Excellent video.

I think the misconception about cone material not mattering comes from the idea that the cone is moving air and it’s the air moving that causes the sound. After all, if no air is moving, there won’t be any sound. But they aren’t thinking about the cone itself hitting the air directly in front of it and that cone hitting the air makes the cone vibrate thus imparting sound coming directly off the cone. Right? Or no?

Doug, have there been any materials used over the years that designers learned just don’t make good speaker cones? I’m not talking about something that destroyed itself after a few weeks or something that was ridiculous like gummy bears but more along the lines of foam surrounds which took years before people understood they would rot and disintegrate, or copper because of the weight. Thanks for the informative videos.

great conversation. thank you gentlemen. since audio research is ahead of the game.. i wonder if their engineers will one day use A.I to design their equipment ?!!!.

Heh.. last week it was the ‘upgraded’ plinth at £11k, this week, a whole new TT. I recently purchased a secondhand P8/Apheta2 combo at a reasonable market price. I can’t comprehend these prices.

I was always a tower or nothing guy. Then when I started seeing many towers with the same amount and size drivers and just a wasted cabinets. Then I started checking out Dali bookshelf speakers an and that was it for me. ❤

It's digital, not analog. There is no audiophile version of a digital value.

A perfect lesson in how to waffle a lot in order to say very little, and not answer the question. Sorry if you think that's rude, but I think it is true.

Today's highend Class D (I own NAD C298, PS Audio S300) is the best. Lightweight, runs barely warm, efficient, so many inputs/outputs. ----- source=Apple Music lossless

Audiophool errand.

i don't know ANYONE who plugs their smartphone using a mini jack to RCA to a hi-fi amplifier. most population are listening only to the super small only treble drivers on their xiaomi telephone. that is the reality. and i don't know anyone (friends, family, neighbors) who has the computer connected to a mixer with usb port then to amplifier with big speakers. no bo dy

Love their design. Just wished they were a bit less expensive 😀

I never liked the shopping window from Audio research. But they’re sound is superb.

No, you're missing the point here. I'm afraid, I disagree.

You'll need to swap that American flag, for a German flag now!

Do you still play physical media! The Magnetar hardware could be for you. Also, check out our review of the Magnetar UDP400 on SoundStageHiFi.com through this link: www.soundstagehifi.com/index.php/equipment-reviews/1854-magnetar-udp900-4k-ultra-hd-universal-blu-ray-disc-player-dac

Satellites haven't used vacuum tubes in a very, very long time.

Alot of what determines whether they are crap or not depends on the kind of music you listen to. I personally love my full range speakers.

most hifi people have absolutely no understanding of any of the technology involved. hence bs like this video, and others extolling hifi usb cables!?

Thanks for the video. I had the 1723S towers and upgraded to the 1723 towers. They sound excellent. The build quality is top notch. Hoping to try the 1528 series when I have the budget. Highly recommend the company.

I started with a NAD 3020 integrated amplifier, used it as a preamplifier when I bought the NAD 2150. Now I use tube separates - Vacuum State FVP (four valve preamp) & VTL Deluxe 300 monoblocks.

I own a 160M MKII Thanks to audio research for this product. I'm very happy with it. I can understand that the 330M is better but the price is better as well. Otherwise Bravo to Audio Research

Jist get the c700 v2. Comes with remote and all the other things mentioned are not worth the extra $1200.

Fantastic interview. I love my 330’s and can confirm everything Dave said about their musical qualities. They are sublime.

Recording has been phased out of HiFi like phono stages ? Most equipment doesn’t come with tape or recording in’s and outs Recording is looked at as bad ? Even when it’s your stuff… so it’s a combined effort from the manufacturers to put a stop to recording never mind buying equipment to do just that !

I started with a SP3a, then went to a 6, then the 9MKll, then the…

i just started to rip all my CDs to a digital format because i have set up a streaming server from my Synology NAS with the wonderful Plex and their Plexamp software. With 108TB of storage, space is NOT AN ISSUE!!! I have been ripping to FLAC but now that space is not an issue i wonder, if i want to convert all the rips i made to FLAC to WAV, is there going to be data is loss?

Unfortunately, the tin plates that connect the high and low on the speakers are never discussed. Replacing them with speaker cable or jumpers makes a huge change.

God amps. But Hegel from Norway is gennerally better amps. I will never go back after my Hegel H600

Very informative and interesting interview. Well done. I would really like to see a comprehensive review of the tube maintenance burdens presented by different amplifiers, such as auto biasing versus traditional, protection circuits, etc. thanks for a great video

Nice to see products made in country, and not farmed out to China.

As Ferris Beuller would say, Kabella! 😊

I just rip using my Asus Blu-ray drive, it also burns CDs, the CD, the rips and the copy all sound identical.

I just got the Sonus Faber Sonetto III G2 about 3 weeks ago. These are beautiful in person. A work of art. The sound is superb. Very dynamic. Incredible instrument separation and massive sound stage. deep and wide. I loved my SF Lumina 2's until I heard these and how infinitely better the Sonus Faber Sonetto III G2 were. Worth Every Penny. These speaker expose bad recordings for what they are, bad. But returns the favor when you put a Good recording on, you hear the emotion behind the music. Nirvana.

I’d enjoy this video more if a well informed audiophile publisher knew what to answer in the comments section? Soundstage is useless. EMM - priceless

Can your player play those hard to rip disks? Presumably, most people would have replaced them if they upset their player...

I have the Arendal 1732 Monitors with the dual 8" drivers, and let me tell you, NOTHING I have ever owned even compares. I just listen to music with it and I get emotional on a daily basis...no joke. The music coming out of Arendal speakers makes me cry it's so good.

Fooling people,digital copies all are the same,the main advantage of the format

Outstanding interview. Love Paul Hales work.

A huge difference for me (and I've been recording high-end high resolution audio live for almost 30 years) is that FLAC is able to be TAGGED. At least with my tagger, MP3Tag v3.28 at the moment. WAV files can't, and that's a big enough reason for me to KEEP encoding in FLAC format. Also, yes HDD/SSD space is CHEAP, BUT when you have well over 2,000+ recordings, it's just uneconomical to keep everything in WAV files. And back to the tagging. For every set I record, I make a 24-Bit fileset chopped into tracks, as well as a 16/44.1 CD quality chopped fileset, plus I'm one of the ONLY Taper's who make 320 MP3's as well. And I leave my RAW, uncut masters untracked and just FLAC'd. With 3 sources per set, I end up with 20-30gb of FLAC's per set/show. And trust me when I say this, there is NOOOOOO audible or digital differences between FLAC and WAV files!!! I have done blind comps for the last 25 years and I just can't tell a difference between a 24/96 WAV vs FLAC, and I have AMAZING hearing and can easily hear the difference between different IEM cables and materials. Once more, a properly encoded FLAC SHOULD uncompress to an identical WAV, so where'd the difference go between encoding and decoding? Nowhere because there is NO difference, or I wouldn't risk my live recordings by encoding them to FLAC (and SHN format before FLAC). If you have the space and don't care about tagging, then I say go for it and leave the WAV files alone. But for anyone with a massive library of live recordings AND high resolution albums, it's just not a plausible idea and not having things tagged would get ugly VERY VERY quickly 😢

I have an old P4 Dell tower running winXP, with a Plextor drive and Exact Audio Copy. Been ripping to wave and flac for 20 years. It’s the only thing that computer gets used for anymore, because of the plextor drive being really good. This new drive is all snake oil. For proof, I’ve burnt hundreds of disks, cdr,dvd, you name it. The software I burnt to some disks back in the late nineties on slow speed 2x or 4x burners of the day, still work and install to this day. I do some retro computer stuff, that’s why I have old burnt disks. I f that software reads and installs just fine, then the error correction and CRC checks being done by the drive are working. If there was a bit or byte difference somewhere in the data, it wouldn’t make it through the install.

Some CD roms used to have trouble copying real time without introducing errors into the stream. But enabling the software error correction (slower) while ripping used to solve that problem. Also, some commercial CDs used to purposely write in a error which still played ok, but would cause a error while ripping. I remember some CD ripper programs that had features to get around it though.

Are you still using The Rotel Michi x5 Jeff Fritz?

LIke you, I appreciate dBpoweramp's integration with the AccurateRip database. However, when I find a disc that has errors (a small percentage of my collection), I generally just buy another copy of that disc...worst case from Discogs or similar. That $1,1100+ cost difference vs a standard optical drive will cover the cost of a LOT of replaced CDs. :-D

@0:51 "...there was not one bit of difference." 😅Nice pun.

What about the quality of the ripping software? Are some better than others? I use X Lossless Decoder (XLD), how does it compare with dBpoweramp?

I have a pair of Silver 100 7gs and they are quite enough for the room I have them in. The bass is super stiff and clear, I'm a big RUSH fan and I can easily hear the bass separate from the drums. They can also crank louder over 90 DB and still maintain their clarify

An accurate rip is an accurate rip! It cannot be ‘accurater’! As long as you use the correct drive offset (very important! I don’t think the iTunes ripper compensates for it) and use AccurateRip to check the data by CRC, there is no difference in the data. This is just science. I can see some disagreement about the sound quality differences between CD transports. But this video is not about CD audio transports. It is about getting audio data from tge disc. There is a profound difference here! In an audio CD transports, the bits read form a return-to-zero real time bitstream with clocking sent in the data stream. This means jitter becomes important. When the audio is read (and reread and checked in a non real time data reading process), jitter is not an issue as jitter matters only in AD and DA conversions. So yes, sound quality differences between CD transports exist when they send an S/PDIF signal to a DAC, but differences fall away when the audio is read as data. Also, CD transports that buffer the data and reclock data on the output are approaching the ideal, but even surprising low amounts of jitter will still give differences.

Bose 901 enters.

Only an idiot would spend money on something so stupid.