Sorting the Sheep from the Goats

This old expression, sorting out the sheep from the goats, comes from herders who allowed sheep and goats to graze together. In the evening, one pen held the sheep, another the goats, and a lone shepherd stood at the entrance between both. Another shepherd would drive the mixed herd toward the one standing between the two gates and the first would use a staff to nudge the oncoming beast into its proper pen.

This expression literally means to put things in order; a ranking, so to speak.  And when it comes to audio equipment, someone should one day sort the gold from the junk - someone should sort the sheep from the goats. Just as it is easy to recognize a goat from a sheep, so should it be easy to recognize junk from gold.

The sound of one type of equipment can vary all over the board and there is little to give it away from external appearances how a pice of equipment should sound.  For example, a preamp can have two chassis or one, can be made up of tubes or transistors or integrated circuits, can be dual mono or stereo, one can cost a thousand times more than another, and all of these can sound different - and in fact they do. But none of these external physical attributes tell you a thing about how they sound.

But is there a hint from the component selection that implies how something can  sound without even listening to it?  If you were to "pop the hood" like you can in an automobile and look at its engine, can you take the cover off of a piece of gear and tell if it is even worth your time to listen to? Yes there is!

While these hints in no way tell you exactly how it sounds, it can help you separate the sheep from the goats.  When a designer creates a design, it is done under controlled conditions inside of a laboratory.  The initial design looks like junk but in order to quickly change things about, it makes no sense to make it pretty - at least at first.  Here is where the component selection is easily seen. 

• What type of resistors are used?
• What type of capacitors are used?
• How is the circuit board made?
• What brand of tubes are used?
• What kind of wire is used internally?
• What are the contacts for the switches made from?
• What style of power transformer is used?

All of these (and more) tell you if you could be listening to a thoroughbred or a nag, a sheep or a goat, a piece of gold or a potential piece of junk.  Each of these are selected at first without a budget in mind, and then after the design is finalized, the quality of each component - sheep grade or goat grade - are then carefully selected for the design that makes it into your listening room. 

Sheep grade components cost more - sometimes a lot more - so they can be used sparingly in order to compete with similar products with similar features.  So if there is a price point, say $3,000, and the competition has four models in that range, this model must "fit in" with the price point of those other models in order for it to sell.

Audiophiles, just like economical drivers, are frugal to a point and equipment manufacturers know this.  In order to sell anything they must be careful what the designer spends on any of these components.  If the pricing is close, the designer eliminates the most expensive one of the sheep so that the potential success of the product is better assured.

So what is the single most expensive element in a design?  What feature in a manufacturer's product line is the first to drop out and the last to show up?  What one feature tells you that you could be listening to a sheep or a goat?  The transformers! There are two styles of transformers used in all equipment: the round toroid and everything else (usually called the I-E transformer, which BTW is a rectangular solid). 

The toroidal transformer always appears in the most expensive high-end gear of any manufacturer's product line.  It is the single most expensive component a designer can add to the design and adding two of them in a dual mono configuration drives the prices up astronomically.  Using one transformer dedicated for one function and another for another function again drives the MSRP to stellar heights. These little guys are just flat expensive to use but are the best sounding of all.

Toroidal transformers have more punch, lower noise, lower stray electromagnetic radiation, and extended frequency response.  They are heavy and come in multiple grades, just as do the other styles.  But if one were to look under the hood of any piece of the highest end audio gear, you would find these little round babys snuggled somewhere in a chassis.

So how can you quickly sort out the high-end sheep from the low-end goats? Think round! Look for that gear using 100% toroidal transformers!

Yours for higher fidelity,

Philip Rastocny

I do not use ads in this blog to help support my efforts. If you like what you are reading, please remember to reciprocate, My newest title is called Where, oh Where did the Star of Bethlehem Go? It’s an astronomer’s look at what this celestial object may have been, who the "Wise Men" were, and where they came from. Written in an investigative journalism style, it targets one star that has never been considered before and builds a solid case for its candidacy.

My other titles include:

• Althea: A Story of Love
• Build an Extreme Green Composter
• The Extreem Green Guide to Wind Turbines
• Build and Extreme Green Hot Water Solar Collector
• The Extreme Green Guide to Solar Electricity
• The Extreme Green Guide to Improving Mileage
• Meditation for Geeks (and other left-brained people)
• Build an Extreme Green Raised Bed Garden
• Build an Extreme Green Rain Barrel
• Build an Extreme Green Squirrel-Proof Bird Feeder
• Extreme Audio 1: House Wiring
• Extreme Audio 2: Line Filtering
• Extreme Audio 3: Chassis Leakage
• Extreme Audio 4: Interconnect Cables
• Extreme Audio 5: Speaker Wires
• Extreme Green Organic Gardening
• Extreme Green Organic Gardening 2012
• The Extreme Green Appliance Buying Guide

Copyright © 2015 by Philip Rastocny. All rights reserved.