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Q. The audio industry is shockingly misleading in its specifications and advertisements. Most specs translate into little more than sales hype and are relatively meaningless (though the dBW is a step in the right direction). For one thing, why can't manufacturers state frequency response figures consistently? One cassette deck maker claims a response of 30-16,000 Hz ±3 dB, while another claims 30-19,000 Hz with no dB reference what ever. This is a useless spec, especially considering that the former deck is a fine one costing about 5850, with three heads and three motors, while the latter, which claims better response, retails for about $400 less! Also, why can't speaker manufacturers include the 0 factor in their specifications? This would help greatly in making buying decisions. There are a few good companies still around--Fried, Allison, Harman Kardon, Thorens, etc.--but most seem more interested in the sexy appearance of their products than in providing true, uncolored sound. Look at all those pretty white woofers, huge S-shaped tonearms, chrome speaker grilles with rings around them, and massive mid range and tweeter controls that add distortion and drain power. Well, I have stepped on your toes by putting down your big advertisers, and you surely won't print this letter. It's a shame, because it's meant as a sincere challenge to improve the stereo industry. -Jeffrey S. Albaugh, Baltimore, Md. A. This letter evidently was written with more than a little passion, yet it is neither unreasonable nor un merited, in our view. We would remind Mr. Albaugh, however, that audio consumers are a diverse lot whose personal desiderata encompass not only the sterling virtues he extols, but some of the things he decries. If we assume, for ex ample, that he thinks of Pioneer as one of those "big advertisers" and would dismiss as merely "sexy" the Fluroscan metering and memory/repeat features of the Pioneer cassette deck reviewed in this issue, he can simply buy an alternative and leave these features for the many buyers who will find them genuinely useful. We believe there should be no question of product censorship in the interests of what any buying minority considers of ultimate high fidelity importance. (Mr. Albaugh might find that his preference is not the prevailing one.) Inconsistent specs cannot be dismissed as a matter of diversity of taste, of course. We would plead that even the $850 cassette deck is inadequately specified, if the quotation is correct, be cause no reference level, however vague, is given. Rigorous, independent test reports help mitigate the problem, because the more lax the spec, the greater its departure will be from the bench measurements. And the standards committees of the Institute of High Fidelity are in the process of writing a new rule book to address this matter. Utter unanimity of approach--either among the manufacturers who publish specs or among critics who believe the specs could be better stated-is more than we can expect, however. Q. Your September issue was depressing. Alas, the new open-reel decks don't have the 1 7/8-ips speed, and the new Integrex Dolby unit will only de code, not encode. We stubborn old folks who want to upgrade our systems have nothing available! -Leslie Reggel, Pittsburgh, Pa. A. The obvious answer is that you can buy an open-reel deck with the Dolby circuitry built in and/or a cassette deck, which does much better with the 1 7/8-ips speed than any open-reel model (including the Tandberg’s that, traditionally, have worked wonders with it) we know of. Open-reel tapes are specifically formulated for higher speeds, cassette tapes for 1 7/8; thus the latter have a big edge. But we can sympathize with the bind that tape collectors experience because of advancing technology. One of our editors, for example, has now unplayable tapes of the entire Shakespeare War of the Roses cycle-a total of eight plays, or twenty-odd hours of drama. His solution was to dub them to another format when he saw that the demise of 1 7/8 on open-reel decks was imminent and before his model went into terminal decline. Q. My Fisher quadriphonic receiver has developed interference be tween a local radio station and the left channel of the phono mode. It remains even when the turntable is disconnected. I took the receiver to Sears for repair, and it returned it to me without eliminating the problem. Could shielded cable between the receiver and the speakers help? -B. Torres, San Juan, P.R. A. No. Since the interference exists only in the phono mode, it must be within the receiver's preamp, where we would suspect there's a cold solder joint or similar problem. Possibly the station couldn't be picked up on the Sears repair bench, preventing a positive de termination of what was wrong-a discouragingly common difficulty in troubleshooting both interference problems and intermittent ones. Q. My system-consisting of Bose 301 speakers, Advent 300 receiver, Garrard 990-B turntable, and Shure M-91 ED cartridge--has developed what may be warp-tracking problems. When playing records with even the slightest warp, I can hear faintly (especially from the right speaker) a low, rhythmic bumping sound. It is diminished considerably when the records are played in the mono mode, but this seems a giant step backward. Do you have any suggestions as how I can eliminate this annoyance? -David A. Lindsey, Snohomish, Wash. A. The reduction in bumping when in the mono mode suggests vibration in the vertical plane as the source of the trouble. This could be traceable to a warped or worn idler. First, we'd check the condition of the drive puck in the Garrard. Also, the fact that the noise is louder in the right channel may indicate insufficient antiskating force. We regret that, due to the volume of reader mail we get, we cannot give individual answers to all questions. (High Fidelity, Jan. 1980) Also see:
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