For a combination of reasons I have bizarrely kept dropping in outright capabilities, the current "toy" is just a decent desktop PC, with a vaguely OK mainboard DAC feeding very reasonable Harman active PC speakers, the ones they used to ship with Dell computers. Earlier playthings were a TV driven by Blu-ray, a Phillips all-in-one HT system, robust DIY gainclones driving a variety of "proper" speakers, and the most sensible of all, 200W Perreaux amp - all driven by digital sources, including a very solid Yamaha CD player.
Edit: At a very rough guess I would probably get 100dB from the PC, earlier systems would stretch up to 110 or so.
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Yes, pretty good 3D can be obtained. No disagreement. But the question was about duplication of the original sound field - which is impossible. You may get something well focused, with 3D, space, everything - but very different from the experience you would get at the place where the sound was recorded. Definitely and without doubts. Mike placement, number of mikes, ratio of direct and reverb sound - you get completely new and different sound field and a new sound. You guys should be able to live with this fact.
Vinyl is a funny animal - it can do brilliantly ... or it can fall off a cliff! When I went to this specialist high end show in Sydney, about 12 years ago, they did the Coal Train track - and it was brilliant, absolutely superb! Yet, at the hifi show last year they ran the same track on roughly equivalent machinery - and it was stunningly mediocre, the most pedestrian, uninspiring nothing - just background twaddle ...
The experience at the place you recorded would vary as soon as you moved a few inches in that space - but the essence of what you were hearing wouldn't. And what you are replicating is that essence, the overall sense of being there - the vast majority of the audio you hear isn't even in the starting blocks for doing that, and as far as I'm concerned that's the real goal ...
You guys should be able to live with the fact that no one is insinuating live, we dont listen to live music, we listen to recordings of live music , the recorded space and time will always be different , a really good system dont require alcohol to reproduce a reasonable reproduction of such , putting you there and them here..
Big everything required ....
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Coal train requires large everything , Masakela and crew rocks , i usually dim the lights in the room when reproducing at realistic levels , worst is his sarafina production...
While I concur with you on process control, you cannot bin all semiconductors into the same category. Several branches of silicon are robust enough both in technology and process as to make it feasable to dice and build, then test the packaged product. However, to this day, that is not a realistic blanket statement.
Some discrete diode and transistor lines to this day entail the use of probe stations to sort by branch or sort by test the dice on the wafer. Use of lithography to bypass process variance is standard for linears, but doesn't always assure uniformity across the wafer for BV, IR, and VF. Some manus, Powerex for example, have developed sealed ampule processes such that consistency in VF can be obtained across a 100 mm diameter die, but they still rely on edge bevelling and polyimide passivation to control leakage and breakdown..breakdown within the bulk will cause "problems" .
Agreed. It depends on the type of chip and the application.
Absolutely. Bonsai and Scott discuss technologies where lithography (aka circuit design) is used to accommodate across the wafer parametric gradients. A good example was the LM 139 (IIRC), where cross connected transistors aided in matching.
Powerex ran the diffusion tubes horizontally, it was the sealed ampule that really helped their process uniformity.
jn
I'm always amazed at the choral work on the "Bambi" soundtrack (yes Disney).
This fits your description... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lord_What_a_Mornin'
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It appears that we are all finally agreeing that you can't reproduce a live event at home without live musicians and real instruments. Now for playing back a great recording what is your requirement? I for one want a speaker that can get loud when I want it to without going into massive distortion or even obvious distortion at a reasonable sound level. I want a speaker that when I move across the pair and up to 45 degrees off axis still sounds good and I can hear both channels even when that far off axis and they sound balanced. I want enough amplifier power to drive this without clipping at these levels and I want low distortion and a bottom end that will extend down into the 30 to 40hz range and get that kick in the belly bass, I can feel my cloths are moving on the low end and its punchy. I want a clear high end that I can hear the cymbal splash, I can tell a triangle from a high hat, I can hear the fingers sliding on a great guitar recording and I can hear the pedals on a great piano. When a female is singing it doesn't have terrible sibilance and a male voice is chesty, vocals sound like a real singer standing in the room. When you get to this point you can get crazy about the details but until you get close to this it will never sound even close to real, that is where I stand. This is what I truly want to give the consumer for their home from the speakers that I am working on. I don't want them to have to be six foot tall and take up the entire end of a room. I want people to want to sit down and listen to the tiny details recorded in the music. This is my end goal. I could care less about the measured jitter response or 0.0001 % distortion in the electronics if you can't approach this level of listening, it is all just wasted effort if you don't get sucked into the music!
Kalispera dvv
Nostalgia and the ritual as you say.
The sound can be warm and emotionally engaging (measurements spoil the fan).
With high efficiency speakers I loose my faith on SS.
For ~>100dB/2.83V/1m driver units, I swear to tubes (high Ro SS come close)
George
(Yes, it is ‘Yorgos’. My ID writes ‘Georgios’)
jn, this might work for low volume ( I.e a few million a year). It does not work on volumes of tens of billions a year. The process control aspect is not just about hitting the parametrics, but also yield. 95 % on 70 billion devices a year is a loss of 3.5 billion a year.
That's 3.5 million reels of 1 k pieces.
That's 3.5 million reels of 1 k pieces.
I guess we could ask is 1D better than 2D and is 3D better still? I dont mean the technology but the mulit-dimensional aspect. Even though 3D is still making progress, the best 3D seems more like real to me and has greater potential for even greater realism. I see (?) audio this way also.
We are DIY-ers and designers and some rep the High-End. Moving beyond two channels is long over due.... even though the cost is slightly higher -- the only part of this which kills everything in any market place... cost-- even sightly more. But so what -- this is not for the masses (yet?).
A lot of people here jam JC for 40 year old original insights and discussions yet seem to accept no progress beyond 2 channels - a 100+ year old step forward as just hunky dory to keep it right there. What's up with that? I don't get it.
THx- RNMarsh
We are DIY-ers and designers and some rep the High-End. Moving beyond two channels is long over due.... even though the cost is slightly higher -- the only part of this which kills everything in any market place... cost-- even sightly more. But so what -- this is not for the masses (yet?).
A lot of people here jam JC for 40 year old original insights and discussions yet seem to accept no progress beyond 2 channels - a 100+ year old step forward as just hunky dory to keep it right there. What's up with that? I don't get it.
THx- RNMarsh
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As I stated, it is dependent on the type of silicon being made. I also understand yield concerns.
For some strange reason, wafer probe station manufacturers have yet to go out of business.
Nor have semiconductor test equipment manu's.
jn
People usually choose some instrument like this for their argument, for the simple reason that delivering clean, deep bass notes is seen as the big dilemma,. However, if one goes past worrying about the action below 100Hz, then everything else is eminently possible ... I have a test CD of Peter Hurford playing the Sydney Opera House organ, a decently impressive instrument, and I have been very happy with the sound I've extracted when all was in order, on past systems. What is a key element of organ is the tremendous depth and complexity of the sound, when a great number of the ranks of pipes are activated, it is an intensely rich aural experience, like listening to an immense massed choir. I have taken this CD to various, other demo'ing situations, and resolving that complexity barely started to get a foothold ...
So, from my POV reproduced sound falls into the same category as live sound - rich, intense, immersive, completely filling your aural universe ... I am of course very familar with the comparatively mediocre version that most audio produces ...
Jeez, Frank ...
That's like saying that if you can get past the fact that he was mad, Adolf Hitler was really a great guy. Joseph Stalin a well.
"Below 100 Hz" is where it's at, Frank. That's what drives our music along, that's what gives it its impetus and its authority, its gravitas. That is probably the most significant difference between a decent speaker and some duinky little toy with parice not at all toy like, that' what gives speakers their big sound - or not.
True, just having the drivers in the right place doesn't mean much unto itself, remember the godawful Japanese speakrs of the early 70ies, they had 15 and 18" drivers and still their bass sounded shallow and light, as if it was paper thin. At the time, AR3A Improved didn't go too low, but it was supremely clean and well damped as far as it went. THAT'S what made it a legend.
And I completely agree with Pavel on peak output levels. To me, the ideal home power amp should be delivering nominally 28.3 Vrms, but still be capable of unclipped and grossly undistorted peaks of say 35 Vrms. And it should be able to do that into 8 Ohms down to 3 Ohms, actually down to 2 Ohms, but into 2 Ohms I'll concede that say 32V peak is all right. We don't need much power on an average basis, but we do need it for those transients.
My experience corresponds closely to what Pavel illustrated. Some time ago, a friend and I adjusted my speakers to deliver 95 dB SPL sine wave at 3 meters (10 ft) distance. Then we played music, mostly 70ies pop and rock, only to find that peaks easily hit 25 Vrms, roughly 78 W/8 Ohms. Remember, that's with speakers with a nominal sensitivity of 92 dB/2.83V/1m, in a smallish room, roughly 3x4 m, or 12 m sq., heigth 2.6 m (app. 40 ft sq). The honours for that test went to the vintage Marantz 170 DC power amp (restored about a year ago, adjusted about 3 months ago) driven by the Luxman C-03 preamp (also vintage, my sample made in 1992, as yet unrestored, it's next up on my work list).
Putting on Bach's organ works really pushed that amp hard. The speakers did surprisingly well, but the amp did struggle here and there, It lacked another 5 to 7 V of peak output capability to be really convincing, as convincing as it could be in comparison with the church organs of Ulm, Germany, a sound and acoustics which transfixed me and nailed me to the seat for 4 hours flat, I think without breathing more than twice. The Marantz develops 85W/8 Ohms nominally, and switching to the Karan, with its nominal output of 180W/8 Ohms, drove the point home.
Good luck to those trying that with tube SETs good for 12 or 20 W/8 Ohms.
Of course they are still in business. But the techniques used in low volume production don't cut it at high volume. No time to probe every device at 70 billion a year.
Sample probe at wafer level, accept, assemble, test with feedback loop to fab.
Almost all rejects and field failures are assembly related and overall quality is in low ppb level. As you can imagine, you don't measure yield in an environment like that but simply % rejects - it drives a different mind set.
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