We were talking about snake oil. Cables and expensive watches, status symbols and such.
I attended a class at the Crestron company in New York. They make control systems for just about anything in the audio/video/lighting world. It's good stuff, and they treated us like royalty. I was blown away by the cost of their stuff. A 14 inch video touch screen was 15,000 bucks! No wonder they could wine and dine us.
I began to understand how they do it, after installing a number of corporate conference rooms. The video projector was a big *** DLP, high end sound, Crestron control. Touch begin on the screen and the projector comes out of the ceiling, the curtains close, lights dim, etc. The conference table cost 120,000 bucks. It was a big, nice table, but I'm sure I could make one for about 10,000 and show a profit.
Point is, people who buy that stuff are not spending their own money. The more they spend, the more successful they appear. The more blue LEDs on the equipment rack, the better.
I attended a class at the Crestron company in New York. They make control systems for just about anything in the audio/video/lighting world. It's good stuff, and they treated us like royalty. I was blown away by the cost of their stuff. A 14 inch video touch screen was 15,000 bucks! No wonder they could wine and dine us.
I began to understand how they do it, after installing a number of corporate conference rooms. The video projector was a big *** DLP, high end sound, Crestron control. Touch begin on the screen and the projector comes out of the ceiling, the curtains close, lights dim, etc. The conference table cost 120,000 bucks. It was a big, nice table, but I'm sure I could make one for about 10,000 and show a profit.
Point is, people who buy that stuff are not spending their own money. The more they spend, the more successful they appear. The more blue LEDs on the equipment rack, the better.
Cloudbuster's discussion of that company, Crestron, seems typical of Big Business dealings these days....... Impress..... spend more........flaunt superficiality.
I've been in homes of big corp executives... utterly affluent.... downright decadent.
Nothing is spared.... it's all to impress.... for show.
Remote control this and that..endless possibilities.
Huge overdone furniture...... six sofas in one room!
Indoor Olympic size swimming pools with motorized covers and all the pool fancy treatments.
Including a motorized roof with adjustable sun louvers.
Ya know, all that crap would bore me.
I've been in homes of big corp executives... utterly affluent.... downright decadent.
Nothing is spared.... it's all to impress.... for show.
Remote control this and that..endless possibilities.
Huge overdone furniture...... six sofas in one room!
Indoor Olympic size swimming pools with motorized covers and all the pool fancy treatments.
Including a motorized roof with adjustable sun louvers.
Ya know, all that crap would bore me.
It is not about functionality, but about their image, like a Rolex effect.
Look, we are talking about Crestron company even here, on a diy audio forum, so the investment seems to worth.
I asked a girl a few years ago why she ruined her lips, injecting silicone, because she looks very ugly. She told me that it is not about appearance, but about image: she wants people around her to see that she can afford to pay cosmetic surgery.
However, I couldn't stop thinking about an improvement also in functionality, thinking about a better vacuum seal, but, in essence, I understood her point of view.
Instead, to use snake oil and not want to sell or show something to anyone, just for personal use, yes, that's a problem.
Look, we are talking about Crestron company even here, on a diy audio forum, so the investment seems to worth.
I asked a girl a few years ago why she ruined her lips, injecting silicone, because she looks very ugly. She told me that it is not about appearance, but about image: she wants people around her to see that she can afford to pay cosmetic surgery.
However, I couldn't stop thinking about an improvement also in functionality, thinking about a better vacuum seal, but, in essence, I understood her point of view.
Instead, to use snake oil and not want to sell or show something to anyone, just for personal use, yes, that's a problem.
For the Doctor in a residential install I worked on for over 2 years, It was a toy. He grew up without a TV, became this specialist bone doctor working on sports injuries. 10, 20k surgical procedures, 5 or 10 a week. We don't have to do the math to know the guy was loaded. His wife was overheard asking for a one million dollar diamond ring. When he objected, she said, "Why not? We can afford it." She was a southern Baptist, totally into God and her church. How bout a 100,000 ring, and a 900,000 donation to the church or a charity?
Crestron works well, highly reliable and custom programmable for any imaginable system. He had a pool, complete with motorized cover, and fiber optic color cycling display. Whole house audio, Crestron controlled lawn sprinkler, lighting, intercom system, home theater, you name it. The lighting control was so extensive, we had to get special equipment to make it work. Until then, the lights in the house would randomly dim or go out. There were 4 6 foot racks of gear and miles of wire in that house. Meanwhile, the house is slowly sinking 'cause it's built on river silt. The land has zero perk. A rain puddle remained until it evaporated. The support for the wall in the living room was down about an inch last time I saw it.
Oh, I forgot. The master bath had a flat screen TV mounted at one end of the bathtub, there were speakers in the shower, and 25 dollar a square foot Italian tiles on the floor, and the wife's 20 by 10 foot walk in in closet had over 100 pairs of shoes on the floor. She received 3 or 4 UPS packages each day. I got to hand it to her. The kids were well disciplined and incredibly considerate, given they had little privacy what with the construction addition to the house and our crew in there all the time.
You can’t discount the fact that (at least half the time) what your getting for the extra outlay is of superior quality........it’s up to you to decide if you want extravagance or not.
Speaking of tile $25/sq ft isn’t that crazy anymore......we spent $18/sq ft for the amber onyx going in our shower, given there’s $9/sq ft of the same material available but for the extra $$ you get select golden honey colored instead of snot brown mixed in!
Speaking of tile $25/sq ft isn’t that crazy anymore......we spent $18/sq ft for the amber onyx going in our shower, given there’s $9/sq ft of the same material available but for the extra $$ you get select golden honey colored instead of snot brown mixed in!
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I've just replacement my freesat box, it doesn't have a clock, the old one did. It now requires real effort to discover the time, somehow my lounge seems less cluttered and more relaxing.
More like 100,000 ring, 100,000 to house foundation modification and a 800,000 donation to the church or a charity.
I have a nice Omega watch from my 18th birthday (1977) sitting in a safe, it comes out for special occasions every few years. I stopped wearing a watch 25 years ago and don't have a mobile phone.
Ignorance is bliss
You nailed it.
Speaking of harmonics, things I've read indicated that even harmonic distortion can sound good, odd harmonics bad. We can reduce even harmonics with PP, but the odd order remains. My only disappointment with the Rane DSP: I wanted a transfer characteristic module. Draw the curve, simulate the sound of a tube.
My question: is it possible to create only even harmonics in some way, leaving out the odd order? I know many audiophiles might claim their tube amp sounds better for many reasons. I believe that a measure of the right kind of harmonic distortion is a good thing. Wish I could dial up any kind I wanted.
If I'm not mistaken: asymmetric distortion = even harmonics, symmetric = odd? That's probably an oversimplification, but it would explain at least in part why some prefer the sound of SE output over PP.
CB, if you're interested in DSP to mess with this stuff, you could use one of the little boards sold by Parts Express & others that runs the SigmaStudio software. Among many many other modules, this has a linear interpolator that uses an index table for its transfer function. You could calculate the function, or I suppose just enter it manually, for all kinds of wave-warping fun.
Here's a link to the Parts Express thingy (note that it's 2 stacked pieces), and here's the extra board that allows you to talk to it via USB to go beyond the very basic pre-programmed functions. The free SigmaStudio software can be DL'd here.
CB, if you're interested in DSP to mess with this stuff, you could use one of the little boards sold by Parts Express & others that runs the SigmaStudio software. Among many many other modules, this has a linear interpolator that uses an index table for its transfer function. You could calculate the function, or I suppose just enter it manually, for all kinds of wave-warping fun.
Here's a link to the Parts Express thingy (note that it's 2 stacked pieces), and here's the extra board that allows you to talk to it via USB to go beyond the very basic pre-programmed functions. The free SigmaStudio software can be DL'd here.
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Pass H2 http://www.firstwatt.com/pdf/art_h2.pdf
Has quite a following on here and a dedicated thread.
Edit: note this focusses on second harmonic mainly.
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Awesome! Looks like a good bit of capability for such a modest investment. Thanks for the links. I'm still looking at that, tried to download some data but the reader complained it didn't know the font. Silly, just use any font dangit.
Thanks! I didn't know what FIR was, and a search got me fir trees, first information report, falling in reverse, etc. When at last it occurred to me to include audio in the search, I landed on this very helpful site: The Complete FIR Filter Guide for Loudspeakers & Audio | Eclipse Audio
Blowing me away. I remember reading that the reason analog filters muck up the phase is that they don't know the future. FIR uses delays so, in a sense, they know what's coming down the pike. Great if latency isn't an issue, and for my application it isn't.
Brilliant. A simple solution. Dial up a little distortion. I have a friend who owns a pair of velodyne subs, said they are a servo mechanism. The position of the cone is compared to the input and a correction voltage is generated 1000 times a second. Very low distortion. They sounded dry to me. My modestly priced 12 inch in an 8 foot concrete tube sounded better. I'd love to put that jfet circuit on those speakers.
I knew that the harmonic series is linear on a frequency basis, 100,200,300, etc, but not on the musical scale, since our ears are logarithmic. Looking at it now, I can see how the lower even harmonics would sound better than odd. The second lands on the octave above the fundamental and the 4th 2 octaves above. Start on C, both 2nd and 4th are C. The third is a G, not so bad, but the 5th hits at E, a minor third above C, undesirable distortion musically. The higher ones get quite dissonant. Fortunately, these higher ones have less amplitude. The bitch about harmonic distortion is IM distortion. The sum and difference frequencies you get with the first few even harmonics will likely hit within the musical scale where the higher ones will get real ugly.
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Then the next question....
What "C" ?
A440 (pitch standard - Wikipedia)
Scientific pitch - Wikipedia
432Hz vs 440Hz on Guitar - YouTube
What "C" ?
A440 (pitch standard - Wikipedia)
Scientific pitch - Wikipedia
432Hz vs 440Hz on Guitar - YouTube
C2, 65.406 based on equal tempered scale, A=440.
The relationships hold exactly if you use a non tempered scale. Start with the fundamental, times 2, times 3, etc. When you get to the g, it would be a perfect fifth, but with equal temperment, the note on the piano won't be exact. If you do it with a string, subdividing one half, third, and so on, it will be exact. The error is small. It was done so you could play in any key and be close enough.
The relationships hold exactly if you use a non tempered scale. Start with the fundamental, times 2, times 3, etc. When you get to the g, it would be a perfect fifth, but with equal temperment, the note on the piano won't be exact. If you do it with a string, subdividing one half, third, and so on, it will be exact. The error is small. It was done so you could play in any key and be close enough.
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