WHY TUBES, CABLES and even boutique parts mean less to me than others…

Tonight during the final voicing of a particular product — I transformed a good but struggling sound into something wonderful.  By modifying the value of a part and adding a second part and finding the magic value for that I took a tube stage into legendary status.  The changes were electrically very subtle., but the difference was well beyond going from a cheap input tube to a rare NOS jewel that cost a small fortune.  The difference was greater than most cable upgrades you might make.  

During this process of voicing I’m not using a Spice simulator to model the values and watch what happens, rather just using common sense to pick a starting point and then slowly migrate the value up until it starts sounding bad to my ears and then migrate the value down until the same thing happens.  That’s the window.  On the high side lives sterility and hardness.  On the low side lives richness, weight, and distortion.  I swim around in the middle until I find the magic values which is a very narrow window, perhaps two or three tops.  In this zone, you have none of the sound of either end of the window, just bliss.  Is the bliss exactly where your Spice model put it... almost never. 

It takes a long time, because you have to build it and listen to each change.  So in this case 10 value changes defined a window with a single part.  If you use two parts like I did, the time can double.  Actually as is often the case there is no perfect value and I usually get stuck between two values which are equally good, depending on the music and the speakers or headphones.  In this situation a silver switch is used to give the user both values at his/her fingertips.

You quickly understand using this methodology that you can make most circuits sound any way you want.  You have to first hear it in your mind, and then find that sound with the circuit.  When you design audio gear with a calculator, you can’t listen to the windows you test, if you even go that far.  Most I suspect will just calculate the “correct” value and test it on spice followed by building the actual unit exactly that way.  Then if they don’t like the sound, they blame it on the parts and start putting in 100.00 capacitors and exotic resistors and connectors and wire and so on trying to get that sound.  It never really happens... only for them.

Never create a circuit using boutique parts and perfect playback gear.  Always inject a full armament of handicaps so that WITH those handicaps you can make it sound right.  It’s not hard, they are there before you voice it, and if you can’t get the transparency or the frequency balance or focus you are after, then adjust the circuit until you get it.  Then and only then and after it has burned in and you’ve lived with it for a good while, do you systemically upgrade parts.  Now you actually hear what those boutique parts are actually capable of to their full potential instead of half their potential.

Once you have lifted every handicap to see how far the design peaks out on the wow meter, you may want to tweak the voicing just a touch, but most of the time not.

As a consumer the closest thing to this process you can experience is tube and cable rolling.  Changing one changes the other.

-Steve Deckert / DECWARE

THIS philosophy is what makes Decware stand head and shoulders above other companies. Bottom line: Steve makes the main thing the main thing.

"The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane."

Nikola Tesla

This is one of my favorite quotes and it comes to mind when reading almost every post by Mr. Deckert. I would argue that his 1 beer/1db equation also qualifies as clear thinking.

This discussion brings to mind a present thread on the Lii Audio Facebook page. A guy had purchased the Lii Silver 10 and W-15 bass drivers and had baffles made and drivers installed by a speaker builder.

The builder informed the guy that the Silvers measured very badly, and the guy, being very upset, posed the “problem” on the Lii Audio page looking for answers. Even though this driver and the Crystal 10 both have great reviews, there were others that stated they had the same bad measurements. Arguments ensued from there between the “listeners” and the “measurers”.

All of this to say that the guy was all stressed out over the measurements, and he had not even set them up in his room and listened to them yet!

Interesting discussion.  To me it boils down to prejudice -- pre judging and ego.  Some people enjoy/like something until someone else says it's bad.  Or someone doesn't like something because it doesn't conform to their expected "form" for something good.  

I'm not sure there is a way around this other than to be self aware enough to know when we are doing it ourselves.  This is also good to remember when we are quick to criticize someone's preference that is contrary to our own.  Don't get me wrong, I'm in no way saying that everything is equivalent or even good.  

BTW, the more I get into a woodworking project, the less I worry over anything other than how my tools are preforming (sharp, aligned, etc.) and I suspect the same in audio.  F everything but the sound!

Exactly!  In one of my favorite Steve papers he suggests that if you want the best sounding SS amp, pick the one with the highest THD spec.  

Steve, one point I think you're missing because you're too close to it, is the listening skills needed to pull this off. For most people, all 10 options sound pretty much the same, or so close as to be difficult to define or differentiate...for many people, hearing memory is very short. Add to that, not everyone can turn off the "this should work and sound good" part of their mind that tricks them into thinking it does sound good...so they don't realize they are going down the wrong path.  

On top of all of that, is the experience very few people have that gives them the vocabulary and audio memory (brain pathways?) to hear what's happening, or especially imagine where they want the circuit to go and poke around till it gets there! Not everyone has had that OTL experience or multiple "audio-ruinations" that give audio "life experiences" to know what's possible!  

I realized that part of what helps me point out things that are "off" about someone's gear or room, is those experiences I've had at your place...that, and being able to throw any and all bias out the window the second I sit in the listening spot and just be an open ear-brain interface waiting for data to parse.  

Anyways, my point of all this is that it's awesome to have a peek into your process...but I hope you realize the special talents you have and have developed over 25+ years of this. And if not, I'm happy to remind you my friend!  :)