Two Questions....

[wkhanna]

1.)
Does newer gear designed & maufactured with more modern technology sound better than the stuff from a few years ago?

....better than from more than 10 years ago?



2.)
And is newer gear starting to sound more & more like all the other gear?

....has 'audiophile' gear become (or becoming) an acoustically homogenized, mass-produced for maximized profitability slurry of DAC chips, transistors, power supplies & circuit boards with nary the hint of ‘personality'?

[JeremyG]

1. Not that I have much experience with gear before the 90's, but it seems that there's more resolving power with newer high end equipment. Especially with DVD-A, SACD, and blu-ray formats.

2. Maybe so. Or was the old "personality" something that was added to the audio stream that was not on the recording, and has since been replaced with a newer, different "personality"? Personality = artifacts in the stream? How am I going to reminisce on my audio experiences in 30 years? "This fancy holographic implanted sound doesn't have the personality of good old digital on a disc audio. You're not audiophile unless you have a spinning disc!!!"

[madmac]

1.)
Does newer gear designed & maufactured with more modern technology sound better than the stuff from a few years ago?

....better than from more than 10 years ago?



2.)
And is newer gear starting to sound more & more like all the other gear?

....has 'audiophile' gear become (or becoming) an acoustically homogenized, mass-produced for maximized profitability slurry of DAC chips, transistors, power supplies & circuit boards with nary the hint of ‘personality'?

#1.....Yes it does sound better. Period!.

#2. I have noticed that cheap gear nowadays really does sound quite good for what it is!. Unlike 10/15+ years ago where you had to drop some coin to get decent sound. If there is any deficiency today, it's in the lower end loudspeakers. There's a lot of cheap speakers out there. Amplifiers have become somewhat cheaper nowadays (cracker jack amps with bullshit power ratings) and to get a good amp that pushes some real amperage, you have to drop MORE coin today than you had to do in the past.

All in all we're doing better than in the past. Like I've always said, the digital age has brought decent sound to the masses!.

[PewterTA]

1) Yes and no. It's really a dual answer. Yes there ARE things that sound better now... there's also a lot of stuff that sounds WORSE. There's also older stuff that sounds better than most of the new stuff... yet there was also stuff that sounded bad back then as well. I do think it's safer to say that the "quality" has shifted to where there's more availability of better sounding equipment (ie more manufacturers and over all quantity) then there had been. However, there's still some really amazing gear that was built that is no longer. Really your Carver C-19 (granted refurbished, but I don't think that should be held against it) is perfect proof. It's one of the better/best sounding pre-amps I've heard under... what about the $5K range of today's standards. That's pretty darn impressive.

2) Yes... there's a lot more of the "sounding all the same" with audio equipment. I think this is focused in more of the "under low HiFi" equipment. To me all of the gear nowadays is set to make terribly compressed and brickwalled music sound actually somewhat tollerable. So in doing that, most of the equipment has to sound similar to deal with well..... one single set of problems. It's like saying solve the equations X + 2 = 4.... you're not going to get many differences for 'X'. lol

However, that being said... I think the Mid-HiFi and Higher end (and maybe even classify low HiFi as well -- this is the grey area) still tend to retain their individual sound. Perfect example is Classe vs. MacIntosh.... They really sound different and neither one is bad necessarily...but two people will go towards each end of the spectrum on that.... So for the companies that still do it for the love... they really refuse to make their equipment sound "different" from 'their' sound.

[Ovation]

I may be in the minority here, but I don't want my gear to have a "personality". I want it to be as neutral as possible. The only things I want (and expect) to have any "flavour" are my speakers--and even then, the goal is neutrality. I choose gear based on features, functionality, ease of use, reliability. I want it to "get out of the way" and grant me access to the material that is on the medium from which it is being extracted without deliberately trying to give it "personality".

As for old vs. new--it's usually a lot less expensive to get the same performance today than what was available 10 years ago. (keeping in mind, I'm referring to digital sources--I have no analogue sources at the moment) I would say older gear (at least my older gear) had more build quality but even the lighter, less solidly built stuff I've bought (often expecting it to fail within a year or two but willing to live with that vs. price) has, almost without exception, lasted quite a while. Probably helps that I don't allow anyone else to touch any important gear.

[Glen B]

1.)
Does newer gear designed & maufactured with more modern technology sound better than the stuff from a few years ago?

....better than from more than 10 years ago?

Digital sources yes, amplification not so much. When it comes to amplification, IMHO a lot of what is being called "modern" high end technology is for the most part simply tweaking/variations on long-standing mid-1970s design (typically single or dual differential input, full complementary output stage). What you DO get in more modern amplifiers is better performing parts (esp. caps, transistors).

The truth is in the schematics. Two different brands from different decades, show the same basic topology here.

Late 1970s/early 1980s design:

Image not available

1990s/2000s design:

Image not available

[JonMarsh]

1.)
Does newer gear designed & maufactured with more modern technology sound better than the stuff from a few years ago?

....better than from more than 10 years ago?



2.)
And is newer gear starting to sound more & more like all the other gear?

....has 'audiophile' gear become (or becoming) an acoustically homogenized, mass-produced for maximized profitability slurry of DAC chips, transistors, power supplies & circuit boards with nary the hint of ‘personality'?

NOT A CHANCE!! :W


Case in point...


(or case to look at)




Definitely not mass produced, definitely not acoustically homogenized.


And in my grimy mitts since last Saturday.... arty:

(inside my hotel room in Munich)





What we have here is a modern throwback: 24/192 DAC, with all the usual inputs carefully optimized, without a single standard DAC chip in sight, but a very nicely implemented R2/R ladder DAC by a custom FPGA and a whole pile of very expensive Vishay 0.01% foil resistors. Yes, it's got a remote control. No, the display doesn't radiate high frequency (OLED, custom drive technique, and can be turned off).

Non Over Sampling, but with real engineering, instead of the backwards looking hoodoo voodoo with antique TDAXXXX converter chips and wretched image aliasing due to neanderthal output filter designs.

OK, so maybe I'm not being very diplomatic here- let's just close for the moment with one additional thought-

"No generalization is worth a damn, including this one".

The other corollary of course, is the usefulness of posts dealing in generalizations about anything... though I'll readily concede that statistical analysis of trends and product may lead one to feel that some questionable generalizations have a lot of reality in fact. :roll:

So, I'll bite and say that there is general improvement in mass market gear at many price points, and you can certainly buy a better sounding Blu Ray player these days than you could a good sounding DVD player a similar amount of time post introduction. But, there's still a lot of gimmicky stuff, some of the same mediocre volume processing chips are used in the majority of HT products, and I don't think there's any such thing yet as a really decent sounding $1K DAC, but you can do surprisingly well with careful shopping at $2K. Surprisingly well, unless you compare it to a good vinyl rig; then you'll probably be ill...

And very, very last, yes, perhaps, a lot of new gear may be sounding a lot like the other new gear, as egregious colorations are perhaps less tolerated in the market place than 10 years ago; but the real question is, does the new gear sound more like the original mic feed or not? Not an easy question to answer.

Oh, BTW, TotalDAC makes both a DAC series with variations and a digital premp/reclocker in the same case with the same front end and FIFO buffer. My friend in Munich and I confirmed this weekend that with solid source material (i.e., well recorded acoustic music, not the latest super compressed Hip Hop or Pop release), that up to two of the reclockers in front of the DAC (which also has the FIFO 10 msec digital time lens/buffer) makes a significant audible improvement in terms of what we both called the "palpability" of the sound; i.e., the vinyl, as I somewhat sarcastically described it to him as, since he has no prior experience with high end vinyl. And that is WITH a Brainstorm DCD-8 providing the reference clock for his music server, as well as re-clocking the AES/EBU output from the server, with the DCD-8 locked to a 10 MHz SRS rubidium standard. We auditioned every conceivable combination, including removing the DCD-8 completely, or just using it for word clock generation for the server.




Basically we needed to confirm for ourselves other reports on the reclocker, including using them in series.

http://www.homecinema-fr.com/forum/source-dematerialisee-haute-fidelite-et-dac/dac-totaldac-t29963819-1755.html

unfortunately for my pocket book, the reports appear to be accurate, so I've got some saving to do...

Oh well, at least the DCD-8 is relatively cheap, and I've got an SRS 10MHz rubidium oscillator in my luggage... ultra low jitter and phase noise!

[wkhanna]

NOT A CHANCE!! :W

... a modern throwback: 24/192 DAC, with all the usual inputs carefully optimized, without a single standard DAC chip in sight, but a very nicely implemented R2/R ladder DAC by a custom FPGA and a whole pile of very expensive Vishay 0.01% foil resistors. Yes, it's got a remote control. No, the display doesn't radiate high frequency (OLED, custom drive technique, and can be turned off).

Non Over Sampling, but with real engineering, instead of the backwards looking hoodoo voodoo with antique TDAXXXX converter chips and wretched image aliasing due to neanderthal output filter designs.


.............but you can do surprisingly well with careful shopping at $2K. Surprisingly well, unless you compare it to a good vinyl rig; then you'll probably be ill...

:roflmao:

Leave it to Jon to put a reality check on everything we pine for.

As for how I see & hear things......

The wheel has not gotten any rounder......and they needed no help from us to build the Pyramids.

[audioqueso]

I don't know about the answer to the first question. Sure, there have been lots of technical advancements, but if you ever have a chance to listen to some older integrated amps from the 70's, there is a distinctive difference. The only one's I have listened to with familiar speakers have been Marantz, Sansui, and NAD. I'm talking about the one's that had wood! lol Was it the same sound quality as some of the amps of today. No, but there was something very different and very... enveloping.. about the sound. I think this question can also be answered like this: if all modern-age audio equipment is suppose to be superior, why is vinyl still alive?

[madmac]

I think that 'homogenized' sound being referred to here is generally good neutral sound. The point being (Aside from speakers) that all gear nowadays sounds pretty damn good.......as opposed to the past.

[Alaric]

In the early 80s I spent what was then a decent sum on my stereo. The Tandberg stack (amp , pre , and tuner) , Yamaha PX-2 turntable , Nakamichi ZX9 cassette deck , and A/D/S L1530 speakers , with all the other bits and pieces like Koss headphones , etc. , set me back $10k. Family thought I was crazy-until they heard all the wonderful music those shiny black disks actually contained. Now , a pair of equivalent speakers would cost $10k and it doesn't get cheaper for a good vinyl rig! My point being that old stereo sounded very good and would compare favorably to modern high end gear costing many times the price. I believe good stuff from the 70s on (at least) has most of the ingredients for audiophile quality sound. The cheap stuff has seen most of the improvements , IMHO. Thank goodness for that , because my budget has not kept up with inflation.

[madmac]

Amen!!!

[Dmantis]

1) IMO most of the time it does. Companies are finding more and more ways to preserve the recording. Not getting in the way instead of personally tuning it to a certain liking.
There are some classic pieces of gear that are timeless.

2) Maybe in some cases but most of the time they tend to sound very different. It all should sound exactly the way as the goal is to recreate what was , not add or take anything away.