mike1127
Member of the Trade: Brilliant Zen Audio
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I just got to hear the DNA Sonett tube headphone amp at greater length, and wanted to write about that... and about audio evaluation philosophy, because the experience got me thinking.
(This amp is a recent design from DNA (Don North) audio and will be at the Can Jam next weekend. It's a tube single-ended triode. Full disclosure: I'm a friend of Don's, but I will try to write in an honest way that lets you judge for yourself whether I'm making sense. Also, many of you will be at Can Jam and can hear it for yourselves.)
A problem we face in audio is to evaluate a *single* piece of equipment, in the face of a problem: that equipment is always part of a whole chain from microphone to headphone and everything in-between. How do we isolate its characteristics?
Hear a fault? Is it the device you're testing or something else in the chain? Hear a virtue? Is it the device you're testing, or perhaps does it emerge from a synergy between devices?
A college professor (James Boyk) told me one of his strategies to deal with this complex situation was "adding up virtues."
Let's say you are evaluating speakers. And let's suppose you can't bring every speaker home---you must listen to some in the store, in an unfamiliar acoustic environment and with unfamiliar driving equipment. So you listen to brand X speaker and it has beauty of timbre, a very nice virtue. This professor's theory was that in spite of uncertainties, you could make a guess the speaker did possess a fundamental *capacity* for beauty of timbre.
If you heard the same speaker in another context and heard good microdynamics, you put a check mark next to "good microdynamics."
And now you make a reasonable guess that it's capable of *both* good microdynamics and beauty of timbre, when driven by equipment that also has *both* qualities.
Now, what about the complexity of equipment interaction? What if the speaker doesn't really possess good beauty of timbre in itself, but rather you heard a synergistic combination of equipment? Perhaps the components were even correcting for each other's faults: the amp could have been too bright, and the speaker too dark, and betwixt the two, beauty of timbre emerges.
How can you be certain or even make a reasonable guess about about a single device in the chain?
This professor held the view that there was nothing more beautiful, interesting, or exciting than live acoustic music, where every virtue we ascribe to audio equipment exists in a higher form. To him, if a component "got it right" in some area, it was an indication that equipment was accurate (close to a straight wire, in essence).
Let me give an analogy. Consider the "telephone game," where you whisper a sentence to someone, who whispers it to someone else, and to someone else, and so on for ten or twenty people. And then the last person speaks the sentence out loud, which has usually mutated beyond all recognition.
Think about two kinds of input to the telephone game: a few simple words, or a long paragraph.
Let's say the input is simply "tom cat." You put this through a line of twenty people, and at the end, contrary to our expectations, the phrase is repeated accurately!
Did every person along the way repeat the phrase accurately? Not necessarily. Maybe someone changed it to "top hat." A simple enough mistake. A few people later, someone mis-hears "top hat" and repeats: "tomcat." The phrase is put right again. A coincidence, but one that could happen.
Now suppose the input to the telephone game is a long, complex paragraph. We repeat the experiment, and the paragraph emerges intact! I would find this good evidence that *every* person along the way repeated the phrase accurately. It would be unlikely that a complex mistake was made and then put right again by accident.
This professor believed that many virtues of music were like that long paragraph. He is a pianist and spends thousands of hours listening to pianos and fine-tuning his performances, so he is aware that there are a thousand ways to get piano timbre wrong, but only one way to get it right.
I think he's right about much of this, and in particular I agree beauty of timbre is a complex property of sound (ask anyone who has tried to make electronic instruments that are as beautiful as acoustic ones---it is NOT easy; or ask someone who voices acoustic intruments) and not one that is likely to emerge accidentally or by the equipements' faults cancelling each other out.
I do believe that a low-resolution piece of equipment can sometimes sound warm and fuzzy, and that's a kind of beauty, but I'm talking about a really high-resolution beauty, one that lets you hear all the details the musician created and hear the sum total of beauty.
So back to the DNA Sonett, I listened to it with several headphones: the AKG K501, AKG K601, Beyer DT880, and Beyer DT990. (CD player was the Naim CD5X.)
With both Beyers, the beauty of timbre was compelling. Massed strings had a spiritual quality. Pianos, clarinets, French horns really almost startled me with their beauty. This was high-resolution beauty.
I think it's reasonable to conclude that the DNA Sonett has the capacity for high-resolution beauty: it functions accurately in that domain. (Note that we can make that conclusion about *every* component in the chain, too: CD player, headphones, and even the recording.)
When I switched to the AKG K601 headphone, raw physical beauty was not as foreground, but another virtue was grabbing my attention: expressive musical shapes with clear subtle dynamic changes.
This is one of my favorite virtues of good music. Musicians put so much expression into shaping their phrases. A wind instrument may start a note with a gentle crescendo and subtle increase in vibrato. A phrase may get a bit louder and more insistent the middle, then end softly and mysteriously. A pianist may play arpeggios with small dynamic changes from note to note.
"Microdynamics" is the closest audiophile term I know to describe this, although it can sometimes get thrown around outside the context of enjoying music. Like any technical aspect of a system, microdynamics are only good to the extent they accurately reproduce what the musicians were doing and make it easier to enjoy the music.
Adding up virtues, then, we can suggest the DNA Sonett is capable of both high-resolution beauty and conveying expressive shapes. What about the headphones? I would say the Beyers were better at beauty and the AKG K601 was better with expressive shapes.
At the very end, we listened to the AKG K501. We should have brought it out at the beginning. The K501 didn't sound as high-resolution or as spacious as the K601, but I think it had more accurate timbre, and got closer to conveying the whole range of virtues of the DNA Sonett.
I very much look forward to getting my own Sonett in a few weeks and doing more listening with the K501. I'm going to continue my search for the "perfect headphone," too, one that can accurately convey every virtue of music. (I'll let you know when I find it, although I may have to convey the message via a psychic medium, because I don't think it exists in this life.)
(This amp is a recent design from DNA (Don North) audio and will be at the Can Jam next weekend. It's a tube single-ended triode. Full disclosure: I'm a friend of Don's, but I will try to write in an honest way that lets you judge for yourself whether I'm making sense. Also, many of you will be at Can Jam and can hear it for yourselves.)
A problem we face in audio is to evaluate a *single* piece of equipment, in the face of a problem: that equipment is always part of a whole chain from microphone to headphone and everything in-between. How do we isolate its characteristics?
Hear a fault? Is it the device you're testing or something else in the chain? Hear a virtue? Is it the device you're testing, or perhaps does it emerge from a synergy between devices?
A college professor (James Boyk) told me one of his strategies to deal with this complex situation was "adding up virtues."
Let's say you are evaluating speakers. And let's suppose you can't bring every speaker home---you must listen to some in the store, in an unfamiliar acoustic environment and with unfamiliar driving equipment. So you listen to brand X speaker and it has beauty of timbre, a very nice virtue. This professor's theory was that in spite of uncertainties, you could make a guess the speaker did possess a fundamental *capacity* for beauty of timbre.
If you heard the same speaker in another context and heard good microdynamics, you put a check mark next to "good microdynamics."
And now you make a reasonable guess that it's capable of *both* good microdynamics and beauty of timbre, when driven by equipment that also has *both* qualities.
Now, what about the complexity of equipment interaction? What if the speaker doesn't really possess good beauty of timbre in itself, but rather you heard a synergistic combination of equipment? Perhaps the components were even correcting for each other's faults: the amp could have been too bright, and the speaker too dark, and betwixt the two, beauty of timbre emerges.
How can you be certain or even make a reasonable guess about about a single device in the chain?
This professor held the view that there was nothing more beautiful, interesting, or exciting than live acoustic music, where every virtue we ascribe to audio equipment exists in a higher form. To him, if a component "got it right" in some area, it was an indication that equipment was accurate (close to a straight wire, in essence).
Let me give an analogy. Consider the "telephone game," where you whisper a sentence to someone, who whispers it to someone else, and to someone else, and so on for ten or twenty people. And then the last person speaks the sentence out loud, which has usually mutated beyond all recognition.
Think about two kinds of input to the telephone game: a few simple words, or a long paragraph.
Let's say the input is simply "tom cat." You put this through a line of twenty people, and at the end, contrary to our expectations, the phrase is repeated accurately!
Did every person along the way repeat the phrase accurately? Not necessarily. Maybe someone changed it to "top hat." A simple enough mistake. A few people later, someone mis-hears "top hat" and repeats: "tomcat." The phrase is put right again. A coincidence, but one that could happen.
Now suppose the input to the telephone game is a long, complex paragraph. We repeat the experiment, and the paragraph emerges intact! I would find this good evidence that *every* person along the way repeated the phrase accurately. It would be unlikely that a complex mistake was made and then put right again by accident.
This professor believed that many virtues of music were like that long paragraph. He is a pianist and spends thousands of hours listening to pianos and fine-tuning his performances, so he is aware that there are a thousand ways to get piano timbre wrong, but only one way to get it right.
I think he's right about much of this, and in particular I agree beauty of timbre is a complex property of sound (ask anyone who has tried to make electronic instruments that are as beautiful as acoustic ones---it is NOT easy; or ask someone who voices acoustic intruments) and not one that is likely to emerge accidentally or by the equipements' faults cancelling each other out.
I do believe that a low-resolution piece of equipment can sometimes sound warm and fuzzy, and that's a kind of beauty, but I'm talking about a really high-resolution beauty, one that lets you hear all the details the musician created and hear the sum total of beauty.
So back to the DNA Sonett, I listened to it with several headphones: the AKG K501, AKG K601, Beyer DT880, and Beyer DT990. (CD player was the Naim CD5X.)
With both Beyers, the beauty of timbre was compelling. Massed strings had a spiritual quality. Pianos, clarinets, French horns really almost startled me with their beauty. This was high-resolution beauty.
I think it's reasonable to conclude that the DNA Sonett has the capacity for high-resolution beauty: it functions accurately in that domain. (Note that we can make that conclusion about *every* component in the chain, too: CD player, headphones, and even the recording.)
When I switched to the AKG K601 headphone, raw physical beauty was not as foreground, but another virtue was grabbing my attention: expressive musical shapes with clear subtle dynamic changes.
This is one of my favorite virtues of good music. Musicians put so much expression into shaping their phrases. A wind instrument may start a note with a gentle crescendo and subtle increase in vibrato. A phrase may get a bit louder and more insistent the middle, then end softly and mysteriously. A pianist may play arpeggios with small dynamic changes from note to note.
"Microdynamics" is the closest audiophile term I know to describe this, although it can sometimes get thrown around outside the context of enjoying music. Like any technical aspect of a system, microdynamics are only good to the extent they accurately reproduce what the musicians were doing and make it easier to enjoy the music.
Adding up virtues, then, we can suggest the DNA Sonett is capable of both high-resolution beauty and conveying expressive shapes. What about the headphones? I would say the Beyers were better at beauty and the AKG K601 was better with expressive shapes.
At the very end, we listened to the AKG K501. We should have brought it out at the beginning. The K501 didn't sound as high-resolution or as spacious as the K601, but I think it had more accurate timbre, and got closer to conveying the whole range of virtues of the DNA Sonett.
I very much look forward to getting my own Sonett in a few weeks and doing more listening with the K501. I'm going to continue my search for the "perfect headphone," too, one that can accurately convey every virtue of music. (I'll let you know when I find it, although I may have to convey the message via a psychic medium, because I don't think it exists in this life.)
