Do Mills resistors REALLY sound different?

[Jeff B.]

Re: Do Mills resistors REALLY sound different?

Ok, the debate wasn't about the slogan that is being repeatedly quoted. So what was it about?

cheers,

AJ

It was about the fact that the engineers themselves - nearly every single one them that I read reports and papers from - that created the digital audio technology were saying this about CD reproduction. This statement wasn't about whether they were right, or their reasons for making the statements, or whether it was obvious to anyone listening to different players that it wasn't true; the statement was about the fact that they still said this. Yes, they were the engineers and scientists, and it was the overwhelming majority of them, and it happened, and that part is simply a fact of our history on the subject. You can't really debate whether it happened or not, because it simply did. I guess you can deny it took place, but that's just silly, and would have the same credibility as saying the Apollo missions were faked :eek:. ........And that's the whole point of this wayward thread - that people, especially engineers and scientists, often take positions that are later clearly proved to be wrong once a greater understanding of the subject known. It has been this way all through history, and it will continue to be this way for a long time to come too. And this is why we are talking about all of this in thread on Mills resistors. And I have not said what I think of the resistors one way or the other. I am just stating a fact about the past. :rolleyes:

Re: Do Mills resistors REALLY sound different?

AJ just may be too young to remember.

Or perhaps it's lacunar amnesia?

CD reproduction isn't quite as simple as a resistor though.

Au contraire, mon ami.

Who are the hotheads? I must be missing something, because I am reading this on a friendlier scale without the agitation normally associated with "hotheads". I guess it is all in how you choose to read something. And I don't understand why the tread necessarily needs to be closed just because people may see something differently.

Jeff are you familiar with the people who get really angry listening to talk radio? Everyday. Even though their tuning buttons and knobs aren't broken?

Two things minimum. One, that CD sounded bad in comparison to analog reproduction. Knowing the variability of analog, I didn't pay much attention to this as I didn't put a lot of money into the front end back then. They didn't know whether it was "the CD format itself, the lack of Mills resistors in the Phillips, the 14bit resolution, the cheap opamps" or any other part. They mostly didn't claim to know. They simply said that the marketing departments were full of [email protected] They certainly did not accept "Perfect Sound Forever". Except for those die-hard objectivists that looked at CD technology, the Nyquist theorem, then pronounced that CD could not be bad.

Two, that CD players really did not all sound the same. The objectivists mostly scoffed at this. No one could hear a difference between two properly performing players. I mostly fell in line with the objectivists before I ever dropped a dime on CD. Being an EE, I knew that they had to be right and that those subjectivists were "hearing things". Only problem was, it went on for a long, long time. I actually started to have doubts, much to my chagrin. There couldn't be much variation in playback, they all had those measurements that proved that they were all very close to each other, just like they used THD to prove that there could not be a difference heard in any amp that had good THD numbers. Proof.

Then one day along comes this engineer who trusted himself enough to do some real research to find out why he thought there was a difference. That was the advent of jitter measurement.

Enough of that.

dlr

So are you going to buy the jitterbug late 80's player for the next DIY at your place or not? Maybe you can invite "the factory guy" too.

cheers,

AJ

[dlr]

Re: Do Mills resistors REALLY sound different?

Ok, the debate wasn't about the slogan that is being repeatedly quoted. So what was it about?

cheers,

AJ

Two things minimum. One, that CD sounded bad in comparison to analog reproduction. Knowing the variability of analog, I didn't pay much attention to this as I didn't put a lot of money into the front end back then. They didn't know whether it was "the CD format itself, the lack of Mills resistors in the Phillips, the 14bit resolution, the cheap opamps" or any other part. They mostly didn't claim to know. They simply said that the marketing departments were full of [email protected] They certainly did not accept "Perfect Sound Forever". Except for those die-hard objectivists that looked at CD technology, the Nyquist theorem, then pronounced that CD could not be bad.

Two, that CD players really did not all sound the same. The objectivists mostly scoffed at this. No one could hear a difference between two properly performing players. I mostly fell in line with the objectivists before I ever dropped a dime on CD. Being an EE, I knew that they had to be right and that those subjectivists were "hearing things". Only problem was, it went on for a long, long time. I actually started to have doubts, much to my chagrin. There couldn't be much variation in playback, they all had those measurements that proved that they were all very close to each other, just like they used THD to prove that there could not be a difference heard in any amp that had good THD numbers. Proof.

Then one day along comes this engineer who trusted himself enough to do some real research to find out why he thought there was a difference. That was the advent of jitter measurement.

Enough of that.

dlr

[Jeff B.]

Re: Do Mills resistors REALLY sound different?

I think this thread needs CLOSED considering all the hotheads in here. Notice I said hotheads as in plural because it's not just one person stirring the pot, there's 2 or maybe 3 in here guilty :rolleyes:

Who are the hotheads? I must be missing something, because I am reading this on a friendlier scale without the agitation normally associated with "hotheads". I guess it is all in how you choose to read something. And I don't understand why the tread necessarily needs to be closed just because people may see something differently.

Re: Do Mills resistors REALLY sound different?

Of course "Perfect Sound Forever" was a marketing slogan.
The people writing articles, letters to editors, etc., none of those were based on the slogan. It was a real debate.
dlr

Ok, the debate wasn't about the slogan that is being repeatedly quoted. So what was it about?

cheers,

AJ

Re: Do Mills resistors REALLY sound different?

Hi, Jeff. Back in early '83 I participated in a blind test between a Philips CD player and a Nakamichi Dragon with TDK metal tape using the same source material. I scored 10/10 in 3 separate sittings. Mike Wolfe, the recordist for the NM Symphony at the time, walked out of the room remarking about "sound from a tin can".

Did you attribute this to the CD format itself, the lack of Mills resistors in the Phillips, the 14bit resolution, the cheap opamps, the different cables on each component, the switcher, sunspot activity that day, etc? Exactly what did you listen-through isolate it to?

The factory guy was relating how the two were indistinguishable in reproduction and CD's offered "Perfect Sound Forever" (remember that?)
Dave

The factory guy? Hmmm, I know who the family guy and the cable guy are, but I've never heard of the factory guy. What was his expertise? Sales? Marketing?

cheers,

AJ

[dlr]

Re: Do Mills resistors REALLY sound different?

You can read it anyway you wish Dave. I'm simply stating that I read "Perfect Sound Forever" as a manufacturers ad slogan and not something on par with Faraday's Law of Induction, like you may have. Just a different perspective or recollection of something past. I guess we are all subjectivists after all.

cheers,

AJ

Of course "Perfect Sound Forever" was a marketing slogan. Do you take every one of us for complete fools? Maybe I shouldn't ask that, even rhetorically, given your predilection for sarcasm in posting.

The people writing articles, letters to editors, etc., none of those were based on the slogan. It was a real debate. The fact that you can't remember it doesn't mean it did not happen. How about showing a tiny bit of recognition that there are life experiences outside of yours?

dlr

[davidl]

Re: Do Mills resistors REALLY sound different?

I think this thread needs CLOSED considering all the hotheads in here. Notice I said hotheads as in plural because it's not just one person stirring the pot, there's 2 or maybe 3 in here guilty :rolleyes:

[Pete Schumacher]

Re: Do Mills resistors REALLY sound different?

Hi, Jeff. Back in early '83 I participated in a blind test between a Philips CD player and a Nakamichi Dragon with TDK metal tape using the same source material. The factory guy was relating how the two were indistinguishable in reproduction and CD's offered "Perfect Sound Forever" (remember that?) I scored 10/10 in 3 separate sittings, judging the Nak superior in every criteria in each trial. I was not alone. My fellow recording engineers Eric Larson and Tim Rich did the same. Mike Wolfe, the recordist for the NM Symphony at the time, walked out of the room remarking about "sound from a tin can". Brings back happy memories :D

Dave

AJ just may be too young to remember.

AJ, Jeff was right. That was all the talk, not just marketing, but from the engineers who created the technology. It all looked great on paper, but the issues with jitter and anti-aliasing filters weren't caught until much later.

CD reproduction isn't quite as simple as a resistor though.

[dbe]

Re: Do Mills resistors REALLY sound different?

No, what he's "absolutely correct" about is that when CD players were introduced nearly every engineer I heard and every magazine I read declared that all players sounded identical and that the reproduction was perfect. Even though it was apparent to all who listened that all players did not sound the same, it still took quite some time before you heard audio engineers begin to admit this and attempt to explain why. You don't recall this? It was a pretty commonly debated topic in the early 80's.

Jeff B.

Hi, Jeff. Back in early '83 I participated in a blind test between a Philips CD player and a Nakamichi Dragon with TDK metal tape using the same source material. The factory guy was relating how the two were indistinguishable in reproduction and CD's offered "Perfect Sound Forever" (remember that?) I scored 10/10 in 3 separate sittings, judging the Nak superior in every criteria in each trial. I was not alone. My fellow recording engineers Eric Larson and Tim Rich did the same. Mike Wolfe, the recordist for the NM Symphony at the time, walked out of the room remarking about "sound from a tin can". Brings back happy memories :D

Dave

Re: Do Mills resistors REALLY sound different?

No, AJ knows what we have read and not read while he was in college, apparently. Even to the point of knowing that I was reading letters to the editor from manufacturers' marketing departments. All of those that I read were all written under pseudonyms. How ignorant I was. I actually thought it was real people writing.

I mean, really, when I said that there were letters to the editor from some respected scientists, then he seemed to become condescending, that's only because even though he read my words, he knew that my words were wrong and it was only marketing departments involved in everything I was reading. There were no respectable scientists nor engineers involved back then. Even the discovery of jitter must have been some marketing hack's brilliance. How was I to know? Why would anyone have actually conducted research into it and developed a means of measuring it, since all CD players sounded the same, even in the early years before jitter was understood? Marketing, it was nothing but marketing. Jitter, snake oil, all the same.

AJ knows what we all read back then and that no one outside of manufacturers actually spoke out nor wrote about how they all sounded the same and were perfect. Those few who wrote that CD players didn't all sound the same, reason unknown, they were all also just marketing hacks to promote their brand. They weren't real people unaffiliated with any companies. Imagine my dismay in now realizing that for years I read the magazines (no web for posting links to REAL information back then) and actually believed that there was debate about the quality. Wow, how foolish of me.

I defer to you now, AJ. In the future I'll ask you to speak for me, since I obviously can't speak for myself and what I did or read over those years and I couldn't even get that right. Thank you for the enlightenment, I will be forever in your debt.

Oh, and of course, we're not to let the thread veer off of the original topic, no sirree. AJ will set us straight.

dlr

You can read it anyway you wish Dave. I'm simply stating that I read "Perfect Sound Forever" as a manufacturers ad slogan and not something on par with Faraday's Law of Induction, like you may have. Just a different perspective or recollection of something past. I guess we are all subjectivists after all.

cheers,

AJ

[johnnyrichards]

Re: Do Mills resistors REALLY sound different?

well, I was seven years old in the early 80's and I didn't own a CD player until somewhere around 1990 so I missed the whole debate.

You guys are all poopyheads and I have no white papers to back that purely subjective conjecture with so please, just accept my sweeping generalization as a fact. I am a maaintenance man with an AAS in electro-mechanical technology and I have listened to thousands of poopyheads and while they all sound different, they are all poopyheads so there.

Holy cow, I mean it's like we are debating audio properties of something that at normal listening levels probably doesn't matter. It's like discussing saturation of iron core inductors. At normal volumes and power levels is it really a concern? Do resistors in a circuit really get hot enough to change properties at normal listening levels?

I don't know. I got into a debate about wires one night at work with a pair of "audiophiles" who were picking on me for using cheap Dayton interconnects and 12awg zippycord. They used stupid expensive "Transparent" branded stuff. I mentioned that we were running at 99+% repeatability (+/-0.0005mm) on robots using nothing more than Belkin twisted pair cables and grey ribbon cables etc. Oh, and little carbon resistors with a 10% tolerance all over the circuit boards.

FWIW...

[dlr]

Re: Do Mills resistors REALLY sound different?

No, what he's "absolutely correct" about is that when CD players were introduced nearly every engineer I heard and every magazine I read declared that all players sounded identical and that the reproduction was perfect. Even though it was apparent to all who listened that all players did not sound the same, it still took quite some time before you heard audio engineers begin to admit this and attempt to explain why. You don't recall this? It was a pretty commonly debated topic in the early 80's.

Jeff B.

No, AJ knows what we have read and not read while he was in college, apparently. Even to the point of knowing that I was reading letters to the editor from manufacturers' marketing departments. All of those that I read were all written under pseudonyms. How ignorant I was. I actually thought it was real people writing.

I mean, really, when I said that there were letters to the editor from some respected scientists, then he seemed to become condescending, that's only because even though he read my words, he knew that my words were wrong and it was only marketing departments involved in everything I was reading. There were no respectable scientists nor engineers involved back then. Even the discovery of jitter must have been some marketing hack's brilliance. How was I to know? Why would anyone have actually conducted research into it and developed a means of measuring it, since all CD players sounded the same, even in the early years before jitter was understood? Marketing, it was nothing but marketing. Jitter, snake oil, all the same.

AJ knows what we all read back then and that no one outside of manufacturers actually spoke out nor wrote about how they all sounded the same and were perfect. Those few who wrote that CD players didn't all sound the same, reason unknown, they were all also just marketing hacks to promote their brand. They weren't real people unaffiliated with any companies. Imagine my dismay in now realizing that for years I read the magazines (no web for posting links to REAL information back then) and actually believed that there was debate about the quality. Wow, how foolish of me.

I defer to you now, AJ. In the future I'll ask you to speak for me, since I obviously can't speak for myself and what I did or read over those years and I couldn't even get that right. Thank you for the enlightenment, I will be forever in your debt.

Oh, and of course, we're not to let the thread veer off of the original topic, no sirree. AJ will set us straight.

dlr

Re: Do Mills resistors REALLY sound different?

AJ, you may wish to reread this

I just drop in occasionally to stir 'em up. Easy to pull some people's chains

I just had to pull the pin on the grenade and roll it into the room

but almost every post you make is somehow in violation of decorum and grace.
Dave

Maybe after your eyes clear from your grenades smokescreen, you'll reread your own posts. No promise of comprehension of course. Then try rereading the thread topic. Got any Technical Talk to explain this?

No, what he's "absolutely correct" about is that when CD players were introduced nearly every engineer I heard and every magazine I read declared that all players sounded identical and that the reproduction was perfect.

What Engineers? Recording? EE?
Did psychologists and audiologists all concur too? With a Sony ad slogan??
Reproduction of what was perfect?

Even though it was apparent to all who listened that all players did not sound the same, it still took quite some time before you heard audio engineers begin to admit this and attempt to explain why.
You don't recall this?

No.

It was a pretty commonly debated topic in the early 80's.
Jeff B.

And things have changed in 2009? Debates about who can "hear" what and what can and can't be "heard"? Anecdote vs reality, etc, etc?

Btw, the thread is about the "sound" of Mills resistors et al. I'm still waiting on scientifically valid evidence. Anyone?

cheers,

AJ

[donparsons]

Re: Do Mills resistors REALLY sound different?

AJ,

Do you act like such a tool in person?

Sheesh.