Sins of Omission

...and Sins of Commission

By John Groom

August 2005

Psychobabble is a column to explore the twilight zone of hi-fi. That strange place where the improbable meets the impossible, the fussy meets the obsessional, and the physical meets the psychological.

iPod It bugs me when my world gets out of order. It is bad enough when I can't find my car keys and heaven forbid that I should mislay a file. Even worse is when things don't meet my expectations. Take the iPod for example, and it seems that most of the world has. Flat earther that I am I have never taken it seriously, never owned one or even listened to one. I was quite happy with that state of affairs until our last wet weekend at the bach. Juliet is having a love affair with her iPod from its cheery good morning beep to its late night lullabies. I am not jealous of course; just being factual about it all. Anyway, Juliet insisted on bringing the thing away with us and asking innocently if there was any way that she could play it through the 'big system'.

I saw the light

The bach system nowadays consists of a Harmon Kardon amplifier and Goodman's 'full range' twin cone speakers. With the iPod on the front end the sound was surprisingly full. Not the ultimate in terms of presence or impact, but all the same detailed and true to the CD copy and with a low fatigue factor. Given how reasonably priced the product is, how small, and how much music it can hold, it fair shook up my prejudices.

The ad break

I am using the column here as something more substantial than simply a promo for the iPod. The experience made me think about distortion in the hi-fi system and how our listening responds to it. I am sure that 'loss less compression' used in the apple system is a good thing. In other words even to a 'golden- eared' listener the losses are subtle, though of course they would be more apparent in the context of a more sophisticated system. At the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show this year the ipod was used at the front end of a mega bucks Thiel/Theta demonstration. Ken Kessler described the sound as 'viable at worst'.

Over the top

I think that there is something more significant going on here than just top end systems wanting to identify themselves with a very popular product. I will give you another example of my own speculation. The Harmon Kardon amplifier at the bach was in my main system at home for a couple of years while I looked around at the market. I grew to love the HK, warts and all, for its warm, enthusiastic and emotional approach to music- making. Juliet was particularly keen, and a quiet night with Beethoven's late quartets usually meant I was on to a good thing. I eventually grew tired of the sound as I realized that the enthusiastic emphasis was being brought to all kinds of music in ways that were not always satisfying. Clearly I was responding negatively to the added colouration.

A little gem

After much consideration I replaced the HK with a Cyrus 8 amplifier with an external power supply. Depending on the review that you read, it is either 'thin', 'punches well above its weight' or is 'the singing shoebox'. I prefer the latter. It has few obvious vices in the additive sense. At worst, the sound is a little 'British' in that restrained, slightly tight and correct way. The sound has a low fatigue factor, is easy to ignore, and yet carries a lot of information. It is an 'expensive' sound. Again this is more than just a promo for Cyrus. I think the amplifier continues to appeal to me, as its weaknesses are the subtle things it misses rather than the obvious things it adds.

Dream on

The dream of amplification being 'a straight wire with gain' is just that: a dream. In the real world of the type of equipment that most of us can afford, then we are buying equipment that either adds to, or detracts from, the original signal. This may not matter and in fact like the HK it can often be a pleasant experience. To take this thinking even further, in the April 2005 edition of Hi-Fi News Jim Lesurf suggests that the addition of background noise may in fact give the impression of greater information.

Get real

The practical implications of what I am saying are: accept that equipment adds its own particular 'signature'. Find a signature that suits the majority of music that you play. Don't deal with a retailer who can't acknowledge the 'sound' of what they are promoting. Only buy from stores who will let you trial something for a few days. Either accept the inherent colourations of your system, get into tweaking it or move to less 'expressive' gear.

Other Psychobabble columns

John Groom is a psychologist working in private practice on Auckland's North Shore. John has over three decades experience in both hi-fi and psychology

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