 Michael and Rebecca Wong |
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Michael and Rebecca Wong |
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Stereo, Stereo, how I love thee, Stereo :)
What guy doesn't love stereo systems? Total harmonic distortion, signal to noise ratio, dynamic headroom, channel separation, decibels, power output per channel ... the jargon of boys' electronic toys. It seems to be an exclusive preserve of men- some of my friends appreciate my stereo mania while my wife just rolls her eyes. I bought my very first stereo long before I met her, back when I was a teenager. It was a Technics rack system, complete with a 100 watt per channel integrated amplifier, AM/FM tuner, double-deck cassette player, a 6-disc CD changer, and a big pair of speakers with 12" woofers. It was my prized possession when I bought it, it was one of the largest, most expensive objects in my possession ... and it was garbage.
Well, you don't learn anything until you screw up, right? I honestly thought it was a pretty good system- it made a lot of noise, and if I pressed the "Super Bass" button, the bass got appropriately loud and boomy. But at the urging of an old friend, I visited a high end stereo store a couple of years later. In that store, I heard high end stereo systems for the very first time, and I was absolutely blown away. My old stereo, which I had thought to be adequate for my needs, now made me feel sick to my stomach. To this day I'm not sure why I was content with it before visiting that store- perhaps it's a bit like the phenomenon of people who think McDonald's burgers taste pretty good because they've never bothered ordering or making a real hamburger.
In any case, I couldn't live with that piece of crap any more. I sold off the pieces one by one, and began a long journey toward a respectable stereo system. Along the way, I learned a few things, listed in order of importance:
Speakers. Get a good pair of speakers, no matter what. Speakers make up 90% of the perceived character and quality of your stereo system. Quality is everything, quantity is nothing. Cheap speakers that have three or more drivers are always garbage- if you haven't got a lot of money, buy decent two-way speakers. Weight also matters- if the speakers feels feather-light, it is guaranteed to be junk (a certain amount of weight and rigidity are necessary to damp out unwanted vibrations). Good names are B&W, Paradigm, Klipsch, PSB, NHT, Mirage, etc. If you've never heard of any of those names, and if Bose is the only speaker brand you can recognize, then you need to do some research. Bose is the most commonly recognized name in speakers but that's only because they've utterly blanketed the market with their advertisements. They're a bloated monstrosity with overpriced, underperforming products (even their top-of-the-line 901 Series product requires electronic equalization to have a decent frequency response!). Avoid them at all costs, unless you enjoy paying inflated prices for junk products in order to support their enormous advertising budget.
More Power! You can't have too much power, especially if you use your stereo for home theatre purposes. This may seem counterintuitive, but it's actually harder to blow your speakers with an overpowered amp because you can hear the onset of overload-induced distortion in time to save your speakers but you can't hear amplifier clipping until it's already happening. Having said that, it's important to remember that it's easy to "cheat" the spec sheet. A very high-gain negative feedback loop can produce arbitrarily low THD figures with a predictable input signal, and the act of pumping out 110 W/ch into a purely resistive 8 ohm load (the type of load used in the standard amplifier testing scheme) requires nothing more than a 30V rail voltage and less than 4 amps current output per channel. The problem is that once you leave the laboratory and plug your amp into a real loudspeaker, the load is highly reactive and varying in magnitude, so your 7.5 amp supply won't be adequate to pump out the 100W/ch on the spec sheet. Also, the high-gain negative feedback loop that produced your wonderful low THD figures can cause instability or distortion with real-life signals (try plugging high NFB into a standard second-order control systems equation and you'll see what I mean- you can't just fix a bad control function with high NFB). Good amps are heavy, with huge power supplies, enormous current reserves, and very few Christmas-tree features (the best ones are separate power amps, with no front-panel controls but a power switch).
Interconnects. The stock interconnects (the RCA-jacked wires that go between your CD player and your amp) are usually garbage. In fact, they are made so cheaply that you can't even count on a solid soldering job. I actually had one come apart in my hands once, after tugging lightly on the rubber boot! You don't need to buy those ridiculously overpriced $500 interconnects that you read about in high-end stereo magazines (I can't hear any difference) but you have to get something better than the freebies that come with your CD player.
Wiring. Get fat speaker wire instead of the hair-thin wires that most garden-variety electronics stores foist upon you. I like 12-gauge Monster Cable ultralink speaker cable because the rubber jacket is very soft and strips cleanly, with minimal effort. Again, I'm not so sure about the super-expensive stuff, but you've got to use something better than the skinny lamp cord that most people use. Besides, 12-gauge speaker wire costs less than a dollar per foot, and it looks cool.
Subwoofer. If
you want to use your stereo for home theatre, get a powered
subwoofer first, and surround sound second. I know everyone raves
about surround sound and how important it is, but I would rather
listen to a movie with powerful bass and no surround than a movie
with weak bass and surround. Besides, surround sound is useless
on music, while a subwoofer is not.
Surround. There are two types of legitimate 5-channel surround sound systems for the consumer electronics market: DTS and DD (Digital Theatre Surround and Dolby Digital). You need a DVD or laserdisc source to use either, and of course, a good digital surround decoder. One thing which you don't necessarily need is a centre-channel speaker, since you can just use the "phantom centre" option on most DD or DTS decoders. I only mention this because a lot of people get cheap centre-channel speakers and the centre-channel speaker handles a lot of the sound. Therefore, it's better to shunt that job off to your main L+R speakers than to use a cheapie centre-channel speaker. Your ear won't be able to tell the difference between a real centre and a phantom centre unless you're seated far off centre.
How about Pro Logic? Well, Pro Logic or Dolby Surround are advertised as "surround," but if you look at the back panel connections you may notice that they have to work with just two channels of information from your VCR. It's smoke and mirrors. Pro Logic grabs common, in-phase information from both channels to fudge a "centre" channel. Then, it grabs common, 180 degree out-of-phase information from both channels and uses it to fudge a "rear" channel. Note the word "channel", not "channels." Pro Logic has a monophonic, narrow-bandwidth rear channel.
I don't want to sound like an electronics snob, but Pro Logic isn't really surround sound at all. In fact, the nature of the human ear is such that your brain automatically constructs an effect very similar to Pro Logic surround: if you are seated in the "sweet spot" triangulated with your speakers, your brain will interpret common L+R information as coming from a "phantom" centre speaker, and common 180 degree out-of-phase information as coming from all around you. A very good stereo system can produce most of the effect of a Pro Logic "surround" system, without the added expense.
Finally, don't try to kid yourself with the myth that you can upgrade to Dolby Digital later- the differences between Pro Logic and Dolby Digital are so numerous that it's no cheaper to go from Pro Logic to Dolby Digital than it is to go from plain stereo to Dolby Digital.
Consumer Reports sucks. If you want a decent stereo, cancel your subscription to Consumer Reports today. They've got a killer reputation for being the one true source of information for the smart consumer, but if you examine them with the same critical eye that they are supposedly turning on the products they review, you will notice a distinct tendency to "skim the top off" any market. For any market, be it cars, computers, or stereo systems, they disregard the so-called "marginal" demographic- the people who want truly high performance. They are more interested in what the "average" person wants, and bundled into those judgements are their assumptions about what "average" really means. Any computer-literate person can look through their computer-related articles and see this pattern of behaviour in action, and nowhere is it more evident than in their stereo related articles. They actually had the temerity to proclaim that "most" of today's speaker brands "approach perfection" once, which is pretty damned near the funniest thing I've ever heard from a national magazine. They invariably regard performance as irrelevant, and feature-sets are critical. Naturally, I hold the exact opposite view, and if you visit the various audio-related newsgroups, you will find that this philosophical schism is cause for endless, vitriolic debate. On one hand is the "you will never hear any difference" camp (who try to disprove the existence of these differences with double-blind listening tests), and on the other hand is the "if you can't hear the difference then you have Beethoven's ears" camp. If you are interested in this debate, just remember a few things:
The Consumer Reports types like to call themselves "objectivists", and their opponents "subjectivists". This terminology is completely invalid. The "controlled" listening tests cited by the "objectivists" use human beings as the measurement devices, and are therefore still subjective tests. The fact that they are double-blind tests is intriguing, but as a matter of logic, you cannot disprove the possibility of perceptible differences with such a test. You can fail to prove the existence of perceptible differences, but this is analogous to failure to disprove a scientific theory. A failure to disprove a scientific theory does not necessarily constitute proof of that theory, and a failure to prove the existence of perceptible differences does not necessarily constitute disproof of those differences.
The differences under dispute can be directly measured, with accurate devices such as oscilloscopes (rather than people, who are rather inaccurate measuring devices). This conclusively lays to rest any argument over their objective existence. The only question is whether they subjectively exist, so the two groups are arguing not about objectivism vs subjectivism, but about the broad applicability of double-blind listening tests. It is arrogance and linguistic inaccuracy for the first group to refer to themselves as "objectivists." They are attempting to disprove the subjective existence of objectively measurable differences! The two groups should instead be called "double-blind listening test fans" and "sighted listening test fans".
Double-blind test fans usually compare their tests to medical placebo control-group tests. This is almost as invalid as their attempt to label themselves "objectivists". Their measurement device is a human being, with all of the inaccuracies, poor memory, and subjective weaknesses that this entails. In the case of placebo control-group tests, changes in medical symptoms are measured objectively, with the wide array of diagnosis devices available to the modern physician. They do not simply ask the question: "how do you feel?" As with the term "objectivist", the comparison of double-blind listening tests to medical control-group placebo tests is a not-so-subtle attempt to hitch their wagon to something more substantial than their own argument.
My stereo has obviously changed greatly during the last decade. It is now composed of the following components:
|
Sources |
Pioneer DVL-909 LD/DVD/CD player |
|
Adcom GTP-400 preamplifier/tuner (used only as a tuner) |
|
|
Main amp |
Adcom GFA-555 Mark 2 power amplifier |
|
Surround amp |
Adcom GFA-535 Mark 2 power amplifier |
|
Preamp |
Pioneer Elite SP-99D Dolby Digital preamplifier/decoder |
|
Mains |
2 Mission 765 2-way floor-standing tower speakers |
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Surrounds |
2 Celestion 5's 2-way bookshelf speakers |
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Subwoofer |
Velodyne F-1500R powered servo subwoofer |
The Pioneer Dolby Digital preamp/decoder is the most recent acquisition. It's unusual for a Dolby Digital decoder in that it incorporates an RF AC-3 demodulator, which is highly unusual nowadays. This demodulator is necessary to decode the RF AC-3 stream that comes from AC-3 encoded laserdiscs, and if it weren't for Star Wars, I wouldn't care about this. However, George Lucas apparently doesn't intend to release Star Wars on DVD for several years to come, and so for now and for the near future, this is the only way to experience Star Wars at home with 5.1-channel surround sound.
BTW, don't get the wrong impression. I am not a wealthy man. The price difference between nice, individually selected components and packaged "all-in-one" junk rack systems may be smaller than you think, and the quality differential larger than you imagine. For more information, check out GoodSound, the Bose FAQ, and the Stereophile home page.
Update: I used to have an
anti-DIVX rant here, but thanks to the tireless efforts of the
anti-DIVX movement, the DIVX corporation has closed its doors, and
gone out of business. I keep the anti-DIVX logo here only as a
reminder that when corporations try to shove an unwanted product
down the throats of consumers, they just might find themselves
losing a boatload of money and going out of business.
DIVX died thanks to the inherent stupidity of the idea, as well as the tireless efforts of grassroots anti-DIVX activists across North America who made it their business to tell as many people as possible about why DIVX should be crushed, and ground into dust. May we never see such a ridiculous idea ever again. On an upbeat note, someone has created a rather amusing song about the demise of Circuit City's stupid DIVX idea. Click here if you have an MP3 player and you want to hear it!
DIVX is not to be confused with the Divx codec. DIVX was a pay-per-view video disc system which was designed by a legal firm which represents certain movie studios in conjunction with Circuit City, thus earning it the not-so-affectionate nickname "Circuit Shitty". It was part of a long-term plan to eliminate home video ownership in favour of pay-per-view schemes, since the big studios have always opposed home video ownership (they actually sued the big VCR manufacturers when VCR's first came out, because they felt that VCR's facilitated piracy). The Divx codec, on the other hand, is an open video compression and decompression standard which is loosely related to MPEG-4. Since it is no secret that it is often used to make computer-playable copies of movies, its name was chosen as a deliberate slap in the face to the backers of the original DIVX scheme. In fact, it used to be known as the Divx ;) codec, but the smiley was dropped as it gained respectability.
Last changed: 2001/05/21
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