Buyer Beware or Caveat Emptor; if you haven't got £30,000 in your back pocket, so as not to worry about how much you pay for HIFI gear, then think carefully before you spend your cash. It always pays to be sceptical , rather than cynical, about anything that anyone says about stereo HIFI, including me. It also pays to not let emotion get in the way of reasoned judgement. It pays to ask yourself the question; can a claim about HIFI performance be true? Are the claims, made in HIFI magazines, true about the performance of the HIFI equipment that they review? Do HIFI magazines do A/B/X listening tests based on randomised double blind testing procedures? If you are new to HIFI it is best to consider this. Many things written in HIFI magazines and forums are based on gobbledegook, false reasoning, prejudice and mis-represntation and, perhaps lies. It is up to you whether you believe me or not.
Vinyl records sound better than digitally produced recordings.
Yes, vinyl can sound better if you compare a well produced vinyl LP record to a poorly produced CD or lossless digital music file. I have a small number of well produced jazz, folk and classical music LP records which sound really good. However, for most of these records, I have also bought a well produced equivalent CD or equivalent digital download. The digital records sound better to my ears. There a good reasons for this, because I have never heard an LP or 45 rpm vinyl record which does not have a crackle or a pop. This crackling or popping is ok for popular music and for most jazz records as the music masks the record's faults. For classical music or acoustic folk music the crackles and pops are a no-no for me because I can't stand the noise. As far as I am concerned, if unwanted noise intrudes into the musical performance then I am not listening to HIFI.
It has been proven over and over again that the method of producing vinyl records introduces un-intentional harmonic distortion which cannot be avoided. A vinyl record cannot produce a completely accurate representation of the frequencies of the original master recording. Forget about "inner grove distortion" the whole grove is distorted. Some people find the distortion pleasant and, so do I sometimes, but not for classical music.
If you read HIFI forums you will see countless and continuing arguments about which sounds better vinyl LP or CD, some times these arguments get nasty and insulting. If you like listening to vinyl LP records then good for you: I enjoy them too. However, I do not claim that vinyl always sounds better, and it will sound better as long as you have good ears and expensive equipment. All I know is that if I buy a well produced classical or folk music CD then I am never tempted to buy the LP afterwards. However, I am often disappointed with an LP's sound, so I buy the equivalent CD. CD sound reproduction is not plagued by inbuilt rumble, inbuilt wow and flutter and harmonic distortion: enough said.
Equipment Stands
If you have spent £30,000 on a turntable, a CD player and an amplifier, then you are going to want to mount this equipment on a really good looking equipment stand, that stands to reason. You don't need to read gobbledegook about equipment stands in a HIFI magazine. A £15,000 stand will be no better at "attenuating vibrational energy" than a much cheaper one. I use a stand to separate components and most of all to support my 10 kilogram turntable from footfall and knocks etc. My stand is made of solid glass and metal and protects the turntable very well, and it only cost a couple of hundred pounds. When I was a student with hardly any money I would stack, tuners and amplifiers etc. on top of one another, as did all of my friends, and we never heard vibrational or electrical energy affect the music. Back in those days components were encased in metal which acted as a Faraday cage to eliminate electrical interference.
I would think carefully about what is said about expensive equipment stands on HIFI forums and HIFI magazines.
Very expensive interconnect and speaker cables
I have been caught out by this one; years ago I replaced all my HIFI equipment with a new CD player , amplifier, analogue tuner and speakers. The salesman suggested that because digital music had so much higher resolution, that I should use a "higher quality" interconnect cable for the CD player than for the tuner. I fell for it. I connected all my new equipment up at home, and I was mightily satisfied that I was hearing genuine HIFI at a cost effective price. A year later I had to move my HIFI equipment and discovered that I had connected the "high quality " cable to the tuner instead of the CD player. I did some sound tests where I swapped the "high quality " and "lower quality" cables around but I could hear no difference. I had been bamboozled by HIFI gobbledegook and magical thinking: silly me.
I once read an article in a HIFI magazine which compared two electric interconnect cables from the same specialist company, the "lower quality" one cost about £1500 and the "higher quality" one cost about "£2000".The reviewer suggested that the £1500 cable had "tighter bass" and improved "transients" etc. whatever that means. The £1500 cable brought the listener to HIFI nirvana, What about the £2000 interconnect, did it bring the listener to nirvana plus 1? What they were saying was complete tosh. With regard to expensive cables no HIFI magazine ever presents evidence for such claims or publishes the results of double blind listening tests. I'd like to think that HIFI journalists are not being disingenuous but are they going to report than exotic cables make no difference, when they need advertising revenue?
Similar reasoning applies to speaker cables, USB, power and HDMI cables etc. Good quality reasonably priced cables do a wonderful job, so there is no need to go overboard.
Below: there is some truth in what this "audiophile" gent is saying and I feel that he genuinely believes cables make a difference, but he supplies no proof other than his subjective opinion. Buyer beware don't get caught out like I was.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzdavoA8c8E
Night and Day Differences in sound quality
I am reading this statement all the time in magazines, HIFI forums and Amazon reviews. What does a "night and day" difference in sound quality mean? It means precious little. Does "night" mean that you hear nothing at all? Does "day" mean that you are hearing sonic perfection?
I have been listening to stereo music from LP records, CD and streaming players and tapes for years and I have never heard a substantial difference in sound quality, unless the equipment was damaged or faulty or a vinyl record was really scratched and badly pressed. When I was young my neighbours had an acoustic 78 rpm record player, there was no electronic amplifier and you wound up a spring which drove the turntable. If you played a well kept classical record you could recognise, the violins, clarinets and cellos etc. Of course modern record players are much better but the difference in sound quality is not a "night and day" difference.
Recently, I bought a new CD player and amplifier, but I could not hear any difference in sound quality to the old ones. The equipment cost much more, but rather than sonic improvement I had bought an improvement in connectivity to use optical connexions etc. I had not wasted my money.
I have also bought upgraded cartridges to hear better sound from my turntable, I could hear only subtle changes to the sound quality. I could have been fooling myself, as I had not subjected myself to double blind testing; so I could have wasted my money. The power of suggestion and wanting to believe is so strong that most of us fall for it, and open up our wallets.
A bit of honesty helps
It is worth reading this Audioholics article about how easily some audiophiles and HIFI journalists can get caught out badly.
https://www.audioholics.com/audio-technologies/mobile-fidelity-scandal
Mobile Fidelity, or MoFI, is a highly reputed producer of LP records which were sourced from analogue tapes, and produced using an entirely analogue "one step" simplified process. Many audiophiles and HIFI journalists praised their all analogue approach. Such was their belief in MoFI vinyl LP records, that they started to traduce digital recording techniques by saying that analogue music reproduction is inherently superior to digital reproduction. This is clearly not true.
Last year it was revealed, by accident, that 60% of MoFI records had a digital production stage which was used to make some of their records or mix them. A lot of audiophiles were unknowingly listening to digital sound reproduction rather wholely analogue sound. Some of these "audio experts" were devastated by these revelations and sued the company for mis-representation.
Mobile Fidelity defended themselves by saying that some recording companies are unwilling to release their original analogue tapes to companies such as MoFI for fear of them being damaged, because they are now so old. Also, they claim, quite rightly, that digitally archived analogue tapes are transparent and can be used to produce the highest quality LPs. They also claimed that they never specifically stated that there was no digital involvement in their LP production. Nevertheless they had to make a legal settlement to compensate upset audiophiles. Mobile Fidelity now publish the production techniques used for all their records.
I have some sympathy with MoFI, as I have a modern classical-music LP which was obviously recorded digitally. It sounds fantastic and almost as good, to my ears, as its digital equivalent except for the crackles and pops. Virtually all modern LPs are produced from digital recordings because they sound better. Surely, we all want better sound reproduction.
The moral of the story is do not make false claims. Even with golden ears and very sophisticated and expensive HIFI equipment analogue purists could not recognise a digital recording when they heard one. They only believed that analogue recordings were better from prejudice rather than evidence.
Conclusion
I suppose this sums it all up. I have a stabiliser weight made of brass and rubber which I use sometimes when I play an old LP record which is slightly warped. It goes over the turntable spindle. I never use it on records that are not warped because I can't hear any difference. Some audiophiles claim that a stabiliser makes a "night and day" difference to the sound quality of all records. My stabiliser looks and feels great but I am not sure it makes a difference even when playing old warped LPs. It cost £45 but I could have spent £200 for the same thing but I don't have 30 grand in my back pocket.
