När jag läser artiklar som den nedan så blir jag minst sagt orolig för att jag bara inbillar mig skillnader mellan slutsteg.
Ett 14000 $ Passmonoblock kunde inte detekteras mot en 10 år gammal integrerad Yamaha!
Några kloka kommentarer? Hade ett F/E test klarat att detektera skillnaden?
What follows is a letter to the editor from Tom Nousaine to The Audio Critic, issue 24.
The Audio Critic:
There has been a lot of hot chatter on the E-mail circuit over the past couple of months about the Steve Maki and Steve Zipser challenge in Miami. I thought you would appreciate a complete recount of the events. Zipser, a high-end salon owner, had issued a challenge that he would pay the airplane fare of any in- terested party who wanted to see him prove he could hear the differences be- tween amplifiers.
On Sunday afternoon, August 25th, Maki and I arrived at Zipser's house, which is also Sunshine Stereo. Maki brought his own control unit, a Yamaha AX-700 100-watt integrated amplifier for the challenge. In a straight 10-trial hard- wired comparison, Zipser was only able to identify correctly 3 times out of 10 whether the Yamaha unit or his pair of Pass Laboratories Aleph 1.2 monoblock 200-watt amplifiers was powering his Duntech Marquis speakers. A Pass Labs preamplifier, Zip's personal wiring, and a full Audio Alchemy CD playback system completed the playback chain. No device except the Yamaha integrated amplifier was ever placed in the system. Maki inserted one or the other amplifier into the system and covered them with a thin black cloth to hide identities. Zipser used his own playback material and had as long as he wanted to decide which unit was driving the speakers.
I had matched the playback levels of the amplifiers to within 0.1 dB at 1 kHz, using the Yamaha balance and volume controls. Playback levels were adjusted with the system preamplifier by Zipser. I also determined that the two devices had frequency response differences of 0.4 dB at 16 kHz, but both were perfectly flat from 20 Hz to 8 kHz. In addition to me, Zipser, and Maki, one of Zip's friends, his wife, and another person unknown to me were sometimes in the room during the test, but no one was disruptive and conditions were perfectly quiet.
As far as I was concerned, the test was over. However, Zipser complained that he had stayed out late the night before and this reduced his sensitivity. At dinner, purchased by Zipser, we offered to give him another chance on Monday morning before our flight back North. On Monday at 9 a.m., I installed an ABX comparator in the system, complete with baling-wire lead to the Yamaha. Zipser improved his score to 5 out of 10. However, my switchpad did develop a hang-up problem, meaning that occasionally one had to verify the amplifier in the cir- cuit with a visual confirmation of an LED. Zipser has claimed he scored better prior to the problem, but in fact he only scored 4 out of 6 before any difficulties occurred.
His wife also conducted a 16-trial ABX comparison, using a 30-second phrase of a particular CD for all the trials. In this sequence I sat next to her at the main listening position and performed all the amplifier switching functions according to her verbal commands. She scored 9 out of 16 correct. Later another of Zip's friends scored 4 out of 10 correct. All listening was done with single listeners.
In sum, no matter what you may have heard elsewhere, audio store owner Steve Zipser was unable to tell reliably, based on sound alone, when his $14,000 pair of class A monoblock amplifiers was replaced by a ten-year old Japanese inte- grated amplifier in his personal reference system, in his own listening room, using program material selected personally by him as being especially revealing of differences. He failed the test under hardwired no-switching conditions, as well as with a high-resolution fast-comparison switching mode. As I have said before, when the answers aren't shared in advance, "Amps Is Amps" even for the Goldenest of Ears.
Tom Nousaine
Cary, IL
[comment from the editor, Peter Aczel]
I was the one who asked Tom, our columnist, to write up this information in letterform, justfor the record, in antici- pation of distorted versions of the story. Both he and I knew all along, of course, that all such challenges by Golden Ears are unwinnable, but there are still some wide-eyed audiophiles out there who haven't received the word. Since anyone who has sampled Zipser'sfoul exudations on the Internet must realize that the man is a pathetic loser, it should come as no surprise that he lost his hopeless challenge, just like all others who have tried.
-Ed.
ISSUE NO. 24 SPRING 1997
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