What's to say, audio is just as much a fashion and marketing driven industry as the automobile business.
Monster trucks are not interesting, but Ford is (hopefully was, as I total and utterly despise the make)
What the turntable and cartridge business is at current, is the result of decades of trends, marketing, not merely technically driven.
Fine example is the LP12, and the Troika, imho.
(I do boats, and guns, and anything else with a potential to kill. Goosfraba)
Owning a few custom guns and shooting in some 1,000 yard comps it is less subjective than audio. Who has the smallest measured group at the distance wins. If you remove the shooter you tend to find current state of the art. And some days the $600 beats the $6000. But cryo treated hand lapped barrels and coated hand trimmed bullets are still fun stuff. I will have to try a green marker on my plane propeller though.
The un-explored world of stogies! You pocket slide ruler-ites are missing out! Get with it- Ding Dong!
My baby was reviewed in TONEAudio issue #54 TONEAudio MAGAZINE | The e-journal of analog and digital sound
My boss is a nationally ranked target shooter- all of his guns are customized to the nth degree. I handled one of them and was duly impressed, but in my case, I'm the limitation, not the tool. Still, if someone gifted me one of his $15k pistols...
Two weeks ago I repaired a Dual 1219 (it has one of the best platters I’ve seen).
Compared to a Wurlizer, it was a simple construction.
George
Attachments
Yes, I'd say that is an excellent review to get, even if the reviewer gets RIAA EQ backwards.
Thanks. I told them about the RIAA being backwards when I read the pre-release copy. RIAA - details schmetails!
None of readers seem to care as evidenced by the following onslaught in demand Lounge is goin through.
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Let's call it the Bremner syndrome. BILLY BREMNER - LOUD MUSIC IN CARS. - YouTube
Believed to be caused by an often occurring tandem fascination with playable status symbols which had not yet reached technical maturity by the time most subjects were young.
Can lead to coincidental symptoms of depression on the realization that further improvements will only be incremental and may be largely irrelevant.
That's exactly wha it was for their audio stuff:-
Panasonic was the Toyota
Technics the Lexus
They decided some time in the 90's to drop the Technics brand because the must have worked out it was no more valuable than the Panasonic brand- and their focus was clearly on TV and consumer white goods etc.
I guess they weren't making money with Technics either.
Their TV activity has turned out to be a disaster for them - they completely missed the LED trick. I went to an industry show there in 2008 or 2009. All the Taiwanese panel manufacturers (AUO, CMO etc ) were showing working panels at 3-5 mm (yes mm) thick while Sharp, Pana, Sony had 5-8 cm TVs on display. About 18 months later Samsung launched their LED TV. I gave my Sharp to a community center and own a Samsung. How the mighty have fallen.
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Now, what would be interesting to do is some testing of double blind testing in audio; the ol', experiment is the experiment trick - like the getting people to zap badly performing subjects one.
As an example, do a nominal AB test between two slightly 'differing' tracks, prime the subjects with the idea that the variations are very subtle, so many repetitions may be required to pick something. The hook is that B in fact is slowly made more and more different each time it's heard, only very slightly each time, so that it would be extremely hard to pick even if you knew what was happening. By the end the A and B are screamingly, obviously different.
The real test is obviously when, and if, the penny ever drops for the subject - is there a variation between subjectivists and objectivists, etc ...
Nothing ever changes blind testing = ABX and nothing else, like a broken record. We have to let you know what you are listening to "for proper context", after all you and your associates integrity is beyond reproach. How silly for us to question this.
Ivor let the truth slip in, how unfortunate we won't let that happen again.
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And my professional opinion is that you, Scott, do not understand the differences in phono cartridges as well as you might think. That goes for a number of others here, also.
IF you had not shown your 'limitations' by stating that there was no audible differences between the two sides of the record, I would have NOT found that out.
IF you had not shown your 'limitations' by stating that there was no audible differences between the two sides of the record, I would have NOT found that out.
Had you even considered the possibility that you're mistaken? You certainly were clear that you haven't done any ears-only testing of this assertion, and you've made no secret about your firmly held preconceptions about digital technology.
Of interest, finally bite the bullet and listened to the infamous Lullaby plus Sousa band tracks - what a ridiculous test! It would be impossible to pick the fudged track unless one spent days training yourself to pick the one, on the highest possible quality playback setup.
By using a primary track with huge reverb mixed in, you're guaranteeing that masking will completely overwhelm the lower level signal - using Audacity, selecting short segments in the quietest portions of the primary waveform, and running on continuous repeat, muting and unmuting the A, B, or difference it's easy to see the absurdity of using this: the tonal character of the reverb of the lullaby beautifully blends with the the band's "sound", except it's much louder - it was always an impossible task ...
By using a primary track with huge reverb mixed in, you're guaranteeing that masking will completely overwhelm the lower level signal - using Audacity, selecting short segments in the quietest portions of the primary waveform, and running on continuous repeat, muting and unmuting the A, B, or difference it's easy to see the absurdity of using this: the tonal character of the reverb of the lullaby beautifully blends with the the band's "sound", except it's much louder - it was always an impossible task ...
So propose something more relevant. Your point is that it would never be possible to hear the Sousa band with the reverb tail. In essence your saying that content with reverb from a real space (or synthesized) will mask any nasty's at -60 dB (or .1%). Perhaps we can make a track that determines what ratio is relevant with a really quiet background. How quiet should your background be? An ambient noise level of less than 20 dBA is really rare in even very good recording environments. Here are some references- http://www.nonoise.org/library/household/ It seems the loudest noise source in their list (louder than a circular saw) is a stereo system.
In terms of household noises, some things can be very surprising. Take a household smoke alarm - I don't know how this compares with units in other countries - it's rated at "only" 85dBA, but you wouldn't say that when you hear it! Powered by a trivial battery, zero speaker, it regularly takes off when the toast is overdone, and the sound is absolutely piercing, bites into your eardrums like no high end speaker systems driven by enormous power amps ever seem to be able to do.
So, what's going on here ...?
So, what's going on here ...?
Moving forward, I've got hold of a nice little distortion effects plug-in for Audacity, which allows me to specify the transformation function by B-spline waveshaping - extremely flexible. This is the sort of thing that can probably replicate just about any real-world behaviour you can think of - should have a lot of potential ...
Years ago I sat through a car audio demo using a pair of A7's showing that 20% THD was not audible. All I remember was the obnoxious noise that passed for music in the demo.
There are several issue that should not get conflated too easily. First, audibility of distortion. Second audibility of artifacts (by this I mean unrelated noises). And one other thing to explore is sensitivity to wow, flutter and other timing issues. I would also through in frequency reponse.
Actually a CD/high res file with varying levels of "impairments" could be a product. I'm sure many here would really like to know how sensitive to these impairments they are.
There are several issue that should not get conflated too easily. First, audibility of distortion. Second audibility of artifacts (by this I mean unrelated noises). And one other thing to explore is sensitivity to wow, flutter and other timing issues. I would also through in frequency reponse.
Actually a CD/high res file with varying levels of "impairments" could be a product. I'm sure many here would really like to know how sensitive to these impairments they are.
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