valve amp?

[Martin Naef]

Hi Peter

On 20.10.2011 07:01, Peter Korsten wrote:
> A friend of mine had these super-sophisticated speakers, that are more
> or less the size of a small door (in width, height and particularly
> thickness) and which are supposedly the bee's knees. He was into jazz,
> or something similarly horrid, and whilst you could indeed hear a lot of
> detail in those speakers, they also had absolutely no bass presence
> worth mentioning.

Sounds like an electrostatic speaker. Some people love them, but they 
wouldn't work for me unless coupled with a subwoofer.

> In my opinion, this whole audiophile business is a load of tosh, but on
> the other hand, I've trouble telling the difference between an
> uncompressed audio file and an 128 bit MP3.

The search for perfection is what drives progress, so I'm willing to 
give credit to the audiophiles even if it often gets ridiculous or 
outright esoteric (ultra-expensive cables for digital signals over short 
distances???). It's not like us electronic musicians would be any 
better, really. (Hands up who's ever been drooling over analogue filters).

Obviously, with so many years of research and engineering that went into 
audio playback technology, we've clearly reached a point where the law 
of diminishing returns hits very hard. I certainly wouldn't spend any 
huge sums on valve amplifiers or any other electronic device in that 
domain. Speakers, yes - but that's where basic physics define the shape.

Martin