John Darko
Peter Comeau is the Director of Acoustic Design at IAG, the Chinese company that now owns and manages classic British hi-fi brands such as Wharfedale, Mission, Castle, Audiolab and Quad. In recent times, Comeau has designed the 85th Anniversary Wharfedale Linton Heritage (review here), Wharfedale’s new Elysian series and reworked the Mission 770 for modern tastes and sources (review here). Prior to that, Comeau worked for Mission in the late 90s / early 2000s and helped found Heybrook in the late 1970s. This all sums to a loudspeaker designer with many decades of experience. Comeau has been around the block. He’s done things. He’s seen things. He’s heard things.
To my mind, fifty years of professional (and not just hobbyist) loudspeaker design experience makes Peter Comeau an expert in the hi-fi field. And on his third visit to the Darko.Audio podcast, the man from IAG takes aim at 10 hi-fi myths — or what he perceives as the spread of misinformation by armchair experts on forums and comments sections:
1. Hi-res audio sounds better because of its ultrasonic content
2. Supertweeters work because they reveal ultrasonic content
3. Digital is just ones and zeroes and is impervious to interference
4. Analogue sounds better than digital (LP vs. CD)
5. All amps (or DACs) sound the same
6. Valve (tube) amps are only enjoyable to listen to because of their added distortion (and transformers are bad)
7. Speaker cables all sound the same
8. 3-way speakers are better than 2-way (or, conversely, full-range speakers are better than 2-way speakers)
9. DSP can solve all response problems
10. Frequency response (and other specifications) will reliably tell us how a piece of equipment will sound
NOTE! The podcast also features two bonus myths as busted by Comeau.
Listen via SoundCloud, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, TuneIn or the embedded player below.
