Seeing how virtually the whole of human history we have relied totally on such, and, society has managed to survive and get somewhere, including where we are now, using such - indicates that it's not totally disposable,
. I heard a strange rumour the other day, that the legal system still depends on this to some degree - silly people!!Poor Pano has actually heard a 'small' speaker sound 'big' - the unlucky chap had better head off to a shrink or two, to get his ideas straightened out, it seems ...
The strange thing is that some people 'believe' we should listen to 'experts', who tell us how the world works - and they're the same ones who pour vast amounts of scorn upon those who go along like sheep when some audio demo and authorative promoter convinces them of some audible behaviour. I guess we'll just have to hand out some nice labels to pin on shirt pockets - "You can believe this person ...", and "You can't believe this person!!" ... there, that should make it a lot easier for everyone ...
Experience is when you sit in front of the best of the the best sort of those little speakers with best of the best of those power amps in the world and make your entire living mixing for 30 years mixing for people so their records will sound as great as possible when someone like you fas42, has passion enough and is blessed enough, to have similar if not equally good gear! experience with this is all I do have! This is why I know the difference when I hear horns.
That's OK, Absconditus, I'm pushing a Political Incorrect line here, so I'm bound to get some reverse thrust ...
The thing is, this is what particularly interests me in audio: what stops conventional hifi, most of the time, sounding any better than, well ... 'hifi'. One factor, as peteleoni points out, is that frequently the sound subjectively compresses as the volume rises, and my interest has been to understand what's causing that. Most people immediately point the finger at the speakers, and, yes, it can be 'solved' by using very efficient speakers. However, I chose to go down the electronics route, and have said to myself, many times, "Well, that's bloody amazing! Who would have thought that that tiny/crappy speaker could produce so much clean, high volume sound!!"
I'm afraid experience trumps theory, research every time - in my book ...
That's one problem with this thread, we need a hard definition of "Golden Ears."
But I think the definition you're using inevitably involves a lack of understanding behind the science and engineering of audio reproduction. This inevitably results in some "cargo cult science" where various adjectives and terms such as PRAT are used to describe the sounds and/or the feelings they evoke.
I'm once again reminded of that guy discussing and comparing different speaker cables on another forum (I recall writing about this incident before). Let me see if I can put into exact words what was bothering me. He said his day job was a scientist of some type, so he said words to the effect that "I know what I'm doing." So I asked him about cable characteristics - resistance, inductance, etc. He didn't have a meter and didn't know anything about electrical engineering anyway. If I had posted about "experiments" in HIS field without doing the least bit of studying the basics of his field, he would have blasted the hell out of me, and rightfully so.
But no, he was ignoring the works of Volta, Faraday, Kirchhoff, and others who figured out these things over the last several hundred years.
Compression can be caused by symmetric peak clipping, or odd-order distortion just below clipping. Odd-order is mostly compressive rather than expansive. Clipping generates lots of distortion. It is conceivable that a small speaker will not reproduce the extra distortion components as well as a bigger better speaker. Thus if you intend to go loud and have clipping it might be best to use a small cheap speaker - provided it is robust enough to survive.
This is not an argument in favour of small cheap speakers - including those in TV sets from Aldi! It is an argument in favour of avoiding excessive clipping.
This is not an argument in favour of small cheap speakers - including those in TV sets from Aldi! It is an argument in favour of avoiding excessive clipping.
The compression being discussed here, at least as far as I'm concerned, manifests as tonal change as the volume is altered, upwards ... and IME occurs primarily because the power supply is insufficient. My first 'big boy' amplifier nearly 30 years ago gave me good treble, up to a point - at a certain precise volume, for a certain recording, the clarity of the treble started to degrade and progressively got worse the higher the volume. Now, this was well short of clipping - I had other recordings which could be pushed to much higher volumes without obvious symptoms, because the spectrum content didn't emphasise this area. Having established that this was occurring, I took this recording around to audio dealers at the time and played it on their 'better' systems - and was greatly bemused when every one of them was decidely worse in this key area.
This started me very strongly into the area of improving power supply cleanness, and related electronic areas, and as a result I was able to get that recording to behave itself, to as loud as was reasonable, for enjoyment in listening. This is key: the ability to wind the volume hard up and down, and not have tonal changes - a recent exercise auditioning standard pro active monitors was laughable, most were gutless wonders, completely unable to reach decent SPLs - they compressed, and collapsed into little boxes of spitty sound when the pressure was on ...
This started me very strongly into the area of improving power supply cleanness, and related electronic areas, and as a result I was able to get that recording to behave itself, to as loud as was reasonable, for enjoyment in listening. This is key: the ability to wind the volume hard up and down, and not have tonal changes - a recent exercise auditioning standard pro active monitors was laughable, most were gutless wonders, completely unable to reach decent SPLs - they compressed, and collapsed into little boxes of spitty sound when the pressure was on ...
OK, so not compression. Why is it that in audio it is considered acceptable to completely redefine the meanings of words?
Possibly intermodulation? Regarding power supplies you would need to describe what you mean by 'insufficient' and 'cleanness' - these are vague terms which don't carry much engineering content.
You do need to bear in mind that your continual criticism of 'good' systems and your preference for 'cheap' systems may tell us more about your taste in sound than anything else.
Possibly intermodulation? Regarding power supplies you would need to describe what you mean by 'insufficient' and 'cleanness' - these are vague terms which don't carry much engineering content.
You do need to bear in mind that your continual criticism of 'good' systems and your preference for 'cheap' systems may tell us more about your taste in sound than anything else.
Audio compression is usually the term applied when the dynamic range is reduced, deliberately or otherwise. Subjectively, this is what appears to happen - certain sounds won't go 'louder', beyond a certain point.
Power supplies are in theory very straighforward - they aim to deliver DC voltages. But the reality is very different - they are modulated severely by their input, and the nature of their load - you can 'listen' to a power supply when working under load, and the lesser ones are not very pretty ...
A 'good' system should deliver, especially if expensive - I have mentioned many times coming across ones that perform well, this just highlights the failings of those that don't.
I don't 'prefer' cheap systems, I'm pointing out that they can do remarkably well if the right approaches are taken - they measure extremely well in the value for money stakes. And they do have their limitations - I've pointed out often that they usually have to be exercised heavily for some time to give of their best; an expensive, 'good' system should reach optimum in a matter of minutes from switch-on, that's the sort of thing a person spending that sort of money has the right to expect ...
Power supplies are in theory very straighforward - they aim to deliver DC voltages. But the reality is very different - they are modulated severely by their input, and the nature of their load - you can 'listen' to a power supply when working under load, and the lesser ones are not very pretty ...
A 'good' system should deliver, especially if expensive - I have mentioned many times coming across ones that perform well, this just highlights the failings of those that don't.
I don't 'prefer' cheap systems, I'm pointing out that they can do remarkably well if the right approaches are taken - they measure extremely well in the value for money stakes. And they do have their limitations - I've pointed out often that they usually have to be exercised heavily for some time to give of their best; an expensive, 'good' system should reach optimum in a matter of minutes from switch-on, that's the sort of thing a person spending that sort of money has the right to expect ...
So now we are back to clipping again. Remember that soft clipping will simply limit the volume increase, while hard clipping will add lots of distortion which will make it sound superficially louder. Hence wanting louder sound beyond the clipping point could simply be a request for hard clipping.fas42 said:
Sometimes I wonder why it seems that there is no geniuses in this audio engineering field (the supposed to be experts seem to have not enough idea of what they are supposed to). But I think the answer is because you need both knowledge and ears to do well. And surprisingly some just think that golden ear thing just don't exist.
In solid state forum some had just argued about the importance of designing amp without clipping. Well, in my experience you cannot always achieve your goal and have the amp to soft clip. In order to achieve certain performance (at low volume) you need to have the amp to hard clip at high volume. Of course, there is no intention to get into this clipping condition! It is just that you cannot achieve your performance goal at low volume if you design the amp to not clip at high volume (output voltage).
I'm not going to discuss what performance that I strive to achieve in amp design. I'm not an expert, but I prefer to listen to my own amp than from so called experts.
"Sonic" or "dynamic" is an important factor for sound system to be enjoyable. Of course, those are just "audiophile" words that do not comply with engineer's dictionary. Those are just words from those who can perceive sound. What physical parameters relate to the words, that's not their job to explain.
"Transconductance", is one technical term that relates to those words above. "Speaker control" relates to the same thing. Unfortunately, the theoretical damping factor is NOT the physical parameter really responsible for this speaker control. How do I know? Because I can vary amplifier's DF and it doesn't correlate to the perceived speaker control.
So the point of my post is, I believe that "wanting louder sound beyond the clipping point" could not simply be a request for hard clipping but a request for a better control of the speaker, which often doesn't happen with certain amps especially when it is designed for no clipping.
There are few geniuses in any field. There are genuine experts in most fields; they rarely claim to be experts but prefer to leave it to others to recognise their skills. Interestingly, experts in one field are often best recognised by experts in other fields; non-experts (in any field) can be quite bad at recognising genuine expertise.Jay said:
Does it?Jay said:
Does it?
Cable resistance affects damping too. I note you switch between technical (DF) and perception ("perceived speaker control"). I assume that means no measurements? If not DF, what physical parameter do you postulate?
What is your own finding?
Are you now a cable believer too?
Well, resistance is the only thing experts can think of. Audiophiles speculate with skin effect etc. At least they have imagination (to explain what they can perceive) heheI'm not going to postulate anything here. There are many measurable "parameters" out there. What everyone needs to know is how each parameter affect sound perception.
No, it is imaginative - in the sense of imagining an alternative world with different laws of physics. An expensive alternative to sci-fi? For the price of an audiophile cable you could buy quite a lot of books. Both involve fiction, but in the case of books the fiction is the product; for cables the fiction is in the marketing.
As far as I'm aware, 'soft clipping' is just a form of compression - there are discussions on gearslutz on precisely what all these terms really refer to. If you look at waveforms of tracks of actual CDs you can see examples of soft and hard clipping all over the place, even on jazz and classic albums - but no-one jumps up while listening to these tracks and says, I can hear the system distorting!
So, in normal listening these 'abberations' are virtually inaudible - and a well engineered system should behave the same way: they should clip, really clip, now and again when the volume is up, and this should be essentially non-perceivable - not unless you're standing next to the speaker, with your binoculars,
.This is how my lowly powered systems can make a good showing, they would be technically clipping, but subjectively that fact is not registering ...
There's a nice little "trick" to audio,
...If the electronics are not up to snuff, then the speakers become a superb measuring device, for the ears, of those "problems". Every tiny variation in the setup of the speaker side: drivers, crossovers, cabinets, the works, will be obvious, because the FR will immediately vary, and the spectrum of the troublesome artifacts will significantly alter, and be obvious to the ear.
However, if one improves the electronics the subjective importance of those artifacts will drop off dramatically, and varying the spectral nature of them is no longer easily noticeable. This is when the speakers become 'invisible', because one is no longer subconciously using them to measure how much distortion one's hearing ...
As far as I'm aware, 'soft clipping' is just a form of compression - there are discussions on gearslutz on precisely what all these terms really refer to. If you look at waveforms of tracks of actual CDs you can see examples of soft and hard clipping all over the place, even on jazz and classic albums - but no-one jumps up while listening to these tracks and says, I can hear the system distorting!
So, in normal listening these 'abberations' are virtually inaudible - and a well engineered system should behave the same way: they should clip, really clip, now and again when the volume is up, and this should be essentially non-perceivable - not unless you're standing next to the speaker, with your binoculars,
This is how my lowly powered systems can make a good showing, they would be technically clipping, but subjectively that fact is not registering ...
The reason no one on gearslutz is saying the system is distorting is because the source material (the music) is the culprit. It is already clipped and distorted before it comes off the cd. Why blame the system in those cases when it is innocent?
And those distortions are very audible indeed. Clipping is always audible regardless if it is the amp in the replay system doing it or if it is caused by dynamically over-compressing the mix or master.
An accurate system merely accurately replays those distortions unpleasant as they are.
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