The Carver Challenge (1985)
stereophile.com
stereophile.com
Audio Science Review (audiosciencereview.com) is an interesting counterpoint to all this huffing and puffing about what sounds "good" that has historically held the audiophile industry hostage. The guy has some state of the art test equipment and thoroughly tests equipment that people send in to be tested. Some of the results are really suprising, like a $14K DAC that was, from a performance standpoint, just garbage. He'll test almost anything, including the "audiophile network switch" that (surprise!) didn't do anything. If you're into this space his tests are almost always interesting.
So then he build the Carver Silver 7, as something of a joke.[1] It has fourteen tubes per channel. The power supply is on a separate chassis. All wire is silver, soldered with silver solder. It costs $17,500. Per channel. Here's a picture of a pair of them.[2]
It sold quite well. Versions of it are still selling.
[1] https://www.stereophile.com/content/carver-silver-seven-t-mo...
[2] https://www.underwoodhifi.com/sites/default/files/Carver%20S...
"the quality goes in before the name goes on"
and SNL had a spoof called Horizon System 12 where
"The parts go in before the name goes on"
With parts flying in like in the zenith ad, but an enormous number of parts...
can't find a clip, but I found references:
http://www.snlarchives.net/Commercials/?198003153
http://www.snlarchives.net/Episodes/?19800315
p.s. for a long time all I could think about were two cube amps, one for each (stereo) speaker. Could never afford them. :)
OTOH, I have owned a Carver magnetic field power amplifier, and I liked it very much. Bob Carver is a audio genius.
That's at least a step forward from 1985, it would seem:
> We made no effort to do A/B testing, since we feel it does not replicate normal listening conditions, and there is still insubstantial evidence that A/B testing reveals small differences as well as does prolonged listening to each unit under test.
So, in 1985, not even non-blind A/B testing! These people are delusional.
If it's high fidelity sound reproduction you're after (rather than just "pleasant" coloration), today's upscale studio and live gear can't be beat IMO.
I worked my way though college by sound engineering/DJing in a major european city. The signal paths in studios at that time were complex meandering things all adding minor or not-so-minor levels of color, and now can all be substantially replaced by something like a "Universal Audio" DSP box, which is capable of reproducing 99% of the sonic/tonal qualities of the classic equipment. I can't, however, shake the assertion that old, analog, recordings have a certain quality and warmth to them that to my ears sounds amazing, and we have moved so far from this with crappy compression algorithms and equipment which mostly does not match 90's HiFi, unless you spend a lot. Particularly, anything processed at CD quality, seems tinny to my ears. Recording at 192KHz seems to be set to overcome this however.
MP3s are an obvious example. (Although many of us realistically can't tell the difference.) And many/most listen to music through cheap earbuds rather than expensive speakers/headphones.
Or take phone calls. Some may remember Sprint's hearing a pin drop commercials to advertise the quality of its network. Now, many of us don't even have landlines and just deal with the drops and other problems of cellular phones and IP video calls.
That said, disk is cheap, and FLAC is easy piece of mind.
The cool thing about Bob Carver was that he didn't just rely on his (obviously very good) ears, but also on his knowledge, intuition/insight, and equipment. Just amazing. Thanks to OP for this.
I'm not convinced, but I will graciously concede that it could be so. This would not, however, justify the claim in the GP that "MP3s sound horrid".
Also, I would say that from reading the article, I don't think Carver relied on his ears much at all.
2) 96kHz vs 48kHz does allow for some small but probably worthwhile improvement in the behavior of the anti-aliasing filters used in the analog->digital converters.
3) I have a theory that has been shot down by some highly respected DSP people but I retain it nevertheless. In Ye Olde Analogue domain, most of the distortion that occurs will be somehow related to harmonics, because of the nature of the analog electrical signal and the components it passes through. In the New Digital Goodness, there's no inherent reason why any of the distortion will be fundamentally harmonic. Consequently, if either type of signal pathway introduces any distortion at all, the analog one will tend to be "musical" because of the harmonic aspects at its core, whereas the digital one will be something else.
I'm not arguing about the amount of distortion etc. Anybody who knows anything about this stuff knows that Ye Olde Analogue pathways were full of distortion, but that either we grew to love it or it was just inherently musical enough that we loved it from the beginning. The sound of that old analog gear you love? Yes, that's right, you love the distortion it adds.
Bob Pease also had some articles on audio. I think he would agree that open loop analog circuits often produce harmonics that people like. And digital and feedback controlled ones tend to produce harmonics people HATE.