Reference

Editor's Note: The matter of whether—and if so, how—speaker cables and interconnects can affect the sound of an audio system has vexed the audiophile community since Jean Hiraga, Robert Fulton, and others first made us aware of the subject in the mid-1970s. Most of the arguments since then have involved a great deal of heat but not much light. Back in August 1985, Professor Malcolm Omar Hawksford Ph.D (of the UK's University of Essex and a Fellow of the Audio Engineering Society) wrote an article for the British magazine Hi-Fi News & Record Review, of which I was then Editor, in which he examined AC signal transmission from first principles. Among his conclusions was the indication that there is an optimal conductor diameter for audio-signal transmission, something that I imagined might lead to something of a conciliation between the two sides in the debate. Or at least when a skeptic proclaimed that "The Laws of Physics" don't allow for cables to affect audio performance, it could be gently pointed out to him or her that "The Laws of Physics" predict exactly the opposite.

As mentioned by two readers in this month's "Letters," amplifiers are used to drive loudspeakers but are almost exclusively measured into resistive loads. The reasons for this are twofold: 1) real loudspeakers both produce neighbor-annoying sound levels and tend to break when driven with typical amplifier test signals; and 2) the question as to which "standard" loudspeaker should be used is impossible to answer---at least the conventional resistive loads are consistent and repeatable.

Have you ever suspected that the component you bought after diligent research is somehow not "typical"? That its sound seems to bear little resemblance to the descriptions in the reviews you read? Sure, you listened to the unit before purchase, but the one you took out of the box at home—was that the same unit? And if you suspect your new unit's sonic quality is below par, just how do you or your dealer go about proving it?

High Definition Compatible Digital^® (HDCD^®), the proprietary process for improving the sound of 16-bit digital audio, has finally arrived. More than a dozen digital processors using the technology are on the market, and the professional encoder used to master HDCD discs is following closely behind.

Although I still haven't been able to listen to the Cary Audio Design 805 single-ended tube monoblocks that Stereophile praised so highly a year ago (Vol.17 No.1, p.104), I've recently auditioned many other tubed single-ended designs. Undeniably, a good SE design has a distinctive quality of harmony and atmosphere in the midrange that reaches well beyond the average attainment of its solid-state brethren.

The Complete Guide to High-End Audio
by Robert Harley
450+xxiv pp., $29.95 softcover, $39.95 signed hardcover. Published by Acapella Publishing, P.O. Box 80805, Albuquerque, NM 87198-0805. Credit-card orders: (800) 848-5099.

In the October 1994 Stereophile (Vol.17 No.10, p.39), I discussed my experiences with the DTS audio data-reduction code/decode switch box, which, briefly, is a two-channel box that makes use of the algorithm DTS has proposed for their version of discrete multichannel sound for laserdiscs.