I just caught up with your closed thread and now this one, and went over to the blog. But there comments don't seem to be enabled so I'm posting here.
I'm piqued by your comments about power supplies because that the closest you've got so far to the 'down-and-dirty' details. Details are what's mssing from your posts to date and I reckon that's why you get so many negative comments. Are you purposely omitting details because that's your 'secret sauce' ? If so then the jibes will continue I reckon.
I pretty much agree with your basic philosophy - electronics matters, a lot more than most people are prepared to admit. But then I would say that because I'm an EE, not an acoustics guy. Perhaps if I focussed on acoustics I'd come to the conclusion that that matters more than most people admit too.
So, on power supplies - what's the philosophy? Seems from one of your anecdotes the philosophy might be 'as many microfarads as you can possibly afford'. But that's not really helpful - why do you need so many uF? Can't the same effect be achieved with fewer but smarter-used caps? Is energy storage the only thing that matters?
Myself I recently improved my low cost actives with RCRC^2 filtering on the supplies. Surprised how much it improved the soundstage depth. I ended up reducing the total uF (previously there had been 2 * 10,000uF) but I think I roughly halved this amount but distributed it between 10 caps.
I'm piqued by your comments about power supplies because that the closest you've got so far to the 'down-and-dirty' details. Details are what's mssing from your posts to date and I reckon that's why you get so many negative comments. Are you purposely omitting details because that's your 'secret sauce' ? If so then the jibes will continue I reckon.
I pretty much agree with your basic philosophy - electronics matters, a lot more than most people are prepared to admit. But then I would say that because I'm an EE, not an acoustics guy. Perhaps if I focussed on acoustics I'd come to the conclusion that that matters more than most people admit too.
So, on power supplies - what's the philosophy? Seems from one of your anecdotes the philosophy might be 'as many microfarads as you can possibly afford'. But that's not really helpful - why do you need so many uF? Can't the same effect be achieved with fewer but smarter-used caps? Is energy storage the only thing that matters?
Myself I recently improved my low cost actives with RCRC^2 filtering on the supplies. Surprised how much it improved the soundstage depth. I ended up reducing the total uF (previously there had been 2 * 10,000uF) but I think I roughly halved this amount but distributed it between 10 caps.
Thanks for joining in, abraxalito, I was hoping to catch your attention!
Details have been missing, because that's the information that's in abundance everywhere on this forum, and elsewhere. By great numbers of people who are coming to the problems from all sorts of angles. By contrast, my 'secret sauce' is not giving up until you get the good sound, that every system has in it inherently the ability to get sound as good as the vast majority would be content with, but that's a hard concept to get across, it seems ...
My philosophy is that fundamentally the quality of all systems is slugged, crippled by those elements that haven't been paid enough attention to, and in alignment with yourself I've found that the areas that need focus way beyond anything else are the electronics/electricals.
And the power supply is a crucial area. And why I haven't put forward a 'fas42' approach is that there is no such animal. Some time ago I used the "more uF, less ESR, do it locally" approach - this worked well enough. Then I tried the very stiff, regulated technique, this was also a winner. And lastly, in the current listening system, I'm trying re-engineering some of the fundamentals of how conventional rectified supplies function -- this is now in IP territory. And, again, I'm happy with the results: to compare with my earliest tweaking methods, in the current setup I haven't touched or enhanced any of the standard smoothing cap's.
So, very different ways of getting there - the goal, of getting the power supply to behave itself is the issue, not how you do it! How I'll make the monitor's supplies get to a decent level will be a "depends", I need to gain greater understanding of the overall circuit and parts to decide on the best "way" ...
I used a variation of the RCRC^2 technique as part of the regulated setup, I agree it can pay great dividends if you fine tune the component sizes -- LTspice is your friend!!
Cheers,
Frank
Details have been missing, because that's the information that's in abundance everywhere on this forum, and elsewhere. By great numbers of people who are coming to the problems from all sorts of angles. By contrast, my 'secret sauce' is not giving up until you get the good sound, that every system has in it inherently the ability to get sound as good as the vast majority would be content with, but that's a hard concept to get across, it seems ...
My philosophy is that fundamentally the quality of all systems is slugged, crippled by those elements that haven't been paid enough attention to, and in alignment with yourself I've found that the areas that need focus way beyond anything else are the electronics/electricals.
And the power supply is a crucial area. And why I haven't put forward a 'fas42' approach is that there is no such animal. Some time ago I used the "more uF, less ESR, do it locally" approach - this worked well enough. Then I tried the very stiff, regulated technique, this was also a winner. And lastly, in the current listening system, I'm trying re-engineering some of the fundamentals of how conventional rectified supplies function -- this is now in IP territory. And, again, I'm happy with the results: to compare with my earliest tweaking methods, in the current setup I haven't touched or enhanced any of the standard smoothing cap's.
So, very different ways of getting there - the goal, of getting the power supply to behave itself is the issue, not how you do it! How I'll make the monitor's supplies get to a decent level will be a "depends", I need to gain greater understanding of the overall circuit and parts to decide on the best "way" ...
I used a variation of the RCRC^2 technique as part of the regulated setup, I agree it can pay great dividends if you fine tune the component sizes -- LTspice is your friend!!
Cheers,
Frank
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Your wish is my command - I saw you'd been over to my blog so I wanted to repay the compliment
However you won't have my attention for long because you've so far dodged my detailed questions, preferring to substitute your own...Nope, don't buy that argument for a second. This place is a desert for details, in general. People like to protect their 'IP' - whatever that means to them. There are notable exceptions of course who prove the rule.
By contrast, my 'secret sauce' is not giving up until you get the good sound, that every system has in it inherently the ability to get sound as good as the vast majority would be content with, but that's a hard concept to get across, it seems ...
Preaching to the choir here
Yes, in some sense I would agree that there's no 'one size fits all' approach - any approach is highly context-dependent. So then give us examples of what you've done in the past, why you did it and how it sounded ? Then what you took away from the experience for the next time? That's one aspect of what I mean by 'details'.
In what context? Chipamp or discrete ? 10W or 200W?
A winner in sound but probably not in complexity or price or efficiency? Tell us what the compromises were?
So what are you looking for when you simulate? Overall ripple reduction or improvement in output impedance? If so, over what frequencies have you found this to be important?
BTW, for anyone interested, I'm kicking the The silk purse project: a musical studio monitor ... thread along, as Part 2, in my blog. That seems to a nicer area to hang out ...
In other words people cant reply
Wrong! You said its because you wanted to make financial gains from your 'secret'
flogged-to-death horse sauce?
Every system has, with work and money, the ability to sound average? thats a very laudable goal
but that's a hard concept to get across, it seems ...
Nope you got it across. Its just hard for us to get across to you that the DIY community (not just this site) have known about it for years already
Also known as 'designed to a price' - again its been happening for decades and yes we knew already. Thats why we DIY our AUDIO
Do you even READ you own posts? You have to measure to see what the issue is and then design a solution specific to that problem, which in a crappy HTIAB and cheap active speakers is to return them for a refund and build something better than the original cost plus the time & wasted money you'd have spent buying and polishing a turd!
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This is as good a place as any to be more specific as to what my criteria for success, a highly nebulous word of course, is, because they are what guide my movements forward. It's also a place where I really need my <really irk some people mode on>.
As mentioned in an earlier post I had my OMG moment in audio many, many years ago: call it 25 years as a nice round number. Through trying various ideas I was making steady improvement in the quality of the reproduced sound, until one day, completely out of the blue, and totally unintended I achieved invisible speakers. And these were reasonable booktop models, B&W DM10s, heavily tweaked but otherwise nothing special.
People have various ideas on what is meant by this expression. In my case, to my ears it was complete: I was not able to locate the position of the speakers, or drivers, using audible clues only, no matter where I was standing. Or kneeling. At the time, it was amazing stuff, I was flabbergasted ...
But all fairy stories must end: the illusion, which of course is what it was, only lasted a short time, the sound faded back into normal hifi quality over a period of some minutes. But it wasn't an illusion in the sense that I had gone giddy for a moment of two
, because I was able to replicate that experience over and over again. At will. Over many months, whenever I felt like doing it.So what was the secret of making it happen? Firstly, everything had to be 100% warmed up, stable; at this time I was leaving everything running 24/7. And, the most crucial: switch off, power down everything in one go, leave for a few minutes or two for the cap's to discharge, then switch all back on again. And immediately listen. For 5 minutes I would get glorious sound, and then it would slowly degrade, revert back to normal system behaviour.
And that experience is what got me on the road, and keeps me going to this day: being able to maintain that optimum level of performance.
Pretty long part answer, I'll post this and answer the rest anon ...
terry's gonna have a field day now ...
Frank
Why I have done everything is chasing that quality of sound described in the previous post. If something helps me get closer to stabilising that behaviour it gets a tick. This whole journey is like a long distance detective novel for me: I know there is a solution because I've been privileged to experience the good outcome exposed on the last page, but it has been hard work, frustrating, trying to unravel how the plot all hangs together, leading to that conclusion
Discrete: a Perreaux 2150B, 200W plus
For a DIY chip amp of my own design: LM3875s. Yes, complex, did reasonable in the invisible stakes, and was well ahead of the Perreaux in terms of dynamics. I'm always chasing the illusion of a completely convincing soundstage, and these were still susceptible to interference effects damaging that.
The nighmare of audio circuits is that the good behaviour, output impedance of supplies, open loop gain, PSRR of opamps and other circuits, all starts to get shakey the higher the frequency of interest. Which is exactly where the human ear is most sensitive to distortion problems - the audio demons had it in for us humans!
So I am totally obsessed with eradicating high frequency glitches occurring for any reason in audio circuits. Clean, pure treble is only possible when waveforms which are meant to be DC, or only have low mains frequency harmonics impressed on them are in fact so ...
Frank
You didn't describe a quality of sound at all - rather the 'illusion' of soundstage from stereo sound (which is not how the original sound was propagated but rather how it was recorded and mixed) which should be fairly easy to replicate with a basic speaker and the right toe in and seat placement.
So in not answering abraxalito's question: 'So then give us examples of what you've done in the past, why you did it and how it sounded ? Then what you took away from the experience for the next time?'
The best you can give us is 'heavily tweaked' DM10s that did a magic trick that was easily replicated but didn't last very long
And you're putting this down to turning things on/off? No details of what 'heavily tweaked' means, amp, source, cables
, room description, speaker placement etc etc etcIn all seriousness you don't appear to:
be able to string a useful, coherent sentence together
stick to one coherent story all the way through
answer simple direct questions
give pertinent FACTS when asked repeatedly
understand the quality of sound as opposed to soundstage
understand from peoples posts that your vacuous ramblings are VERY frustrating and try to change
understand that almost all of what you are talking about has been done in some way or other
understand that you could receive lots of help and interest if you didn't act like some wannabe messiah here to save those that probably know better than you anyway
Until then your gonna be a lonely fella with mostly criticism, derision and laughter splashed across a few threads that are devoid of useful information and will ultimately be locked for your own safety and our sanity
The definition of insanity is 'doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results' -Albert Einstein You've suffered humiliation on another forum and its not going well here either. Do us and you a favour - Try something new for a change
You're just talking of the conventional sweet spot. I'm talking of the sweet spot being anywhere in the room, not just in some particular small area in a precise relationship with the speakers. Since very few people in the audio game seem to ever experience this, or if they do they don't fully explore its boundaries, it doesn't ring true that it can occur. But, rest assured, it can manifest, IF the quality of reproduction is sufficiently high
The speakers "heavily tweaked" means that the rubbish inner cabling was discarded, some DNM cable, the widely spaced conductors with grey insulation, I think it was, replaced it. All connections were hard wired, including through the terminations at the back. A home made stand made from sand filled concrete coupled the speakers directly to the concrete floor, using Blu-Tack. No big deal, nothing special by today's standards. No fiddling with the crossover components, apart from driving them heavily to condition the caps.So in not answering abraxalito's question: 'So then give us examples of what you've done in the past, why you did it and how it sounded ? Then what you took away from the experience for the next time?'
The best you can give us is 'heavily tweaked' DM10s that did a magic trick that was easily replicated but didn't last very long
No details of what 'heavily tweaked' means, amp, source, cables
The coherent story I'm telling is that I achieved success by being fussy, very fussy about every aspect I thought important. And constantly experimenting with trying various things, 100s of things over the years. And I'm still exploring, trying to understand the significance of effects. If I told you my biggest problem at the moment is cell and cordless phones, would that help -- probably not ... ?
Room acoustics, speaker placement, seating position has never played any part in this exercise; the key is to make the audio system completely impervious to anything happening around it. Think, someone just plugged a heavy duty arc welder into the same spur, in a socket in the next room, and is using it. Your job is to make the effect of that on your audio system completely inaudible, that's the sort of approach that will get one there ...
That's EXACTLY what I've always been saying, yet when I describe what can be achieved if a person does enough of these things, that are pertinent, are important to the particular system, then I'm ridiculed, abused. Like now ...
,Frank
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Pretty much the approach everyone follows, with different degrees of fussiness according to individual proclivities. The breakthroughs come when when we're prepared to pay close attention to the things we hereto thought were quite unimportant.
I'm sorry but due to the nature of sound itself, what you describe is not merely "difficult" but impossible. It is impossible to design a system that will sound equally good in any room.
IF you are giving just an exaggerated example, then ok, i agree. But you can't honestly expect that such a system may reasonably exist. What if the house is hit by lightning, frying everything in the vicinity?
I'd say that a system that "sounds right when in a reasonably prepared room" is a difficult enough goal which is also enough.
then I'm ridiculed, abused. Like now ...
Frank
I know the feeling. Try to remain detached. It is impossible to please everyone, it is ridiculously difficult to please the majority and, frankly, it is pointless. Since only a 1-5% of people know what they are talking about, aim to please those. (under the assumption that pleasing someone else besides yourself is amongst your goals)
You sir are a dyed in the wool certifiable lunatic if you think we'd believe that you ever achieved that - you appear to have no idea or understanding of acoustic lobing that DEFINES the sweet spot, room interaction, resonent modes etc etc etc that could be measured and PROVE that it never happened. ESPECIALLY with a pair of speakers that are not 'heavily tweaked' by any measure - you didn't even touch the freaking crossover!!!!!!!!!
You are bordering on idiocy now. Did you know that in an anechoic chamber most people don't recognise their own voice? Room acoustics ALWAYS have a part to play and they are easier to hear than someone using an arc welder next door. The only way to 'make the audio system completely impervious to anything happening around it' is battery power and LOTS of time spent sorting your room and the speakers for that room. Why the hell do you think speakers sound different in corners to free space?
That's EXACTLY what I've always been saying, yet when I describe what can be achieved if a person does enough of these things, that are pertinent, are important to the particular system, then I'm ridiculed, abused. Like now ...
Its not called being ridiculed Frank. Its being called out and so far you've not had the decency address issues anyone has had with your 'claims'. You opened your strange view of the world up to us - there was no letter sent requesting your attendance. You wont listen to the majority but insist we listen to you - how reasonable is that? You got spat out from one forum and your on the same train now, of your own making. You get to choose the destination.
The definition of insanity is 'doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results' -Albert Einstein Do us and you a favour - Try something new for a change - LISTEN
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Interesting..
I guess there is no effect from source..LP, CD, Tape, DVD, all are equal?
The recording type or compression also have no effect??
The source impedance also has no effect?
The room acoustics are the same everywhere?
The mains voltage never dips or changes?
The charge time of the PSU after a transient and ESR have an effect?
The inductance of the components and ripple of supply and RFI content have an effect?
It sounds like this..
To not hear any effect in different parts of a room? Then you were not producing sound from a dual point source..IE it was MONO..
To also not hear an effect the system would be masked, vield..it might sound great? (to some)
Regards
M. Gregg
I guess there is no effect from source..LP, CD, Tape, DVD, all are equal?
The recording type or compression also have no effect??
The source impedance also has no effect?
The room acoustics are the same everywhere?
The mains voltage never dips or changes?
The charge time of the PSU after a transient and ESR have an effect?
The inductance of the components and ripple of supply and RFI content have an effect?
It sounds like this..
To not hear any effect in different parts of a room? Then you were not producing sound from a dual point source..IE it was MONO..
To also not hear an effect the system would be masked, vield..it might sound great?
(to some)Regards
M. Gregg
Precisely. A succinct summary of my approach.
Conventional audio thinking always says that, but that has not been my experience. A live musical instrument always sounds like itself, irrespective of where it's being played. Take a saxophone, play it in the bathroom, on the back porch, out on the street, in the living room. It never sounds anything but itself, it never sounds "wrong". So should an audio system ...
I'm only referring to the audible quality not being affected by other, subversive electrical activity. I've spent the last year or so aiming, and to a fair degree succeeding, in stopping muck coming through the mains cord causing problems. Variations on the mains filter solution, in other words.
Thanks very much for those good thoughts ...!
The proof's in the pudding. It happens for me, and it has happened for others. Just recently I tuned into some of the ideas of psychoacoustics, which explains a great deal of why it is possible. In simple terms, if you give the ear/brain enough ammunition, enough undistorted fine detail, then the mind will generate a convincing illusion of the audio event, which supplants your "knowledge" that it can't be real. So the trick is to get past the barrier of not having sufficient quality for the switch to click in your brain.
In some ways it's like the 4 minute mile. It seemed an unachievable challenge, many were convinced it was physically impossible. But once the first person broke through, suddenly eveyone could do, and a few years later people wondered what all the fuss was about ...
These are precisly the things I worry about ...
Strong imaging is not the goal, rather soundstaging, or better again, the creation of a soundscape. The texture, the dynamics of the sound permeates the room, and the natural acoustics of the listening area complements that sound.
Frank
first of all, the musical instrument sound is the reference. a hifi is supposed to replicate that.
let's start from the point that no recording can actually capture what is going on live. i play the electric, and there is no way any hifi can reproduce what is going on when i have a full stack of 12" celestions driven by a massive 200W blackstar (i had the pleasure to play on such a thing, even if for a short time only). I can set off alarms of parked cars in the streets. I can strip paint off the walls. To replicate this would require sacrificing whatever hifi drivers you possess. And still you wouldn't even approach the cosmogenesis that is a baritone 8 string guitar through that amp/cab combo.
so you can't replicate the live instrument. at best, you can get a simulation of it.
Second, you are wrong in your assumption that an instrument sounds the same anywhere. There is a reason an orchestra plays in a specially treated room. A different reason forces me to play in a prepared studio when i record my guitar. because if i don't you won't hear nothing when i play.
So to recap, with all due respect to your persistence and experience: an instrument does sound different when it moves around in a room (in fact, this is an effect violinists use to color their sound, orientating the violin in certain angles: the sound that reaches the audience changes slightly) because the room affects it... however, you do not want that change to happen when you are listening a recording. I hope this makes sense
However, i want to say that your idea of taking the space around the speakers out of the equation is an idea i've had for quite some time. Might talk about it later on. goodnight from me!
No Frank. If that was your approach you'd be a lot more amenable to those trying to help YOU understand things that YOU think 'quite unimportant'....
If you can't hear the different between a sax being played in the bathroom and on the street then you are really not in a position to be telling us 'conventional' wisdom is wrong. It always sounds like a sax but it doesn't sound the same in each location.
In which case can you post a picture of the pudding? We've heard a lot about the pudding but not had any proof. Around here we like proof with our pudding
You read up on psychoacoustics and thats what you got - that it backs you up? Please explain how the Deutsch's "scale illusion", the Franssen effect, the glissando illusion, the Haas effect, the Levitin effect, the octave illusion, the precedence effect, the tritone paradox in any way back up your drivel?
Once again Frank you've been called out.........
It would help a lot if you stopped using missapplied analogies. Roger Bannister ran the sub 4min mile because of the gains he made with a better training program under Franz Stampfl. The time is broken often now because of better equipment, diet and these are full time professional athletes with buckets of national and corporate sponsorship.
Oh so NOW the listen area has 'natural acoustics' - I thought that just a few posts back it was 'conventional audio thinking.... but that has not been [your] experience'
Frank a soundstage as the world of HIFI knows it is a broad projection of sound that places individual instruments/performers in specific places. This is almost entirely down to the recording method and the mixing used. Strong imaging is part of the recording and can't be dragged out of disc if it wasn't mixed that way.
Do me a favour Frank, as I'm the only one listening. Answer (and I mean ANSWER) what you can of the above and then in one single sentence, tells us what you actually want to achieve. Thats one sentence with no analogies, bluster or bull****, explaining simply what you want to achieve.
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He wants to design a complete hifi system that can perform optimally without being affected by its surroundings.
Wow Frank you said that without moving your keyboard!
And for those who might not have read all of Franks posts & who answer questions posed for other people, Frank claims he has already done that and even now with a HTIAB, can achieve a realistic performance sitting wherever he pleases and still hearing the sound - not musicians within the recording but the sound.......
The next step to greatness was a cheap pair of active monitors that would modified to within an inch of their lives to force them to give a 'soundscape' - (Franks previously 'heavily modified' amazing speakers receive no more than a stand and a wire change. No crossover analysis and redesign, just wire & stands) But that thread was closed by a Mod because it was full of nebulous & ponderous ramblings which ultimately have no factual basis and was going nowhere.
Next with the help of Roger Bannister and no understanding psychoacoustics Frank would have us believe that...
"if you give the ear/brain enough ammunition, enough undistorted fine detail, then the mind will generate a convincing illusion of the audio event, which supplants your "knowledge" that it can't be real. So the trick is to get past the barrier of not having sufficient quality for the switch to click in your brain"
How Franks brain might have received that level of undistorted fine detail from HTIAB or any of the systems from his past is part of the 'secret' which was, by the way, once to be a source of income. The fact that your mind has to 'generate a convincing illusion' speaks more of drug use, a mental episode or dreaming than actuality as the speakers, amp, source etc are apparently are now not important (so why tweak anything?) and so any cheap cr@p will do. The barrier of not having sufficient quality again brings up the question of how a HTIAB could do this with the cheap 3inch full range driver and piezo tweeter?
Having invoked the gods of psychoacoustics Franks appears to believe that your brain can be fooled into believing that 'soundscape' can be conjured up with nothing more than the right attitude. However Frank himself can't tell the difference between a sax being played in the bathroom vs. in the open air & doesn't understand how echos work, so how he is able to glean 'enough undistorted fine detail' from his system, (even if it were able to produce it) is beyond the realms of human understanding - but not Franks, and thats the glorious gift he wishes to bestow on mankind....
Its all wonderfully circular and by steadfastly ignoring any number of facts that might get in the way Frank has yet to be 'proven' wrong
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I can understand your confusion if you name is also Frank but I think not. I asked Frank a very direct question. Your reply showed you had not read all Franks threads and were not aware of Franks history of hot air.
Frank has yet to answer a single question posed in response to his ramblings. If you cant hack someone being called out about that maybe you should join club penguin. He posted on an open forum so how about enough butting in and telling me what to do? Lets see if Frank can deliver anything......
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