Do Mills resistors REALLY sound different?

[DDF]

Re: Do Mills resistors REALLY sound different?

dBE, how fairs? Nice to read you again, hope all is well. Digital vs film:

http://fwd.five.tv/videos/challenge-blow-up-part-3

To the original poster: After years expending my education and 10 years of a career obsessing to answer these sorts of audio perception questions, all I can offer is one more opinion: don't sweat it at this stage. Use decent quality normal parts. Once you have the sound you want, start swapping a few parts and decide for yourself, and only if you enjoy the process. For diy audio, even if a placebo brings you enjoyment, its worth it. The worse thing you can do is allow the debate to bring you doubt or tension, its counter productive to enjoying the hobby.

You will hear the exact same debates raging 20 years from now.

Sometimes we allow our expectation of truthful and helpful 3rd party claims to disconnect us from the joy of audio. You don't need to hold your standards to those we expect from "impartial professional reviewers". Its diy, all that matters is your enjoyment.

Its funny how it works. I've heard Apogees over a system that was tweaked and obsessed over, and no doubt the changes brought the owner joy. I don't even doubt he heard the positive changes and could pick them out blindly. Good for him. All I heard over my fresh set of ears was that cheap Vifa woofer!

Personally, FWIW (nothing really) I think I hear sand cast resistors, and avoid them. Otherwise use Dale Rh's and Rs's (extremely well made and re-usable) and sleep soundly.

[dbe]

Re: Do Mills resistors REALLY sound different?

cheers,

AJ

*****

I think the thing that I appreciate about you the most is the level of wisdom, insight and thoughfulness that you bring to the table in a discussion. You never fail to make me smile. In the realm of predictability I can set my watch by you and your cookie cutter EE 101 responses.

I'm sure that your intellectual clone Daryl will chime in soon. The more the merrier, I always say.

Isn't using the expression "cheers" after the diatribe above a bit hypocritical, even for you?

Your favorite fool,

X-X-X
O-O-O

Dave

[dbe]

Re: Do Mills resistors REALLY sound different?

Did your pixelization discussion touch on fractal technology? -Too bad we can’t (yet) use the same technology real time on red book audio CD’s…C

Nope, I don't know enough about SOTA in digital camera technology to speak intelligently on any level. I just know what looks good to me. I guess that makes me a subjectivist when it comes to pik-toors, too. Every time I buy one with more pixels, the pictures get better to these old eyes.

Oddly enough, I prefer the sound of my CD player @ 44.1 to 96 or 192. It has 8 Burr-Brown DACs running in parallel, a Pacific Microsonics PMD 200 digital filter and they still can't figure out how to divide 192 by 44.1 evenly :D I really do wish they had chosen 88.2 and/or 176.4 as the sampling frequency for higher resolution audio.

Dave

[dlr]

Re: Do Mills resistors REALLY sound different?

Hi Biff

By whom? Please link a direct quote of who stated this. I was in an EE program at that time. No class in my curriculum taught that. Has this changed?
Are you sure that you are not confusing the science that is taught from high school onwards, with advertisements made by manufacturers?

He's absolutely correct. It may not have been in your classes at the time. This is what I was referring to in an earlier thread. Don't tell me that I have to post a link, this was in articles, and more often letters to the editor from some respected scientists, that have likely never been put onto the web. It was common in the early years. We're talking in the neighborhood of 20 years ago or more. I threw out those magazines quite some time ago.

I am an EE myself, read the various audio magazines for years, believed the objective side absolutely for years. Yep, digital was perfect sound forever. Variants on that theme were common, not just in advertising. There was a distinct objective vs. subjective argument for some time. The retailers were early to get into improving the playback. It took more years before the recording studies realized and accepted that the commonly used Sony A/D converter had significantly bad clock jitter. This argument was entirely separate from any based on the analog stages not directly associated with the A/D and D/A conversions.

As for this thread, I don't get into resistor and wire debates. I've not been able to detect differences other than with large vs. small wire on long runs for wire and only made a cursory experiment with resistors. It's not important enough for me to spend the time.

There's no doubt to me that early players aren't the equivalent of today's. I kept my original one for about 15 years, using it only as a transport in later years. I've also picked up others' throw aways of old ones over the last few years, playing around with them, some going back to the 80's, swapping out the old opamps in a couple of cases. The sound is without doubt worse using their analog outs, even with new opamps. It's not like differences in resistors.

Dave

Re: Do Mills resistors REALLY sound different?

Hi Biff

When CD players first arrived, we were told they all would sound the same, and that they were perfect.

By whom? Please link a direct quote of who stated this. I was in an EE program at that time. No class in my curriculum taught that. Has this changed?
Are you sure that you are not confusing the science that is taught from high school onwards, with advertisements made by manufacturers?

But they didn't, and they don't, and for a long time most of us could hear differences but not ascribe a reason. Many generations of D/A conversion later, upsampling schemes, jitter and all sorts of other factors have led to real improvements in sound quality. At one time these were not quantifiable parameters - now they are unequivocal. My Mag/Philips 1st gen does not sound like a Cambridge.

If the premise is contrived to begin with, how is it to be met? Jitter is certainly a measurable parameter of CD playback. Jitter also has audibilty thresholds, as do most other measurable parameters. Are you sure that you can ascribe a cause/effect to what you believe you may have heard with early CD players? Can you link me to some data of old vs new? IIRC (tired of searching) there was a DBT with an older vs newer (at the time) player, where listeners could not tell them apart. Does this mean that all CD players have always sounded alike? No. Clearly there can be audible differences. Can be. Not are.

All transistor amps sound the same - yeah, right.

Who said this? Quote? AES Link?

At one time overuse of feedback correction used to reduce test numbers made for some sonic underacheivers. The whole alphabet soup of amp topologies has in some instances a noticable sonic signature while measuring "flat". Over time characteristics other than a THD on the order of the square root of nada have shown to be more relevant to sonic acheivment. Back when, dynamic headroom, damping factor, slew rate were considered irrelevant, but certainly not now.

Lot's of strawmen and little evidence. The actions of a few manufacturers is an indictment of them all? Of science itself? Do you need a link to Cordellaudio?

It is hard to believe we have found all the relevant factors to be identified in audio reproduction

Who is claiming that we have, other than those who like to erect strawmen?

cheers,

AJ

[Ludo]

Re: Do Mills resistors REALLY sound different?

I agree with you guys that different components (electrical gear) sound different as I have done my share of swapping tuners, amps, cd players, etc. and I've heard differences that I wasn't expecting.

But what makes these Mills resistors sound better? And if there truly is something behind their better sonic properties then why doesn't the manufacturer provide some data why this could be so and tout the heck out of it! Just show me one convincing measurement or graph, and I'd gladly pay the extra money.

Kind of reminds me of those little fans you used to be able to buy to put in your intake manifold to increase gas mileage; are those still around?

Louis

[curt_c]

Re: Do Mills resistors REALLY sound different?

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

Ah… I didn’t see that it was a smoke grenade…

Did your pixelization discussion touch on fractal technology? -Too bad we can’t (yet) use the same technology real time on red book audio CD’s…

C

[biff]

Re: Do Mills resistors REALLY sound different?

I can't say anything definitive about Mills vs brand X, but here are a couple of points to consider -

When CD players first arrived, we were told they all would sound the same, and that they were perfect. But they didn't, and they don't, and for a long time most of us could hear differences but not ascribe a reason. Many generations of D/A conversion later, upsampling schemes, jitter and all sorts of other factors have led to real improvements in sound quality. At one time these were not quantifiable parameters - now they are unequivocal. My Mag/Philips 1st gen does not sound like a Cambridge.

All transistor amps sound the same - yeah, right. At one time overuse of feedback correction used to reduce test numbers made for some sonic underacheivers. The whole alphabet soup of amp topologies has in some instances a noticable sonic signature while measuring "flat". Over time characteristics other than a THD on the order of the square root of nada have shown to be more relevant to sonic acheivment. Back when, dynamic headroom, damping factor, slew rate were considered irrelevant, but certainly not now.

It is hard to believe we have found all the relevant factors to be identified in audio reproduction - even a few years back something as simple as the dispersion and power response of various orders of XOs was not a big deal and recently a consensus formed that the desirability of second order acoustic slopes is due largely to just that. It's a great thing that among us are those that go after things they "hear" - some of their sluething will be dead ends and some bear fruit. We are all in debt to those that consider "good enough is not as good as it gets". My car has a gas pedal and a brake pedal and needs both.

Now I am not about to buy overpriced Lincoln logs to eliminate dielectric smear from my polyester carpets or spend a grand on an Amish blessed hunk of Maple to kill vibration in my electronics, BUT... If I am going to spend between 10 and 1000 hours (pick your spot) on a design and build to enjoy my music for a few years I couldn't stand to sit on the couch hearing the gremlin saying " you're right, spending a couple bucks extra to maybe make Linda Rondstat and Anne Savoy sound better would've been silly!" We all choose where to draw our own line in the sand

[brianp]

Re: Do Mills resistors REALLY sound different?

the answer is yes high watt inductive resistors can roll off the top end. of course most crossovers dont use 50 watt resistors or 5 10 watt resistors. I agree that the mills and eagle resistors are better made. here is a link to a 2 ohm 50 watt resistor that will roll your tweeter off.

http://www.newark.com/vishay-dale/rh-50-2r000-1-0/power-resistor/dp/01F9897

this has an inductance of .22mh it will start to roll off at 5700hz, but using a 50 2 ohm resistor like this in a tweeter network is not a common thing to do.

Using a 10 watt 2 ohm inductive resistor
the mH is .04 ROLLOFF STARTS AT 31000hz. So if you are going to have issues with rolloff it looks like high powered tweeters needing very large powerhandling resistors would need the noninductive resistors. Since it is likely to be progear using large powerhandling mills are tougher then daytons.

If you need that higher power handling, couldn't you just parallel up standard wirewounds of appropriate values? For 2 Ohms/ 50 Watts you'd use five 10 Ohm/ 10 Watt resistors. Their inductances as well as resistances would be in parallel, and should thus drop to insignificance.

[dbe]

Re: Do Mills resistors REALLY sound different?

Bad analogy Dave...
Analog photography does not provide infinite resolution, but is limited by the size of the grains of silver iodide. Consequently, by your definition, both digital and analog photography produce 'images'.

Absolutley correct. The "confused" smilie should have been the giveaway there. I put this statement in to do two things: (1) Bifurcate the discussion and (2) bring out the thinkers in this bunch. You ain't seen grain until you've pushed 2475 recording film to ASA 2400. The grains are about the size of Texas Pixelization is much more controlled and predictable. I was in a discussion with a friend that is a dyed in the wool film photographer and we were having this conversation about the analog like smoothness of a film photo versus a hi-rez digital picture's sharpness. Quite an interesting conversation, to say the least.

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

Dave

[romanbednarek]

Re: Do Mills resistors REALLY sound different?

AJ, we're definitely on the same train of thought regarding your recent posts and a lot of my skepticism comes from experiments that I've performed myself with an ultimate goal of trying to determine which components in the audio chain have the most variation and where is your money best spent.

Another way of looking at things when considering devices other than speakers is to consider the overall sound produced by that device regardless of the quality of components used in that device. For example, if a lower cost CD player uses cheaper components yet has a better circuit design, it may sound better but then again "better" is a subjective conclusion and I always say that the synergy between components must be considered as well (like using a "bright" CD player with a "warm" amp). Component quality is a good thing to strive for but if the components don't compliment each other then spending the extra money can take you in the wrong direction sometimes.

Back to my experience with audio components. By performing these tests myself I tend to find certain posts to be a bit more credible if I've been able to notice differences with similar components myself. With this said I can honestly say that when using the analog outputs, all of my CD/DVD players sound different although some of the differences can be subtle depending on the players used in the comparison. I've found the same to be true to some degree with amplifiers but the trend is a bit different because there seems to be a bit of convergence as the amplifier quality goes up and the frequency responses of the amps in the comparison are closer to "flat."

Like you, I'll still question a post when somebody says that the difference heard in a known comparison is huge but I won't dispute the fact that there may be a noticeable difference in certain cases based on the component in question and my experience with components of the same type.

Topics like these are best settled by performing experiments but the problem is that the experiment must be set up correctly and can't be clouded by bias. I've really learned a lot through these experiments (blind, guess which component is which type) myself and I probably should continue to experiment a bit further especially with crossover components. I guess one reason why I haven't could be because it may be a waste of time for me due to the fact that even if I do notice a difference I don't know if I'll ever be able to spend significantly more money on crossover parts than on drivers for a specific project. I know that some people that build my projects like to go "all out" by buying expensive parts and the question that I have is that if those more expensive parts do produce a different sound will this sound change the character of the speaker relative to how I initially tuned it?

[Cinemadesigner X]

Re: Do Mills resistors REALLY sound different?

"Just the uninformed/ignorant who are either too vain, or simply cannot discern between psychogenic events and the real world."

AJ you're the Oswald Bates of Human Behaviour.

Now I must eructate before my phil-opium tubes interjects on my behalf.

"I believe it was Plato...No, excuse me, I mean Play-Doh...who stuck to the wall when he said one must not put one's transvestite in jeopardy if one is to become a cunning linguist". "Hey, I ain't no venereal fuddrucker!" O.B.

Re: Do Mills resistors REALLY sound different?

A lot of very interesting arguments but what troubles me is that the audio signal goes through hundreds if not thousands of resistors and capacitors on its way to the speakers, most of which were selected for low cost, convenience and integration capability onto monolythic integrated circuits. Little to no consideration is given to the "sonic" properties of those hundreds of passive components (except for KT/C or KTR) so what makes the ones in the crossover somehow so special that they have the ultimate impact on the quality of the audio signal?

I am very sceptical that there is an audible difference between Mills resistors until someone can come up with a measureable difference like the paracitic inductance or capacitance, EMI pickup, noise figure, etc.

Louis

This is quite simple Louis. It's called the "Just listen through" effect.
I've always been amazed when audiophiles attend shows and talk about "hearing" an amplifier, cd player or wires, etc.
Even though they believe that everything, including the individual parts like resistors themselves, wall outlets, sun spots, whatnot, have a "sound", they still have the ability to completely isolate the "sound" of say an amplifier, from the entire system, when the reverberant soundfield of a room impinges upon their ears. Quite amazing actually.
I wonder if they can tell exactly what brand of part(s) were used in a mixing board by "just listening" to a cd? Or should that be "more revealing" LP's? For long, relaxed and extended listening periods of course.

cheers,

AJ

Re: Do Mills resistors REALLY sound different?

this conclusion is scientifically inconclusive and doesn't prove that there are no differences sonically between what is being compared.

Correct. The null hypothesis can never be proven. But when hundreds of audiophiles test their beliefs against the real world and the score is zero for them, a trend starts to emerge.
DBT's cannot prove that no difference exists, just that if it exists, it is below the test threshold. What it does prove, is that audiophile are prone to wild exaggerations (surprise, surprise) of any differences, real or imagined.
And exactly how do we know these differences exist in the first place?
Given the susceptibility, reliability and general (scientific) ignorance of the ear witnesses?

cheers,

AJ

[Ludo]

Re: Do Mills resistors REALLY sound different?

A lot of very interesting arguments but what troubles me is that the audio signal goes through hundreds if not thousands of resistors and capacitors on its way to the speakers, most of which were selected for low cost, convenience and integration capability onto monolythic integrated circuits. Little to no consideration is given to the "sonic" properties of those hundreds of passive components (except for KT/C or KTR) so what makes the ones in the crossover somehow so special that they have the ultimate impact on the quality of the audio signal?

I am very sceptical that there is an audible difference between Mills resistors until someone can come up with a measureable difference like the paracitic inductance or capacitance, EMI pickup, noise figure, etc.

Louis