The mail has been overwhelmingly (and heartwarmingly) favorable in response to Issue No. 10, but we are not going to clutter up this column with nice, straight, unkinky love letters. We appreciate them immensely and thank their writers from the bottom of our heart, but here we want information, elucidation and confrontation, not facile applause. Some of the ground rules governing the publication of letters were explained in No. 10; others will become apparent as the plot thickens. Any communication of serious editorial interest coming from a reasonably credible source is likely to be published. Letters may or may not be excerpted, at the discretion of the Editor. Ellipsis (...) indicates omission. If intended for this column, your letter should be addressed to:

The Editor, The Audio Critic, Box 392, Bronxville, NY 10708.

The Audio Critic:

Congratulations for the comeback.

Please enter my subscription...

With best regards, Prof. Matti Otala Helsinki, Finland Okay, okay. Publishing this may be a slight contradiction of our introductory remarks above, but we could not resist the opportunity to note that the best minds in audio are among our strongest supporters. Other great practitioners called instead of writing and said gratifying things... No, enough!

-Ed.

The Audio Critic:

I certainly hope you have your act together this time. We need more snobs in this business, and you are the best.

Best wishes, Ed Freeman

Los Angeles, CA

Snobs? How preposterous! All we ask of our inferiors is a little bit of humility. Does that make us snobs?

-Ed.

The Audio Critic:

This letter is being sent to the editors of all the audio magazines to which I currently subscribe. I have a question which I invite any or all of you to ad dress.

My question is this: Why are the disagreements among the various points of view...printed in the consumer oriented audio press so acrimonious? Arguments over ideas or positions often turn into attacks directed at the integrity or competence of individuals. Al though strong differences are common among people involved in other subjects (music reviewing for instance, the other side of our hobby), no other field that I have participated in has disagreements as intense, as personal, and as bitter as the audio press.

Perhaps you might consider inviting articles on this topic from readers with appropriate backgrounds in psychology or psychiatry. It would be interesting to at least understand why these disagreements are so intense, even if this situation remains unchanged.

J. B. Oakley III Tulsa, OK

A perceptive and highly relevant question, deserving a thoughtful answer.

Let us try:

Audio, as a general discipline, and equipment reviewing, in particular, lie in a disputed border territory between science and subjective opinion. That can be a highly volatile situation, conducive to all kinds of nastiness, but not nearly as specific to "our hobby" as you seem to believe. For example, as a longtime breeder and exhibitor of pure bred dogs, your Editor can assure you that dog-show people are just as prone to malicious and hysterical antagonism as underground audio journalists and for comparable reasons, arising out of the turbulence at the interface of factual knowledge (genetics, canine anatomy, the written breed standards) and value judgment (by dog judges in the show ring). The similarities are quite poignant to someone active in both fields.

In audio, the conflict between science and subjectivity derives its special vehemence not from an irreconcilable dichotomy in the discipline itself-after all, the accuracy of a sonic replica is not nearly as much a matter of opinion as the quality of the original-but from the major gaps in knowledge that divide the various factions. More than nine years ago, in Vol. 1, No. 6, we editorialized that "the...'dynamic range' from pure bull to sheer brilliance that characterizes today's audio scene is by far the widest in history..." Well, it seems to be even wider today. Our most recent reading ranged from a superb AES paper on digital dither by the erudite Canadian duo, Stanley Lipshitz and John Vanderkooy, all the way down to irresponsible dispatches from cuckoo country (on the subject of headshells) by the tragically untutored Enid Lumley. Such a fundamental inequality between published practitioners in the same field is bound to result in contempt from above and, as a natural reaction, hatred from below.

It is the situation analyzed a century ago by Nietzsche in terms of the two German words for "bad"- schlecht (bad, in the sense of inferior or worthless) is applied from a position of superiority, bose (bad, in the sense of wicked or vicious) from a position of inferiority.

Either way, perceived badness leads to acrimony. Historically, as we see it, it was Harry Pearson who exacerbated the contentious tone of audio journalism to the point where it became distasteful to a large number of readers. Before he came out of the woodwork in the mid-1970's, a thin veneer of professional manners covered the inevitable antagonisms.

Once he broke the nastiness barrier, others followed suit, and we ourselves were no exception on certain occasions.

It is difficult to remain polite in a snarling environment, especially when you are a natural counterpuncher.

As for the relatively greater restraint that exists in music reviewing, your may very well be right, but are you familiar with the play and movie reviews of John Simon? Not exactly sweetness and light.

-Ed.

The Audio Critic:

...The two articles on Carver and his amps were especially interesting and important, I felt. Keep up the good work! Can you verify that current production models of the M-1.5t amp do in fact sound like the original prototype? Perhaps you'll test his tuner and preamp and speakers.

Also, I hope [in] each issue you have some sort of "Recommended Components" guide. I find such a summary of findings to be helpful.

Thanks, and good luck, Paul C. Welz San Francisco, CA

Yes, as recently as January 1988, we tested a brand-new production sample of the M-1.5t (SIN 14004) against the hand-wired duplicate of the proto type Bob Carver had left with us in late 1982. Into monstrous reactive dummy loads (worse than any speaker) and with pink noise and USASI noise as the signal sources, the left channels gave us a -52 dB reading on the null test and the right channels -54 dB. The -74 dB null obtained in 1982 against the ML-2 was admittedly a more sensational result, but it took many hours of bench setup, fanatically careful connections and wire dressing, bated breath-and even then the reading drifted as soon as somebody blinked. The recent test was quick, not nearly as meticulous and sensitive, but still entirely convincing, since even a null of -40 dB is more than sufficient for total indistinguishability in listening tests. We could hear no difference between the 1982 and 1988 units, no matter what kind of music they were amplifying, even when A and B were fully identified. We therefore dispensed with the ABX test.

On the other hand, we must confess that by our 1988 standards the five-year old M-1.5t is no longer among our favorite power amplifiers. It has served honorably and it still sounds good, but time marches on-the ML-2 sound, which dates from the mid-1970's, has been handily surpassed. At this point, none of the above is of much more than academic interest, since the M-1.5t is about to be discontinued.

The Carver speaker, as you can see, is reviewed in this issue; summaries of reviews with updated recommendations will be forthcoming, but not before there is more of an accumulation than thus far.

-Ed.

The Audio Critic:

I read your interesting Issue No. 10 and have some comments about "the Carver controversy." I purchased the amplifier while I was working in Mary land and have not been happy with its performance since day one. There are some technical errors in the original article [as regards] the production model. I have serial number 1431.

(We have taken the liberty of as signing numbers to the various points you bring up, for easy reference in our reply below -Ed.)

[1] The circuit topology is not complementary symmetry from input to output. [2] A FET input op amp IC (TLO81) is used as an input amplifier.

From personal experience I would say an AD711 sounds more like a Levinson product. [3] The circuit does not use the fastest output transistors; I recently tried some 60-MHz output transistors and they sounded better, but probably because their HFE was three times higher, reducing power supply modulation. I don't think the Carver circuit is able to make use of their speed. [4] There is still an output filter on the amplifier.

Yes, the coil in series with the output is gone, but an RC filter is in parallel with the output jacks. [5] There are only two WIMA MKP10 polypropylene capacitors in the circuit. I know you didn't mention brands in your article, but I don't know why he didn't keep on using them in the other positions where he has changed the circuit (this according to the preliminary service manuals I purchased from the Carver Corporation).

Looking at the schematics of the various revisions of the M-1.5, I notice one other thing missing: [6] Where are all those transistor re-biasings? [7] All the voltage gain stages are the same, the open loop compensation capacitors are the same value, only the feedback around the IC has been changed, the loop gain changed, the input Z changed and the inductor removed. Big deal.

My friend's Electrocompaniet Ampliwire II has an output filter and sounds fine. My Carver M-1.5t collects dust and any "off-the-wall" modifications I come up with, until I find a way to make it sound like a good amplifier.

Sincerely, Edward D. Berger Oakmont, PA

P.S. I don't like the sound I've heard from Levinson or Cello amplifiers either.

[1] False. [2] True, but that does not negate the complementary symmetry. [3] 60-Mhz transistors are good for high-speed switching power supplies; they are not suitable for linear applications. [4] False; the RC network does not perform a filter function but is part of the feedback network. [5] True; the polypropylene capacitors are used where they make a difference. [6] In the second class A stage, in the bias regulator, in the driver transistors, and in the out put transistors. [7]

First two statements false; the rest true. The second class A stage and the bias regulator are not the same; their gain was changed. Said capacitors are not the same value.

"Big deals" and other amplifiers, good or bad in your opinion, are completely beside the point. All we ever claimed was that the M-1.5t faithfully replicates the sound of the old Levinson ML-2, which you are free to like or dislike. The ML-2 is gone now, and the M-1.5t is also on its way out, as we said above, but the facts remain.

-Ed.

The Audio Critic:

Welcome back! After suffering for nearly seven years with inferior publications, I am overjoyed to have received Issue No. 10 in today's mail.

Your review of the MESA/Baron is a perfect example of the sort of information that cannot be found elsewhere.

I wonder if you have any suggestions as to where one can find reliable information on video products? I recently developed an interest in that area and have found The Perfect Vision virtually worthless and Videofax sorely lacking in reviews of televisions, a component they seemingly have forgotten as part of the video experience.

Best wishes for the future.

Sincerely, John R. Levy Fort Lauderdale, FL

We have good news regarding the modified MESA/Baron M180. Randall Smith is definitely going ahead with the project of producing and selling an audiophile version of the amplifier. We hope to have final details in our next issue-maybe even a review.

The growing interest in top-quality video has not escaped our attention; we intend to devote some space to it in the very near future. Large-screen TV with multichannel sound is the ultimate me dia trip for stay-at-homes and is ready for some serious testing.

-Fd.

The Audio Critic:

Yes, it is good to read again the well-written pages of The Audio Critic.

Welcome back and good luck.

However, I do wish to make a suggestion. In reference to Dr. Hill's Plasmatronics speaker system [Issue No. 10, Fall/Year-End 1987, p. 11], you appear to go beyond what you need to say about this speaker. (Even sounding a little bitchy?) First, it does require helium: that is necessary to its design.

If it is expensive, so what? The [Infinity] IRS and Wilson products are also expensive. Of real concern is your acceptance of the gossip about the "poisonous" nature of the Plasmatronics speaker. If you know Dr. Hill--and I assume you must have met him at one time or another-you must know that he is a gentle soul and would not ever sell a product which would "poison" his customers or the general public. Dr. Hill is a much better scientist than that! In fact, some "scientists" look upon audiophiles as a peculiar breed and dismiss them with a statement like, "Twenty hertz to twenty thousand hertz--that's not difficult." He is one of the rare breed of scientist-audiophiles, who does not think audiophiles are nuts and who is willing to try different technologies to achieve the audio Nirvana audiophiles claim to want. He should not be labeled for that attempt "bizarre," as you characterize him.

I have attached Dr. Hill's reply to the unfounded "ozone" gossip which un fairly circulated about the Plasmatronics speakers. You should read his statement and modify to some extent your biased view of the Plasmatronics speaker. That speaker remains a courageous attempt to give the audiophile what he wants: purity of sound, by a means that only someone familiar with the real physics of sound can appreciate. A thirst for helium and unfounded fears of ozone are really unfair indictments of a scientifically sound design. The speaker is NOT dangerous and will not cause listeners ill effects. You have not been fair to Dr. Hill and have failed to take real measure of his achievement.

I hope you are fairer to other and lesser products, and less tuned-in to misinformation.

Respectfully yours,

Carl E. Miller

Columbus, OH

Whew! Sorry for not remembering how thin-skinned champions of lost causes can be... We do try, however, to express our thoughts with some degree of precision. In your zeal to reel off the party line in defense of the Hill speaker (confess-you parted with $10,000 plus tax to own a pair, or are we off base?), you forgot to double-check our sentence on the subject. We never breathed a word about the cost. We never called the speaker poisonous or Dr. Hill a poisoner. We never labeled him bizarre.

We wrote that ozone is poisonous, which is a fact, and. that the speaker system is bizarre, which is a considered opinion shared by many.

After reading Dr. Hill's "Notice to Dealers, Distributors and Audiophiles" that you enclosed with your letter, we are quite satisfied (1) that the amount of ozone (triatomic oxygen) generated by the Plasmatronics speaker is totally in significant and harmless, (2) that trace amounts of the healthful negative ions of diatomic oxygen produced by the speaker might sometimes be mistaken for ozone because of the slight resemblance in smell, and (3) that the ultraviolet emission from the speaker (which we did not even bring up) is also completely negligible and nonhazardous.

Those reassurances remind us of the old Béla Lugosi film in which, as we re call, the girl is frightened by the mad scientist's gorilla. "Doan't be efraid," he says, "he is onder hevy seedation." The Hill speaker may have been rendered harmless, but it is still a monster (just look at that big ugly cylinder of com pressed helium) and still a creature of the experimental laboratory rather than a civilized presence in the music room.

We consider ourselves to be reasonably "familiar with the real physics of sound" and do not feel we have belittled Dr. Hill's technical achievement, as such. A linear electroacoustic transducer without moving parts has undeniable appeal, and we realize that Dr. Hill has made a positive contribution to the technology that started in the early 1950's in Paris with Sigmund Klein's invention of the Ionophone tweeter (known as Ionovac in the U.S.). The Hill plasma transducer appears to be the most advanced implementation of the basic concept so far, with response from about 700 Hz to virtual infinity, but the other half of the Plasmatronics speaker system is still quite conventional and not particularly impressive.

A full-range, monolithic, crossover-less plasma speaker (fat chance) could make us overlook more than a little awkward ness and, yes, bizarreness, but in its present ungainly form, which is neither fish nor fowl, the Hill speaker does not meet our minimal commonsense standards for domestic audio gear and does not interest us for purposes of testing- and that is all the offending sentence was intended to mean.

-Ed.

The Audio Critic:

Welcome back!...

Issue No. 10 looks quite good, but I would like to raise what is probably an obvious sticky point. In [your] reply to [the letter from] Frank Pulli, you state that the Fourier situation should not be decided without hearing the Mod el 8e. With the company gone, this poses a problem, which I believe I have a solution to.

How about releasing the design into the public domain? This would al low analysis and discussion about the design, as well as giving diehards info to roll their own.

I hope this doesn't sound like asking you to part with one of your children, but it could avoid some com plaints (and start a whole round of debate, no doubt).

If the design contains a custom driver, perhaps the approach would be to let a supplier like Madisound offer a set of parts. I am assuming that they could get the old vendor to make the special parts simply by asking for a quantity of them.

Again, I wish you success.

Sincerely, Carl

Van Camp Lansing, MI

The Audio Critic:

...It is good to have a "voice of reason" back in audio reviewing.

As a continuation of the Fourier story... there are a number of do-it yourselfers who would love to have plans (tech info) on the 1's and 8e's, if you have no further plans toward the commercial loudspeaker business...

All readers (most, anyway) would like to learn from your investigations into crossovers and driver design...

Sincerely,

Connol Reid Pheenix, AZ

The matter is not quite as simple as either of the above letters assumes. A good roll-your-own or do-it-yourself speaker system is designed as such from the ground up. The making of Fourier speakers involved various steps and procedures not easily translated into the simplicities of the typical home work shop. The end result would suffer, unless some serious kit engineering were undertaken beforehand.

Another problem is that vendors require a commitment to a cumulative total of at least 1000 (more often 2000) units of a special-order, "dedicated" woofer, such as was used in each Fourier model. Who could guarantee that kind of interest among home constructors? We are still doing a bit of loud speaker R and D for our own edification, without any commercial involvement, and as a result we have progressed well beyond the more than four-year old Fourier IL and even a little past the two-year old Fourier 8e. If we published anything for "analysis and discussion," disregarding the home construction impediments, we would want it to reflect our latest thinking and the most up-to date computer support. We are not quite ready for that yet. Should any finalized hardware result from our current investigations, the readers of The Audio Critic will be the first to know.

-Ed.

The Audio Critic:

I appreciate the complimentary copy of TAC, but concern about your attitude gives me pause. Your reply to Dr. Eichenwald was shocking. Rather than admitting you were wrong not to refund money owed on an unfulfilled subscription (even if only $12.50), you turn around and attack the doctor. You do not seem contrite about leaving your subscribers high and dry for about seven years. Samuel Johnson is not venerated because he made customers wait many years for their books, but rather in spite of that. He should have been contrite, too.

You take a similar arrogant attitude with regard to the guy who regretfully bought the Fourier 1. You compare yourself with Shakespeare.

Failure in business is a fact of life.

Failure to pay debts is excusable only in cases of bankruptcy. Your repayment of those debts now (albeit in kind and without interest) furthers your redemption. But your arrogant attitude impedes it.

Sincerely, Marc Richman Washington, DC Leave it to someone who is not, and never was, a subscriber and thus could not have been left high and dry, but who did manage to wangle a free copy of Issue No. 10, to be such a stern guardian of our morals. We admit that contriteness is not our bag; we never regarded it as useful equipment for the audio journalist-or the encyclopedist, for that matter.

Now for the facts: Refunds on unfulfilled subscriptions were available from us on request for quite a while, until the money ran out. We could have filed for bankruptcy at that point, but we kept hoping to resume fulfillment eventually, as we are doing now. The Shakespeare rap leaves us dumbfounded;

where in that sentence did we equate ourselves with him? Are you serious? The good doctor (we love that cliché-as if none were bad) constitutes a special case, in a class by itself. We obviously touched a nerve there. Some readers reacted with unrestrained whoops of iconoclastic joy, others felt we had committed sacrilege. We never believed that an M.D. degree gave its bearer some kind of diplomatic immunity from being considered asinine, but it is clear that such irreverence offends the sensibilities of various socio-cultural groups.

In this particular instance, Dr. Eichenwald ended up as the most authoritative source of evidence in support of our "shocking" comments. He wrote us a (get this!) 4-page single-spaced letter, with a 3-page single-spaced curriculum vita as an enclosure. The letter ends with the statement that we do not have his permission to publish it (because we would most likely respond to his criticism by poking fun at it); however, no one can take away our First Amendment right to discuss what the good doctor said. What a case history! It turns out that he is a 62-year old pediatrician of the utmost academic and professional distinction; his résumé starts with primary school in Switzer land (whence his humorlessness may spring), continues with magna cum laude at Harvard and the finest medical education at Cornell (plus New York Hospital), goes on to professorships, department chairmanships and staff commands at various major universities, medical schools and hospitals, and then lists the most dazzling assortment of professional honors. A veritable giant in his field. This giant proceeds to berate the hapless Editor of this hardly gigantic journal, in ringing Germanic tones alternating between hectoring and condescension, for commercial hucksterism, lack of business ethics, poor loudspeaker design, incorrect evaluation of amplifiers, loss of respectability and, as a recurrent theme, the attack on his medical ethics. The fact that we never even nudged the subject of his medical ethics does not seem to intrude on his knee-jerk indignation. Perhaps what we actually wrote, expressing disappointment in his intellectual priorities and emotional maturity as they reflect on his stature as a healer, was so much more traumatic that it had to be tuned out. It does not occur to him that he is proving our point with his epistolary marathon-can you imagine a Dr. Salk or a Dr. De Bakey caring so desperately about an audio journalist's opinion of them? Would they have dared us to print a hate letter to begin with? Here comes the most hilarious part:

After his paroxysm of contempt and rejection, he offers to send us the detailed results of his and his friends' private tests of the Carver M-1.5t, which he claims will prove us dead wrong on the Levinson sound-alike issue-provided we publish them in The Audio Critic and Carver reprints them in an advertisement! In other words, even though we are naughty boys, he would like to play with us in our electronic sandbox, as long as he can bring his own pail and shovel. We ask you-were we wrong when we did not take the good doctor seriously?

-Ed.

The Audio Critic:

Welcome back. No other magazine I've seen has filled the void that you had left...

About amplifiers: In Vol. 2, No. 2, p- 37, you said to "forget about 'black box' tests (comparing the output against the input) in general." In that issue, you wrote favorably about the sound of the Bedini 25/25, despite its being a "test-bench turkey," and you seemed certain that it would indeed measure beautifully, if only you knew what to measure. At that time, how could any reader have known whether or not you were correct, or whether you were taken by some euphonic colorations imposed on the signal by the Bedini? Now, with the advent of people like Bob Carver and his skill in duplicating an amplifier's transfer function (and after other advances that have occurred since way back when), I imagine you probably have a better understanding of what makes amplifiers sound the way they do. It would be nice to have a more detailed statement of your current views on the subject. Was the Bedini really an audible yet enticing signal processor? Or, more importantly, what do you feel are the most revealing "black box" tests nowadays, and how useful are they? I'm delighted to see that your acerbic wit is intact; your remarks in Issue No. 10 about Matthew Polk and his speakers were highly appropriate, in the best Audio Critic tradition. Please don't stop remarking on the excesses of the audio marketplace and its press. The old "Admonitor" column was a fine feature...

You use a number of foreign phrases in your magazine. Personally, I'd prefer to see more German and less Romance, but that's just my taste.

Jedenfalls, I'm thankful that you at least don't butcher German spelling, grammar and capitalization the way The Absolute Sound et al. have been known to do...

Thanks again for returning from the dead. I really appreciate your under standing of audio technology, your writing skill and style, and your willingness to call em like you see 'em. I hope you stay around for a long time.

Sincerely, Tom Ace Boulder, CO

"Test-bench turkey" was a little too brusque anent the Bedini 25/25 (we were younger then and more impetuous); actually, as the review stated, most of its parameters were quite felicitously chosen, even if the use of the speaker wire as the stabilizing series inductance was a somewhat crude touch. Today we would pay more attention to its input impedance and output impedance characteristics, subsonic response (i.e., high pass filter characteristics), distortion spectrum (not just THD) and other little black-box clues to audible performance we have picked up since, which now give us greatly increased faith in 1/0 comparisons. Yes, judged against, say, an all-JE-990 signal path by Boulder, the Bedini 25/25 does appear in retrospect like a mild signal processor, but we see no reason to take back what we wrote about it in a 1979-80 context.

By the way, have you heard that Madame Tussaud's of London has made an offer to buy the wax sculpture of Matthew Polk that Polk Audio's ad agency is using in all those full-color advertising spreads and brochures? The famous waxworks would like to add it to their permanent gallery of geniuses.

Apparently the agency is reluctant to part with the piece because they would then have to think of another great campaign, but it is rumored that consultant Vincent Price has come up with a radical yet mutually acceptable solution.

As for our use of foreign words and phrases, we generally restrict ourselves to those that have been naturalized in English. Since there are many more Latin and French entries than German in the Merriam-Webster dictionaries, the existing immigrant quotas, as it were, are simply not in accordance with your preferences. We are not afraid, however, to sneak a nonresident alien into our vocabulary when it is le mot juste; for example, it is our opinion that those Schongeister at TAS need elementary coaching in science more urgently than in German.

-Ed.

The Audio Critic:

...When I read of the imminent return of The Audio Critic, I looked forward most of all to the fire-and brimstone broadside I expected you to fire at the digitization of music. When you left us seven years ago, your last word on the subject was basically this:

Concept, A+. Execution, C-. Your reservations have apparently been taken care of since then; mine have not... At a sampling rate of 44.1 kHz... [etc.] Sincerely, John Steinberg Balboa, CA We are not printing the earnest but flawed two-page argument against 44.1 kHz sampling and the Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem that follows the above. It would only tend to muddy the waters for newcomers to the subject.

We are aware that said subject is booby-trapped and that we added to the confusion with our remarks seven years ago. We owe it to you and other readers who have been stirred up by similar arguments to clarify these matters, and we are beginning to do so in this very issue, in the article on CD players.

-Ed.

--------

[adapted from TAC, Issue No. 11 Winter/Spring 1988]

---------

Also see:

Cartridge, Arm and Turntable vs. the Groove: Who's Winning? [1977]