Pawnticket: "I'm the Guy that Found the Lost Chord!"

A Krell Evolution Home Audio Amplifer. Just $20,000

Absurd price huh? What does it do for $20,000? How can it possibly create a truer sound vs. any other amplifier that's cheaper?

In double blind studies, it was found they cannot. Double blind studies are where the researcher and the test subject don't know exactly just what is being tested. It removes bias. When it comes to hi end audio equipment, the tested doesn't know the brand of the amp he's listening to and the researcher doesn't either. Someone else is doing the wiring in another room.

They tested the above Krell against a Pioneer amp and 50% said Krell was better, the other half said Pioneer was better. Statistically, this is just pure chance. There was ZERO correlation. Of course, Krell went ballistic over the findings. They have a lot to lose if it's been found that people found Pioneer was better and that meant lost revenue for Krell. Pioneer didn't say a word, but I assumed they smirked.

I have written before how I adore music and the tools to reproduce it. I have been too wowed by the higher end stuff and the literature that comes with it. Prior to the internet, audiophile magazines would produce adds that showed stereo equipment in the best light. There was would be pictures of an amplifier next to a bust of Beethoven or a turntable upon a small Greek column, with ferns around. Their equipment was surrounded by deep colors and put in strange environments, much like seeing a commercial with a car driving along the salt flats in Utah, with the dust billowing behind the car.

“Oooooh...look at that!”

Although being a Doubting Thomas about everything, I too was taken in. They don't pay marketing people unless they can subvert your logic and get you to think emotionally about a product. I believed that the better equipment was just hi-end and that I probably couldn't' afford it. That until about ten years ago when I found website about building your own speaker systems.

The guy laid it out plain and straight. Electronic equipment is just science, not an art. You can use formulas to design just about anything and he had them for building speakers. “For about $400 in parts, using the highest quality drivers, capacitors and coils you can buy, you can create a speaker that'll sound like the ones costing 10x as much. Not only that, I can prove it to you.”

He goes on to show one of his builds and then tests it using same parameters they test the hi-end stuff, Theile/Small Parameters. His speakers tested the same but the difference was in cost. In real life, speaker building isn't rocket science. You do have to do a bit of math but you can find programs on the internet to flash out crossover points and dimensions of the box itself. If u can solder, run wires and use a table saw w/o taking your hand off (and I was especially careful about that! Make a “push stick” and you'll save your fingers) you too can build speakers.

In three months from when I found that site, I had built my first pair. I have since built a second pair. I would not have had my pony sized dog hadn't charged through the house and knocked one of them over, busting out the woofer speaker.

Anyways...this hobby is addictive. You can build up a component system and sit back and listen to the equipment work or you can listen to the music. That's the annoying part of it! Forever improving the sound is an everlasting task because you'll never reach perfection as it cannot exist. Not only that, human ears are imperfect...and mine are no great exception. And I'm not paying $20k for a amp that may be correcting mistakes my ears can no longer hear anyway. When young I could hear every thing from 50Hz to 20,000Hz, now I can't get past 13,000. Play a note at 13,000Hz and I'll just stare off into space. My ears hear dead silence at anything above that.

A side story that's a bit funny. Kids in schools learned that if you downloaded a ring tone for your cell that was above 15,000Hz, most adults over 30 could not hear it, but young teens still can! You could respond to your heart's delight because that craggy, bitchy old teacher of 42 couldn't hear your phone go off. There was another story where a Quickie Mart installed a noxious noise generator to repel teens from hanging out in front. It would blast annoying sounds, at 16,000Hz at high volume into the parking lot. The teens left. The older adult customers couldn't hear a thing as they walked in.

Back to my story. Every now and then, I get the Jones for new equipment, to find a way to approach that unapproachable 100%. I lately was drooling over an equalizer that can shape the sound from the amplifier. I've had equalizers in the past but the damn things introduce so much noise it wasn't worth it. That was until I heard a pro-sound piece of equipment turn on and it produced...no static at all. The problem with pro-sound (the stuff you see powering live concert venues) is that it's completely wired for itself and not home audio. But being the scrappy, always digging, always searching dog that I am, I found my bone. An RTA pro-sound equalizer that has unbalanced RCA jacks. Hey presto! It'll synch with my home audio.

Soon I'll be sitting on my carpet, sliding sliders, adjusting the sound. “A bit more...just a bit more...Damn! I've gone to far! It sounds like crap! Back off!” I can do that for all bands from 50 to 13,000. I won't be needing the ones above apparently though it does go to 20,000.

To me, this is fun.

Hopefully UPS delivers this toy soon