspeakers on a couple of different occasions, they’re very impressive. I know people are buying them, but it’s just not, you know, it’s not mentioned.
You know, and look, maybe he’s not a super great marketer, but I tell you what, he’s made a fantastic product. So, you know, deserves to be mentioned. And that’s that. The only other thing I’d say just to finish it off, there’s a couple of speakers that actually from around the world, which I find surprising, get really so little love. Totem Acoustics, which I believe from memory is Canadian.
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I’ve heard their speakers at Uniq on many occasions and have often thought they’re the best affordable loudspeaker at the show. Neat loudspeakers, UK product, which I have sold in the past and I sold it because it’s just so natural and easy to listen to and Morel, I find hilariously under marketed as well. Also a just a first class quality product. So that’s the end of that.
round of discussion and we’ll have a quick break.
His input is invaluable as far as just interesting conversation and bringing up things that otherwise the other three of us would never think of. So once again, thanks for listening in 2024. We look forward to 2025. We’ve got a great audience, ever expanding audience, and that’s really a pleasure. And in season two, we’re going to polish the machine a little bit and try to make it even more interesting. So listen along and of course,
If you could follow, subscribe, or maybe even write a review if you feel strongly about something, it would be very much appreciated. So thanks again, everybody, for listening in 2024 and see you in 2025. Hey, we’re wrapping up 2024. I think it was a pretty good year. I agree. mean, we all had a few changes. It’s been a busy year. Have you heard anything particularly…
amazing this year under any circumstances at a customer’s home, at a store, a factory, show.
Not an Audiophile Podcast (36:42.503)
I’ll go first if you’ll gather my thoughts. Yeah. Cause I’ve thrown that at you. Gentle listeners. This is totally unscripted. yeah. I think, think they know. yeah, I do have notes, but I need to, I mean, I know what I heard this year that impressed me. And, so was lucky enough to go to Munich high end again, which we now find out this for the second last time with the last show in Munich coming up, next year. And then it’s moving to Vienna.
which is fine. So acapella horns, and they’re not a horn loudspeaker in the tradition that you would expect. They are more of a giant, Duntech-sized, Duntech Sovereign-sized tower.
with a rather odd looking, I’ll call it giant wave guide on the front of it. And I don’t really know anything more about it. You should look it up. There’ll be a link on the website to them, but their room at Munich, it sort of is kind of part of our previous segment and conversation where it’s a product that no one talks about. They were positioned away from the main show.
At the end of a hall, down where PMC were doing their Atmos demo in a large, I’ll call it a sort of a ballroom affair is what it probably is. We went down there to try to, having not booked for the Atmos demo, tried to scunge our way in, sneak in sort of like, yes, we’ve got tickets.
look and hold a sort of, I don’t know, a credit card or something and wave it. That wasn’t going to work. There were simply no places. So I did get in the next day. That’s another story. And I use that as a learning exercise to how to play the system because it was all fully booked out. So there were the thing with those things is that sometimes people don’t turn up. So you can, you can sneak in if you, you have to wait around. But getting back to Acapella. So we walked away somewhat disappointed.
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friend I was with and myself that we couldn’t sneak in because he was particularly interested in hearing Atmos at that level with I don’t know how many speakers but you know a lot. There was a room nearby there was a sign that said acapella you know I think they are German my friend was German but he hadn’t really heard of them and and so we but we went in.
And there was very few people in there. was quite a big space. This room was set up with the speakers firing across the shorter dimension, which was kind of nice. They threw an extraordinarily large stage of beautiful music. And we sat down and were just astounded at just the…
the exciting presentation. And I don’t mean exciting in some kind of overly dynamic, crisp, detailed, etched kind of way. We’re not talking about the last word in hearing things that you’d never heard before or anything like that. This is just entertainingly and maybe not even putting musicians in the room, but kind of like that because it was just so easy to listen to, so lifelike.
so utterly mesmerizing. But we sat there for like four, and the guy, we sat there for four tracks, the guy who’s probably the owner of the company or the designer, an interesting looking character, he never spoke. He sat down in the back corner of the room.
towards the end of the track, he was playing records on this outrageous turntable with about a three foot long tone arm made from, you know, balsa or something. don’t exaggerate, No, no, it was. I’ve got photos and I will show them to you and they will be on the website. Okay. Um, yeah. So I don’t know what the turntable was. mean, other people will know. I don’t really care what it was. It’s just the sound that, and it was like a giant integrated amp. it was a
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That’s all it was. It was a turntable, a giant integrated amp and these giant speakers that just, and they’re not inexpensive. So don’t get excited folks. You can’t buy them for 10,000 a pair. They were all the money in the world. But the sound, just, you could sit there for weeks. Now you were talking about it earlier where, you know, you, that is the difference. You either want to get out of the room or in this case, you just luxuriate there. And,
I came back the next day to have another listen with a different friend slash industry cohort. can’t even think who the hell it was, but I’m like, come and have a listen to these things. And he was also equally as amazed. And we also again sat there for four tracks, not really wanting to leave, except that the second day people were
hearing about it. The room was full. In fact it was as full as people who’ve been in Munich will know. The MBL room is always chock-a-block with people because it sounds amazing as well and that’s the other suggestion I would make. But, but Acapella, if you’re going to Munich next year and I presume they’ll be there, you absolutely have to have a listen to it because it is genuinely amazing. Unlike 90 percent.
I’m sorry to say at least 90 % of what you hear at that show and people say, yeah, you can’t get sound to show. Well, that’s bollocks because these people had the most amazing sound as do MBL and as did ultimately the PMC room sounded pretty bloody good as well. So I don’t think there’s a problem with getting good sound at a show. think sure it’s ruined by, you know, annoyingly high ambient noise levels. If you can avoid that, then obviously the system sounds better straight away.
but yeah, absolutely easily, the vote for this year for the best sound I all year. And, and also of course, maybe what makes it seem a little better was that I just didn’t expect it. It was, you know, I was a bit disappointed perhaps that I missed out in PMC on the first day and then, happened across this amazing sound. But I kind of went back the next day to confirm that I didn’t dream at all. And then in fact, it was just, you know, it was a bit like, you know, one of those,
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you know, sipping a sipping a not Crikey, what’s an Italian champagne process? You know, in some beautiful Italian setting and you look at the bottle and you go, this is the most amazing drink I’ve ever had. And it’s, you know, five euro. And then you buy it at home and you’re like, this tastes like cheap plonk, you know, because it’s all, you know.
place and time and it’s all contextual. Yes. And so I went back to confirm that that was not the case. And, it was equally as amazing the second day as was MBL, which is my regular suggestion is just the best sound on the planet. know, not, everyone agrees with that, but most do.
It’s kind of irrelevant. Their full-blown system these days is about a million and a half euro. And I think the Acapella’s, the system was over a million euros. So this is kind of academic, probably the incorrect usage of the word, it’s, yeah, I mean, it doesn’t really matter, but it it balances all of the disappointment that you hear sometimes in those situations where you.
go into your, might have been your
favourite brand’s room and you leave a little disappointed. Well, as we spoke a few episodes ago, all of this stuff is frame of reference stuff and you don’t know what you don’t know until you don’t know. No, and I think people who…
Yeah, well, I’ve said this and I’ve probably said it in this podcast any number of times. I’ve certainly said it to many people over the years who are are audiophiles. And I say that in the nicest possible way. They are genuine enthusiasts of audio equipment and great music. Sure. Reproduced beautifully. they’ve never been in Munich. And I don’t mean the town specifically. I mean the show at the high end show. And you would say, well, I’m not, you know, it’s this and it’s that. And it’s on the other side of the planet. yeah, it’s a pain to get to. There’s no doubt about it. But it’s a two thousand dollar airfare.
Not an Audiophile Podcast (45:12.978)
And if you just went there for the show, you could probably do it for a thousand bucks for a couple of days. So it’s a $3,000 investment. Just eat sandwiches and drink water and expand your horizons infinitely over.
you know, the otherwise very good Melbourne Hi-Fi show, which really is just a handful of, you know, great products, but this is everything. There’s really not much that isn’t there that you can’t hear and then come away with a far more accurate idea of what you really like. What have you got, David? Do you have something that tweaked your interest this year? Again, this is just too, I’m just…
pulling this out of the sack randomly. But two surprises. We deployed a system for a client, consisted of a Lab 12 tube amp integrated. Really unpresupposing, looks very, very interesting, very retro. People will either love the look of it or hate the look of it. With a pair of Martens from Sweden. is, I would say almost a…
An interesting combination in way. That’s one way to put it. And I don’t think a lot of people, well, I’m sure a lot of people wouldn’t have heard that combo, but I was genuinely surprised. Genuinely surprised how, here we go with the English language, how musical and fun it was. It was a fun sounding system. was one of those systems.
Yeah, well, you know, mean, look, if it’s not about the music, what the hell are we doing? And we were playing so many different genres and so many different artists through it. And there was stuff there that I normally don’t like listening to that I’m thinking, you know what, that sounds bloody excellent. And this is a really interesting system. And it wasn’t it wasn’t MBL price or anything like that. right. Which Marten? Small ones, big ones? The medium Marten. OK, so a floor stander. Yeah, a floor stander.
Not an Audiophile Podcast (47:18.609)
Well, medium sized floor stand. So, but it was, it was a beautiful sound, really beautiful sound and, at, you know, not insane pricing either. so that was, that was one surprise. the other, the other thing that really knocked my socks off, this is the beginning of the year. And this is a very personal thing. I heard the Stax 9,000 electrostatic ear speakers, with the Stax top end energizer. Jesus, Mary and Joseph,
I’m not a headphone guy. So no, not many people are no I but I do love Stax But I haven’t heard those ones So what what what what can you describe about the using the the chunky clunky English language? What? What What
What did it for you about that presentation? This is gonna sound like such a wank, but it’s as if the actual hardware disappeared. Okay. And I don’t say that lightly because I’ve owned various iterations of Stax energizers, third party energizers, and I’m very familiar with the sound of things, of all the different Stax headphones over the years. But the 9000s were this tour de force that
ironically, when auditory force, if you know what I’m trying to get at, you put them on the delicacy there. There was just this like, I’m actually not listening to hardware. The signal is just coming through in the hardware is just getting out of the way. as if you’re at a concert in the sense, well, in the sense, you know, there’s all these cliched attributes about electrostats, whether they be ear speakers or, you know, in room speakers like
I’m looking at a pair of Martin Logan’s now. Yeah, Finish them one day. We’ll get to that. They just need to be screwed back together probably because a previous repair destroyed them. And my enthusiasm level for fixing his bodgy, bodginess is, is it an all time low, but in fact they are penciled in to be gone by the new year. So they’ll be done in the next week because they work and they sound lovely. So yeah, no, I’m with you on that. And in fact, you know,
Not an Audiophile Podcast (49:34.513)
That’s another kind of product if we think of speakers, electrostatic speakers. It’s kind of not spoken about much anymore. And Martin Logan, when I was…
Well, I sold them briefly back in the day and they were a big thing in the, I suppose, late 80s, 90s. Correct, yeah, they even the 2000s, but wow. mean, they even themselves, they kind of gave up. Well, as did Akustat and the number of manufacturers. just went the way of the dodo. yeah. It’s kind of a shame because they do have a way about them, but then they have all these other problems, you know, as we can see from the scale of the things.
Yeah, that’s interesting. Yeah, okay. Yeah, I don’t listen to enough really good headphones. And the thing is, I’ve just I don’t like listening to headphones. I don’t like I don’t like headphones. I understand that. really shut off from the world. Yep. Except when I’m on aeroplane.
Well that’s why God invented Apple earbuds. Yes, I’ve never put one in my ear, I know what it’s like. I’m just such a heathen. That’s okay. Yeah, I do have noise cancelling headphones of various kinds. So we…
Happy, yeah, no, we’ve got time to mention this. And I’ve got something to mention too after this. Okay, well I’m going to mention, and this is sort of chucked in at random I think, because looking at my notes here, we’ve kind of covered it, but what we haven’t covered, and I haven’t mentioned this to you preemptively either, is I played a game yesterday on my
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streamer I call it the title alternative artist game. So you type in say I don’t know eagles which you know you don’t want to listen to right but certainly in the 70s and 80s everyone was right so you type in eagles or the eagles and then you the way the game works is you you
if you need to click on the artist button but the point is it comes you know it gives you that probably if you type in the eagles it will come up with eagles or the eagles and but you go to the next artist and you listen to their stuff
Now this is obviously a discover new music kind of game but you do, we all get stuck in well I get stuck in a rut to some degree. I mean I don’t and I don’t. I Tidal’s great for discovering new music but you know maybe you want to listen to something you’re familiar with which is going to, this whole thing is going to bring us back to it. Do you have a demo or do you have one track that exposes flaws in equipment?
that you kind of use regularly is where this is going. But getting back to the new music game, so you select the next artist on the artist list that’s not a match for whatever you type in. And you have a listen to it. Now, interestingly on Tidal, I did this about 10 times and eight times out of 10, it was something hip hop. So I don’t know what that’s about. And one of them was really quite good. Maybe two of them are really quite good. But.
I typed in, and I think at the request of the woman that I was living with yesterday, and still do today hopefully, was Barbra Streisand. Streisand? Streisand? this is a great segue to my next point, but go ahead. Under Barbra Streisand is Barbra, spelt the same way, Lica. Lica Lica. I’m not sure how you pronounce L-I-C-A.
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Wow, there’s a find. Her music is of a particular style, slightly jaunty and French sounding. Jaunty and French. But, and it’s not the reason I like, it’s great music, she’s got a lovely voice, she’s got a slightly, she’s got a voice that some people won’t enjoy. Why do think that is? Because it’s a little, a little bit childlike in some phrasing and that, it’s a bit hard, have a listen.
Barbra spelled, I guess, B-A-R-B-R-A, like a L-I-C-A. here’s the bonus for the audiophile listener, beautiful recording quality. I listened to three or four different albums with three or four different tracks on each album. They’re all beautifully engineered, like, you know, demo track.
You know, show off your system quality, but forget that. Yeah. was good music. The music’s good. Yeah. I couldn’t. It’s yeah. Yeah. A rare combo because so often, know, you know, high five shows and demo material. Please. I’ve just had breakfast and we’re all guilty, but we are, but some people more guilty than others. Now there’s people still playing. I’m not even going to say the word will be murdered.
guitarist’s first name starts with N, his second name with L and people still play that rot. I mean, that is the worst piece of music in history. Anyhow, I mean, it’s just mournful shit, but I mean, seriously. And I mean, I played it once in a shop. I, I’ll admit I did it, but I’ve never played it at a show. Yeah, we should do one episode of, um, of tracks and albums. be banned. John Darko does a lovely job of that as well.
But, what do you got there, Dave? Okay. Interesting. And again, I say listeners, this is totally unscripted, but you uttered the words Barbra Streisand. I would like to perhaps close the episode with what I consider the most tragic, Schauenfreude like episode, of,
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of audio tomfoolery with exactly what is known as the Barbra Streisand effect. You’re aware
of the Barbra Streisand effect? I was vaguely aware of it. I believe I know where you’re going with which video on famous YouTube that you are referring or about to refer to. I do kind of enjoy this story because as a technical person, it’s I see many examples of this, but OK, let me tell the story. Let me explain to the reader of readers, the listeners.
who may not be au fait with the Barbra Streisand effect. Many years ago, Barbra Streisand bought this magnificently expensive luxury property on the seaside. I think it was in Florida. can’t recall. It might’ve been in California. anyway- I was thinking it might’ve been Malibu. It doesn’t matter. It might’ve been Malibu. Yeah, exactly. Anyway, of course, some wags got a hold of the image and put it up on the interwebs. And she was jumping up and down fist clench and calling out her lawyers and saying, you know, I want this removed. I want this removed.
you know, understandably because she didn’t want everyone to know where she lived. Yeah, the house is outrageously large. Oh, it’s immense. It’s stupid. It’s, you know, kind of Mac Mansion by 20. Trumpian. Trumpian. Anyway. style and scale. So anyway, so all this brouhaha erupted over the interwebs. And of course Reddit went mad. 4chan went mad. All the regular surface
bloody websites went mad. And of course what happened, the very opposite effect to the intended result occurred. Instead of dissuading people from looking at this image, millions upon millions of went and had a look and now know exactly where Babs lived. And so it was exactly the opposite effect of what she intended. So anything that kind of backfires now is referred to as a Barbra Streisand effect.
Now, a really salient example of that happened earlier in December when this lovely YouTuber called Mend It Mark did, and Mend It Mark’s got dozens of YouTube episodes up to how he gets old audio gear and fixes it. And he’s a jolly English guy, really beautiful demeanor, and he’s incredibly technical and competent. and great all-round skills, So anyway, this- of them being making an entertaining video. yeah, I mean, which is a rare art, because most YouTubers are dry as all get out, but anyway.
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So anyway, he got this, what was it called? Master Groove by Tom Evans Audio. It was a phono preamp. Mind you, a snippet, 25,000 pounds. Let me repeat that, 25,000 It’s a big hunk of a thing. Made of acrylic. Well, yeah. Now this is funny, because I came across the video before the hoo-ha. Oh yeah.
Now, I don’t know how I did because I’d never seen any of his videos before. So I guess it was already getting served up in the algorithm because I guess I might’ve looked at something similar, but, but is the £25,000 today’s money or what the guy paid for it? it’s today’s money. It’s on Tom. so it’s still a current model. It’s still a current model and quote unquote only 10 and made a year. that’s right. Yes. Yes. Yes. So it’s, it’s a current model. Yep.
Cut a long story short, was something failed within it. The owner sent it back to Tom Evans Audio. He uttered some outrageous response for the quote and the customer said, no, this is not good enough. I’m taking it to Mend at Mark. Mend at Mark opened it up and showed the horror within. And I won’t keep going on about this, but those of you can Google it and find it on YouTube. Amazing, amazing interior.
There’s very few times when my jaw involuntarily collapses and I sigh. Oh, it’s a child science project. It’s You’re being extraordinarily generous. Fisher Price came to mind when I looked at it. But anyway, the funny thing, if anything funny, can be taken away from this apart from Tom Evans’ destruction as an audio brand, think. mean, Jesus, I don’t know what’s going to go on there. there’s this other YouTuber I follow called Louis Rossman.
who has been a champion of right to repair for Apple gear and all this jazz. Lewis has been around for years and years and years. He came across this and he did this massive evisceration of what went down as only Louis Rossman can do because he’s an ex-New Yorker. And I urge the listeners to watch the Louis Rossman reaction to the Tom Evans audio debacle, because there’s no other word for it.
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And that is probably the saddest thing in the audiophile world I’ve heard. What’s the saddest thing for 2020? It is. is. And fortunately or unfortunately, it’s, I would say not so much now, but in the day, there were a lot of those products where they were window dressing on the outside, kooky bullshit on the inside, poorly assembled at that, verging on hardly working most of the time.
And for some reason, you know, a couple of great reviews or something in a somewhat important, you know, struck the product on the right day and they wrote something amazing. And here we go. There’s a reputation built based on nothing based on, you know, well, in this case, shockingly poor engineering standards as far as the.
the way it’s constructed and as Mark shows it’s all straight out of data sheets design. There’s nothing in there that’s anything inventive whatsoever. It’s a 5532 op amp circuit straight out of the data book repeated over and over. And look, there is a couple of American brands that I could
And won’t because it’s, you know, cause I don’t want to deal with the legal ramifications if they’re, cause I mean, Americans apparently like to sue each other. You think? Yeah. There’s a, there’s one particular American brand and I’m not even going to allude to what it is, but I can assure you it is a total pain in the ass to repair because it is bullshit is what it is. Is that it’s just repetitive circuitry, lots of things paralleled up for bizarre reasons. It is literally just.
I mean, ultimately now you can get a robot to build your surface mount circuit board in no time anyhow, no cost. mean, so the real cost of these comp over over engineered rubbishy circuits is nothing, but it looks impressive if you take the lead off it and you put a few pretty color orange electrodes in there or something like that as well. You know, something that looks pretty bright blue, whatever. And then, you know, and people go, that looks
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kind of expensive. forget, there’s a lot in there. Black circuit boards as well. yeah, well the black circuit board thing now is, well I can tell you about that as well. But look, I, there’s few problems. Is there a problem? mean, does anyone care where something’s made? I think most people… No, I think people care how they’re made. Yeah, but then they don’t really know because, see the Chinese, and I make a generalisation here, are very good at making things look rather smart.
But when you have a closer look, what is the quality of the parts? But no consumer is having a closer look. It’s only idiots like me that have to try to fix the stuff that have a closer look, have to have a closer look.
I mean, I can assure you that nine out of 10 things that come out of China are utter rubbish. The other 10 % are really well made because whoever organised the manufacture of it paid the extra to do it properly and not so much extra. I mean, it shouldn’t be extra, just paid the right amount to get it done properly. But yeah, this Tom Embers thing, I mean, that’s just, I mean, that’s olde worlde cobbled together bullshit is what that is. Well intentioned men in sheds. Yeah, it’s,
It is that and there are there is a lot less of that now but I can assure you in the 90s. it was right. Yeah yeah was you know you’d get some yeah quite often it’s phono stages for some reason but anyhow yeah that’s a it’s a great the original video which is now back up because the point is it was was taken down on a bogus copyright claim but
Which is actually quite nasty because what I didn’t realise even though I do have a YouTube channel is that you only get three copyright strikes from YouTube and then your channel’s gone. So Mark’s had one. Yeah. It’s bogus. Yeah. And he can’t reverse that. No, you can’t reverse it. You get three and you’re gone. And he has a very, you know, obviously a lot of subscribers and you know, it’s a good look. The guy’s super skilled and does, has a very nice way of presenting.
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the story which I just can’t do and hence I don’t do it. So what do we got? That was it, 2024. think that’s it, interesting year. What’s looking good in 2025? You got 30 seconds. Nothing. Okay, right.
No, not really. I think it’s going to be more of the same. think what will happen eventually, the blob will start eating up a lot of smaller companies. You know, I just look at what’s been happening over the last few years with corporate aggregation. I think that’s going to continue. It continued the other day. Someone bought somebody. Onkyo and Klipsch and whatever got that group got taken over by another boardroom full of accountants.
My lips are sealed, I’m not going to go down that rabbit hole. Another episode. Yes. Thank you again, David. Thank you for everything this year. Much appreciated. And we will… Well, will you be back in 2025? I will be back. certainly plan to be back. I mean, we’ve got thousands of listeners, so we have to come back. And an exhaustible amount of topics.
An exhaustible amount, yes. Well, let’s think on that and come up with an inexhaustible amount. Indeed. Alright, hey, thank you again David. David Corazza, Andrew Hutchison signing off for 2024. We’ll be back in 2025.