Whats the problem with crystals..+ cats whisker ..we have communication. Whooooweee zzzzz...DAHHH..DAHH..DA..DA ..DAA..da da...Ping Da,,da..da..Radio equadore here...SW...
World service....welcome to a night of weeeeee..woooooo and....weeee..zzzz night.....ssssssss tomorrow...
Sounds like the start up of HAL 9000 ...
Will I dream<<<<all intelligent beings dream ..so you have no chance HAL..
perhaps if linked to a ZX81...Regards
M. Gregg
The ZX81 had a crystal and Sinclair could see into the future...
We know because he saw the future of transport the C5..
Regards
M. Gregg
Many thanks for lots of useful contributions. I've been reading and remembering stuff read long ago.
Although there is a variety of meanings attached to the idea of zen audio, these mostly are not differences of opinion, but rather emphasise different aspects of the same overview.
Americans seem to have a much closer affinity to ideas from Zen than Europeans. My exposure to modern usage was almost entirely from the USA. A matter of foreign engagement I suppose. Woven into a range of literature and film, from Kerouac to the Karate Kid. All a bit Disney, if you don't mind me saying so.
One aspect that I hadn't considered is that although Zen is a social point of view, it appears to be an intensely private experience, at least in its usage as applied to audio. There is an emphasis on the individual experience of "just right", as being the unity of the objective and subjective. This unity is clearly problematic, as witnessed by the perennial "sound quality vs measurements" thread. "zen audio" should surely not only resolve that dichotomy, but reveal it as the source of the dynamic that drives audio technology through time.
The projection of an idea of "simple", from a state of mind to an actual physical circuit, expected to perform better as a result, seems fanciful, by the way.
A more clearly secular term would be more comfortable for me. Applying the word to consumer devices seems disrespectful. Just a personal problem, maybe.
Briefly, to get from zen audio to where I want to be, there are a just a couple of logical transpositions, each from one domain to its opposite:
First, to get to dialectical audio, project zen audio from the individual to the social domain. For the dialectical idealist, everything is a product of the social mind, or "weltgeist". Considering music is a social endeavour, a social concept of its distribution is appropriate. DIY audio isn't just for your experience or mine: we're doing this for world history.
Next, to get to dialectical materialist audio, switch from the primacy of the listener to the primacy of music; from the perception to the material itself. DIY audio has to be equally right for us and for the music, but we are the secondary consideration. The music comes first, not our experience of it.
Simple
To finish, here's a bit of Hegel, who was a contemporary of Ampere, just before Lenz, and who died just as Maxwell was born. Pretty much all of the ideas of "zen audio" that have cropped up in this thread are reflected here:
"Formerly men had a heaven adorned with a vast wealth of thoughts and imagery. The meaning of all that is, hung on the thread of light by which it was linked to that heaven. Instead of dwelling on this world's presence, men looked beyond it, following this thread to an other-worldly presence, so to speak. The eye of the Spirit had to be forcibly turned and held fast to the things of this world; and it has taken a long time before the lucidity which only heavenly things used to have could penetrate the dullness and confusion in which the sense of worldly things was enveloped, and so make attention to the here and now as such, attention to what has been called 'experience', an interesting and valid enterprise. Now we seem to need just the opposite: sense is so fast rooted in earthly things that it requires just as much force to raise it. The Spirit shows itself as so impoverished that, like a wanderer in the desert craving for a mere mouthful of water, it seems to crave for its refreshment only the bare feeling of the divine in general. By the little which now satisfies Spirit, we can measure the extent of its loss."
Although there is a variety of meanings attached to the idea of zen audio, these mostly are not differences of opinion, but rather emphasise different aspects of the same overview.
Americans seem to have a much closer affinity to ideas from Zen than Europeans. My exposure to modern usage was almost entirely from the USA. A matter of foreign engagement I suppose. Woven into a range of literature and film, from Kerouac to the Karate Kid. All a bit Disney, if you don't mind me saying so.
One aspect that I hadn't considered is that although Zen is a social point of view, it appears to be an intensely private experience, at least in its usage as applied to audio. There is an emphasis on the individual experience of "just right", as being the unity of the objective and subjective. This unity is clearly problematic, as witnessed by the perennial "sound quality vs measurements" thread. "zen audio" should surely not only resolve that dichotomy, but reveal it as the source of the dynamic that drives audio technology through time.
The projection of an idea of "simple", from a state of mind to an actual physical circuit, expected to perform better as a result, seems fanciful, by the way.
A more clearly secular term would be more comfortable for me. Applying the word to consumer devices seems disrespectful. Just a personal problem, maybe.
Briefly, to get from zen audio to where I want to be, there are a just a couple of logical transpositions, each from one domain to its opposite:
First, to get to dialectical audio, project zen audio from the individual to the social domain. For the dialectical idealist, everything is a product of the social mind, or "weltgeist". Considering music is a social endeavour, a social concept of its distribution is appropriate. DIY audio isn't just for your experience or mine: we're doing this for world history.
Next, to get to dialectical materialist audio, switch from the primacy of the listener to the primacy of music; from the perception to the material itself. DIY audio has to be equally right for us and for the music, but we are the secondary consideration. The music comes first, not our experience of it.
Simple
To finish, here's a bit of Hegel, who was a contemporary of Ampere, just before Lenz, and who died just as Maxwell was born. Pretty much all of the ideas of "zen audio" that have cropped up in this thread are reflected here:
"Formerly men had a heaven adorned with a vast wealth of thoughts and imagery. The meaning of all that is, hung on the thread of light by which it was linked to that heaven. Instead of dwelling on this world's presence, men looked beyond it, following this thread to an other-worldly presence, so to speak. The eye of the Spirit had to be forcibly turned and held fast to the things of this world; and it has taken a long time before the lucidity which only heavenly things used to have could penetrate the dullness and confusion in which the sense of worldly things was enveloped, and so make attention to the here and now as such, attention to what has been called 'experience', an interesting and valid enterprise. Now we seem to need just the opposite: sense is so fast rooted in earthly things that it requires just as much force to raise it. The Spirit shows itself as so impoverished that, like a wanderer in the desert craving for a mere mouthful of water, it seems to crave for its refreshment only the bare feeling of the divine in general. By the little which now satisfies Spirit, we can measure the extent of its loss."
Interesting reply, PlasticIsGood. What I'd particularly like to highlight in your post is the 'individual experience of "just right"' ... because this is the approach I use for assessing audio reproduction, I have no problem with the use of the word "Zen". I "know" when the sound is right, because there is nothing in what I hear at that point that I can label, that I have a desire to call, "wrong". Measurements are irrelevant then, the sound quality speaks for itself.
So, in that sense the dynamic of audio, DIY or otherwise, I believe, should be knowing what is possible and advancing with assurance in that "correct" direction.
Frank
There's measuring, and then there's measuring. Obviously one needs to monitor DC voltages, resistances, currents, AC mains for safety and other concerns. But in terms of ensuring that FR is spot on, and the levels of distortion, the ears can take you a long way.
Of course, if you were to assemble a very high power class D amp, of an original design, then I don't think you could get away with minimalistic measuring ...
I designed a chip amp, with regulated power supply incorporating my own ideas, using just simulation tools. Worked first time, with fine performance, and kept on working ...
Frank
Of course, if you were to assemble a very high power class D amp, of an original design, then I don't think you could get away with minimalistic measuring ...
I designed a chip amp, with regulated power supply incorporating my own ideas, using just simulation tools. Worked first time, with fine performance, and kept on working ...
Frank
Seems that is were our paths diverge, especially if one has prior knowledge of what one is listening to.
Non-blind listening tests tend to be less than useful as our ears (and I mean EVERYBODYs!) are very easily fooled or subconsciously overruled by eyes and knowledge.
On rereading what I posted, I'm not quite sure why I said "spot on", the intent of what I was trying to say is not conveyed by that expression ...
What I really meant to say, is that I have found that the smoothness or correctness of FR is not critical for achieving satisfactory sound -- there have been many examples, reports of sound reproducing setups having wildly inaccurate response curves that still yielded subjectively excellent sound for many people.
Which in my take of the audio universe I interpret as the ear/brain doing an excellent job of compensating for the less obnoxious deficiencies. So, yes, our hearing system is easily fooled, I agree, and that's exactly what we should optimise our systems to do, I believe: "fake" the sound so well that our brains are convinced by the illusion.
Frank
What I really meant to say, is that I have found that the smoothness or correctness of FR is not critical for achieving satisfactory sound -- there have been many examples, reports of sound reproducing setups having wildly inaccurate response curves that still yielded subjectively excellent sound for many people.
Which in my take of the audio universe I interpret as the ear/brain doing an excellent job of compensating for the less obnoxious deficiencies. So, yes, our hearing system is easily fooled, I agree, and that's exactly what we should optimise our systems to do, I believe: "fake" the sound so well that our brains are convinced by the illusion.
Frank
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I tend to rely on measurements for those - getting flat FR purely by ear for one of my DACs would be a jolly hit and miss affair. My ears can't tell me if my new DAC is really working to design specification (when its a fresh design that I've never listened to before) but measurements can and do. I prefer to save my ears for the stuff that I don't have reliable measurements for - like degrees of soundstage depth, sibilance and dynamics.
I haven't gone to the lengths of doing my own DAC, so that sounds perfectly reasonable. But, I can certainly hear whether the DAC has come to life, for want of a better phrase. Which in my book is down to subtle, damaging, low levels of distortion that digital is very prone to adding to the mix, the absence of which gives you soundstage and the other good stuff.
The 64 million dollar question is why it has proven so difficult up to now to get reliable measures of that type of misbehaviour ...
Frank
Yep, perfectly reasonable - measurements can't deliver anything in regards to 'life'
Yes, I have found soundstaging correlated with getting the earthing correct, which is a major source of low levels of digital distortion. Correct earthing in this case means not having noise currents superimposed on signal paths.
At the risk of re-igniting the 'religion' element, this rather reminds me of a remark G.K. Chesterton made about Christianity. I rather reckon here its not so much that its been found difficult, rather that nobody's tried as the 'digital' guys reckon its already pretty much perfect already and the 'analog' guys steer well clear because they consider digital irredeemable. This leaves only a narrow band of suspects inhabiting the middle ground...
IME the problem with digital is that it is sometimes too perfect/clean and editing has become far too easy.
This becomes more obvious if one is recording a band for example.
One can do a quick and dirty recording with mic bleed, the odd bum note and noise and the resulting recording is full of 'life' and vibe and one can record the same band/song having eliminated all mic bleed and noise as well as having edited out every bum note and the resulting recording will be dull and lifeless.
But then one can get similar problems with analogue recordings which have been over-produced so I'd say the problem is not the medium per se but what one does with it.
Unfortunately over-producing has become far too easy with the digital medium.
This becomes more obvious if one is recording a band for example.
One can do a quick and dirty recording with mic bleed, the odd bum note and noise and the resulting recording is full of 'life' and vibe and one can record the same band/song having eliminated all mic bleed and noise as well as having edited out every bum note and the resulting recording will be dull and lifeless.
But then one can get similar problems with analogue recordings which have been over-produced so I'd say the problem is not the medium per se but what one does with it.
Unfortunately over-producing has become far too easy with the digital medium.
Talking of narrow bands, digital reproduction does itself no favours: my 25 plus years of experience has served to emphasise that the quality of CD sound, in particular, follows an incredibly sharp peaked bell curve, of minimal width - whatever the correct term for such is. Below that peak the sound is washed out of detail, soft but boring, innocuous; on the other side of the heights the apparent level of detail is overwhelming, tone is aggressive, harsh, in your face.At the risk of re-igniting the 'religion' element, this rather reminds me of a remark G.K. Chesterton made about Christianity. I rather reckon here its not so much that its been found difficult, rather that nobody's tried as the 'digital' guys reckon its already pretty much perfect already and the 'analog' guys steer well clear because they consider digital irredeemable. This leaves only a narrow band of suspects inhabiting the middle ground...
Hitting the spot at the top of the curve is so, so hard, and so precarious once there, but the rewards are immense, the analogy of it being Guassian in character is spot on. I have found the "right" technique, for me, is to first get on the "far side" of the curve, plenty of the sharp, irritating quality -- which is just a type of distortion of course -- and then carefully, ever so carefully, move to the left, riding up the negative slope, till that magic peak emerges ...
Frank
I get your meaning. The washing out of detail I might describe in another way, that of severely restricting the palette of tonal colours. Or 'bleaching the tonality'. This though I reckon is because you're using those S-D type DACs - they sound soft and boring. Granted that S-D type DACs can have lower levels of false detail (which I associate with glitching).
OTOH going over to multibit dacs, the challenge is taming the results of the glitching on the following analog circuitry. When I originally started designing with TDA1545 I found the sound's sweetness very sensitive to the filtering prior to my (IC based) analog stage. A higher value of inductor before the IC produced a sweeter sound and I put this down to better glitch filtration because it wasn't a big enough valued inductor to eat into the audio band.
Call yourself a physicist?
Oppenheimer could quote the Bhagavad Gita. You haven't even read Pirsig.
You're not qualified to hold an opinion here.
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