A frank discussion about accuracy, with Stereophile's Herb Reichert 

OK, I will stop using virtual backgrounds in these interviews soon, but I have a few interviews I already shot that have annoying backgrounds. After that, just my messy apartment!

I gave up “accuracy” for good, “fun” sound a long time ago. Flat is boring, love my horns!

2 of my favorite reviewer together

Great to hear this discussed by you two with so much experience. I think Herb gets it right when he says, "when it FEELS real." Music is emotion. Herb Reichert is a national treasure. 🙏

Euphony. It has been scorned ever since I started this hobby. Now it is my goal.

Great discussion. Nelson Pass also describes it well and realistically. He cites measurement as important for obtaining baseline distortion, reliability and repeatability. But his real work comes in by listening and tweaking until he gets the sound he seeks. He has a small cadre of like minded guys who all use the same speakers for listening tests and rely on the group assessment before deciding on the finished product. That thought process appeal to me especially after all the abuse I've seen from the engineering crowd that only reference their scope and chastise those that depend on their ears to assess the sound. When I tour an audio show, when a room sounds good, I find a First Watt or Pass Labs amp. I also think that Paul at PS Audio described the tube vs solid state pretty well. As a manufacturer he avoided tubes as they are more prone to service issues. But he relented after a trusted partner forced him to listen to amp prototypes with a tube front end vs solid state. The tube front end could not be beat. The output side of the amp is well suited to great solid state to get the power output. Personally, I like simple triode designs with great power supply. Then you must deal with the output transformer. This must be either a very big well made device ($$$$$) or a good OTL design. I chose the latter.

There are 3 measurement DOMAINS...... The Frequency Domain, the Time Domain, and the Amplitude Domain (dynamics). All the focus by the accuracy camp has always been Frequency Response. But you can have a system, that measures perfectly flat frequency response, yet smears the time domain, and compresses the dynamics. A system like this will measure nice, but sound awful. Horns may not be flat in frequency, but they are more accurate in dynamics, and therefore sound more REAL. A panel speaker may have better time domain response, and therefore sound more transparent, but it will compress dynamics, and not measure flat. There are things to admire in all these different designs, and all are compromises.

Steve, Great interview. As in PLEASE do MORE of these. I learn so much and so very Grateful. Thank you.

Herb is a good, refreshing voice in the community. His experience shows. I love him more in person than in print.

I enjoyed this video very much today. Good way to start the morning. I’m very late to the Audiophile world and a bottom feeder at best but truly enjoy trying to interpret two guys with so much experience and info. I run Klipsch Forte IIIs with a PrimaLuna Prologue Premium Integrated Tube Amp. I have Amazon HD and an old Sansui SR-737 with Ortofon Bronze cartridge. I never really think about “accuracy” when listening but when I finally got my turntable really dialed in I prefer vinyl all day if it’s a good pressing. That tells me I’m ok with the “distortion” factor and not worried about the last 0. I just enjoy what I have. I do have an old Denon POA-2400A power amp that I had hooked up with a Harman Kardon Citation 25 Preamp that is absolutely brilliant for the $185 bucks total I spent on both used. I’ve kept both for future listening. Thanks again for the video!

I always love hearing what Herb has to say. "Dust particles of information", what a perfect description.

One of the best conversations I've heard about hifi notwithstanding Steve's shift in and out of the space-time continuum. Thanks again for sharing these insights. Yes, happiness in listening to music is what it's all about.

It's good to hear from Herb Reichert again, Steve. I always learn something(s) from your informal conversations.

Great stuff guys thanks .

Yes I miss Herb. Great Zoom meeting, very informative. Thank you!

Thanks for this informative and interesting interview with Herb, very grateful for that, Steve. It's pure pleasure to listen to your wisdom and philosophy about this theme. Thanks a lot, keep up your great work and stay healthy 😊

Hi Steve, It's always a treat seeing herb talk! This guy relates to folks and has so many stories he could hold a captive audience talking about anything! Keep it up! Thank you herb and steve !

love this guys... give me passion... give me messy... give me emotion and musicality! 🚀🚀🛸🛸

The virtual background is cool man. Feel like I'm on an old acid trip from highschool. Hahahahaha

These backgrounds are hilarious... I couldn’t stop cracking up. But these conversations are REAL GOLD !

Wow. Learning has never been so much fun. Thanks!

When I see and hear these two great guys talking, I miss Art Dudley. What a loss.

Great input guys! I have been tweeking horn speakers lately,and having a blast!! I built some 6 1/2 in two ways that centered on piano,female vocals.(hardest to get right!).I achieved it.audiophile friends said"too much!too much info!!" I wanted to hear her sweat while she sang! Herb,your right when describing audiofiles that want everything neat and tidy! Music is never like that live!

Very worthwhile discussion.

I just found your channel and I LOVE your content. Very informative

One of your top ten best videos.

Steve and Herb two sensible audiophiles and reviewers

I could listen to Herb all day, he’s the Man , Thanks for this. 😎

Herb is onto something here about the air and top end with class-d vs class-a. I also several times heard many recordings with class-d equipment where all the reverb, aesthetics and high frequency bells totally got censored away and replaced with nothing making the experience cold/weird/unsettling. You can hear it in a small degree with Allan Taylors "color to the moon" On a normal system you only hear the bell in the the first 5-10 seconds. But with top class-a watt gear, you hear the bell throughout the entire song very clearly. It is a weird thing.

Wow! How insightful...conversations like this justify RU-vid. Thanks Steve/Frank.

Thanks Steve, it was awesome to meet Herb (also my father's name). What a wonderful life - hifi in Brooklyn.

great stuff.

Thank-you Steve and Herb Herbert. Great thought provoking discussion. At this point in my learning journey I'm thinking very low to full volume absolute waveform phase accuracy over an extended frequency bandwidth seems to be the goal. As suggested during the discussion, minimizing "subtractive distortion" AKA maintaining the nuance "absolute phase purity" of a waveform seems to be the challenge for audio designers. I also agree that vintage 70's / 80's class A amps still seem impressively good at doing this.

Three thumbs up for these lasts discussions about sound fidelity and accuracy. Thanks a lot :)

I used Audio Note gear because I like to listen to choirs and hear each singer as clearly as I can in a church, string sections like they are in the concert hall. I live in London and I genuinely can experience music live, be home in 45mins, put the CD and its the same! LOL

Accuracy isn't about being a detective and investigating what's in the recording. Accuracy is about pulling more detail out of the music because it sounds better. Isn't it? Steve, excellent discussion!

Steve I may be all alone here but I am finding your latest background screens (green screen ?) to be so distracting that I can’t focus on the review. You did have a great one today, and Herb is always fascinating. Thanks for a great interview one of your best

And we love these discussions .. tons of information .. lots i have NO idea what it means .. but i google the terms and the models of gear to read .. BUt these casual conversations are just amazing .. more more more more

At 3:25 HR says "the best hifi's are the ones that find it", then SG says "an less accurate speaker won't revel as much..." Recent speaker reviews talk about speakers 'coming alive' with better electronics, so which part of the rig is most responsible for revealing what is in the recording? Thoughts? On my desk there is a jar full of pens...1.4mm bold tip, 1.00mm medium tip, fine and xtra fine tip. There are ball point, felt tip, and rolling ball gel tip. They all look and feel different, but none of them change the content of the written word.

It was a pleasure meeting Herb at CanJam a few months ago.

Excellent discussion. Herb hits on the essential essence of it. The reproduction of low level signals. This is where the emotion lives. The room ambiance. The harmonics. The reverberation. The illusion of a natural sound. There are so many ways to kill this information. Cross overs. Inefficient speakers. Excessive feed back. Resistors. Opamps. Filters. Transformers. Complicated circuits. Crappy resistor volume control. Poor power supplies. The best systems are minimalist with excellent amplification devices. Triodes come to mind. High efficiency speakers with high quality first order crossovers or maybe no crossover. They may not measure well, but they will sound awesome.

"The energy of atmosphere"...yeah! that's the stuff that differentiates the great from the good. Great way to put it.

Interesting to listen to Steve and Herb share their thoughts. As for me, I learned a long time ago that my journey, no matter what particular one it may be at the moment, is my journey, and mine alone. That doesn't mean that no one may be along, but that just means they are experiencing that journey in their own way. It's personal. And no two are exactly alike. So I'll enjoy my journey my way, and I'll let you enjoy your journey in your way.

I think an accurate system is one that has no obviously detectable additions or subtractions, gets out of the way of the music and just sounds natural. An over-rich system is adding colorations at some frequencies that mask low level detail or ambience. Neither is a thin or dry clinical sound accurate that has been stripped to the bone, with no warmth. An accurate system acts like a chamealeon and just seems to change with the recording and venue. An accurate system cannot make a bad recording sound good though - a bad recording should sound bad. If your system makes everything sound OK then it probably isn't accurate and will not shine on great recordings but will be easier to live with on the whole.

Excellent episode. Big thanks to both of you and I dig the virtual background. The way I judge a system... If listening to my favorite music on a particular system makes me feel the urge to get up and dance, tap my toes to the beat or move to the music in any way, it's a good system. Accuracy is great but if I'm not feeling it, what's the point?

Great discussion keep it up Steve I’m not going anywhere

Loved......."I don't understand accuracy, it makes no sense to me". Me neither! It sounds good or it doesn't. Loved even more....."Measurements can tell you the difference between a bad speaker and a good speaker but only listening will tell you the difference between a good speaker and a great speaker".

Great to hear more of the Yiddish vocabulary getting into the audiophile world: Herb’s use of Mishegoss (noun) is genius. Perhaps we need to expand the dictionary. May I suggest... Schlep - the exact distance to your nearest bricks and mortar dealer Ov vey - The exclamation made by an audiophile on hearing someone claim their AV receiver sounds great in stereo Tchotchke - worthless but sentimental peripherals that make no difference to sound quality Zaide - someone who still has vintage gear they bought in the 70s Bissel - incremental gains that are actually just different, not better Kibbitz - the cause of bad sounds at audio shows Schikse - a DAC in a tube-based system Gornischt - the ultimate black background Mishegoss - the debate between the merits of Class A/B and Class D Tsuris - audible noise Nu - leave your thoughts in the comments section Shmendrik - someone who buys retail Mensch - a dealer with a genuine discount Plats - someone who is looking for accuracy Meshuggeneh - use of cables as tone controls Sei gesund everbody

Sack "accuracy" I audition stuff and my only criteria is if I like it.

Accuracy is the pinnacle of subjectivity.

Love both yous

Great info with the special effects of Dr Who in 1966! Have Herb on more, Steve!

Thank you for 86ing the green screen. Isn’t HR the best? Thanks for having him on, Steve!

I don't claim to be an expert on the high end industry or electronics or speaker design. But I do appreciate precision in talking about things, and I've always found that if people try to use clear and mutually understood terms a lot of seemingly intractable arguments disappear. That said, the fact that absolute accuracy is impossible does not mean it should not be a goal, since like Zeno's paradox, while we may never reach it, we can always get closer. And I think _closer_ is what we really value as people who critically appreciate reproduced music. But we may not always understand each other when we talk about it. There are a number of different aural cues that humans can use to identify a sound. These cues are more fundamental than, and in combinations produce audiophile perceptions like "sound stage", "precise placement of instrument images", "image depth", "space between instruments", etc. There are limits, in terms of cost, design skill and knowledge, and the physics of both the equipment and the listening environment that prevent a design from supplying all the necessary cues project a perfectly accurate reproduction of any, let alone all, original musical events. This is why different and equally "good" designs for electronics or loudspeakers can sound different. One design was using a different balance or even a few other kinds of aural cues than the other. In that case, it doesn't make sense to ask which is "right", except as a matter of your particular preference for, or habit of attending to the particular cues that a design emphasizes. But a design that is not good, is one that produces too few cues or a balance of cues so skewed that most people recognize that the perception of sound it produces is simply wrong...it is too inaccurate to be worth the money, time and effort. As for Steve's question about the source of that ultimately unreachable goal of "accuracy," it's been part of critical high end or high fidelity journalism from the very beginning: "Audio actually used to have a goal: perfect reproduction of the sound of real music performed in a real space. That was found difficult to achieve, and it was abandoned when most music lovers, who almost never heard anything except amplified music anyway, forgot what "the real thing" had sounded like. Today, "good" sound is whatever one likes...fidelity is irrelevant to music. Since the only measure of sound quality is that the listener likes it, that has pretty well put an end to audio advancement, because different people rarely agree about sound quality. [...] Audio as a hobby is dying, largely by its own hand. As far as the real world is concerned, high-end audio lost its credibility during the 1980s, when it flatly refused to submit to the kind of basic honesty controls (double-blind testing, for example) that had legitimized every other serious scientific endeavor since Pascal. [...] For the record: I never, ever claimed that measurements don't matter. What I said (and very often, at that) was, they don't always tell the whole story. Not quite the same thing." ---J. Gordon Holt, the founding father of Stereophile magazine and high end audio journalism (2007) www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/1107awsi/

Atkinson quote is elegant. Fit to purpose is a phrase that helps me reframe conversations around preference. A little bluetooth device may not give me what I want from a speaker but my farmer and woodworker family and friends like the functionality. I'd have loved those when I was 19, bring it to the garage, to the lake, so fun. I would never speak of my gear as better with them, it is immature and of no benefit to anyone. When I do mention my gear I welcome visitors and we have fun. That's sufficient for me. Now, I am trying to resist that pricey (for me) Audioquest power cable for my Rogue Sphinx V3. More Steve and Herb please.

Great discussion but better for me because it provided a picture of Herb Reichert's Altec Lansings which are allegedly housed in red refrigerators. My source for this is Herb's 1999 review of the Spendor SP 1/2s for Listener magazine (Steve Guttenberg also had a review in that issue.) That review is my all-time favorite piece of audio writing. Mr. Reichert, as Herbie the minibus driver might say, you, Sir, are "Coolacious". BTW, I am the owner of Spendor BC1s and found out after a move and to my great dismay that your take on the Spendors performing much better in a small or medium-sized room was spot on (sob).

I *DO* miss Herb! And thanks to Herb, I now love Mel Tormé's tidal wave of tone!

Hah! I don't suppose you'd appreciate it if I hit the thumbs up twice - but a particularly enjoyable discussion gentlemen, thank you. "Accuracy" seems a funny term when artifice is a big part of most recording practice, but I certainly value those spatial cues and detailed textures highly.

More with Herb please. Make it a regular segment if possible..

I think of accuracy in music, is similar to accuracy from a photograph. There’s a lot you can do to both. They both look and sound different to each individual.

Most recordings are done dry, and added effects later. That is why a recording done under wet conditions often are more lifelike, because it sounds more natural. A live recording in a grand hall where some of the reverbs there at in the recording will sound more natural than artificially added reverbs in post. But you must add some reverb to add the illusion of natural sound. That is why a recording of a acoustic concert sounds so good, because some of the natural reverbs are still in there, because most instruments is recorded wet. Maybe only a solo instrument has close microphone in those circumstances.

Your messy background reminds me of mine. I like it. Fake backgrounds look like fake backgrounds.

Good information. Listening to people, I think the concept of accuracy is blurred with detail and clean sound. Not necessarily interchangeable.

Mishigas........I love it !

Our own ears can fool us into things that aren't there. I remember listening to some recording (can probably be found somewhere on the net) where they were experimenting with test tones and it was easy to make a sound seem like it was only in the right channel when in reality it came from the left channel.

the man with the plan!

Those Class A power amps also make great space heaters.

I like how Steve Force projected himself into some alleyway in the Bronx.

Bleedthrough, did someone say early Zeppelin...

Why can't we have BOTH speakers that sound good AND measure well?

I prefer your videos w/ your apt in the background.

Great discussion, it contains a lot of food for thought. In recent years, I haves seen a growing dichotomy about system accuracy within the hobby and myself. I crave the intense resolution of a revealing system. Love the thrill of hearing something I never heard before off a recording. However, as much fun as that is, I know that is not what real music sounds like. When attending a live concert, I have yet to hear whether or not the classical guitarist just manicured his/her nails. Something a highly resolving system can give you the illusion of. So likewise, I do question what is truly accurate? In terms of currently produced speakers a lot of the highly resolving, so called accurate designs roll off the bass too aggressively. They do not have the ability to reproduce the low notes some instruments are capable of. For me, it is like viewing a Rembrandt with a magnifying glass. You see the wonder/beauty of each paint stroke, but at times not a full view of the entire piece. My choice for main speakers would not be considered highly accurate/detailed. Since they are not bass shy, you could argue that they are more for HT use than music listening. Nonetheless, when playing a large orchestral pieces through them. I can hear just how low a Cello can go, that there are Bassoons present, and the Bass drum rumble the room. Despite their limitations, they can recreate a believable facsimile of the performance, every instrument, every note played.

Always good to hear you and Herb chewing the fat, as it were. In fact, I enjoy all of the bull sessions you have with other viewers, but Herb’s in a class by himself.

Herb is so much cooler than we are!!!

More Herb!

I understand people that want it more correct/accurate because a lot of tube sound is really flabby/inaccurate/closed in/limited. A good clock and good parts and good power fixes that. It's almost impossible to get a good clock function on tube gear, whereas with transistor it's almost impossible to get good parts. (transistor usually has better clock control) But both can sound good at the top level and give the impression of having all the sound aspects at a very high level. (once you have a really good clock, the music gets more solid and the harshness dissapears and the timing get's insanely good)

Great interview. I was never really a true audiophile but am perusing the best sound for me ( on a budget). I have to agree that specs only get you part way there and listening does the rest. I recall articles in Stereophile magazine where they would first give you the specs then the listening impressions. Often they didn’t seem to relate. I think our brains have this uncanny ability to focus on different aspects of the music. To zero in on some things and filter out others. Sort of like how a good car mechanic can identify a bad lifter in an engine just by listening to the cacophony of noise coming from it. No sound analyzer can do that as far as I know.

I thought your explanation of the difference between vinyl and digital nailed it (11:00 min mark).

I like the words “transparency” or “revealing” instead of “accuracy.”

Accuracy is what I like.

for a time I thought that Steve was not the typical stuffy audiophile. The more I watch, though, the more it becomes clear that he is part of the club. The most annoying part of it is that he never addresses any of his fundamental assumptions. "It's more like being there," he says. This is an assumption that underpins a lot of his videos and yet he never defends it. Why should the purpose of a system be to replicate some (mythical) live experience? Steve seems to base his life around this, yet he doesn't really examine it. At the very least he could admit that his tenets for audiophilia are really just grounded in his own taste, but I guess you get kicked out of the club if you admit that.

Great quote at the end, "Measurements can tell the difference between a bad speaker and a good speaker, but only listening can tell us the difference between a good speaker(amp) and a great speaker(amp)." Specs of an amp or speaker can tell you if they are at least in the 'good' category, but ultimately we are all in this hobby to 'listen' so if your ears aren't happy, specs don't mean a thing. And perfect specs won't tell you that your ears will be happy either. Sometimes I think our ears like a little coloration here and there. And as we age and our hearing changes, so might our taste in what we find pleasing to them.

Great discussion. To me, a recorded / reproduced performance is somewhat like the relationship between acting and cinematography. The performance is an art and the recording is an art. The playback of either is an art/technology and what we hear is the entire performance. It takes it all. Electric guitar players play the amp and the guitar. Accuracy to me is not the game, what is the game is the synergistic result that hits your ears. Pass me another beer.

You don't have to stop virtual background . You only need to use green screen maybe or something to have a solid color in the background so software can find the edges of your body better.

Strictly speaking of Classical music and Jazz, accuracy is (in my mind..) achieved when, a violin _sounds_ like a violin, an oboe like an oboe and a piano ...you guessed it, like a piano. In a darkened room, I listen to a saxophone player. Can I get fooled to believe the sax player is there in the room? _That_ is accuracy IMHO. ...... Good day Herb! Great to see and hear you here. I hope we see more of you in Steve's channel.

I could listen to you 2 talk audio all day! I think accuracy is subjective. To me accuracy means more detailed, but it comes with a trade off - it loses its spaciousness.

Steve could you turn up the volume please. It's pretty quiet. Anyway thanks for yours discussion!

So accuracy would that be the same as inner detail?? I'm always after inner detail and sound stage and dynamics. I have an old school 52 lb class D amp designed by John Ulrich that really makes my Maggie's. 0.7's come alive with all it's power with amazing energy and lots of nuances that I find pretty darn close the the real event. Now taking into consideration, my ARC LS15 tube pre amp and Exogal Comet DAC helps things along. Could it be better, probably, but wow! what would I have to spend.

As a guy who lived (survived?) 8-track tapes, I know what INaccurate sound is like. I relate to Herb’s “electrons bouncing off the church wall” concept of micro-information. That’s a plea for even greater accuracy, not less. But there’s little doubt that intense musical enjoyment can be had with today’s mid-fi, arguably less accurate systems. So at the point where my budget hits accuracy achievement, I turn into a subjectivist.

Great discussion - apart from the background doing very scary things to Steve's hair! Accuracy - the hint is in the name "hi-fidelity". We want what comes out of our speakers or headphones to sound faithful to the instrument (to the extent there is one) being recorded. A transistor radio plays a tune and that's fine if you're a bricklayer working on a building site, but if you are a hi-fi person (i.e. audiophile) you want to hear the sounds that entered the microphone as unmolested as possible, subject of course to the artistic decisions of the mastering engineer. For me, the benchmark is tonality - does that piano sound like a piano? And ideally, does it sound like a Bosendorfer rather than a Yamaha? And then, totally agree that those micro details (the reverb or ambient info) adds to the illusion of actually being there which makes it more emotionally satisfying. The more of that, the better. So yes, to me "accuracy" is important although I agree it can't really be judged through numbers and measurements.

I’m neither for nor against “accuracy”, whatever that might be...but I do love the idea of my system actually portraying what the recording artist wanted the world to hear when they were making the record...just a thought

We have a very serious disease, and there is no cure in sight.The reality of being a true audiophile is that this is as good as it gets. I feel like I am stuck between yesterday and tomorrow, everyday. Hope that makes sense.

Nonlinear response to low level signals can be a source of "subtractive distortion." Conversely, compression can be a source of what I will call "additive distortion." Many people prefer additive distortion. It is one reason some like very low power tube amplifiers that "soft clip" or compress the loud parts of the signal.

Ha SG is in Max Headroom mode!

This is a great discussion by two relatively unpretentious audio experts. As a recording engineer, I would love to be making recordings for people like them. Unfortunately most people are hearing music through white plastic things with or without wires stuck sloppily in their ears. This is what makes high levels of compression and limiting necessary. One advantage I have is doing my critical listening through the same amp and speaker setup for years. I can't imagine trying to make judgments about sound when you're listening through a different system every week. I'm sure these gentlemen enjoy their work but I couldn't comfortably judge anything that way. If I were to do that job, I couldn't give grades it would just be pass fail.

Did I just drop acid? Am I halucinating when I see Steve? I think I'm peaking! Oh wait! Herb looks normal. Oh no Steve's back! What the hell is happening to me????

The thing is like most terms in this hobby accuracy is not a well defined thing. The term implies something that can be quantified but there are so many aspects of the sound with respect to the original recording that scads of different aspects could be in the listeners mind when talking about it. Frequency balance, imaging, dynamic range and a linear relationship of recorded dynamics v.s. actualized dynamics, phase relationships, damping, sense of the room... So what is accuracy? Depends I guess. In the end since we don't have access to the original performance (if a real performance even exists) sometimes a better target is a plausible representation of an event.

I'm have not nearly as good of audio systems that you'll have or listen to but the best way I can articulate would be like a figure skater that goes on new fresh ice, I want that sound to be like that every time I put the tone arm or push of a button to music (get my drift?) .

Tidiness? I like things tidy because untidiness is a distraction (some people are better at tuning this out than others - I'm not one of them). So when there is a lot of distorted crap coming off a LP due to scratches or wear then it distracts me from the music. Except, if the vinyl front end is good enough, the music is so vivid (full of details and with plenty of impact) then the threshold for the distortion spoiling it is way higher. Digital gives a false sense of tidy - it all sounds very clean but lots may be missing, or digital distortion is making things sound hard, or dry or whatever - harder to spot than a scratch on a LP or hiss on a tape as it's there all the time and changes the character of the sound rather than intruding noticeably. Reality check - last night I (kind of by accident) watched Prince performing on RU-vid with a wire from the headphone output on my TV to my hi-fi. The sound was ok but not a match for my hi-fi front ends. But...seeing Prince perform live, his stage antics and facial expressions...totally brought it to life and made me interact on a very emotional level with the music. And that's from someone who doesn't really like Prince's music that much. Is that missing detail somehow analogous to what you get from seeing a performer, sort of filling in the gaps?

Great discussion awesome thanks gentlemen. Though Steve if you want to use the pho backgrounds you really need to tone down the shirts. Hate to say it but it should be a solid color.